KING KONG:
Extra, Extra: STOP the Mainstream Press!
Gorilla Executions Stories Front for Powerful
Interests
Note:
This is the ABRIDGED version of the longer and more important story published
by www.allthingspass.com on July 30,
2007: Gorillas ÒExecutedÓ Stories front for Privatization and Militarization
of Congo Parks, Truth of Depopulation Ignored
Published 30 July 2007 by COA News, an on-line portal
to independent news.
http://www.coanews.org/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=2009
July 30, 2007
keith harmon snow
&
Georgianne Nienaber
ÒI think what is important is the rangers, above
all, and the gorillaÕs.Ó
--Washington Post Correspondent, Stephanie
McCrummen
The story began as they all do: DATELINE: Virungas
National Park: ÒIN EASTERN CONGO OASIS, BLOOD AMID THE GREENERY. In Africa's
Oldest National Park, Gorillas Are Being Killed and Their Guardians Are
Endangered, Too.Ó
Published July 22, 2007, it
is yet Òanother gorilla murderedÓ story. This time it was the Washington
Post, recycling a month old story about a slain gorilla.
From Africa to China, three
days later the headlines of Wednesday July 25 screamed out that three more
mountain gorillas had been killed. Not just killed, executed. On the 26th it
was up to four.
ÒMass Gorilla ÔExecutionÕ
Discovered in Congo,Ó announced National Geographic News. ÒThree female
mountain gorillas were found shot dead this morning in the Democratic Republic
of CongoÕs Virungas National Park.Ó There is a certain moral indignation expected
from the public when someone is ÒexecutedÓ—it is the language that should
be attached to human beings, but here it is attached to gorillas.
Photos on CNN and at least
100 web pages show the gorilla bodies displayed on stretchers, while seemingly appalled
conservationists look on.
Meanwhile, 113,000 people
have fled fighting between government forces, rebels and local militias since
February 2007 in the same region of DRC. Some human rights organizations count
250,000. On July 20, 2007, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon called
for action to resolve the crisis in the DRCÕs volatile eastern region, where
the United Nations on July 20 counted 700,000 people as internally displaced.
At least 1000 people a day
die in this region due to war, malnutrition, disease and lack of basic medical
care. Some of these deaths are executions by soldiers from varying militias and
armies. Congolese journalist Serge Maheshe was executed on the street in
Bukavu, South Kivu, on June 13, 2007, but there was no comparable outcry.
OpEdNews.com was the only alternative media outlet that published a photo of
the murdered journalist. There is little moral indignation for a single dead
Congolese person, and usually the victims are blamed for their own suffering. It
is the same for Ugandan and Rwandan peasants across the porous border.
Washington Post
reporter Stephanie McCrummen apparently traveled from Goma to the park with
security from Richard LeakeyÕs organization Wildlife Direct, but she refuses to
answer simple questions about her relationship with the elite mercenary firm.
ÒI think what is important is the rangers, above all, and the gorillaÕs,Ó
McCrummen replied tersely, on July 24. Is this journalism?
According to McCrummen and
the Washington Post, the ÒbeleagueredÓ Congo rangers—who have been
blogging from the wilderness to feed Wildlife DirectÕs web site and help raise
funds abroad—Òhave not been paid in a decade.Ó
Why? What has happened to the
millions and millions of dollars and euros and pounds and yen pumped into
gorilla conservation in the past seven years alone? We were at Rumangabo in
February and photographed well-stocked storerooms of food in the rangersÕ
encampments.
Forget about the onslaught of
press releases from Wildlife Direct and Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, or the
breathless articles from the Washington Post and National Geographic
News, all blaming local ÒmilitiasÓ and Òcharcoal gatherers,Ó and ÒMai MaiÓ
and Òpoison bananasÓ and Òrebel leadersÓ for the gorilla killings.
But there is something else
going on here too.
Our February-March
investigative visit to DRC revealed a different picture than the one
regurgitated by the Washington Post from press releases provided by
Wildlife Direct, the mercenary ÒconservationÓ organization supporting the
ÒbeleagueredÓ Òranger force.Ó
Post reporter McCrummen
laments about the rangers wielding Òrusty machetes,Ó but is the truth?
Take a look at the
accompanying photo, provided to us by Robert Muir in January 2007, when his
employer, the Frankfurt Zoological Society, was touting the Òsuccess storyÓ of
the ranger program. Obviously well fed, well clothed, well-armed, with machine
guns ready, and fresh from training by British mercenary and
soldier-of-fortune, Conrad Thorpe (see Guns for Hire: Congo 2006; www.vonplanta.net) this mercenary army has
more than Òrusty machetesÓ as reported by the Washington Post.
There have been at least ten
mountain gorillas killed since this publicity photo was taken: indeed, the
killings are synonymous with Wildlife DirectÕs arrival on the scene. It is
obviously a failed policy to have mercenary rangers in Virunga Park. The
current Wildlife Direct press releases plea for more money for the suddenly
under-equipped rangers.
Wildlife Direct operates
under the mantle of the Africa Conservation Fund, a tax-exempt (501-c-3)
registered with the Internal Revenue Service. Walter H. Kansteiner III has been
a board member since the founding of ACF in 2004. Kansteiner has been a
constant presence behind the scenes in CongoÕs war since 1996. His background
and experience are not in conservation. He has worked on a strategic minerals
task force at the Department of Defense and was Executive Vice President of a
commodity trading and manufacturing company specializing in tropical
commodities in the developing world.
The World Policy Institute
found KansteinerÕs 2001 appointment into the Bush Administration troubling.
ÒMr. Kansteiner's appointment is disconcerting, particularly with respect to the
evolution of US policy towards the war ravaging the Democratic Republic of
Congo.Ó
The Democratic Republic of
Congo has the worldÕs purest and largest deposits of strategic minerals, such
as gold, coltan, niobium, cobalt and columbite. Kansteiner is on the Board of
Directors of Moto Gold, now operating in the killing fields of the bloody Ituri
district.
The late (2006) board member
of ACF, Paul Van Vlissingen, had been working for years to privatize all of
AfricaÕs national parks for tourism. Kansteiner was a major force for
privatization in the Clinton and Bush governments, and his work continues in
this vein with think tanks and policy institutes.
The BBC reported in
2003 that Van VlissingenÕs company Òplanned to take over a string of national
parks throughout Africa.Ó The scheme was to found a private company, African
Parks Management and Finance Company, to take them over.
At a press conference,
Zambian Member of Parliament, Sakwiba Sikota, called for an investigation,
saying the scheme Òborders on theft and plunder of the resources of the people
of Barotseland and should be thrown out.Ó
But the Washington Post
did not even bother to take a look at the machinations behind the ÒCongo
Rangers.Ó
One critical glance at the
ÒCongo RangersÓ promotional materials or board of Directors would have been
welcome journalism by the Washington Post.
On the Von Planta video, the
white mercenaries and their elite Congolese ÒrangersÓ can be seen terrorizing
the local fishermen—whom they call ÒpoachersÓ—forcing them to
ÒconfessÓ their crimes or face death. The video clearly shows the poorest women
in the world running for their lives from armed gangs otherwise defined as
ÒrangersÓ and their white Wildlife Direct Òtrainers.Ó The Virunga rangers are
on videotape committing human rights violations against innocent villagers who
have a few wire snares in their meager huts—their only means to feed
their families.
The ÒGuns for HireÓ video
also makes it clear that the white mercenaries believe that Congolese officials
are fanning the flames of the violence, encouraging local people to cultivate
inside the park, because park officials receive ÒpayoffsÓ—albeit
pitifully meager—for each cultivated plot. Congolese government soldiers
are blamed with running a charcoal operation offering incentives for peasants
to make charcoal or collect wood inside the park. Poor Congolese communities
rely on charcoal as a staple energy source, and while they are the victims of
an unjust international system exploiting and forcing them off their lands,
they are blamed for trying to survive.
White British SAS forces give
smug interviews in the video and share lofty ideals, based in privilege and
backed by the badge of their skin color, and sneak around in the
bush—wearing flak jackets and carrying automatic weapons—peaking
through tall grasses and spying on peasant fishermen in old rickety boats and
skinny boys on rusty pedal bikes. The video is a stupidly made propaganda tool
that catches the real criminals in the act(ing).
The Congolese people are not
stupid, and someone is sending a very clear signal with the gorilla killings:
we donÕt like what you are doing, and we donÕt want you here. The local people
want the white mercenaries and their elite first-world agenda—with all
the dishonesty, corruption and vested interests behind it—gone. Period.
That is the sad, hard truth,
never mentioned in mainstream media. Why?
Consider this: Washington
Post director Barry Diller is a director of Conservation International and
the Coca Cola Company, one of the big partners of the aid organization CARE
International, and the defense company IAC/Interactive. DillerÕs wife, Diane
von Furstenberg is also an IAC/Interactive director.
CARE is a USAID partner
involved in ÒconservationÓ and ÒhumanitarianÓ projects in Congo, Uganda and
Sudan. USAID has funded scores of millions of dollars in big conservation
projects in the Great Lakes region in the past decade.
Oracle Corporation—a
big intelligence and defense contractor—is another partner of CARE.
OracleÕs CEO, Lawrence Ellison, is on the board of directors of Dian Fossey
Gorilla Fund-International. Three IAC/Interactive directors are directors of
Oracle Corporation. One is Washington Post director Alan Spoon, and
another is General Norman Schwarzkopf.
Bullet holes riddle the
entrance signs to Virunga Park. The locals are not happy with elite private
militias limiting their already minimal options for food and survival, or
forcing them out of the only shelter they have in eastern Congo. Most want only
a few hectares to grow maize for their sick, emaciated children.
ÒWe drove from Uganda to
Congo through the Virungas,Ó said Oscar Kashala, the Congolese medical
scientist from Harvard who ran for president in CongoÕs 2006 elections. ÒThis
is a very celebrated park. Everything was green but there are no lions in
Virunga. No gazelles. People here have eaten everything. We didn't even hear
any birds singing. We were seeing half naked kids coming out of the bush. For
me—a doctor—to see malnutrition like that is very hard. The kids
all have wounds on their feet, and their bellies are swollen. They are all
sick.Ó
The gorillas have become
hostages in a propaganda war, the people have become irrelevant.
On the other side of the
fence—quite literally, the park boundary—the well-fed Congo Rangers
and their families rely upon a sympathetic Western public for donations to keep
themselves supplied and protected in former colonial encampments within the
Virunga Park. In fact, Wildlife Direct recently put out a plea for more funds.
The rangers were supposedly running out of food and an infusion of funding
would certainly help.
Or, perhaps the fingers of
blame should be pointed closer to home?
ItÕs a jungle out there, and
the monkey and money holes run very deep.