Congo's Forgotten Children

[Ibtisam]

NOW on Channel 4:

 

Congo reminds me so much of Somalia sometimes. Any londoners who can watch this.

 

Dispatches examines how the children of Congo are being affected by the latest fighting that is tearing their country apart. An entire generation has been scarred by a seemingly endless conflict - in the last 12 years at least three million children have died as a result of fighting and the hunger and disease that war creates. The long running conflict is largely ignored by the rest of the world but last November Congo briefly hit the headlines as rebel troops seized control of a large area of Eastern Congo. The Dispatches team were the only journalists to reach the town of Kanyabayonga. Children describe how they ran and hid in dense forest to avoid the fighting. In the panic many were separated from their parents. They spent up to three weeks with little food, no clean water and no shelter and as a result many became ill and died.

 

Reporter Deborah Davies hears directly from children from across East Congo describe their horrific experiences: a five-year-old boy, struggling to breathe in his hospital bed, thinks soldiers threw a rock at him because he's too young to understand that he's been shot in his chest; an 11-year-old girl hides behind her hands because she literally can't face describing how she saw a woman raped and slashed to death; a teenage boy describes how he was kidnapped by an armed group when he was twelve and forced to kill; a boy who was orphaned at 10 works in a gold mine breaking rocks in searing heat trying to earn enough money so he can go to school.

 

The latest fighting has also seen a huge increase in the number of children being kidnapped by armed groups and forced to be soldiers. At a special centre for former child soldiers Dispatches hears about the long term psychological damage to youngsters who've been trained to kill, to kidnap other children and who've been used for sex – as "wives" to militia commanders.

 

Many of the child soldiers Dispatches met were taken by the CNDP rebel group. Dispatches meets it's leader, Laurent Nkunda to challenge him on his illegal use of children and his role in causing the latest crisis, which has led to up to a third of a million people fleeing in terror – more than half of them children.

 

In Kanyabayonga, Dispatches follows families as they trudge out of forest on their way home – only to find their houses have been completely looted. But it becomes clear that the damage was done by the Congolese army. Under the terms of a ceasefire the rebels withdrew without ever entering the town. These events have been investigated by a UN human rights team. Their report into the actions of the Congolese army is expected at the end of February.

 

But the majority of the recent suffering has been caused by the advance of a rebel group who still surround the major town of Goma . The Don Bosco orphanage is caring for hundreds of new arrivals, many of them under five years old. They include a girl of about three who hasn't spoken since she was found three weeks earlier all alone in the forest.

 

The Dispatches team also travel to one of Congo's gold mining areas to talk to children who work there because they've lost relatives and been forced to leave their homes as a result of a previous round of violence.

C4

[Ibtisam]

Oh my god I can't watch this :eek: :eek:

[Che -Guevara]

Congo is worse..I have seen few reports on the conflict, the things rebels do to kids and women...It is beyond anyone's imagination.

 

war against women-Warning

[Dhubad.]

I actually stopped watching after a few minutes! These people are animals, why would anyone do that to children. Its sick world that we live in!

[Faheema.]

This sounds like something out of the movie Blood Diamond only worse