Congo: ‘The Horror! The Horror!’

Posted on | May 25, 2026 | No Comments

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), formerly known as Zaire, and before that, the Belgian Congo, is one of those Third World nightmare hellholes that I describe as being “worse than Baltimore.” However, since a new federal prosecutor has brought Baltimore’s homicide problem under control, I’ll describe the DRC as worse than Memphis.

Joseph Conrad famously used the Belgian Congo as the scene for Heart of Darkness, with the madman Kurtz dying of fever, his final words being: “The horror! The horror!” The situation has not much improved lately, as the State Department warns: “Do not travel to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) due to crime, civil unrest, and health. Some areas have increased risk due to armed conflict.”

And then there’s the deadly ebola outbreak:

A second incident of Congolese youths storming an Ebola clinic to demand the return of infected bodies for funerals took place on Sunday evening, as the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) announced the number of suspected infections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda has surpassed 900.
Eyewitnesses reported gunfire at the Mongbwalu General Hospital in the eastern DRC province of Ituri, the epicenter of the Ebola Bundibugyo outbreak, as a mob of angry youths stormed the treatment center to demand the return of two bodies of Ebola victims. Some reports said members of the mob were armed, while others said police fired the shots in an attempt to disperse the crowd.
“There was gunfire and the medics were trying to evacuate the patients and the staff,” said Dr. Richard Lokudu, medical director of Mongbwalu General Hospital.
Lokudu said the hospital remained “on general alert” as of Monday morning. It was not clear from official reports if anyone was injured during the altercation.
A similar incident occurred on Thursday at Rwampara Hospital near Bunia, the capital of Ituri province. In that case, a mob of angry youths set fire to the Ebola treatment center when the hospital refused to hand over the body of a popular local soccer player who was believed to have died from Ebola.
On Saturday, another mob attacked an Ebola treatment clinic in Mongbwalu operated by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and set fire to one of its tents. No injuries were reported, but 18 people who were undergoing Ebola testing fled from the facility and could not immediately be located to resume treatment. . . .
Officials in the northeastern DRC banned funerals and gatherings of over 50 people on Friday, in an effort to slow the spread of the deadly disease. Funerals in the outbreak region are seen as super-spreader events because the bodies of dead Ebola victims can be highly contagious and people tend to come into physical contact with them during funeral ceremonies. . . .
Parts of the eastern Congo are controlled by violent insurgent and jihadi groups with links to the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, and over a million people have been displaced from their homes, making treatment and contact tracing for Ebola exceptionally difficult.

If Joe Biden was still president, he’d be bringing ebola-infected Congo refugees to America. “The horror! The horror!”

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