The atrocities in the Congo are truly heartbreaking. This 2020 piece gives harrowing quotes:
“They cut with the machetes several of my compatriots, 20 have already died and more than 14 [are] seriously injured,” said Solo Bukutupa, a local administrator. “It’s unbearable to see people die like that.”…
“The victims are of all ages, children, youths, women and old men, killed by machete, by knife or by firearm,” Pilo Mulindro, a tribal chief, told AFP news agency.
Anjan Sundaram is an important author/journalist/TV-presenter. I was honored/thrilled to be able to interview him.
Sundaram has a master’s degree in math and a PhD in literature, and he’s fluent in multiple languages. He made the inspiring decision to use his intellect to fight injustice, even though he was offered a high-paying job on Wall Street.
See below my interview with Sundaram. I edited the interview to make it more conversational, and I added hyperlinks.
1) What are the most exciting projects that you’re currently working on?
I’m working on Breakup, a war-memoir—of my reporting on the Central African Republic—about how support from those closest to us helps us to investigate topics/places further removed.
I think that the book will speak to anyone who’s reflected on how family and work fit together.
2) What are the most exciting projects that you know of that others are working on?
I was excited to see Renzo Martens’s “White Cube” project on the front page of the New York Times.
3) What do you think about the analysis that Chomsky/Herman did in their 1979 work Political Economy of Human Rights? They divided atrocities into three categories: “constructive bloodbaths” that are good for US power and for the corporate class, “benign bloodbaths” where US power doesn’t really care one way or the other what happens, and “nefarious bloodbaths” that official enemies carry out. Their prediction is that the media will welcome the constructive ones, ignore the benign ones, and express outrage over the nefarious ones. They also predict that the media will invent all sorts of fantasies about the nefarious ones to make the nefarious ones look even worse than they are. (An unfortunate thing is that if you point out lies about a nefarious bloodbath, then that opens you up to an easy smear, since it can be claimed that you’re somehow defending the nefarious bloodbath, as opposed to just saying that we should tell the truth about it and not lie about it.)
Yes—strategies of dehumanization are commonly employed in war to create enemies and justify horrific crimes against them.
And—by extension—to paint oneself as the good guy.
It’s one useful framework by which to assess a much broader question: Why do some of the greatest conflicts of our time, for example in Congo and in the Central African Republic, not get much news-coverage? Why don’t they make the news?
I suspect that there’s also a psychological desire to turn away from our flaws, since much of the developed world is complicit in these conflicts. And complicit in cover-ups—of human-rights crimes—on a massive scale.
4) What are the constructive, benign, and nefarious bloodbaths today?
I’m not qualified to make a full list.
But certainly Russian and Chinese crimes might be classed in the nefarious category in the Chomsky/Herman framework.
Rwanda’s crimes in the Congo would be classed as constructive—along with the war in Yemen. As would many of the domestic US crimes highlighted by groups like Black Lives Matter—the structural racism/oppression that underpins US society/economics.
5) To what extent are the media responding to each category of bloodbath in the predicted manner?
Chomsky/Herman seem to have been onto something that still holds true today.
6) What are the key points in your 2013 book Stringer?
I try to understand why so many major events in our world—affecting 1000s or even millions of people—don’t make the news.
I try to understand this from my experience trying to sell news to the AP to earn my living.
In the book I go to great lengths to get good stories—but I’m unable to sell many of my stories, so I also question what kinds of stories are allowed to make the news.
7) How valuable are the Congo’s resources, what are these resources used for, and which exact interests benefit from these resources?
Congo has long provided resources to fuel the world’s technological progress. It supplied rubber for car-tires during the automobile-revolution, copper for wires during the electrical revolution, tin for electric circuits, coltan for our smartphones.
Congo’s war allows local/regional interests in Congo/Rwanda to pillage Congo and make profits that would be inaccessible if Congo were a functioning state.
Once these resources are exported to international markets, they’re traded like any other commodity.
8) How many people have died in the ongoing conflict in the Congo?
About 6 million is the generally agreed-on figure.
Some of the deaths are from direct violence. And many are from starvation/disease—and a loss of access to food/medicine—due to the war.
9) What has media coverage of the Congo been like?
Virtually non-existent. It’s the most deadly war since World War II, but we hardly hear about it.
This is one of the reasons I went there to cover it—and then wrote a book about it and about my experience reporting.
10) How much responsibility does the US/West bear for the atrocities in the Congo?
Lots of responsibility. The US financially/militarily supports Rwanda, which started these wars in the Congo.
For three decades before that, the US—and Western countries—financed Mobutu’s dictatorial rule, which destroyed civil society and laid the groundwork for war to have horrible effects.
For many decades before that, Belgium was Congo’s murderous colonial ruler.
11) What do you think about Chomsky’s comment about the Congo? In 2009, Chomsky referred to the “victims of the worst massacres of recent years, in the Eastern Congo, where only the cynical might suspect that the neglect has something to do with the fact that the worst offender is US ally Rwanda, and that multinationals are making a mint from robbing the region’s rich mineral resources with the crucial aid of the militias tearing the place to shreds”.
Chomsky is absolutely right.
12) What are the key points in your 2016 book Bad News?
I write about how Paul Kagame—Rwanda’s president—destroyed his country’s free press.
I tell that story through a group of about a dozen journalists whom I taught. Kagame’s government took them out one-by-one: shot one of them dead, imprisoned a couple of them, tortured a couple of them—and forced them to flee the country when their lives were threatened.
13) Noam Chomsky wrote about your 2016 book that it “provides insights about the human condition that reach far beyond the tragic story of Rwanda”. What are those insights?
Some people will risk their lives so they can speak up against crimes against others. They inspired me.
You’ll have to read the book to find out the rest!