Seeing Orange

Orange who has guest blogged here don'tcha know, writes to me and says:


You have a much larger readership and reach than I do, so I hope you can link to this speech by a Canadian named Stephen Lewis. Lewis's foundation is dedicated to HIV/AIDS in Africa, but this particular speech is about the atrocities against women that continue to rage unchecked in the Democratic Republic of Congo, particularly in the eastern Congo.

In short, systematic and widespread rape, gang rape, mutilation, torture, instrumental rape, gang rape followed by vaginal shooting or stabbing, and so on, affecting many tens of thousands of women (if not hundreds of thousands). What is going on in the Congo is apparently worse than Darfur, has gone on for years longer than Darfur, and yet gets no international action, no international pressure, no intervention to protect the female human beings in that country.

I am not sure what the average American can do. Urge our senators and congresspeople to urge Bush and our UN ambassador to urge the UN to take action? For starters, at least we can increase visibility of the problem and hopefully get more people aware and motivated to act.

What say you? I hope you'll post something and nudge others with even bigger audiences to speak out. Thanks for your consideration.

There's no saying no to Orange, who is one of the two bestest people on the internets, as far as I am concerned. The other one is our friend Flea, who has just told me where I am having PK's next birthday party, I think.