Two urgent messages arrived from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in late August 2007—each labeled S.O.S. It is ironic that land-locked Congolese would use the international maritime distress signal S.O.S. to plea for help. As independent journalists, we feel a bit like the captains of the Carpathian in their futile attempt to rescue the passengers of the sinking Titanic. The irony of the Titanic disaster was that the ship California was floating ten miles away and capable of rescuing all onboard—but not responding to the visual  S.O.S. The California analogy fits the mainstream media today, as honest men and women fire rocket flare after rocket flare from the depths of Congo, hoping and praying that anyone will take heed of the ongoing conservation and humanitarian disasters.

 

The puzzled crew of the California watched the Titanic’s distress signals until it was too late. Over 1500 people perished in the legendary wreck of the Titanic. By some accounts, 10 million have vanished in Congo, with 1,000 people dying daily in North Kivu Province alone. Untold lowland gorillas have vanished along with the iconic mountain gorilla. Congo‘s Virunga Park is as devoid of life as the hulking wreck of the great ocean liner now rusting on the seabed of the icy North Atlantic.

 

On August 27, 2007 Congolese national Vital Katembo Mushegezi, a state Conservator and Senior Game Warden in the Virungas National Park, sent out an urgent S.O.S. appeal from the DRC.[i] The second S.O.S. came from a Congolese animal rights organization that has been investigating the gorilla trade and corruption in the ranks of conservation NGOs operating within Virunga Park.

 

In a stunning revelation, investigators from the Innovation for Development and the Protection of the Environment (I.D.P.E.)—affiliated with the World Society for the Protection of Animals and supported by Animal Rights of Hawai’i—describe “a network of people who are in search for sticks that the big apes, such as those the gorillas and the chimpanzees use.”

 

The astonishing claim—mysteriously never reported by international primatologists and big conservation NGOs like the Jane Goodall Institute and Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund—is that elderly or handicapped gorillas and chimps use wooden sticks to defend themselves or to support themselves as they walk bipedally. Sorcerers—known as “marabouts”—seek these magic sticks because of the supernatural powers they possess and the sticks fetch a $20,000 price on the international market.

 

INTERNATIONAL SCANDAL IN CENTRAL AFRICA

 

Conservator Vital Katembo came under attack from powerful forces seeking to maintain a long-standing silence about corruption, extortion, and criminality involving international non-government organizations (NGOs) working in the conservation, development and humanitarian sector in Central Africa. While previously concerned for his livelihood and security, Katembo was recently barred from his offices at the internationally renowned Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature (ICCN) and remains deeply concerned for his life and his family’s security.

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