Published: Sunday, October 11, 2009
Updated: Sunday, October 11, 2009
A group of Ohio State students is showing their commitment to bettering the world and raising awareness for global issues.
Starting Oct. 18, students on campus will be hosting events to celebrate Congo Week, a global initiative to raise funds for and spread knowledge of the conflict taking place in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Devyn Paros, a third-year in international studies and French, is one of the student organizers of Congo Week. She became interested in the conflict in the Congo during a summer internship in Washington, D.C. She learned about Congo Week after meeting Maurice Carney, the executive director of Friends of the Congo, a human rights group based out of Washington, D.C.
“I met with [Maurice] to talk about what was going on at Ohio State and how I could get involved,” Paros said in e-mail. “What really motivated me to involve myself was the prolonged and violent nature of the conflict. It’s impossible for me to know how the world benefits at the expense of Congolese lives without trying to learn more and affect positive change.”
The main contributors to the violent situation in the Congo, Paros said, are the corporations who mine columbite-tantalum, or coltan, which is used in mobile phones, video gaming systems, laptops, pagers and most electronics.
“Anywhere from 64 to 80 percent of the world’s known reserve of coltan is found in the Congo,” Paros said.
The corporations fund rebel groups who keep the local population submissive through sexual and physical violence, essentially controlling the civilians through fear. Because close to 10 million civilians rely on the mining industry for survival and have no other alternatives, the brutality continues.
Talubezie Kasongo, a 2007 Ohio State graduate with a bachelor’s degree in biology, is the leading organizer for the OSU branch of events. She was born in Rwanda but lived in Burundi, in the eastern side of Congo, for a significant amount of time. She arrived in the United States on Feb. 27, 1996, just missing the outbreak of war.
Despite losing childhood friends and neighbors to the conflict, she considers herself “lucky.” However, Kasongo still longs to return to her home.
“I miss it every day,” she said.
Kasongo has given talks about the Congo situation at local events such as OSU’s production of V-Day, an international movement to stop violence against women. She has also spoken at Amnesty International Regional Conferences and to local groups.
Congo Week, which was started in 2008 and was founded by Kumbale Musavuli, who is also associated with Friends of the Congo, has taken hold around the globe. Last year, 35 countries and 150 campuses across the nation joined in to show support for the victims of the ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The death toll for the Congo has risen to more than 6 million.
“Over 45,000 people in the Congo die every month,” Tabulezie Kasongo, the leading organizer for the OSU branch of events, said.
This year’s Congo Week will kick off on Oct. 18 with a showing of “Lumo,” a documentary following the life of a young Congolese girl who was raped by 25 men. A second documentary focusing on the orphans created by the violence, “Street Children,” will be shown on Oct. 21, the final day of Congo Week.
At 7 p.m. on Oct. 23, the Hale Center will host a small celebration of the Congolese culture with authentic Congolese food and live music. The entrance fee is $5, with all proceeds going to Heal Africa, a hospital in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
While Kasongo knows that not everyone can be an “activist,” she said that she believes everyone has a “niche” and can work from within it.
“When people demand change, change will be delivered,” Kasongo said.
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