While black politicians, many media people and other liberals are busy playing the race card about Susan Rice, Congolese native Vava Tampa, of Save the Congo, poignantly asks where are they when they are really needed. 

Why was so much media attention focused on the week old war when Israel decided to defend itself against hundreds of rockets launched from Gaza?   Despite harsh press restrictions, some information about the savage civil war in Syria reaches the rest of the world, Vava comments.  

But little attention has been paid to the brutal war in the Congo.  And it should insists Vava.

If humanitarian crises were listed by some sort of moral -- or editorial -- standards on the stock exchange, to help indicate which ones urgently require international news coverage and political action, shares of the situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) would have commanded international news headlines and extensive press coverage over the past 12 years.

The U.N. has labeled the DRC, Africa's second largest country, as the "rape capital of the world" because of the pace and scope of the use of rape as a weapon of war by proxy militia gangs fighting for control of Congo's easily appropriable and highly valuable natural resources, destined for sale in Europe, Asia, Canada and the United States.

The wars in that country have claimed nearly the same number of lives as having a 9/11 every single day for 360 days, the genocide that struck Rwanda in 1994, the ethnic cleansing that overwhelmed Bosnia in the mid-1990s, the genocide that took place in Darfur, the number of people killed in the great tsunami that struck Asia in 2004, and the number of people who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- all combined and then doubled.

But few people outside the region know about the ongoing horror in the Congo.  Why not, Tampa asks? 

Is it due to the geographical or cultural distance between London or Washington and Congo? Or are Western media just reluctant, if not uninterested, to cover it because no Western interests or ally is endangered by it?

Would the coverage the situation in Congo receives be the same if it was happening in Europe or if Congo spoke English rather than French?

What if Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe or his disciples were implicated in funding murderous militia gangs in Congo? Or if the killing was between black Africans and Arabs? Or if minerals funding Congo's killing and raping industries benefited the East more than the West?

Tampa begs news organizations to 

[F]lood the airwaves with vivid images and news stories on the human sufferings in Congo. Newspapers such the Guardian, in the UK, and the New York Times must drumbeat front-page news stories on the wars and human tragedy engulfing that country.

Unless they tip that balance a little and force policy makers in Washington and internationally to pay more attention and act, the killing, raping and looting that have thus far claimed over 5.4 million Congolese lives, and continue to leave 1,100 women raped every single day,

Perhaps if Vava went before the UN, which has been noticeably silent about the Congo horror, and blamed Israel the media and the world would take notice.