Tech | December 16, 2010 | 8 comments

UN Peacekeepers Trying To Head Off Christmas Massacre In Congo (Over Blood Minerals For Consumer Goods)

source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iduTBApHLCmGUF9clnqdrlk-L8TQ?docId=CNG.a3...

Image
twohawks
The United Nations has ordered 900 peacekeepers to a remote region of Democratic Republic of Congo, where the LRA killed more than 1,000 adults and children around Christmas in 2008 and 2009 and kidnapped hundreds more, to head off feared Christmas attacks by Lord's Resistance Army fighters.


===== report ==============
UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations has ordered 900 peacekeepers to a remote region of Democratic Republic of Congo, to head off feared Christmas attacks by Lord's Resistance Army fighters, a spokesman said Tuesday.

UN forces will go to a region where the LRA killed more than 1,000 adults and children around Christmas in 2008 and 2009 and kidnapped hundreds more.

The UN mission in DR Congo is also sending extra humanitarian supplies to the region, UN spokesman Martin Nesirky told reporters.

A special operation against the LRA has been launched in the Dungu district of Upper Uele region and would carry on until mid-January because of fears of the "holiday season" attacks, Nesirky said.

The announcement came after the UN Security Council called for greater international action against the LRA, which is led by Joseph Kony who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The LRA sprang out of a rebellion in Uganda in the 1980s but now terrorizes communities in Central African Republic, southern Sudan and DR Congo.

The Security Council welcomed an African Union move to set up a joint task force to fight the LRA and deploy joint border patrols.

"It calls for the countries of the region to enhance coordination and information sharing regarding the the threat posed by the LRA," said a Security Council statement on efforts to bring peace to Central African Republic.

Ugandan special forces currently lead the international hunt for Kony, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In December 2008, LRA fighters killed 865 men, women and children in the northeastern DR Congo and in southern Sudan, and kidnapped hundreds of others.

A year later 300 people were murdered between December 14 and 17, also in northeast DR Congo.

The United States has promised to support a new effort to catch Kony and halt the conflict generated by the LRA, but in a report titled "Ghosts of Christmas Past," 19 aid agencies said the Security Council should do more.

The report said LRA attacks remote communities in Sudan, Central African Republic and DR Congo almost four times a week.

"These communities await Christmas with fear," added the groups, who include Oxfam, Christian Aid, Refugees International, World Vision and War Child UK, among others.

The UN refugee agency said in October that the rebels had killed 2,000 people since December 2008, kidnapped more than 2,600 and displaced more than 400,000 in DR Congo, the Central African Republic and southern Sudan.

"The acute suffering and mass population displacement the LRA has generated across international borders is undermining stability in an already fragile region, where southern Sudan is preparing to hold a landmark referendum on secession in early 2011," the report said.

The aid groups welcomed recent steps by the United States and the African Union. But it said kidnapped people had to be helped to return home and villages had to be protected.

The aid groups called on the UN Security Council to set up an expert panel as "there is a chronic lack of information about the motivation, composition and location of the LRA."

The LRA began their rebellion in northern Uganda in the late 1980s, but have not carried out an attack there since 2006.

Since south Sudanese-hosted peace talks broke down in 2008, the fighters have roamed the jungles of central Africa and been repeatedly blamed for the slaughter of defenseless civilians.

The African Union has said the LRA should be called "terrorists" rather than rebels.

############# ARTICLE LINK #############
UN peacekeepers to head off Christmas massacre
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iduTBApHLCmGUF9clnqdrlk-L8TQ?...
(AFP) – Dec 13, 2010
  1. groups:
    Community,   News and Politics,   Tech
  2. tags:
    Politics,  Green,  Internet,  Human Rights,  50 more
  3.     
    |

8 comments // UN Peacekeepers Trying To Head Off Christmas Massacre In Congo (Over Blood Minerals For Consumer Goods)

  • twohawks
    • 0
      twohawks  

    • I just want to emphasis, its really important people take a moment to read about some of this stuff... the potential answers are not cut and dry. Its not like there is a movement to cut off economics to the region, but there is a movement to raise awareness, and try to formulate better integrity with our involvement there.

      We do well to practice more integrity with managing our appetite for goods, and how we spend our money, and understand how the effects of those things ripples way out ...affecting other lives in critically significant ways.

    • 1 year ago
  • JanforGore
    • 0
      JanforGore  

    • This is very important information. Thank you so much for bringing this here. I don't own a cell phone and don't want one. I will definitely be using the resources you posted here regarding other electronic products I have. This has to stop.

    • 1 year ago
  • twohawks
  • ayipis
    • 0
      ayipis  
    • JanforGore:

      you know your computer is about 100% worse than your cell phone..

      are you going to cut that one?? the answer to this problem is NOT TO INCONVENIENCE YOURSELF..but stop and punish those who caused the atrocity..or else it will continue..

      i predict that the UN and morons like "someone" i know will just complicate things and cause more unnecessary pain to others ...

      ***LOL here comes the "awareness plan"**

      JAN.. awareness is over..TIME FOR YOUR ASS TO ACT..LOL

    • 1 year ago
  • twohawks
    • 0
      twohawks  

    • Minerals Found In Consumer Electronic Devices Help Finance Civil War In Congo...
      As you arm yourself with electronic gifts over the next few weeks, you probably won't think about the minerals your new cellphone, laptop or digital camera runs on. But no matter which company made the gadget, it's likely to be powered using tin, tantalum, tungsten or gold, all of which are mined in Eastern Congo, where profits contribute to financing the country's bloody war.

      Rebel groups and the national army control many of Eastern Congo's mines. Over the past decade, more than 5 million people have died, and hundreds of thousands of women have been raped in the struggle for power, according to the Raise Hope for Congo campaign. While the Congolese government has expressed interest in tackling the multimillion-dollar trade in minerals, the involvement of its own troops has led critics to question their efforts.

      The West has long been aware of this problem, though hard facts are difficult to establish: A 2008 U.S. Geological Survey report found that less than 10 percent of tantalum (the mineral used to make capacitors in most cellphones and iPods) imported to the United States is from Congo. But one human rights group, the Enough Project, estimates that Congolese armed groups make $8 million per year trading in that mineral alone.

      Electronics companies argue that the supply chain is nearly impossible to track: There are thousands of companies, they say, that leave little or no paperwork. Manufacturers use Congolese minerals, which cost only one-half or one-third the price of those mined in other countries - due to large quantitites of minerals close to the surface, lack of regulation and cheap labor - leaving the American consumer with no way of knowing whether their purchases are subsidizing warfare half a world away.

      ###### FULL ARTICLE AT THIS LINK ########################
      Minerals Found In Consumer Electronic Devices Help Finance Civil War In Congo
      By Elizabeth Flock
      Washington Post Staff Writer
      Monday, December 13, 2010; 6:21 PM

      https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/13/AR2010121304571...

    • 1 year ago
  • twohawks
  • twohawks
    • +1
      twohawks  
    • Image

    • Is Your Christmas Gift Fueling War?
      by Tristan McConnell
      December 15, 2010

      What's the true cost of that mobile phone in your pocket?

      That's the big question human rights group Enough Project wants you to ponder this year as it urges holiday consumers to be strategic when buying electronic gifts.

      At issue: whether their new high-tech items were produced using "conflict minerals."

      The mobile phones, laptops, tablets and other electronic gadgets that define our age are all made with tin, tungsten, tantalite and gold. Those increasingly valuable minerals are mined in eastern Congo — where their profits are blamed for fueling the region's ongoing war.

      ==================================
      A new survey urges American consumers to press electronic manufacturers to make sure that their products do not contain minerals that cause war, mass rape, murder and exploitation in eastern Congo.

      The world's top 21 electronics firms are ranked according to their efforts to make their products "conflict free" in a survey published Monday by the Enough Project, a Washington-based pressure group.

      HP is the best, according to the rankings. Intel, Motorola and Nokia ranked two, three and four, respectively. Microsoft and Dell round out the top five.

      At the bottom of the rankings were camera-maker Canon, electronics companies Panasonic and Sharp, and video game giant Nintendo, all of which are deemed by Enough to have done nothing.

      The scores were based on the steps the companies have taken, according to their responses to a Enough's survey and publicly available information, said David Sullivan, research director for the Enough Project.

      http://www.enoughproject.org/conflict_areas/eastern_congo

      ######################
      Much More At Article Link (Good INFO)
      http://www.npr.org/2010/12/16/132089765/is-your-christmas-gift-fueling-war

    • 1 year ago
more from Tech:
from the community

top videos