The Worst Place to Live in the World

Where is the worst place in the world to live today? If you said Iraq then guess again. Darfur? Getting closer, but still not quite there. The answer my friends is the Democratic Republic of Congo. You hear a lot about Iraq and Darfur these days for two reasons. The terrible humanitarian situations in both places and the fact that they happen to sit on large reserves of oil certainly merit out attention. On the other hand take DRC, or Somalia, or Haiti. Somalia gets a little more attention because the country is mostly Muslim and we all know that they have to be watched. Haiti, well its just some poor little island full of black people in the Caribbean whose leader is not named Castro, so who cares about them. But DRC is heads and shoulders above the rest of these countries for the level of destruction and chaos that reigns there.

A war has been ragging in that country, formally known as Zaire, since 1996. The causes can be traced back to genocide of Tutsis by Hutus in neighboring Rwanda in 1994. Many of the perpetrators of that horrible event now reside in DRC where they continue to be a major contributor to the current conflict. The war, which at its height involved five neighboring countries in a massive regional war reminiscent of Europe in the previous few centuries, was officially declared to be over in 2004. Up to 4 million died in the conflict over those 8 years. Yet today three years after the war is over up to 38,000 people are still dying every month in DRC. Institutionalized rape has become a favorite form of terror perpetrated against Congolese women. And not just women either. There have been reports of children as young as 10 months, mere infants, being raped. For anyone who did not understand the gravity of using rape as a means of terror this illustration should be clear enough. The only possible reason for raping an infant is for the message it sends to others.

The last scientific report released on the number of those killed was in 2004. A new report is to be published within the next month. Estimates are placing the likely number as high as 6 million since 1996.

When was the last time you read or heard about the plight of the people in the Democratic Republic of Congo? When is the last time Bush mentioned the conflict ragging there? But then again why should anyone give a shit about the Congolese, they are black and even more importantly they do not have any resources we want.