Who can name to me the wars going on in the world right now? Ready.. set... name. I'm going to guess the first thing you said was the War on Terror, where we in the States are fighting in Afghanistan. You may have mentioned Libya, Somalia, Egypt, the Arab States, Israel, Palestine, or others, if you read the news. If you're on the internet a lot, you may have mentioned the "War on Kony", which currently seems to be a stalemate. And if you are in the know, you'll mention the Korean War, which, despite popular belief, is still going on; it is one of the only places in the world where the Cold War still exists. But how many of you mentioned the Second Congo War, the "Great War of Africa", the deadliest war in the world? I would hope all of you. Sadly, this is not the case. This war, despite the deaths of over six million Congolese since the war began 14 years ago, is not popularized or often reported by the media. Yesterday morning, however, my respect for actor Ryan Gosling grew immensely as he and Enough Project co-founder John Prendergast posted about it on the Huffington Post website (which usually I do not frequent, but had to for this article.)
Their joint-authored article is short but concise, telling their readers to go check out the new "I Am Congo" video on the Raise Hope for Congo website.
I'm not here to just advertise for them, however. I'd like to tell you my take on the war. It's like the "Kony" thing we heard, except blown up, happening on such a larger scale. This country is wracked with horrors such as rapes, murders, terrors, and basically, pillaging of the entire Democratic Republic of Congo. And nobody reports about it. Nobody. Apparently our current favorite celebrities' outfits on the latest movie premiere's red carpet is more important than the lives of millions of people. Yes, you read right. We read more about celebrity gossip than we do about the deaths of millions of people. Think of the deaths of our superstars. We give them so much more respect than we give to our servicemen and servicewomen, and we pay so many more times attention to one celebrity life than a million Congolese deaths. If the word ignorant burned it's way to the front of your mind, that's okay, it did to mine too.
We need to raise awareness about this SILENT WAR going on in the Congo. Nobody is making a "Congo 2012" video. WE are the change we need to see in the world. WE must be the ones to raise awareness, not a 15-minutes-in-the-spotlight video. WE must help the voices of the Congolese be heard. Only we can do it.
