Here at Enough, we often swap emails with interesting articles and feature stories that we come across in our favorite publications and on our favorite websites. We wanted to share some of these stories with you as part of our effort to keep you up to date on what you need to know in the world of anti-genocide and crimes against humanity work.
The spate of major poaching operations in Africa of recent months takes on an even more sinister twist with details about the Lord’s Resistance Army using elephant tusks to fund their predations in central Africa. Agence France-Presse highlights the recent findings of Resolve about the LRA’s efforts to secure funding for their declining but still terrifying operations. Says Resolve advocacy direct Paul Ronan:
"Because the LRA is so unpredictable in where they will attack next, really until Kony is captured or killed, the psychological impact that he has on these hundreds of thousands of people in the affected areas will remain huge.”
Forbes focused on some of the grassroots actions taking off to raise awareness about the connection between conflict minerals from Congo and the gadgets we love and depend on. Tech writer Andy Robertson talks with Congolese activist Bandi Mbubi about how concerned consumers can use their electronics to push for Congolese to finally benefit from the wealth found in their land.
Photographer Richard Mosse’s collection of new photographs from Congo, presented in The New York Times magazine, offers a whole new perspective on the current crisis—in magenta. Using an infrared filter as he captures images of jungle, soldiers in camo and ski masks, and camps for displaced people, Mosse aims to point out “the West’s tendency to see in the Congo only darkness and insanity.”
HBO’s new series Witness profiles war photographers in Mexico, Brazil, South Sudan, and Libya to examine the process often purposely hidden from view that goes into capturing the images that impact the way the public understands the dynamics driving a given conflict. The New School blog speaks to Jared Moossy, the director of photography for the program.
VOA’s Anne Look examines the implications of the ICC’s acquittal of former Congolese militia leader Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui, who has been standing trial for war crimes allegedly committed in Ituri. Look quotes Human Rights Watch senior researcher Anneke Van Woudenberg, who cautions:
“[I]t should give some pause for thought to the prosecution that building cases which are so limited on the base of only one massacre without more broadly looking at what happened in the context of Ituri is dangerous and doesn't give us good justice."