08.04.11 Dear Hillary Campaign for the Congo : Saint Michael's College Students and the Dear Hillary Campaign for the Congo will Join Hands for the Congo on April 8th outside the State Department

55 students from St. Michael's College in Vermont will join Congolese
refugees and advocates from all over the country to demand that
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton make peace in the Congo a foreign
policy priority.   Speakers include Lisa Jackson, documentary filmmaker
("The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo"), Kambale Musavuli, Student
Director of Friends of the Congo, and Ritha Baraka,   a translator for
Panzi Hospital in Bukavu.

The Dear Hillary Campaign for the Congo was started in the summer of
2010 by   Saint Michael's students who wanted to do something about the
violence being committed daily against women in the Congo. On October
26, 2010 this group along with 50 other chapters around the country and
in four foreign countries sent Secretary of State Hillary Clinton 17,000
birthday postcards, requesting that diplomatic action be taken in the
Congo.

This past December, the leaders of the Campaign were invited to
Washington DC to meet with Ambassador Melanne Verveer, the Ambassador at
Large for Global Women's Issues.

"The meeting was good," Laurie Gagne, one of the organizers said,
"but this time, we want a public demonstration. " People will be
gathering at 11:30 and the main event—lining up along the sidewalk to
form a human chain as far as possible around the State Department—will
take place at noon.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo has been called   "the most
dangerous place in the world to be a woman." Since 1996 over five
million people have been killed and hundreds of thousands of women and
children have been raped and murdered (http://dearhillarycampaign.wordpress.com/mission-statement/).

For fifteen years, rape has been used as a weapon of war. In 2006 the
United States government passed Public law 109-456 which called for the
nation to take an active role in the Congo.

However, it was never enacted. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is
one of the most powerful women in the world and the Dear Hillary
Campaign is calling on her to use that power to end the suffering of
these women and appoint a U.S. Special Envoy as a sign that the US is
committee   to a diplomatic resolution of the conflict .

For more information go the website, www.dearhilllarycampaign.wordpress.com.