So impress this upon your leaders there, in the West there. What they have done to us! After slavery, there was colonization. After colonization there was neo-colonialism instead of independence. We never had independence here—not yet. And now again, you impose Kabila on us with this democracy of complacency. So it’s neo-slavery. We continue to suffer. Go inform your leaders there: if they continue to place at the head of this country these idiots, these imbeciles, these political homosexuals, we’re going to create Al Qaeda à l’Africaine here. That’s what we’ll become.

- Salvador Muhindo

Philip Gourevitch reports from Goma, where, as the violence continues to spread, some Congolese blame the larger international community: http://nyr.kr/TjSzy9

Photograph by Phil Moore/AFP/Getty.