Speak Up, Can't Hear You....

World Vision in Africa has been forced to suspend their emergency feeding program for thousands of malnourished children in Democratic Republic of Congo, close to its border with Uganda. "People have suffered enough" said one of its representatives. "The real fear now is that, once the fighting starts, there will be retaliation against the local population."

Well, in fact, in Congo the fighting never seems to stop. There are so many factions with their brutal militias exploiting the country. One faction comprised of Hutu tribespeople, out to exact revenge against their Tsutsi rivals, and the Tutsi faction, fighting in their self defence against the Hutu militias. People are tortured, murdered, women raped, and children, if not slaughtered, taken for slaves.

The Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, Hutu rebels who fled Rwanda in 1994 after the Tutsi-led government finally gained control, in the wake of the horrendous slaughter of Tutsis (and moderate Hutus) in what the world has labelled a genocide, operate in the Eastern DRC, preying on the Tutsi population there.

The National Congress for the Defence of the People, representing Congolese ethnic Tutsis, supported by the Rwandan government, and fighting to defeat the FDLR is also present and active in Congo. The dreaded Lord's Resistance Army under the insanely vicious Joseph Kony fighting to establish a theocratic state based on the Old Testament's 10 Commandments, along with tribal tradition is the bane of the region.

And then there are the local Congolese militias, the Mai Mai - collaborating with the FDLR in inciting hatred against the Congolese Tutsi communities - whose end purpose is to destroy the Tutsi population. Attempting to do battle with all of these militias is the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo, whose soldiers have proven incapable of mounting a defence, and members of whom have embarked on their own violent rampages against the population.

The United Nations has installed 17,000 peacekeepers - the largest such installation worldwide - in the region, to try to protect the population. Despite their presence, the militias have managed to murder thousands, forcing over a million people to leave their homes in the last several years. The government of Congo, having now invited thousands of Rwandan troops to cross the border to assist it in rousting the rebels is preparing for large-scale battle.

Aid workers on the ground await the fighting, knowing they will be tasked with trying to assist hundreds of thousands more people, and anticipating aid delivery disruptions to the million people who already depend on them. A month earlier Kinshasa had invited Ugandan troops to join a military task force against the LRA. They succeeded in scattering the Lords Resistance Army into groups who went on to pillage, murder, rape and kidnap children, kept in thrall as child soldiers.

The Lords Resistance Army has since gone on to murder countless others, beating villagers to death with clubs or hacking them with machetes. A Roman Catholic church packed with people was put to the torch. In another village all the boys and men were beaten to death, the women and girls raped before their skulls were crushed. The elusively evil Joseph Kony of the LRA is being sought, desperately.

While all this vile destruction of human lives is ongoing, the international community seems more than a little disinterested. Where is the clamour from among the global public to protest the violence, the misery, and the atrocities? Like the situation in Darfur, Sudan insisting it has the right to do as it will with its citizens, and Robert Mugabe happy to have his Zimbabweans die of cholera and starvation, the world is mute.

Why the double standard, where outraged protesters march against the State of Israel's purported illegal conduct in their military invasion of Gaza to stop Hamas from its continued predations on Israel? What's that? Louder please, I'm having trouble picking up your signal.