Grace+and+Paula-+The+Congo

History of the Congo · In the 1870’s Henry Morton Stanley, the 1st westerner, to visit the Congo, he returned to Europe and allied himself with King Leopold II of Belgium · In 1884 Leopold declared himself a ‘protectorate’ of the Congo’s people and formed the political Congo Free State · Leopold funded Stanley to return and build a railroad into the jungle so could remove resources (rubber and ivory). During this time between three and ten million people in the Congo died under the brutality of Leopold. · In 1908 Leopold was forced to give control of the Congo Free State to the Belgian parliament because of his inhumane treatment of the people. · The Belgian government governed the Congo for the next fifty-two years until eventually in 1960 the Republic of the Congo became independent and Lumuba was elected leader. · The new nation was disorganized with no real order so tension between tribes quickly surfaced. Lumumba was killed and a commander Mobutu appointed himself president and renamed the country Zaire. · Mobutu ruled for thirty-two years with U.S. support (cold war ally) who encouraged violence and funded his lavish lifestyle at the expense of the country. · The country destabilized when the Rwandan conflict spilled over into Zaire. Mobutu was defeated by Kabila who declared himself president and renamed it Democratic Republic of the Congo. Family History · The mother Paula was a dressmaker and the father Joseph worked at an information office at famers collective and they lived near the Rwandan border. · The Tutsis allied with Kabila’s group. Paula and Joseph then joined up with Kabila’s people and moved to Kinshasa. · Kabila jailed and killed anyone who he thought was against him particularly Tutsis from Eastern Congo and the Balegamires were at risk. There was then a return to civil chaos. · Paula and Joseph were afraid so Paula took the kids and traveled east but eventually returned to Kinshasa. Eventually Joseph Balegamire and twenty-eight other men escaped to Brazzaville to avoid violence. They were then in contact with the UN and Amnesty International. · Paula and the children went to Brazzaville (former French colony Republic of Congo) and stayed with refugees. The plan was to be on low profile until the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees could place families in a safe refugee camp or country. · On January 16, 2010 Kabila was shot and died ten days later his son Joseph assumed control. Joseph then began a campaign against anyone assumed to be his father’s political enemies. · Two weeks later the men in Brazzaville were arrested including Joseph in violation of the international law, which forbids countries from sending people seeking asylum back to countries, which may harm them. The men were jailed in Makala where human rights violations occurred (starvation, torture, and disease). They were charged with assassination of Kabila and given life sentences. · Paula lived in Brazzaville three more years with her kids in constant fear. · In 2004 she was offered resettlement in U.S. Georgia and placed in an apartment complex where she found a job as a seamstress in a factory making sports jerseys. · Eventually she met Luna who encouraged the sons to play soccer and hired Paula to work in her cleaning company.