← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Hereward
Thread ID: 4393 | Posts: 12 | Started: 2003-01-08
2003-01-08 23:33 | User Profile
[url=http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/front/RTGAM/20030108/wcann0108/Front/homeBN/breakingnews]http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/Articl...BN/breakingnews[/url]
UN probes reports Congo rebels eat Pygmies
Associated Press
Wednesday, January 8 ââ¬â Online Edition, Posted at 11:56 AM EST
Nairobi ââ¬â UN investigators have found credible evidence that Congolese rebel troops have killed and eaten Pygmies in northeastern Congo, UN officials said Wednesday.
During the past week, UN human-rights investigators have been probing reports of cannibalism in Congo's northeastern Ituri province. Forces of the rebel Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC) and its allied Congolese Rally for Democracy-National (RCD-N) are accused of killing and eating Pygmies living in dense tropical forests.
"The UN is taking these accusations very seriously and has sent a team of six officials to investigate the accusations and other human rights abuses in the region," said Manodje Mounoubai, spokesman for the UN mission in Congo.
Speaking by telephone from the Congolese capital, Kinshasa, Mr. Mounoubai said he preferred to wait until the investigators had left the area before providing further information.
Other UN officials, however, insisting on anonymity, said investigators have established that the charges are credible.
The two rebel factions often hire Pygmies to hunt food for them in the forests as they concentrate on fighting to oust the rival rebel Congolese Rally for Democracy-Liberation (RCD-ML) from mineral-rich areas of Ituri province, a UN official familiar with the probe said.
If the expert hunters return empty-handed, rebel troops kill and eat them, the official said.
Sudi Alimasi, an official with the RCD-ML, said the group began receiving reports of cannibalism more than a week ago from people displaced by fighting.
"We hear reports of MLC and RCD-N commanders feeding on sexual organs of Pygmies, apparently believing this would give them strength," Alimasi said by telephone from Kinshasa. "We also have reports of Pygmies' being forced to feed on cooked remains of their colleagues."
Nearly all foreign troops involved in the war in Congo that broke out in August, 1998, have withdrawn, but fighting has intensified among the country's main rebel factions, splinter groups and tribal fighters after the pullout in the east.
2003-01-09 14:20 | User Profile
[SIZE=3]Let Africa rot in Hell.[/SIZE]
Food riots in Zimbabwe spell trouble
By Susan Njanji AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
HARARE, Zimbabwe ââ¬â Food riots in two towns could be the start of a showdown between President Robert Mugabe's government and a restive population facing shortages of most basic goods, commentators said this week.
Rioting broke out Friday outside a government-run grain depot in Zimbabwe's second-largest city, Bulawayo. Thirty-seven people were arrested, then released Monday and ordered to appear in court Jan. 20. On Sunday, four police officers manning a food line were injured in clashes with youths who besieged a shop that had received scarce supplies of the national staple, cornmeal, in Chitungwiza, 15 miles south of Harare. "I think it's a symptom of food availability and distribution problems, and that could be the beginning of many more riots," said Brian Raftopoulos, chairman of a civic group called Crisis in Zimbabwe. "What happened in Bulawayo and Chitungwiza is just a tip of the iceberg of what has been happening elsewhere," said Lovemore Matombo, president of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions. "These are just spontaneous reactions to a crisis." While some commentators predict full-fledged riots soon, others are of the opinion that there could be sporadic unrest that will eventually fizzle out. John Makumbe, a political scientist and anti-government activist, said the worst can be expected around March or April, when the current farming season ends and it will be clear whether there is enough food in Zimbabwe. "Then we will see sustained civil strife across the country," he said. "I think the food riots could very easily result in the government being kicked out of office. I think this regime is ready to run away if things get out of hand. I think we could have a full-fledged riot," Mr. Makumbe said. Mr. Matombo, the labor leader, said after the clashes in Bulawayo and Chitungwiza that "anything can happen, anytime now." "The time is coming when there will be no food, and we will see people rising to the occasion," he said. But Mr. Raftopoulos said there "could be sporadic riots, but nothing on a mass scale, unless the opposition and civic groups organize." Zimbabwe is in the throes of crippling food shortages that threaten more than two-thirds of the population of 11.6 million. The shortages are mainly attributed to a droughtcolor=red[/color] that has ravaged southern Africa, but critics also blame Mr. Mugabe's land reforms, in which he has ordered white-owned farms seized and given to blacks. Zimbabwe needs to import more than 300,000 tons of corn by March to alleviate the shortage, but supplies are only trickling in at 22,000 tons a week, according to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. The government has rejected accusations that food in some rural areas is being distributed along party lines. In some areas, relief food takes weeks or months to arrive, and people eat wild fruits and the roots of trees.color=red[/color] A weekly documentary program made by the Roman Catholic Church for state television has shown families talking about their distress. Many have hardly one meal a day. Food-security agencies in southern Africa have warned that Zimbabwe and other countries are likely to experience another drought because simply normal to below-normal rainfall is forecast by meteorologists. Basic goods such as sugar, salt, cooking oil, cornmeal and bread, whose prices are controlled by government, are hardly available in shops, but can be found on the black market ââ¬â usually at 10 times or more of the controlled price. Inflation runs at more than 175 percent, and the United Nations said last year that three quarters of the people live in abject poverty.
[url=http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030109-30682354.htm]http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030109-30682354.htm[/url]
2003-01-09 17:02 | User Profile
A typical academic liberal would respond something like:
'We must never fall into the error of evaluating the norms and mores of non-Western cultures by Western standards. This is the cardinal error of ethnocentrism, which must be avoided if we wish to study another culture objectively. The real question we must ask here is what cultural purpose is being served here in terms of belief systems: what is the meaning to the participants of eating various parts of their enemies' anatomy? What are the legends and/or mythology surrounding such practices, and how do they reinforce the culture's deeply felt values, both structurally and functionally? It is necessary to set aside any culturally conditioned responses as revulsion, etc. in order to comprehend this indigenous culture in its entirety and contextual setting. Failure to be able to do so is the hallmark of a xenophobic and less-than-enlightened response to values which conflict with our own similarly deeply held socialized and enculturated beliefs.'
2003-01-10 19:04 | User Profile
I doubt that the story is true. You guys should see how rumors fly in Africa. It's mind numbing. The main cannibalism is "muti", when some young kid will be kidnaped and his body parts, testicles, eyeballs, that sort of thing are used in potions.
2003-01-10 19:07 | User Profile
Let's see what would go well with Roasted Pygmie.
Hmmm, how about Nehi Grape Pop?
2003-01-10 20:20 | User Profile
**Let's see what would go well with Roasted Pygmie.
Hmmm, how about Nehi Grape Pop? **
Forget about soft drinks, I'm more concerned about fine wine recommendations.
2003-01-12 01:27 | User Profile
No doubt it is true. Has anyone ever watched the movie "The Naked Prey"? It is based on a true story how some Africans captured a white hunting party in the 1800's and proceeded to cook them in a variety of ways, one of which was in clay by pouring clay all over their poor victim, letting it dry, and then baking him in his own juices so he was nice and tender. Then the Africans decide to make the guide of the expedition as the object of their own"fox hunt", after he had to watch his friends cooked and eaten. Well, he outwits them and escapes them. This movie is a must-see for all students of Africa.
2003-01-12 02:32 | User Profile
Well, if it happened in a movie set 150 years ago, it must be true now.....
2003-01-12 13:09 | User Profile
The story has been published in The Star, of SA. It sounds real to me.
I subscribe to the IOL newsletter on African Affairs. It's great.
If you are not subscribed, but would like to be, send a blank email to listsrv-join-amnews@iol.co.za
2003-01-13 08:48 | User Profile
I love The Naked Prey - Cornel Wilde really taught those walnut-brained savages what happens when you screw with a White Debbil.
It's a very pro-White movie - which means, of course, that it could never be made today.
2003-01-13 12:40 | User Profile
More like Aids in Africa: 'Mass murder by stupidity and savagery' if you ask me.
[url=http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?newslett=1&click_id=68&art_id=ct20030111195326344S320188&set_id=1]http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?newslett=1&...320188&set_id=1[/url]
Aids in Africa: 'Mass murder by complacency'
January 11 2003 at 07:53PM
By Caroline Hooper-Box
The United Nations special envoy for HIV/Aids in southern Africa has warned of "a crescendo of rage and desperation which governments will ignore at their peril" in a hard-hitting new report on the spread of the pandemic on the continent.
Stephen Lewis, who is UN secretary-general Kofi Annan's special envoy, has accused world governments of "mass murder by complacency" for neglecting the food and Aids crisis in southern Africa, and has warned of the "failure" of southern African states "10 or 15 years down the road".
Among the recommendations that Lewis made regarding the HIV/Aids pandemic and the hunger that is stalking Africa are that anti-retroviral programmes be supported by governments, that southern African governments do all they can to get food to their people, that the international community finds the political will and money to deal with the pandemic and the food shortages, and that the vulnerability of women and children in the region become a priority.
'Hunger and Aids have come together in a Hecate's brew of horror' Lewis, a former Canadian ambassador to the UN, ........................
2003-01-13 17:43 | User Profile
I am surprised that we have not been hearing cannibalism reports from Zimbabwe yet.