At Human Rights Watch, where I work, we see a lot of difficult pictures and read a lot of tragic reports, every day. But this image really sticks with me; I can’t shake it. I think it’s the proximity of the boot and the face. The boot recalls for me every Communist dictator, every rebel warlord, every brutal cop – every injustice that drove me into this business in the first place. And the face – the face is what keeps me here, the rictus of fear in his expression.
I remember working with the Congo researcher for Human Rights Watch, interviewing witnesses who could provide information about warlords getting rich off the international sale of gold from eastern Congo. One witness was so nervous, he could hardly speak above a whisper, although we were well-hidden in an anonymous hotel room with a lookout outside the door. Finally, after a long silence, he croaked out, “J’ai peur,” – a simple phrase that nearly broke my heart. He might be murdered for telling what he knew.
Thousands, tens of thousands, millions of people had died already from the result of war in Congo. But here was one man. We provided him what protection we could; we wrote the report on gold mining in eastern Congo; we stopped two international companies from buying gold from abusive warlords. We do what we can. In this picture, a supporter of Jean-Pierre Bemba is being rounded up by cops on the day after Congo’s first democratic election in 46 years. He is just one man, one of so many. We do what we can.
I remember working with the Congo researcher for Human Rights Watch, interviewing witnesses who could provide information about warlords getting rich off the international sale of gold from eastern Congo. One witness was so nervous, he could hardly speak above a whisper, although we were well-hidden in an anonymous hotel room with a lookout outside the door. Finally, after a long silence, he croaked out, “J’ai peur,” – a simple phrase that nearly broke my heart. He might be murdered for telling what he knew.
Thousands, tens of thousands, millions of people had died already from the result of war in Congo. But here was one man. We provided him what protection we could; we wrote the report on gold mining in eastern Congo; we stopped two international companies from buying gold from abusive warlords. We do what we can. In this picture, a supporter of Jean-Pierre Bemba is being rounded up by cops on the day after Congo’s first democratic election in 46 years. He is just one man, one of so many. We do what we can.
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