Watch National Geographic Live!‘s short film of Marcus Bleasdale talking about the D R Congo and how he hopes his pictures will improve things in The Power of Photography to Witness. As it says on the page:
Photojournalist Marcus Bleasdale wants to make people angry; as angry as he is about Africa’s first world war and the surprising way in which we are funding this violence.
On his own web site you can hear him talking at more length about one of these images at the start of another short film, Avoiding Photographic Dangers.
His work in the Congo is in ‘The Rape of a Nation‘, which is one of a number of stories on his VII page.
I’ve written a number of stories on the war in the Congo, seen from the considerably safer viewpoint of London’s streets and the protests by Congolese on them to try to focus public attention on the conflicts there, and the links between this and our mobile phones, computers and other electronic devices. But Bleasdale’s images bring home powerfully what happens there and its effect on the people.
You can find out more about what is happening on the Raise Hope for Congo website. Many organisations are working in the Congo, and in 2008 the BBC Radio 4 Today programme published a list of charities who work in Congo and deal with survivors of sexual violence, including Merlin, part of Save the Children. Others include War Child and Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).