Sarah S. Milburn, Country Specialist, Central Africa/Military, Security and Police Transfers, Amnesty International USA (smilburn@igc.org) has sent the following Alert to ACAS members and friends:

Amnesty International USA has created an action guide and online materials to accompany the release of the Nicolas Cage movie, Lord of War, which is about an international arms broker selling to an African country (an all-too familiar story to the ACAS folks).  These are available at http://www.amnestyusa.org/lordofwar/

There is also an important research report which Amnesty released this July which provides a wealth of detailed information about the international network of brokers and transport companies which have been supplying arms to the various combatant groups in the long-running war in the Democratic Republic of Congo with the possible assistance of Rwanda, Uganda, and the DRC government.  This report, "Democratic Republic of Congo: Arming the East" can be seen at: http://www.amnestyusa.org/countries/dr_congo/index.do

It can also be downloaded from our International Secretariat website at:

http://web.amnesty.org/library/ (Look for Democratic Republic of Congo: Arming the East AFR 62/006/2005, published July 7, 2005.)

I have attached a copy of the DRC report for each of you with this message. I would be delighted to email or snail-mail a copy of it to any list member who has trouble getting it online and would like to contact me at smilburn@igc.org.  Please feel free to forward this information to interested non-ACAS members also.

Sarah S. Milburn, Country Specialist, Central Africa/Military, Security and Police Transfers Amnesty International USA smilburn@igc.org.