Aid to the Church in Need: DR Congo: Gold, exploitation and disaster for the people

DR Congo: Gold, exploitation and disaster for the people

Posted by Press Release on 15/5/2009, 11:35 am
Board Administrator

ACN News: Friday, 15th May 2009 – DR CONGO

Gold, exploitation and disaster for the people

By John Newton

A LEADING priest from the Democratic Republic of the Congo says that the illegal exploitation of the country’s valuable minerals is fuelling instability in the country and leading to increased fears about the rise of rebel attacks.
Fr Justin Nkunzi, justice and peace commission director of the Archdiocese of Bukavu, called on the Congolese government to ensure that trade from minerals, including gold, does not benefit militant groups responsible for violence in the country.
Speaking to Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), he also called on industry leaders to improve transparency of the supply chain which would allow buyers to trace the source of their gold.
During the interview with ACN, Fr Nkunzi said “If you buy diamonds and gold from rebel held areas, it helps the rebels – they can buy weapons and guns and continue the war.”
For the Congolese people to work towards a peace initiative he emphasised that governments, such as the UK, need to assist his country’s authorities to stamp out the illegal exploitation of their natural resources.
DR Congo is beset by serious problems – including sexual violence, child soldiers, and refugees fleeing conflict – all of which are caused by rebel action which is funded by the mineral trade.
Fr Nkunzi said: “In our country many people suffer, you probably know the story of the dictator Mobutu [President from 1965 to 1997] which led us to many years of war and caused us many problems such as the rape of our women, social violence, child soldiers, and refugees. The Church must be wherever someone asks us for our help.
“Everyone must do the best they can to bring peace, first within your heart, second in the family, then in all the community.”
He condemned the use of child soldiers – people as young as 10 who have been forced or coerced – sometimes at gun point – to join militia groups.
“Rebel groups have so many child soldiers. We must give support to these children, help them to leave militia camps in the forest and bring them back to the village.”
Yet it is difficult to reintegrate child soldiers back into the community.
He said: “If someone has used a gun and that is all he knows, it is not easy to take this away from him. Training must go on in the villages. In fact everywhere there is a need for training for these young people.”
Militia groups are also responsible for an increase in sexual violence, using the rape of women as a way of demoralizing the local people.
Fr Nkunzi said: “For us it’s a kind of new terrorism. It is a strategy for destroying the family. It destroys everyone. It is a kind of ‘killing’.
“Sexual violence causes a big degree of trauma – individual trauma, communal trauma. The perpetrators know that the most effective ways of humiliating a man is to rape his wife.”
In 2007 John Holmes, UN under secretary general for humanitarian affairs, said: “The sexual violence in Congo is the worst in the world. The sheer numbers, the wholesale brutality, the culture of impunity — it’s appalling.”

Fr Justin Nkunzi

Yet despite these serious problems Fr Nkunzi said the Church can play a vital role in bringing justice and peace to this war-torn nation: “The Church must work to bring our people together and say that another way is possible – and speak out against impunity.”
He continued: “The work of the justice and peace commission is to especially help communities to come together after being torn apart and to support them to bring about change for themselves, their families, their communities.
“It is a ministry as Jesus said to bring peace and reconciliation everywhere.”
He stressed how the Church’s social outreach to the communities that have been broken by violence must be rooted in prayer.
Fr Nkunzi said: “Our work wouldn’t be possible without the prayers and the peace that comes from Jesus and God. It is possible because Jesus is beginning the new way and we are following the new way in our country, many persons need to meet him in our country.
“We are all brothers in Africa. We must hear Jesus; we must try to build our region because God has given us a good country.”
He praised ACN for its help in the Congo, saying that the charity had helped many priests, sisters and congregations, who in turn are able to help other people.
He concluded saying: “May God bless all who help you to help us, together we can face many problems in our country.”

Editor’s Notes:

Directly under the Holy See, Aid to the Church in Need supports the faithful wherever they are persecuted, oppressed or in pastoral need. ACN is a Catholic charity – helping to bring Christ to the world through prayer, information and action.

Founded in 1947 by Fr Werenfried van Straaten, whom Pope John Paul II named “An outstanding Apostle of Charity”, the organisation is now at work in about 130 countries throughout the world.

The charity undertakes thousands of projects every year including providing transport for clergy and lay Church workers, construction of church buildings, funding for priests and nuns and help to train seminarians. Since the initiative’s launch in 1979, 46.5 million Aid to the Church in Need Child’s Bibles have been distributed worldwide.

For more information, please contact the Australian office of ACN on (02) 9679-1929. e-mail: info@aidtochurch.org or write to Aid to the Church in Need PO Box 6245 Blacktown DC NSW 2148. Web: www.aidtochurch.org

This message is locked.

Responses are not allowed!

Aid to the Church in Need PO Box 6245 Blacktown DC NSW 2148 ABN: 62 418 911 594
Ph/Fax (02) 9679-1929 e-mail: info@aidtochurch.org web: www.aidtochurch.org