MediaStorm

Diamonds and gold — vast natural resources that could enrich a nation — are a curse in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the Congolese people have suffered the largest death toll since the second world war.

The conflict between warlords and armed rebels for control of these resources have plunged the citizens into a life of poverty, sexual violence, and war. Some 45,000 people die each month as a result.

The actual miners who extract the sought-out treasures have no access to a living wage, societal safety, or simple medical care, while their leaders enrich themselves and allow the misery to continue.

Marcus Bleasdale traces how the west's consumer appetite for these resources have led to such sub-human conditions for the Congolese, and poses that we might make a difference — at the jewelry counter — simply by asking: where does that ring come from?

Published: January 21st, 2008

Credits

Photography & Video
A film by
Director & Executive Producer
Editor & Producer
Video Interview

Special Thanks

Carroll Boggert, Veronica Matushaj, Anna Lopriore, Marrion Udongo, David Lewis, Finbarr O Reilly, Dino Mahtani, KB Nosterud, Hugues Robert, Cheryl Newman, Mary Anne Golon, Alice Gabriner, Anneke Van Woudenbeg, Tom Stoddart, Philip Wood, Ian Parry and the Parry Family, Kadir Van Lohuizen, Philip Jones Griffiths, Aidan Sullivan, Yann-Arthus Bertrand

Get Involved

How To Help

The problems in Congo are vast and sometimes the whole problem feels overwhelming, but it is not unsolvable. It is not a problem that we can't do anything about.

When buying gold or diamonds, ask the retailer if they know where they're coming from. In this way, we as consumers can maintain pressure on an industry that is sometimes not as diligent as it can be.

Additionally the Congolese population needs help. These are some of the organizations working in DRC:

Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch is dedicated to protecting the human rights of people around the world. They work to uphold political freedom, to protect people from inhumane conduct in wartime, and to bring offenders to justice. They investigate and expose human rights violations and hold abusers accountable. They challenge governments and those who hold power to end abusive practices and respect international human rights law.

Médecins Sans Frontiéres

Médecins Sans Frontiéres (Doctors Without Borders) is providing emergency healthcare in some of the worst conflict zones in DRC.

The International Rescue Committee

The International Rescue Committee helps to revive basic services interrupted by the long civil war and aid communities to generate long-term solutions to the problems of poverty and violence.

Save the Children

Save the Children helps to revive basic services interrupted by the long civil war and aid communities to generate long-term solutions to the problems of poverty and violence.

The Coalition to stop the use of Child Soldiers

The Coalition to stop the use of Child Soldiers works to prevent their recruitment and use, to secure their demobilization and to promote their rehabilitation and reintegration.

Global Witness

Global Witness exposes the corrupt exploitation of natural resources and international trade systems. They drive campaigns to end impunity, resource-linked conflicts and human rights and environmental abuses.

All of these organizations need our constant support.

St Kizito Orphanage

The St Kizito orphanage is based in Bunia, in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Over the past decade, Bunia has been the centre of a conflict fought over the huge natural resources found in the region.

Many tens of thousands have been killed or died due to the lack of access to medication. As a result of this and the dire economic situation for the majority of the population, there is an enormous problem with children either losing their parents or their parents simply not having enough funds to support the family. This is where St Kizito comes in.

St Kizito looks after nearly 100 children of varying ages. They bathe them, feed them, educate them, allow them to grow and play and at the end of the day they put them to sleep. St Kizito is mainly staffed by volunteers and is run wholly on support by individual donations.

Purchase

Recognition

Anthropographia

Year: 2010

Place: Honorable Mention

Category: Multimedia and Human Rights

NPPA's Best of Photojournalism

Year: 2009

Place: Second

Category: Documentary Video

The Society of News Design

Year: 2008

Place: First

Category: Features: Monthly Winner: February

Related Links

Press

National Geographic: The Story Behind the Photo That Inspired Walter Mitty’s Journey

Our Age is Thirteen: Brian Storm, 8 years webdocs (French - Translate)

Alexia Foundation: Marcus Bleasdale on Oil Exploitation in Central Africa

Jenological Issues: Rape of a Nation

Storytell.in: How do we measure news?

El Nuevo Dia: Rape as a weapon of war (Spanish - Translate)

Onion Onion Run-Run: Congo - Rape of a Nation (Chinese - Translate)

start2think blog: The failure of the UN (Congo 1) (German - Translate)

Iconic Photos: Congo, Then and Now

PJD Final Major migration: Rape of a nation Bleasedale in DRC

JRN 380 - Advanced Editing & Presentation / Web: Long Form Video: Rape of a Nation

Anthropographia: The Anthropographia Award for Multimedia and Human Rights

Asedwa: Rape of a Nation

Fazendo Media: DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO IN HUMANITARIAN CRISIS (Portugese - Translate)

burn: The Rape of a Nation

Anthropographia: The 2010 Anthropographia results

The Diary of Alpha Reporter: DRC: A conflict driven by minerals. Canada involved? (French - Translate)

Steven Clark: 6 Million Reasons to Reconsider your Next Upgrade

Uneven Development: The Rape of a Nation – Congo

Derek Clark Photography: MediaStorm

Amazing Grace and Safe Haven: Rape of a Nation

Worldfocus: Clinton must call for an end to Congo's media censorship

lucy_ramos: video killed the (newsprint) star

So It Goes...: Paying the Price

We Media: MediaStorm: Story, Art, Passion, Purpose

Sistah Goddess: Rape of a Nation

Miller-McCune Online Magazine: Rising Storm

btno: War against women (Norwegian - Translate)

Nieman Reports: Long-Form Multimedia Journalism: Quality Is the Key Ingredient

The Road to the Horizon: News: DRCongo - The Rape of a Nation

YouTube: Conflict in Congo - The Challenges of Visual Journalism

LeBuzz.info: The best of traditional media photoblogs

Snowflakes in June: MediaStorm - A small piece of the world

Miller-McCune Online Magazine: Documentary journalism takes on a new multimedia format at its extraordinary new home, MediaStorm.org

NewsGems: Curse of the Warlords

Through my eyes: Pushing and using

SportsShooter: If you have a spare 11mins 32secs today....

Multimedia 24: Rape of a Nation ~ The Democratic Republic of Congo

WikiPedia: Democratic Republic of the Congo


Project Showcase

Back from the Brink

Once teetering on the brink of extinction, the Santa Catalina Island Fox made a dramatic recovery. Its resurgence marks one of the greatest conservation success stories in United States history.

Lights in the Shadows

In the shadow of Silicon Valley’s booming technology industry, a growing number of people remain out in the cold. Skyrocketing housing prices in America’s hub of innovation have pushed many onto the streets, straining policymakers to find solutions to a homelessness problem that impacts everyone in the community.

Zora J Murff

This page recognizing Zora J Murff for ICP’s 2023 Infinity Award for Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism features a film about his life, a slideshow of his projects and extra clips of his thoughts about his work and motivation.

Lifetime Achievement: Sebastião Salgado

Sebastião Salgado says "a good picture, a fantastic picture, you do in a fraction of a second, but to arrive to do this picture, you must put your life in there."

Emerging Photographer: Esther Horvath

Esther Horvath has sent questions to the universe and she has received answers. She found her calling to tell visual stories that show the full research story behind our climate data.

Photojournalism: Acacia Johnson

See photographer Acacia Johnson’s growth from her earliest explorations of Alaskan landscapes to a National Geographic cover for a documentary project among indigenous people of the Arctic.

Lifetime Achievement: Don McCullin

Sir Don McCullin never intended to become a photographer. He found it hard to believe he’d ever escape the poverty of North London. But a spur of the moment photograph launched McCullin into a career spanning 50 years in photography.

The War Comes Home

As the U.S. prepares for the final drawdown of soldiers from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, Soledad O’Brien and MediaStorm take an intimate look at two veterans as they struggle with the transition from war to home.

Critical Writing: Zadie Smith

Writer Zadie Smith pays homage to photographer Deana Lawson in the artist’s first Monograph for Aperture.

Fight Hate with Love

As a formerly incarcerated person, Michael struggled for work, and found purpose in being a husband, father, and activist. But 7 years since his release from prison, the cost of Michael’s activism is evident.

The American-Made Benny

Benny is a “certified” garbologist. He collects what others throw away. Benny is also at war with his family. Here is a man sharing a house with his wife but living as a stranger. This is a household on the edge.

Photojournalism - Amber Bracken

Photographer Amber Bracken recognized something deeper than a protest was afoot when hundreds of tribes gathered at the Standing Rock reservation in opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline.

A Shadow Remains

How does the death of a child change a parent? How does the death of a parent change a child? How do these moments change us as we develop and grow further away from who we were as children?

Critical Writing: Maurice Berger

Maurice Berger–cultural historian, and columnist for the New York Times’ Race Stories–has spent his career studying and teaching racial literacy through visual literacy. 

Japan's Disposable Workers

Japan’s Disposable Workers examines the country’s employment crisis: from suicide caused by overworking, to temporary workers forced by economics to live in internet cafes, and the elderly who wander a town in search of shelter and food.

WSJ 2015 Innovators: Karl Ove Knausgaard

Karl Ove Knausgaard is the celebrated author of a massive six-volume autobiography. But Knausgaard remains confused by the attention. This is a portrait of a man who has achieved massive success yet still considers himself unworthy.

The Last Move

Michael Thomasson has devoted his life to video games. It’s been his passion and his obsession for more than three decades. He owns over 11,000 unique game titles for more than 100 different systems.

Michael Christopher Brown: Libyan Sugar

A film about Michael Christopher Brown for the 2017 ICP Infinity Awards.

The Long Night

The Long Night, a feature film by Tim Matsui and MediaStorm, gives voice and meaning to the crisis of minors who are forced and coerced into the American sex trade.

New Media: Jonathan Harris and Gregor Hochmuth

Jonathan Harris and Greg Hochmuth have a complicated relationship with the internet and have worked together to develop an artwork that explored some of the more difficult consequences of what it means to live with the internet.

Inside Tracks

In 1977, Robyn Davidson walked 1,700 miles across the Australian outback. National Geographic sent Rick Smolan to photograph her perilous journey—a trek that tested and transformed them, forming an immutable bond that continues to this day.

Driftless: Stories from Iowa

Once at the center of the U.S. economy, the family farm now drifts at its edges. In Iowa, old-time farmers try to hang on to their way of life, while their young push out to find their futures elsewhere. Driftless tells their stories.

Common Ground

The American family farm gives way to a subdivision - a critical cultural shift across the U.S. Common Ground is a 27-year document of this transition, through the Cagwins and the Grabenhofers, two families who love the same plot of land.

Remember These Days

For Walter Backerman, seltzer is more than a drink. It’s the embodiment of his family. As a third generation seltzer man, he follows the same route as his grandfather. But after 90 years of business, Walter may be the last seltzer man.

Art: Larry Fink

Larry Fink has spent over 40 years photographing jazz musicians, wealthy manhattanites, his neighbors, fashion models, and the celebrity elite. His archive is a thoughtful collection of American history, and Fink’s experience of it.

Publication: LaToya Ruby Frazier

LaToya Ruby Frazier’s body of work “The Notion of Family” examines the impact of the steel industry and the health care system on the community and her family. Collaborating with her mother and grandmother, she uses her family as a lens to view the past, present and future of the town.

Photojournalism: Tomas van Houtryve

Tomas Van Houtryve wants there to be a permanent visual record of the dawn of the drone age, the period in American history when America started outsourcing their military to flying robots. In order to create this record, Van Houtryve sent his own drone into American skies.

Young Photographer: Evgenia Arbugaeva

Evgenia Arbugaeva was born in the magical town of Tiksi, Russia. This barren, arctic landscape influenced Arbugaeva in almost every aspect of her dreamlike photography.

Surviving the Peace: Laos

Surviving the Peace: Laos takes an intimate look at the impact of unexploded bombs left over from the Vietnam war in Laos and profiles the dangerous, yet life saving work, that MAG has undertaken in the country.

A Thousand More

A family is determined to give their disabled son a whole and vital life. In the midst of a great burden, one small child – with a seemingly endless supply of love – is the blessing that holds a family together.

Lynn Johnson

Inspired by the photographs of the Farm Security Administration growing up, Lynn Johnson has spent nearly 35 years as a photojournalist working for LIFE, National Geographic, Sports Illustrated and various foundations.

Resetting The Table

Resetting the Table takes a unique, personal look at the impact Starbucks’ Create Jobs for USA program has had on the American Mug & Stein pottery facility in East Liverpool, Ohio.

Hungry Horse

Hungry Horse captures the spirit of renewal, peace and serenity through stunning landscapes and intimate oral histories.

The Amazing Amy

Using humor and a love of fantasy, "The Amazing Amy" Harlib connects with audiences through performing strenuous yoga-based contortion acts in New York City.

The Bride Price

In many countries, girls as young as eight are forced into marriage by their families, culture and economic situation. This practice destroys their chance at education leading to tragic results.

Photojournalism: David Guttenfelder

Surreal and mysterious, North Korea was a black hole to outsiders wanting a glimpse of the country. That all changed in 2012, when AP photographer David Guttenfelder led the opening of the bureau's newest office inside the North Korea.

Take Care

Virginia Gandee's brilliant red hair and dozen tattoos belie the reality of this 22-year-old's life. Inside her family's Staten Island trailer her caregiving goes far beyond the love she has for her daughter.

A Darkness Visible: Afghanistan

Based on 14 trips to Afghanistan between 1994 and 2010, A Darkness Visible: Afghanistan is the work of photojournalist Seamus Murphy. His work chronicles a people caught time and again in political turmoil, struggling to find their way.

Intended Consequences

In Rwanda, in 1994, Hutu militia committed a bloody genocide, murdering one million Tutsis. Many of the Tutsi women were spared, only to be held captive and repeatedly raped. Many became pregnant. Intended Consequences tells their stories.

The Marlboro Marine

To those who serve in the armed forces, what is the aftereffect of war? The Marlboro Marine is photographer Luis Sinco's portrait of Marine Corporal James Blake Miller, whom he met in Iraq. For Miller, coming home has been its own battle.

Ivory Wars: Last Stand in Zakouma

Zakouma National Park is one of the last places on earth where elephants still roam by the thousands. In a land where poachers will slaughter the huge animals for their tusks alone, it takes armed guards to keep them safe.

Kingsley's Crossing

Kingsley's Crossing is the story of one man's dream to leave the poverty of life in Africa for the promised land of Europe. We walk in his shoes, as photojournalist Olivier Jobard accompanies Kingsley on his uncertain and perilous journey.


Collaborate With Us

We collaborate with a wide range of clients to tell their story. Our services include reporting, post production, interactive design and interactive packaging.

The MediaStorm Platform is an advanced video platform that extends the user experience beyond linear video to include the interactive capabilities of the Internet. 

Learn storytelling, filmmaking, video, multimedia production and business skills through MediaStorm’s intensive, hands-on workshops and in-depth online training resources.



2025 MediaStorm, LLC | Terms & Conditions | Privacy | Contact


See more at MediaStorm