Absolute Hopelessness

Reading the three stories today depressed me to a great extent. I knew about the savage beatings, kidnappings, human trafficking, and prostitution that runs rampant worldwide. I also knew about the horrid crimes committed in Africa. Of the three articles, the "War Crimes" article did not go deeper into the suffering the people of that region felt as compared to the other two articles which contained a large information on the subjects discussed. On top of not going into great detail of the suffering these people faced the author focuses on the town of Baraka located in the country of Sudan. This annoys me the most because of the fact that the author avoided the locations hit the worst in terms of violence. Why draw attention to a small town when you can draw attention to an entire region plagued with violence and rape. Yes the author got the point across but compared to the other readings this article seemed to be most insignificant in terms of global implications and lack of detail especially when compared with the other two articles.

Excuse me while I draw further significance to the issue and further depress you with details.

The continent is Africa. The region of interest, East Africa. Not a tiny town, the whole of East Africa. The crimes committed are murder and rape, unfortunately they are much more than that. First is the question why were these crimes committed? To these people they are righteous killings involving tribal hatreds. In other words, if you are not from my tribe I will kill and take what I want from you. These hatreds of course are spurred on by those in power. This leads me to the first example of hatreds leading to horrific acts of violence. In this example, if your entire family is caught and you are male your limbs are chopped off, you are then forced to watch the rape and murder of your children and finally your wife. The man of course is left alive, useless without limbs, and destroyed psychologically. This is the ultimate form of showing domination of another tribe or group people. If the children are not killed they are taken to be trained as child soldiers (aka the new generation of pillagers). This practice is done by militia. The militia of course is another factor that unfortunately fuels tribal hatred by supporting certain tribes and assisting in the genocide of a particular tribe such as providing machetes to a group they favor. Naturally their are those who get away and know of the atrocities committed. This leads to more groups being formed and many seeking revenge. Since women are not spared they too suffer at the hands of those who either harbor hatred or revenge. Local myths of having sex with a virgin to cure aids does not help either. Violence may not have been part of the culture. Unfortunately the leaders who introduced it created a long cycle that is still spinning to this day. Oh yes and the title of my blog revolves around the fact that at the peak of the violence, no country gave aid or helped to prevent any more war crimes. Hell, in almost all cases the first world countries provided the tools for genocide. In other words these people are a market. Sell them weapons.