Series 1 Gold, Guns and Germs: Conflict in Eastern Congo
Canadian photojournalist Roger Lemoyne visited the gold mines of Congo on a grant from the Alexia Foundation for World Peace in October 2004. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is the scene of the deadliest conflict in the world. Control of the country's vast mineral resources. He returned to cover the disarming and demobilization of militias, including child soldiers, by UN forces in March and April 2005. This series produced in october 2004 and March 2005, was recently awarded the "Prix du Public" at the 2005 Prix Bayeux-Calvados. Eastern Congo has been destabilized by conflict for the last eight years. According to some aid groups, it is the deadliest war since WWII, claiming the lives of over 3 million people, primarily through starvation and disease. Though the war has been over officially for three years, a wide range of armed groups remain active or ready to strike.
One of the reasons for the conflict there has been the struggle to control the Congo's vast mineral wealth that includes gold, diamonds, uranium, coltan and cassiterite. The conflict has often taken the form of ethnic strife, but many feel that these are tribal struggles manufactured by outsiders that want to keep moving the regions' mineral wealth across their borders rather than through Kinshasa and Congolese control. Most of the Congo's neighboring countries have a stake in the resource exploitation.
Large international mining companies that once had vast operations running have pulled out of the Congo, leaving the work to be done by barefoot Congolese with shovels and buckets. There are no safety measures in place and the prospectors work randomly, often in old, unsafe mine shafts. Many children work in the mining areas of Eastern Congo, some alongside their parents, but there is also a large number of children orphaned by the conflicts that find their way to the mining areas to survive.
The instability caused by the conflict has also led to the near complete absence of social structures and health care outside the few central towns in Eastern Congo such as Bunia or Goma. In Mongbwalu, a town that once hosted the huge Kilo Mines operation, the hospital built by the mining company is almost completely bereft of supplies and staff. TB patients idle without drugs in an open courtyard, the pedeatric ward is empty. Near the mine, a child that died of malaria, is buried by a crowd of villagers under a pelting monsoon rain. The mother, caressing the baby girl's face moments be fore she is interred, softly chides the child for leaving so soon. For the miners and their families, the search for gold is just a hard-scrabble attempt to survive in one of the world's deadliest zones.
In early 2005 the UN force in Eastern Congo set April 1st as the deadline for disarmament and de-mobilization. Many militiamen handed in their weapons, others were brought into the National Army in a process called "brassage". Hundreds of child soldiers were also de-mobilised and moved to re-integration programs. But violence continues in the region and reports of arms flooding in from various sources suggest that the region will remain unstable for years to come. The following report from the news service IRIN Paints a disheartening picture.
From IRIN News Service
KAMPALA, 5 July2005 (IRIN) "Large quantities of arms continue to flow into the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) fueling gross human rights abuse including killings, rape and torture, Amnesty International said in lates reportt.The group says companies from the United Kingdom, Israel, South Africa, the United States, Balkans and Eastern Europe provide weapons to militias in east DRC. The new report, "Democratic Republic of Congo: Arming the east," documents evidence that, military aid has been provided from agents close to the Rwandan, Ugandan and the DRC governments to armed groups and militia of their choice in eastern DRC.The report also documents arms sales through groups in neighbours Rwanda and Uganda".
