The Night Before Christmas
by Jessica Jimenez
Christmas is undeniably the most celebrated holiday in the Western world. While many on this day were sitting around a brightly lit tree, opening expensive gifts, eating delicious food, or singing carols, citizens of the northern Democratic Republic of Congo were experiencing a different kind of Christmas cheer. From December 24 to January 13, citizens of the Congo were mutilated, abducted, and incinerated and whole villages were razed and pillaged in what is now known as the "Christmas Massacre."
These atrocities were perpetrated by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a Ugandan Christian Sectarian guerrilla army led by Joseph Kony, who claims to be the spokesperson of God and the spiritual medium of the Holy Spirit. The LRA's stated purpose is to establish a theocracy based upon the Ten Commandments, and thus seeks to overthrow the current government. Their terrorist actions reached unprecedented horror on the 24th when members of the LRA surrounded a Congolese Christmas festival and assaulted the participants with axes, machetes and large bats. The most gruesome example of the LRA’s malevolence came not from the remains of those slaughtered but from the survival of two little girls who had acquired serious neck injuries when LRA members tried to twist their heads off.
On the 25th, the LRA ambushed villagers who had gathered for festivities near the Sudanese border. They proceeded to bind the captives and separate the men and the women. Soon after, they killed the men by crushing their skulls and took the women to the forest where they first raped and then killed them in the same fashion. While this occurred, a 72-year-old man who had been late to the lunch, hid in the bushes and watched as the horror took place; his wife and children being among those who were killed.
By the end of the bloodshed, 620 civilians had been murdered and more than 160 children had been abducted, undoubtedly to be brainwashed into serving the LRA's purpose, according to Human Rights Watch. Now what's left in the wake are hundreds of dead bodies and disbelieving bystanders whose thoughts mirror those of everyone who's heard of the atrocities in the Congo: all of this death, of the most immoral and bestial nature, and for what? What are these religious fanatics fighting for that requires the use of such horrible violence, violence that is technically hypocritical of their religious beliefs? How do you persuade others to believe in those same absurd notions?
How ironic is it that on one of the holiest of days in Christianity, the birthday of Jesus, that these "Christian" rebels would decide to spread their idea of "peace" and "justice" through these atrocities. Such a blatant contradiction reminds us of one of mankind's most dangerous flaws: self-righteousness. After all, was it not self-righteousness that fueled the Roman Catholic Church's Inquisition? Was it not self-righteousness that led to the near extinction of Native Americans and other indigenous populations of America? And was it not that same vice that fueled Adolf Hitler during the Holocaust?
The most unbelievable, albeit frustrating, aspect of the massacres is that these rebels actually believe in what they are doing. They believe that killing and raping these citizens is what needs to be done to make the world a better place; to make the world a more "Christian" place.
The road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions.
