Award-Winning DRC Documentary Fuels Calls for Action
An award-winning documentary that denounces the crimes committed by armed thugs in the Democratic Republic of Congo is drawing new praise since fighting in Congo intensified in August.
Shot "in a land where silence is imposed at gunpoint," Shock Waves provides riveting testimony to the difficult birth of freedom of expression and democracy in a country torn apart in the aftermath of war, according to filmmakers and viewers.
"I have really seen the reality of our country reflected," commented Alma Montoya from violence-plagued Colombia after the Canadian documentary's screening last month at the WACC (World Association for Christian Communication) Congress.
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"I feel that I have been in a region where our indigenous and Afro descendant populations live; they are the same faces that we saw in the documentary," he said, according to WACC.
Over the past few months, fighting in Congo has displaced at least 250,000 people despite the presence of the largest U.N. peacekeeping force in the world.
U.N. peacekeeping spokesman Col. Jean-Paul Dietrich said up to 800 Congolese army troops rampaged through several towns in eastern Congo this week as they retreated from the rebels. He told The Associated Press that some had reportedly raped civilians near the town of Kanyabayonga, 60 miles (100 kilometers) north of the provincial capital, Goma.
While the recent escalation of violence has drawn media attention worldwide, murder, rape, armed conflict and the looting of civilians by the military have been daily facts of life for years, note the filmmakers behind Shock Waves.
For their documentary, Pierre Mignault and Hélène Magny followed the journalists of Radio Okapi in the DRC, who put their lives at risk each day to expose the abuses of power to which the Congolese people are subjected. Shooting in danger zones where the rebellion rages on, the filmmakers traveled around to investigate and broadcast many instances of extortion, intimidation and corruption affecting people alongside the Congo River, in the city of Goma and in Kisangani.
In one scene captured by a hidden camera, a reporter is confronted by soldiers who practice extortion and torture. In another, a reporter gives harrowing testimony by victims of rape and destruction after journeying East to cover a new outbreak of the rebellion.
"We were moved by the will of the Congolese people to regain their rights," Magny and Mignault expressed in a statement.
"Their collective determination to speak out and break the silence is aired on this free radio, a voice that speaks out against all those who want to turn back the clock, when confronted," they added. "This newfound freedom of expression constitutes an intrinsic step in the Congolese people's march towards democracy, and its impact can be felt in concrete, effective ways."
Shock Waves has prompted many to voice their concern over the need for much more to be done to bring the reality of DRC to the attention and action of the international community.
The Rev. Désiré Rutaganda from Rwanda, who attended the WACC Congress last month on behalf of Centre de Formation et de Documentation in Rwanda, claimed that the U.N. mission in DRC is incompetent as the crimes are openly committed in front of them.
"The World Council of Churches and other international Christian organizations intervened successfully in the efforts that finally led to dismantling apartheid in South Africa. But the Democratic Republic of Congo is ignored," he said, according to the WACC.
"We need more than just goodwill statements that end up shelved somewhere. We need action, mechanisms of implementation and monitoring to bring about real, sustainable changes to the situation," he concluded.
Since its release last year, Shock Waves has been garnered awards including "Film Most Likely to Change the World Award" at Detroit Docs 2007, the CIDA Award for "best Canadian documentary on international development," and most recently the WACC-SIGNIS human rights film award.
Radio Okapi, which was praised by the filmmakers as "a precedent that can serve as an example for all countries that are zones of conflict," first went on the air on Feb. 25, 2002, and is the first national radio in the history of the huge Central African country.
As of last month, eight regional stations cover the entire territory, and newscasts are broadcast in five languages to the 450 ethnic groups that make up the nation.
The station was created by the United Nations, under whose protection it operates, and the Hirondelle Foundation, a Swiss NGO composed of journalists who set up radio stations in zones of conflict.
On the Web:
More information about Shock Waves at InformActionFilms.com.
