Modern Day Holocaust

The death toll in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has now surpassed that of the Holocaust: ten million VS six million. Yet there has been little reporting of this Congo genocide by mainstream media. The slaughter in the Congo has followed a tragic pattern: hundreds of thousands of women and girls raped in front of their families, beaten and left to die. At the root of this killing is “greed”: the ruthless search for precious metals by mining companies, many of which are Canadian, who have sponsored some of the worst war lords prepared to butcher millions in return for the country’s wealth.

Those mining the gold, the Colton and other minerals are boys as young as five years of age. Many of them die in the mines but this is of little concern to the international community, including the Harper government, which defeated Bill C-300, an attempt to curb the power of mining lobbyists and help make mining companies and buyers of precious metals in 3^rd world countries behave more responsibly.

This is why Prime Minister Harper’s comments last week at the Francophone summit in Africa are so hypocritical. Canada is complicit, as is the U.S., in the atrocities taking place in the Congo. As for the prime minister stating he wants the next meeting to be held in a democratic country, he must, because of the massive cuts he has made to many of our important programs, exclude Canada.

How the media (and in this case the CBC who accompanied Harper on his trip) can fail to report on this modern-day Holocaust and Canada’s connection to it, continues to be an affront to Canadians and an injustice to the people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.