Country Profile: DR Congo

Reported by Miss Kongo Kimbagu

In my home country, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the government has inflicted violence on its people for more than ten years. The population are at the mercy of the army and police.

The police and the military stop people and threaten to arrest them unless they are paid.

Me and my friend were once walking home from University when two armed officers came over and arrested us.  They said that if we didn’t give them money they would rape us. I didn’t have anything other than my mobile phone and some jewellery I was wearing, so I gave them those. But my friend tried to resist and the soldiers started taking off her clothes. She gave them twenty dollars, which was all she had. There’s no choice. You just have to give them everything you have in your possession.

The reasons behind this are complex. One aspect is that the police are not paid enough. To live a comfortable life they get money out of people by arresting and harassing them. Another factor is that the government are not powerful enough to control the army, they’re not powerful enough to control the police, you don’t feel their authority.

At the heart of my country’s problems is a valuable mineral called Coltan.

In the East of Congo a mineral called Coltan has been discovered. It is used to make mobile phones and laptops. Big companies are doing all they can to get as much Coltan as possible. They use children, six and seven year olds, to work in the mines. The government knows this but they do nothing to stop them because the companies are such powerful lobbyists. In fact, the Congolese army help them to gain control of land that can be mined for Coltan. The strategy they use is to harass, intimidate and abuse the people living on the land to force them to leave. Rape is their most powerful weapon.

In the East of the country 48 women are raped every hour.

I used to live in Kinshasa, the capital. But in the East of the country the violence is far worse. The police and the military rape women over sixty and even children are not spared. They violate them in so many ways, they insert objects into their wombs, they cut off their limbs, things that are just horror, horror. More than five million people are dead because they do whatever they can to get them off the land, and if they don’t go, they kill them.

Following the election in November 2011, Joseph Kabila will remain in power. The credibility of the election is widely contested by international observers.

The atrocities that have taken place in the last ten years were all under the rule of Joseph Kabila, who came to power through a coup d’état in 2001. He won the election on 28^th November 2011, but it was not a democratic victory. International observers from the EU, the UN, NGOs and the Catholic Church were all present during the elections, but they rejected the results because there were too many inconsistencies. He was not our people’s choice. After all that he’s done to our country Joseph Kabila will remain the president. People will continue to get raped and killed. Children will be used in the mines. So today the Congolese are just desperate. They don’t know what to do now.

Please make our voices heard because we feel alone in this.