Exploitation of the Congo at SUNY New Paltz

NEW PALTZ — The Department of Black Studies at the State University of New York at New Paltz, along with the Student Association, will sponsor a lecture titled “Abuses and Exploitation in the Congo: The Human Costs of Resource Exploitation in the Congo” on Wednesday, April 3 at 7 p.m. in Lecture Center 100. Suliman Ali Baldo, senior researcher in the African Division of the Human Rights Watch in New York, will be speaking.

Baldo will give an overview of the complex links between the current war in the Congo and conflicts in neighboring Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, and Angola. The lecture will focus on human rights and humanitarian law abuses, which are directly related to the illicit exploitation of resources in the eastern Congo.

“In the past one and half centuries, the colonial civil wars in the Congo have devastated not only the Congo, but have spilled into the neighboring countries of Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda, from which refugees have streamed into the eastern Congo,” said Eudora Chikwendu, associate professor and chair of Black Studies at New Paltz. “The crisis in the Congo is emblematic of other wars going on right now in Sierra Leone and Angola where diamond extraction has really been done to satisfy Western industrial and fashion obsessions. The casualties of these wars have been millions of Africans.”

The Congo, rich in diamonds, copper, uranium, gold and silver, has endured a centuries of exploitation, beginning with the slave trade and European colonization. Presently another civil war is raging in the Congo.

For additional information, contact the Black Studies Department at 845-257-2760.