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Unwatchable: the war in DR Congo just got much closer to home
The brutal rape and murder of a white, upper-middle class family deep in the English countryside just brought the war in DR Congo much closer to home.
It isn’t often that I support shock-tactics for the purpose of raising awareness about serious issues.
Unwatchable, a highly graphic short film that seeks to highlight the shocking prevalence of rape as a weapon of war in the DR Congo, is a notable exception to that rule.
In just over six minutes, the film charts, in brutal and uncensored detail, the rape and murder of an innocent family in their own home.
In an effort to strike a chord with Western audiences seemingly desensitised to the realities of one of the world’s most brutal and protracted conflicts, which has claimed the lives of 5.4 million since 1998 alone, the victims of this film are not black however, and nor is the setting the malarial jungles of the Congolese republic.
Rather Unwatchable is set in a million-pound mansion deep in the English countryside, with the soon-to-be murdered family every bit as respectable and upper-middle class as they are far removed from the realities of what the film portrays.
I will not pretend that the film is easy viewing, but then it isn’t meant to be.
Its message, moreover, extends beyond just the plight of the hundreds of thousands of brutalised and murdered victims of this forgotten war, highlighting further that for which they die every single day.
As in so many African conflicts, competition for control of mineral resources rests at the heart of DR Congo’s problems. The rapes and killings happen – and continue to happen right now - for control of minerals subsequently used in UK mobile phones, used every day by the likes of you and I.
The film’s message is clear: indirectly perhaps, but mobile phone manufacturers in the UK are complicit in the bloodshed, and by extension, dear customer, so are you.
In 2003, prompted in large part by the horrendous conflict for control of diamond fields in Sierra Leone, the world initiated the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS), with the aim of making the international trade in diamonds ‘conflict free’. Four years on, and the KPCS is beset by problems that stretch its credibility to the limit.
In spite of its many flaws, however, the central principle that underlies the KPCS is absolutely right, and there is no question that it has been significant in helping reduce, though not eliminate, the problem of conflict diamonds.
Harder though it would be to achieve, similar processes are urgently needed to regulate the trade in other conflict minerals, a central message put forward in Unwatchable, and something that has been advocated by various sections of the international humanitarian community for quite some time.
The key to beginning such processes is almost always heightened awareness, which leads to pressure on policymakers to act. To that end, at least, I hope that Unwatchable is a great, and terrible, success.
You can watch the video (but be warned it contains graphic scenes of sexual violence) and sign an accompanying petition here: http://www.unwatchable.cc/
George Grant is the Director for Global Security at the Henry Jackson Society, a foreign policy think tank in London, UK
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"The film’s message is clear: indirectly perhaps, but mobile phone manufacturers in the UK are complicit in the bloodshed, and by extension, dear customer, so are you."
Nops, we're not guilty, nor are we complicit. Leave us alone with your holier-than-thou communal guilt trip and your sick, arrogant concept of collective shaming/punishment.
Besides that, the materials used in mobile phones are also used in many other processes, and many companies deal with the Congo -- will you start accusing cereal producers next, because the killers maybe eat their Cornflakes? (...)
The only people who are guilty here of murder are the killers in Congo stop hiding their guilt behind the 'humanity' whom you think is the fount or all evil(tm) and responsible for everything (why not save everyone's time and money and instead, find religion and complain directly to God for failure to keep the universe innocent? Think BIG!)
Besides that, what will happen to Congo if no-one trades with them? Do you really think that poverty will stop wars and the bad men will all go away?
Meh...
I think this film was made for one simple reason. Sex sells. What better way to get attention for your oh-so-worthy cause than an 'edgy' film with a sexual theme? I am not resonsible for the behaviour of priapic, tribal, opportunistic men on another continent.
There are two reasons why there is not more media focus on the bloodshed in DRC: 1. It cannot be blamed on George W Bush. 2. Neither side are Jews.
I'll add that the very minerals that we are so vewwy eeeevil for using were present in the equipment used to organise, film and distribute this titillation so shaaaame on all concerned.
I'll also wager those behind this are the type to constantly have the latest smartphone glued to their ear as they loudly bray insincere self-congratulatory crap at each other.
This is just another 'No pressure' own goal.
The brutalisation, rape and torture of any human being is something we should all reflect on. I think the makers had a good intention, however, I can't help but feel they ended up merely illustrating the story, finding a simplistic scape-goat rather than connecting emotionally to the victim's plight. The film felt too far removed from the story it attempts to re-tell: the upper middle class residence and clean cut soldiers arriving in a helicopter leaves a feeling that they have just skimmed the surface, rather than trying to dig in to the psyche of both victim and perpetrator. One issue is that real violence is more shocking because there is a banality to it - it is dull, brutal, unquestioning, it reduces. Fictionalised violence, even when based on real events, has an inherent emotional distance, it has an intellectual purpose it is aesthetic. Which is one of the functions of fiction: to allow us to engage the extraordinary then break out of the experience in a way that is impossible with reality, which is often simpler and blunter. What I wonder is: does this film oblige or unintentionally release the viewer from a sense of responsibilty?
Bravo - not top the makers of this film - but to the several commenters who rightly placed the guilt where it belongs - on those who perpetrate rape and murder against their own civilians. The government and military leaders of the DR Congo complicit in this activity should be taken out with drones at the earliest opportunity - starting at the top and working down. That's if we, as a society, actually give a damn about life and humanity as the producers proclaim. I predict we'll find that we don't. We'd rather support films blaming capitalism for all the worlds evils and derive the feelings of moral superiority that result.
While I agree with the abhorrence of such violence. Surely this type of regulation of the mineral etc. Is treating the symptom and not the cause. There will always be another product that is killed for. The problem rests with the country and the people who rule there. Deal with them and the symptoms will stop.