By Catholic News Service

GENEVA (CNS) — The atrocities unfolding in Congo call for immediate condemnation and the protection of human rights, said Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican representative to U.N. agencies in Geneva, at a special session of the Human Rights Council, Nov. 28.

A woman displaced by war sleeps on her belongings at the Don Bosco Center in Goma, eastern Congo. More than 1,500 people have taken shelter at the Salesian-run center. CNS PHOTO/FINBARR O’REILLY/REUTERS

“The international community cannot stand by idle and needs to speak out clearly” and act swiftly to counter the “grave infringements of human rights” in Congo, he said.

A delegation of Congolese Catholic leaders has appealed to Canada to help stop the war in their central African country.

“The situation is dire,” Bishop Fridolin Ambongo Besungu of Bokungu, Congo, told a luncheon information session with members of Parliament, organized by delegations from the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops and its international aid and development agency.

Since the 1990s, warring militias have killed nearly 6 million people and displaced more than 2 million, devastating the civilian population through a campaign of organized rape. The United Nations estimates more than 250,000 people were displaced from July through November.

Sister Marie-Bernard Alima Mbala, secretary general of the Congolese bishops’ justice and peace commission, described the crisis as the biggest humanitarian catastrophe since World War II.

She called the militias’ systematic rape of women and children a form of genocide, since the rapists often have HIV or AIDS. She said attacking a woman was an attack on her husband, her family and society as a whole.

“We believe it is an extermination strategy,” she said.

She said she visited a displaced persons camp during the rainy season and saw women giving birth and children unable to find shelter.

“We must act,” she said.

Archbishop Tomasi urged the world community to condemn the violence and protect innocent victims by helping “to restore the rule of law and to search for the common good.”

While deploring the recruitment of child soldiers, torture and sexual violence against women, the Vatican delegation also denounced the illegal weapons trade in Congo, especially small arms.

“They increase the intensity of violence and threaten the life and the integrity of an unacceptable number of innocent people,” the archbishop said.

While many have ended up in camps and are receiving some form of aid, about 200,000 people cannot be reached by humanitarian agencies because of on-going violence, he said.

Bishop Fulgence Muteba Mugalu of Kilwa said the Congolese delegation to Canada was seeking that country’s help in the creation of a U.N.-approved international peacekeeping force to help end the violence. He said Belgium and the Netherlands were among countries prepared to participate.

Bishop Muteba said conflict was occurring around the illegal exploitation of natural resources such as tin and coltan, or columbite-tantalite, used in electronic devices. The mineral wealth obtained by small miners is being smuggled through Rwanda and finds its way into laptops and cell phones, he said.

The bishop called for a pact so that companies wishing to develop Congo’s wealth could do so peacefully in a way that is fair to the Congolese.

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