UN Accuses Congo of Possible War Crimes

Jessie Lucas
September 18th 2009
10:15 pm

Government forces and rebel groups are in trouble in the Democratic Republic of Congo! The United Nations is accusing them of war crimes as well as crimes against humanity. Some of the Human Rights violations include executions and wide spread rape and sexually violence being almost daily. The Congo apparently has trouble with catching and imprisoning the criminals who commit these crimes and those who do end up in jail are often not their long or “simply walk out the door as there are prisons in Congo that simply do not have doors”. The government forces are being cited with committing large scale pillaging, arbitrary killings, and sexual violence against the people that they were supposed to be protecting. The UN’s estimates of how many people are being victimized may be vastly underrepresented. It is believed that the amount of deaths since 1998 make the conflict in the Congo one of the worst since World War II and responses to the human rights violations have been insufficient.
I truly believe that something needs to be done to end or at the very least minimize the amount of needless killings and overabundance of sexual crimes that are going on in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I mean the word “democratic” is in the country’s title for goodness sake. I don’t believe that gross violations of human rights is very democratic. The UN seems to step in on a lot of issues around the world, but I’m beginning to notice a pattern of them not actually being able to fix very much. I think that human rights violations should be represented more prominently in the media. I think it people were more exposed to these atrocities; they would be more likely to demand something be done to stop it. Then the UN might be more motivated to move its tail end to end these problems and if they weren’t then some other group might be.

http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-09-12-voa18.cfm