Congo - Blood River

When I was a child I knew that Stanley had found another explorer, who was lost, with the now famous phrase of; “Dr Livingston I presume” However, that was all I knew, and even asking a teacher at school did not enlighten me much. So I had to visit the library to try and discover more. Even then I got a sanitised version of Henry Morton Stanley's adventures in the dark heart of Africa. I had doubts about the veracity of the accounts as in his descriptions of Gorillas they were described as wild fierce beasts, yet images shown on television at the same time as I was on my own voyage of discovery were showing Gorillas as peaceful and gentle.

Apart from discovering that Henry M Stanley had mapped and navigated the Congo River, I was no more enlightened about the man at the time. In some ways I am glad to be living at a time when history was being revised to tell the true story. Even I as a child could have doubts about the history I was being informed then and the truth was far less pleasant than the daring adventurer that was being painted.

The tropical rain forests of central Africa, over two million square miles, were not penetrated by western explorers until the latter half of the nineteenth century where there was an exuberance of species and diversity found. All previously unknown, except to the peoples who had lived there for tens of thousands of years. Yet even before Stanley, in 1859 Paul De Chaillu returned from the Congo basin with hundreds of specimens of species previously unknown to science, and wild tales of the Gorilla as this fiercest near human beast of the jungle. Even exaggerating the the tales by claiming that they would abduct women to fornicate with. His book Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa, published in 1861 was the inspiration for King Kong. While not the only one much 19th century literature described African wildlife in terms of myth and fantasy.

However it was Paul De Chaillu's descriptions of the peoples in the forest that had the greatest influence on the men that came latter. Men like Henry Morton Stanley, who on August 9th 1877 reached the mouth of the river Congo having traversed it from its source in the heart of Africa. In his book The Dark Continent, the peoples he encountered, he described as protohumans. This more than anything else triggered the colonial gold rush of the land grab that European countries made for Africa. After all if the land has no human people it was free to be claimed by who ever.

It took Britain, Spain, France, Portugal and Germany only eight years from the publication of The Dark Continent to divide up most of the Equatorial forest between them. However, the largest slice, half the area, was taken not by a country but by an individual, King Leopold II of Belgium Who took the land of the Congo, as his personal pleasure land. He owned every thing, the trees, the animals and the people.

The first resource he exploited in his ironically named “Congo Free State”, was Ivory from the Forest Elephants, so much so that in less than five years the elephants nearly became extinct. The next resource to be exploited was natural latex from the rubber tree. At this point in the nineteenth century rubber was essential for the then new technology of electricity and as insulation on the telegraph wires. As the rubber trees grew wild in the forests, Leopold II (who never set foot on African soil) needed the local knowledge of the various tribes to utilise this resources.

Leopold's exploitation of the forest and the lands set a new standard of horror and abuse in Africa, one that remains to this day. People that failed to produce the volumes of rubber the Belgium king wanted would be whipped for being lazy. And if a village failed to produce its quota of rubber then selected people would have their hand chopped off. Those selected were frequently children.

While European people acknowledge the genocide in Germany, in the Congo was the first modern Genocide and between 1885 to 1908 there were at least four million people killed with estimates that ten million people were mascaraed by the Belgium's All this shaped the peoples of the region and is reflected in the brutality of the modern wars and civil wars of today.

Of course the public myth was that western white men were there to civilise the natives. But the reality was that it was making a profit at any cost. While slavery was already abolished in Europe, the African land grab enabled the racist mentality of the people who still thought that slavery was a good thing to fulfil their dreams and those people who were genuinely going to Africa to help the indigenous peoples were soon made to fall into line with the system. The white man had absolute power there, even the most lowly clerk had this power and that power corrupted the colonialists.

While the public face of colonisation was to civilise and educate the native peoples, the education that Africa learnt was one of brutal exploitation of resources and people. It is from this understanding of the past that I can see and understand the problems of modern Africa today.

The regime of Leopold II though started the first Human Rights campaign of the modern age. One that would be mirrored years latter by the Blood Diamond campaign the Red Rubber campaign Slave Rubber was the first to use photographs of the excesses of the Belgium overseers, like Leon Romme who was notorious for decorating his mansion with the heads of the Congolese

The campaign did work as the king was forced to hand over the colony to the Belgium state, and slowly, very slowly the worst excesses of the colonialists diminished. However the myth of the colonial powers being there to civilise prevailed for another half century.

However, it was the exploitation of the wildlife that has been the hardest lesson that we gave the Africans. The native peoples of Africa (along with all indigenous peoples) had learned how to utilise the natural resources of the rain forest in a sustainable manner. The colonialists saw this abundance and harvested it with no thought or regard to its regeneration or conservation.

However with the discovery of the Mountain Gorilla in 1902 in Kivu the rush by naturalists to the region where the Gorillas lived started a change in the western attitude towards the forest and conservation. Conservationists like Carl Akeley brought a new understanding of the nature of the Gorilla to the world. Gorillas were not the wild man beast of myth but gentle shy vegetarians. This started to change the attitude of people towards the jungle, it was no longer seen as primeval and needing to be tamed and controlled but conserved and preserved.

It was as a result of the efforts of Carl Akeley that the first national park was created in Africa, to protect the Mountain Gorilla at Kivu, although it was originally called Albert National Park. The intention was that the park would be free of people. But the area had been inhabited for thousands of years. This brought great resentment from the peoples, and to them it showed that they were of less importance than the wildlife. Further it reflected the old colonial attitude that indigenous populations were irrelevant and unimportant.

While in the 1950s the Belgium Congo was the most developed part of Africa, with the wealth generated from the mineral resources meaning that it had good primary education and more hospital beds than the whole of the rest of Africa, the attitude towards the indigenous peoples was patronising to say the least. With only the people who resulted from mixed birth being treated with any degree of respect, and even then they were refereed to as evolving. Meaning they were evolving into humans. There were even skin colour charts produced that determined where people could live.

It was not until the advent of television that white western peoples could see the poverty that Africa and Africans suffered while the colonialists were living in the lap of luxury did the movements for freedom and independence take hold. Not just in physical form but in the minds of people across the world. By the 1960s most of the African nations gained independence and there was a genuine optimism across the continent. However the western governments that had been the colonial masters and the major industrial nations still wanted to exert their influence and via a form of industrial colonisation particularly by mining and oil companies, African independence was not as free as it should have been.

Frequently be fermenting tribal differences and illegally supplying arms to disaffected groups, American, Canadian, British and oil and mining companies from other countries were able to exploit the unrest to effectively continue stealing the newly formed states resources. Often simply because the mining companies were not allowed to extract the minerals as cheaply as they had previously. Further, these industrial giants via a system of bribes and the use of mercenaries were able to offer to solve the wars they created in return for much more favourable terms on the mineral concessions. Also government carried out similar activities if they disliked the politics of a particular government.

Therefore, potentially wealthy nations were robbed of the income to develop. Not only that but the infrastructure that was left behind from colonial times was left to decay as the wealth was leaving the country rather than being retained to aid development. All the while the corruption of this system was becoming engrained into the business and social culture.

Further the exploitation of timber and other wildlife resources meant that traditional cultures could no longer live in harmony with the land. Following the example set by their former colonial masters this gave rise to the massive poaching problems that beset Africa. With The Rhino and Elephants baring the most well known brunt of this.

However staying with the Congo, when Mobutu emerged as a leader in the Congo and the state became Zaire it was principally his roots as a man of the jungle that gained him his support and respect.

This is where the history of the Congo meets my personal quest for understanding of who people like Stanley were and my growing discovery of the magic of the wildlife in the Congo rain forest. While my primary interest was discovery of regarding the natural fauna of the region, and to protect the rain forest. I was a campaigner at an early age, the more I discovered about the exploitation of the rain forest and other environmental issues, the more I realised that they went hand in hand with the abuses of human rights.

While under Mobutu's rule, Zaire was relatively peaceful, this enabled the wildlife to survive relatively unhindered. There was still poaching and the growing bush meat trade, but there was not the wholesale felling of the rainforest that was occurring in neighbouring states. Further the wildlife was able to live with far less disturbance than was happening in other parts of Africa.

Now I don't want to create the false impression that Zaire was some bastion of good government, the wholesale and corrupt exploitation of the countries mineral wealth was a serious cancer at the heart of this forest state. Mobutu was siphoning off Zaire's wealth into foreign banks and squandered on building lavish palaces while he became more isolated from the people he ruled. In fact Mobutu had become a mirror image Leopold II. While he did not practice genocide himself it was the Genocide in Rwanda that proved to be his down fall.

He fled into exile leaving the country ravaged by civil war and internal slavery. Many of the mines were abandoned by the mining companies to the armies and militia. Who either kidnapped people to work as slaves in the mines. Or would extract a tax from the miners who are trying to secure a scant living from the mines. This form of tax collection though can not be avoided as if you don't pay the men with guns, you die, they kill you and take their form of tax anyway.

Recent investigations by the united nations have highlighted a couple of the mining and mineral companies that are profiting from this, including a British company. But all of them are involved although they work hard to keep this hidden and out of the public eye. We are all complicit in this as some of the rare and exotic metals used in making mobile telephones will have come from this trade.

The history of the Congo basin is littered with racism and exploitation. The plundering of the natural resources and corruption. While Africans themselves can not be excused for their role in this theft of the continents wealth, nor the violence that they inflict upon each other we in the west have to recognise our part in this too.

As a child I became interested in Africa because of the wildlife. I quickly learned of the threats to the habitat of the rainforest and the mass extermination of species that was following in the wake of that loss of habitat. Equally I discovered that the attitudes towards Africa was greatly influenced by the exaggerated writings of Paul De Chaillu and Henry Morton Stanley. This all combined with the lies of colonisation to give us today the situation where there is a level violence, rape and pillage that would put a Viking to shame.

However if you scanned the media for coverage of the current situation then there has been scant coverage. More hours of television and more lines have been given to the plight of the Gorillas than to the five million people that have died in recent years.

This is not Africa problem it is ours as we need to stop the illegal logging and protect the rain forest to deal with climate change. We in the west need to stop the wars that create the refugees that come to Europe and America. Further as war prevents farming being practised, stopping war and violence will reduce the need for the west to provide food aid and alleviate the current food crisis. However, the last aspect is more complicated. If we stopped our obsession with having the latest gizmo's or gadget like the latest mobile telephone every five minutes, we would not only stop the modern form of slavery that is happening in the mines of the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) and other places, we would not have suffered the credit induced banking collapse and the recession.

There are important ethics in all the choices we make. I have often spoken about needing a new form of Green Economics. Here are ways that it truly would benefit us all.

Incidentally while it is true that Stanley did meet Dr Livingston on his journey down the Congo River, it was a myth that he was lost. He was at a mission station on the banks of the Congo. It was just that it took so long for letters to reach Europe that Stanley assumed he was lost.

Zimbabwe

While Zimbabwe may have fallen off the headlines, the violence there still continues. While the unity government has brought an end to the shortages and the hyper inflation, Zanu PF, and the War Veterans allied to Robert Mugabe are still running amok trying to steal the farms from the white farmers.

Under white rule, ninety percent of the land was owned by white farmers. While this was clearly unjust for the majority indigenous black population, when the former British colony gained independence the agreement was that the farms would be bought from the white farmers. This would give the Zimbabweans land to farm themselves. However, Mugabe and Zanu PF started to just take the farms. The land was then given to the War Veterans who did not farm or work the land but just stripped out the irrigation pipes and all the other equipment and sold it.

All this had the effect of ruining the economy as the farms failed to be able to grow the food that fed the population and provided the export earnings. Also the farm workers became unemployed with each new occupation, further damaging the economy. As did the violence and state aided lawlessness. Therefore a cycle of destruction became embedded in the government.

While this was allowed to happen by the state, Robert Mugabe blamed Britain for the problems. There had been an agreement from Britain and other nations that money would be provided to allow the Zimbabwean government start buying the farms back. But Britain stopped providing these funds when thirty eight million pounds disappeared into Robert Mugabe's own accounts and the government via Zanu PF, started just stealing the farms.

Therefore, following the last rigged election, it became clear to even Mugabe that political change was needed. However, the powers behind the throne, the Zanu PF leadership, could not allow this as they risked being charged with crimes against humanity.

But Morgan Tsvangirai was a genuine peace maker and became prime minister in the unity government. While this reduced the violence, it has not stopped it. Zanu PF, aided by the army and the police are still trying to seize farms from the white farmers and inflicting violence upon the black farm workers, while the worlds media is not looking.

The old adage of “If it Bleeds it Leads” clearly applies to the media still and it is often Human Rights organisations and NGOs (Non Governmental Organisations) who try to alert the world to the plight of the innocent civilian populations.

While Robert Mugabe remains as president, I can not see an end to this situation I hope that other African leaders will start to apply pressure to make Mugabe leave office. Only then with a democratically elected government restraining the police and the army can true peace become established. Further had the Nobel peace prize been awarded to Morgan Tsvangirai, the media's attention would have been turned to Zimbabwe and the dictator Mugabe would not be able to continue his abuse of power unnoticed.

Chad and Sudan Boarder

While the Genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan may have dropped off the front pages and the headlines of the news media, the situation there is still dire for the refugees their. Then last week on the news was a report on the radio that the woman who had fled to Chad and were living in the refugee camps there were subjected to systematic rape.

I can not begin to imagine what it must feel like to take flight from danger, where you know you are at risk of rape and murder to find yourself exploited and abused in your place of sanctuary. For these women and children even the presence of UN troops is not easing their suffering.

I just wish that the media would take much more notice of what is really going on in the world.

Link to the Amnesty International Report here

Pakistan Killing Democracy

In Pakistan the local elections that are scheduled to happen in October have been postponed indefinitely because of the security situation. This is the way that all dictatorships start. The previously elected local officials are being replaced with centrally appointed governors.

While I appreciate that it is all to easy for an outsider to say that elections should be held, when I would not be facing the risks. But only with the legitimacy of an election held freely and fairly can people know that the policies enacted in their name are being carried out via the will of the majority. I know that democracy is not and never will be perfect, but it is the only system that is truly fair and just.

The problem is that terrorism is blamed for needing to cancel the elections, yet as a major factor fuelling the terrorism is the corruption in the Pakistani political system, stopping the elections only feeds into the cause of the violence. Therefore adding to the problem.

If we really want to defeat terrorism, we need to support the democratic process and stop supporting corruption in governments.

Bulgaria Easy Money

About three or four years ago the property programmes on television were highlighting Bulgaria as the place to buy property. Not to live in, but as holiday homes and to make money from. Now my views on property speculation are well know here, but to me encouraging people to buy property in a country where there is widespread corruption and what the EU describes the legal system as a failed system was foolish to say the least.

While I am a Europhile and I do think that the expansion of the European project can benefit the whole of Europe and the world, countries should only be accepted if they can show that they have met the high standards expected of all. Therefore Bulgaria should not have been allowed to become part of the European Union until they had sorted out these problems.

Now I know that there are people who will quite rightly say look at the corruption in Italy, and I would agree that Italy too should not be allowed to receive EU funds unless and until it sorts out the corruption there.

It is these examples that gives the critics of the EU their ammunition. I don't think that the EU is perfect and like all big organisations they will do things that make you think what a stupid bunch they are. But only via cooperation can issues like Climate Change or an integrated green energy policy become a reality.

As for all these thousands of British people that have lost their life savings in buying property in Bulgaria, well had you taken the greed blinkers off, you would have seen that there is no such thing as easy money. All these naïve television presenters did was line the pockets of the criminal gangs and add to the corruption in Bulgaria.

Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi

In the British press there has been quite a controversy about the last of The Great Train Robbers, Ronald Biggs. He is seriously ill and in the latter stages of his life. While he was a violent criminal and was guilty of the offences he was charged with. However it looked as though he was being detained as for years after he escaped from prison he cocked a snoot at the British authorities.

Having suffered several stokes and unable to communicate verbally, finally he was released on compassionate grounds. While there are some people that wanted to see him die in prison, it is a mark of a truly civilised society that we treat prisoners and wrong doers with dignity.

It does not always happen and the British Government has and does breach the United Nations deceleration on human rights far more often than we are prepared to admit. In Britain today there are people who are detained that have never been charged. This is the result of anti terrorist legislation, and breaches the European Convention of Human Rights that is supposed to integrate throughout or law and legal system.

Basically no one should ever be detained unless they are facing charges and due legal process. If there is enough evidence to detain someone then they should face a trial. I acknowledge that it is not a perfect system and every day there will be people who are found not guilty in courts up and down the country that have gotten away with something criminal. But they have faced due process and if the evidence was not strong enough to convict then it is right that they should go free.

To go off on a tangent, the flip side of that is there have been a shameful number of people who have been finally released after years of imprisonment having been discovered to have been not guilty. The real purporters of that offence though has been walking free and frequently able to commit more offences.

Then just yesterday, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi was released from prison on compassionate grounds. While there are legitimate reasons to question the safety of the conviction, he was convicted of the bombing of the Pan Am flight 103 and as such is a convicted murderer. However, he is dyeing of cancer, and it is a true measure of a civilised society that the Scottish Government has been able to show compassion.

Now I know that in America many people feel his release is wrong and that he should have died in prison. However this is one of the major divides between our two nations, as the American Justice system is far more political then the British system and the penal system is much more about revenge than seeking real justice and more importantly rehabilitation of offenders. Therefore as an outside observer, the scandal of Guantanamo Bay was fully predictable because of the US judicial system.

While I could not see a British Guantanamo Bay happening as easily, I do not delude myself that this could not happen here in the United Kingdoms. In Northern Ireland there was detention without trial and many abuses of human rights. Yet when you strip away all the ideology and political rhetoric at the core of all terrorism is an abuse of human rights. Therefore any further injustice and abuse of human rights only perpetuates the terrorism.

Therefore showing compassion to Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi does more to reduce the threat of terrorist attacks than any war or military action ever could.

Aung san suu Kyi and Burma

When I first heard that a man had swam across the lake to the house of Aung san suu Kyi, I googled his name and found a picture of him with some of the generals in Burma. Therefore I was absolutely sure that the lady had been set up. The picture however was removed and the web page gone when I tried to return latter. While I had bookmarked the page, on my old computer, I really wish now that I had printed the page, something I just do not do normally.

Having stolen the government of the country when the democratic process failed to give the generals the result they wanted, the country has been under a dictatorship for many years. Yet sanctions are not working as countries like India and Nepal still trade with Burma, particularly rubies. Therefore, condemning the people to more and longer oppression.

In governments across the world there is a phrase that well known and understood, that a Government is only six meals away from a riot.

Now if countries enforced sanctions properly, régimes like Burma just would not survive. As if you stop the elite from profiting from selling the nations resources, it just would not be able to keep the infer-structure of repression, like the army, on their side. In Zimbabwe it was only because Mugabe stole food aid and used it to feed his supporters has he been able to survive as long.

In Burma the army would rapidly turn against the leadership if they knew that their families were going hungry too. When the army has been used in Burma to repress the people the generals have had to move troops from different regions as most of the troops will not fire upon their own people.

While in general I am in favour of talking over any form of violence, I also believe that where sanctions are agreed they must be total. There will be people that say rightly sanctions harm the people, but twenty years of oppression by the Burmese government has harmed the people more.

Only by isolating oppressive regimes like Burma can real change be instituted. By allowing tourism and trade to continue we aid the generals to repress the people of Burma.

The traditional way of dealing with problem countries or dictatorships is to arm people, ferment war and create divisions, but this only creates new problems down the line. Afghanistan and Iraq are two perfect examples. Where the very people we in the west have armed, we then have gone to war to deal with latter.

I realise that dealing with any irrational government will never be easy, but in the long term stopping the tacit support of repressive governments will make the world a much safer place.

Aung san suu Kyi is an important symbol for the people of Burma, and the generals fear this woman of peace and democracy. And to me she shows the power of peace.