Nous finissons par être immunisés contre les horreurs que nous voyons.
Le silence de la communauté internationale soumise aux lois du commerce
international est juste intolérable!
Nous refusons la résilience.
Nous refusons d’accepter une société où le petit nombre soit soutenu dans
son pillage et ses exactions par nos dirigeants politiques, qui veulent bien
fermer les yeux!
Voici la vie, ou plutôt l’enfer, de petits enfants à peine sevrés du
lait maternel que des monstres martyrisent au quotidien.
Leur tort? Appartenir au pays, potentiellement le plus riche de la terre:
la république Démocratique du Congo, RDC!
Ils seront donc esclaves…. Ici, on nous parle du cobalt du Congo. Hier, je
vous parlais du cacao de Côte d’Ivoire.
Comment lâcher autant de richesses et faire vivre décemment tout le
monde? Impossible. Le dieu-argent veut tout y compris les sacrifices:
prendre la vie d’innocents!
La guerre se fait aujourd’hui contre les peuples et idéalement les plus
fragiles., avec la rentabilité en fil conducteur…
Loin de nos yeux, de petits enfants, noirs et pauvres, sont exploités à
l’envi par des monstres.
A quoi cela sert-il d’accueillir le Bénin le 1er août (fête nationale
suisse), si nous laissons les enfants africains se faire martyriser.
Abusés avec violence, et pour lesquels la mort serait certainement plus
douce, les Congolais sont exploités par ceux-là même qui dictent des lois
nationales des pays dits avancés et démocratiques, grâce à la puissance de
leurs lobbies qui sont accueillis à bras ouverts dans les allées bien
feutrées du pouvoir public!
A l’ère de l’information en temps réel, cette barbarie n’est certainement
un secret pour personne…
Honte à tous ceux qui sont au courant et qui acceptent.
Honte surtout à ceux qui ont le moindre pouvoir et qui renoncent à faire
des vagues!
RDC : Des enfants extraient à mains nues le cobalt de nos smartphones
1 mars 2017
La République Démocratique du Congo se trouve sur l’un des gisements de
minéraux les plus riches du monde. D’énormes quantités d’or, de cobalt et
d’étain se trouvent dans son sous-sol. L’extraction en RDC prend des allures
de ruée vers l’or, le cobalt étant un composant majeur des batteries au
lithium de nos smartphones et ordinateurs portables. Il est recueilli par des
exploitations minières qui vendent le minerai à des sociétés chinoises, qui
ne posent aucune question sur la méthodologie et l’éthique de l’extraction.
Les acheteurs cherchent simplement le meilleur prix.
La plupart des mineurs sont pauvres et n’ont d’autres choix pour survivre,
que de travailler pour les exploitations minières. C’est ainsi que dans des
conditions climatiques épouvantables, les jeunes enfants, dont certains n’ont
que 4 ans, se mêlent aux adultes pour creuser des tunnels ou des puits, et
extraire les sédiments à la main ou à l’aide d’outils rudimentaires. Ils
peuvent être menacés et battus, alors même qu’ils exécutent des tâches
inhumaines, portant des sacs de terre mouillée sur le dos, s’introduisant
dans les profondeurs des tunnels et des puits, dépourvus de tout équipement
de sécurité.
Les journalistes de Sky News qui ont mené l’enquête dans les 5 mines de
cobalt du pays, ont vu des enfants dans chacune d’elles.
Richard, 11 ans, s’est exprimé ainsi :
“Quand je me réveille le matin, je me sens très mal de savoir que je dois
encore revenir ici.”
Dorsen, huit ans, ne porte pas de chaussures et n’a pas mangé ces deux
derniers jours.
“Quand je travaille, je souffre. Ma mère est déjà morte, je dois
travailler toute la journée et ma tête me fait mal.”
Les plus jeunes d’entre eux sont utilisés pour trier le cobalt à l’aide de
leurs doigts fins. Ils ne disposent d’aucun masque et manipulent le cobalt
sans gants, alors que les scientifiques s’accordent pour dire qu’une
exposition récurrente au cobalt cause de graves dommages au système
respiratoire.
La plupart de ces enfants ne possèderont jamais de smartphones, ils
essaient simplement de survivre un jour après l’autre.
Après cette enquête de Sky News, Apple a annoncé suspendre leurs
achats auprès des fournisseurs manquant de transparence. D’autres
clients ont affirmé qu’il était difficile de tracer l’origine du cobalt. Ils
suggèrent de proposer des améliorations des conditions de travail.
https://www.infochretienne.com/rdc-des-enf...os-smartphones/
DR Congo: Cursed by its natural wealth
The Democratic Republic of Congo is potentially one of the richest
countries on earth, but colonialism, slavery and corruption have turned it
into one of the poorest, writes historian Dan Snow.
The world’s bloodiest conflict since World War II is still rumbling on
today.
It is a war in which more than five million people have died, millions more
have been driven to the brink by starvation and disease and several million
women and girls have been raped.
The Great War of Africa, a conflagration that has sucked in soldiers and
civilians from nine nations and countless armed rebel groups, has been fought
almost entirely inside the borders of one unfortunate country – the
Democratic Republic of Congo.
Image caption Many of the country’s mining operations are
connected to the waters of the mighty Congo River
It is a place seemingly blessed with every type of mineral, yet
consistently rated lowest on the UN Human Development Index, where even the
more fortunate live in grinding poverty.
I went to the Congo this summer to find out what it was about the
country’s past that had delivered it into the hands of unimaginable violence
and anarchy.
The journey that I went on, through the Congo’s abusive history, while
travelling across its war-torn present, was the most disturbing experience of
my career.
I met rape victims, rebels, bloated politicians and haunted citizens of a
country that has ceased to function – people who struggle to survive in a
place cursed by a past that defies description, a history that will not
release them from its death-like grip.
The Congo’s apocalyptic present is a direct product of decisions and
actions taken over the past five centuries.
In the late 15th Century an empire known as the Kingdom of Kongo dominated
the western portion of the Congo, and bits of other modern states such as
Angola.
It was sophisticated, had its own aristocracy and an impressive civil
service.
When Portuguese traders arrived from Europe in the 1480s, they realised
they had stumbled upon a land of vast natural wealth, rich in resources –
particularly human flesh.
The Congo was home to a seemingly inexhaustible supply of strong,
disease-resistant slaves. The Portuguese quickly found this supply would be
easier to tap if the interior of the continent was in a state of anarchy.
They did their utmost to destroy any indigenous political force capable of
curtailing their slaving or trading interests.
Money and modern weapons were sent to rebels, Kongolese armies were
defeated, kings were murdered, elites slaughtered and secession was
encouraged.
By the 1600s, the once-mighty kingdom had disintegrated into a leaderless,
anarchy of mini-states locked in endemic civil war. Slaves, victims of this
fighting, flowed to the coast and were carried to the Americas.
About four million people were forcibly embarked at the mouth of the Congo
River. English ships were at the heart of the trade. British cities and
merchants grew rich on the back of Congolese resources they would never see.
This first engagement with Europeans set the tone for the rest of the
Congo’s history.
Development has been stifled, government has been weak and the rule of law
non-existent. This was not through any innate fault of the Congolese, but
because it has been in the interests of the powerful to destroy, suppress and
prevent any strong, stable, legitimate government. That would interfere – as
the Kongolese had threatened to interfere before – with the easy extraction
of the nation’s resources. The Congo has been utterly cursed by its natural
wealth.
The Congo is a massive country, the size of Western Europe.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption
Stanley’s expeditions opened up the Congo for exploitation by King Leopold
Limitless water, from the world’s second-largest river, the Congo, a
benign climate and rich soil make it fertile, beneath the soil abundant
deposits of copper, gold, diamonds, cobalt, uranium, coltan and oil are just
some of the minerals that should make it one of the world’s richest
countries.
Instead it is the world’s most hopeless.
The interior of the Congo was opened up in the late 19th Century by the
British-born explorer Henry Morton Stanley, his dreams of free trading
associations with communities he met were shattered by the infamous King of
the Belgians, Leopold, who hacked out a vast private empire.
Image copyright Science Photo Library Image
caption Congo rubber was in high demand after the pneumatic tyre appeared on
the market in 1888
The world’s largest supply of rubber was found at a time when bicycle and
automobile tyres, and electrical insulation, had made it a vital commodity in
the West.
The late Victorian bicycle craze was enabled by Congolese rubber collected
by slave labourers.
To tap it, Congolese men were rounded up by a brutal Belgian-officered
security force, their wives were interned to ensure compliance and were
brutalised during their captivity. The men were then forced to go into the
jungle and harvest the rubber.
Disobedience or resistance was met by immediate punishment – flogging,
severing of hands, and death. Millions perished.
Tribal leaders capable of resisting were murdered, indigenous society
decimated, proper education denied.
A culture of rapacious, barbaric rule by a Belgian elite who had
absolutely no interest in developing the country or population was created,
and it has endured.
In a move supposed to end the brutality, Belgium eventually annexed the
Congo outright, but the problems in its former colony remained.
Mining boomed, workers suffered in appalling conditions, producing the
materials that fired industrial production in Europe and America.
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http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24396390
