by ANDRE VLTCHEK
Investigative journalist and filmmaker Andre Vltchek PHOTO/Wikipedia
This is not an easy essay to write. I have been postponing it for several weeks. But I have many readers all over the world who trust me, and they encourage me to tell the truth, as I perceive it. And I will continue doing so, for them, even when the topic is complex and somehow uncomfortable.
Let me begin by saying that I fully support freedom for Palestine; I demand that the Palestinian people be allowed to have their own state, and to have their pride and dignity restored. Not ‘soon’ but now, and even ‘now’ is too late!
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I have spent years, going back and forth, to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Between 8 and 10 million people there lost their lives, from 1995 to this day. That is as many as the same unfortunate country (unfortunate because it is so rich in minerals and raw materials, which the West needs for its communication equipment and weapons) lost during the reign of one of the most appalling monarchs in human history – Belgian king Leopold II.
I made a film – a feature documentary film – that is now being aired by Press TV. A film about how Rwanda and Uganda, on behalf of their European and North American handlers, are plundering and massacring millions of people in DRC.
Even the UN in its ‘Mapping Report’ spoke about alleged genocide. It is not some lunatic conspiracy theory. It is real and it is happening now. And two horrible fascist dictatorships, those of Rwanda and Uganda, are persistently supported and glorified in Washington, Paris and London. And the entire 1994 genocide narrative on Rwanda has been twisted and manipulated, so as to give Tutsis some moral legitimacy for the genocide they are presently committing in the DRC.
Yes, I spent more time in Rwanda, Uganda and East Kivu, lately, than I am spending in Gaza or in West Bank. I am sorry. But please see for yourself, how many people are really involved in bringing to the world some objective information about the Great Lakes region of Africa, and about this greatest episode of bloodletting in post WWII history.
10 million people! Entire communities destroyed. There are hundreds of thousands of child soldiers, perhaps millions. The land is scarred and robbed of all its resources. There are Christian fundamentalist fanatics running private armies, torturing and mutilating, executing people, simply for pleasure.
There are rapes. Millions of women have been raped – from babies to 80-years old or more, grandmothers. And the way they rape there, is also absolutely unimaginable. After being gang-raped, many women have their faces slashed open with razor blades and knives, they have their rectums and vaginas cut mercilessly, just in case they were hiding some diamonds between their teeth or inside their private parts. Men do not even bother to kill them before they mutilate them.
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Indonesia is easily one of the most brutal countries on Earth, with a homicide rate twice that of the US (per capita), with its feudal system, and with social violence unimaginable anywhere else, except in sub-Saharan Africa.
Between 2 and 3 million people vanished during the US-backed coup in 1965, perpetrated by the military and by the religious cadres. That was the first genocide in the modern history of the country.
Soon after, there followed a second one, that of East Timor, where approximately 30% of the population lost its life. Almost everybody who means anything in the present political hierarchy of Indonesia was involved in the East Timor massacres – from the President (SBY), to the Presidential candidate Prabowo and his entourage, as well as the entourage of the President-elect, ‘Jokowi’.
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