News About Congo

Congo Airliner Crashes in Kisangani

Oh My God, another airplane crash in Congo!  

The sad part of the equation, travel by air is a NECESSITY.  You can not travel by highway, rail, or waterway.  For me to get from Kinshasa, the capital, to Kananga, a provincial capital, it would take weeks or longer.  One way is go by boat (Kinshasa to Illebo) and train (Illebo to Kananga).  But we have been waiting on the train from Illebo to arrive in Kananga for about two months or more.  Two weeks ago, it finally left Illebo but it derailed a few miles out of the station.

God Have Mercy!

 

via www.nytimes.com

A passenger plane crashed in a thunderstorm as it was trying to land in Kisangani, Congo, on Friday, killing at least 48 people.

The authorities said 53 passengers survived and that at least a dozen people were trapped in the wreckage.

“I confirm the crash of one of our planes,” Stavros Papaioannou, the chairman and chief executive of Hewa Bora Airways, said in a telephone interview. “There are already 46 bodies at the morgue, and another two that just died in the hospital.”

The plane had departed from Kinshasa, the capital, and was bound for Kisangani in the northeastern part of the country.

A government spokesman, Lambert Mende, said the plane went down in bad weather a few yards from the Kisangani airport. “It was due to the thunder,” he said. “There are around 50 dead and 53 survivors, as well as a dozen people still unaccounted for.”

Hewa Bora, which means “Fresh Air” in Swahili, has a history of crashes. 

 

Gold Miners Work for a Bucket of Dirt Each Day

Gold miners work all day long shoveling through tons of dirt.  At the end of the day, they are paid one bucket of dirt as their day's wage.

Do you feel lucky?

Of blood and gold in Congo By Mohammed Adow in Ituri, Democratic Republic of Congo

In the mines of the Democratic Republic of Congo's northeast situated close to the Uganda border, thousands of miners are working in muddy pits, extracting sand, mud and rocks in the search for gold.

But they are not getting rich and their work is risky.

As international gold traders begin to cash in on the high demand for gold and precious metals caused by the global financial crisis, little of the high returns ever reach the mining communities.

For miners in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) decades of gold mining should have provided a ticket to prosperity but in reality it has trapped them in a cycle of violence and poverty.

Al Jazeera recently gained access to gold mines in the Ituri District.

Gold there is found in two forms – either embedded in rock or as loose pieces of varying sizes hidden in the earth or sand, often found deep under river beds.

Most of the mines are operated by artisanal miners.

Every morning 19-year-old Jean Faustin Mandro dutifully shows up for work and toils his way through tonnes of earth. It is the only way he can feed his daughter and wife. 

"Work is very hard here but there is no other work for us to do," he told Al Jazeera.

And there is no guarantee he will be payed for his efforts. At the end of the day each labourer is given a bucket of earth from the pit as payment. 

It may not contain gold.

Innocent Musubi, another miner, searched through his day's wage-bucket at the end of a long day, but he found nothing. It means he will have to return to his family empty-handed and try his luck the next day.

"Working in a gold mine means you depend on luck to get money," he says. "Some months you can make nothing and other months you can make a lot of money and forget all about the hard work you do," he added.

Top LRA Rebel May Surrender in Congo

What is happening in Congo?  The LRA leader may surrender.  This is wonderful news!

Uganda's top LRA rebel commander negotiates surrender

A top commander of Uganda's rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has announced that he is tired of war and is negotiating his surrender with the Ugandan military.

Capt. Deo Akiki, the spokesman of a joint regional military offensive against the rebel group in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) confirmed the rebel commander's announcement to Xinhua by telephone on Wednesday but requested not to name the rebel commander for fear that he could be killed.

    "Yes we have been in contact not only with him but with other commanders who are equally tired of the war," Capt. Akiki said.

The LRA is Not Welcomed in Congo

The LRA has been around a long time but just not in Congo.  I hope they move back to Ugandan or Sudan.  That's selfish!  The true is they should be put out of business.

UN Human Rights Chief Calls for Accountability in Congo

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay says the human-rights situation in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo is alarming. She is calling for all participants in the various conflicts in the region to respect human rights and international humanitarian law and says those who commit crimes against civilians must be brought to justice.

Pillay says she is deeply concerned about a continuous stream of gross human-rights abuses committed by the Ugandan-rebel Lord's Resistance Army in the Oriental Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The group has been attacking villages and terrorizing civilians since it moved its base from southern Sudan to this remote part of the Congo. At the end of last year, the Congolese, Ugandan and Sudanese armies launched joint operations against the rebels.