Those of us with emotional and friendship ties to the Congo have been waiting. We have been waiting for the outrage, or at least some western media coverage after reports of massacres in the Beni area of North Kivu began to trickle out in October. Finally, Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a press release about the atrocities on December 16. Internet searches for “massacres in Congo” lit up for about seventeen hours and now have gone silent. Yahoo News, the Voice of America, Bloomberg, and dozens of other media outlets dutifully quoted the grizzly HRW report, which includes accounts of crucifixions, shootings, machete attacks, rape and other forms of torture of innocent civilians in and around Beni.

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