Ban Calls for ‘Raising the Cost’ for Those Who Use Rape as a Weapon of War

Only when rape in armed conflict becomes a liability for armed groups rather than a tool in the struggle for power – a war crime that will bring inevitable punishment – will progress be made in eliminating the scourge, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today.

“We have to raise the cost of committing atrocities to the point where they harm the perpetrators even more than the victims,” he told a news conference on sexual violence in conflicts in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he is attending an African Union (AU) summit.

“That means that when a peace process begins, perpetrators are never permitted to get or to retain positions of military, political or economic influence. Where sexual violence has been part of the fighting, ending it must be part of making peace.

” Mr. Ban noted that Africa has some of the world’s most progressive legal instruments to address sexual violence in conflict and advance women’s rights, including the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa and the Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa, and he hailed the AU’s decision to ensure that its Peace and Security Council holds an annual session on women and children in armed conflict.

“The challenge now is to ensure these laudable commitments are felt where they matter most, in the marketplaces where women trade, at water-points, and along the roads where girls walk to school,” he said. “The United Nations wants to work closely with the African Union and African troop contributors to better prepare our peacekeepers to respond to sexual violence as a security threat. We need Africa’s leaders and leaders around the world to support this campaign.

“Stressing that prevention is possible, Mr. Ban noted that in Sudan’s strife-torn Darfur region, joint so-called “firewood” patrols by the UN-AU Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) have increased women’s freedom of movement and cut the number of rapes. Women were often attacked when they left internally displaced persons (IDP) camps to fetch firewood or water.

In Liberia, the presence of female police has improved reporting and response, he added. Just this month, UN officials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) reported at least 120 alleged cases of rape perpetrated by both rebels and the national army in the conflict-rife eastern part of the country, where more than 300 civilians, including some boys and men, were raped in a single weekend last summer by members of rebel armed groups.

But Mr. Ban’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict Margot Wallström stressed that the scourge is not just African but global. “I have recently been to Sarajevo, where you know 15 years ago, maybe between 15,000 and 16,000 women were held in rape camps,” she said, referring to the 1992-1995 Balkans war between Bosnia and Herzegovina (whose capital is Sarajevo), Serbia and Croatia. “We know reports today from Haiti.

From everywhere, we have heard that this is the weapon of choice because it is cheap, silent and very effective… this is an element, a phenomenon that we have to stop. And it takes political leadership, political ownership of this issue and a very strong sense of the line of command. Because it has to start with the political leaders who say: ‘this has to stop, this is an international crime, it is criminal, not cultural or sexual, it is criminal.

“Describing the terrible trauma that befalls rape victims Ms. Wallström recounted the story of a woman she met in Sarajevo who had been raped and held in one of these rape camps: “She said ‘sometimes I wish that they had shot me instead because they took my life without killing me.’ “But it is a kind of invisible war damage, the way she has been wounded.

And others with visible wounds, they will become war veterans, they will be honoured by their societies, but [there is no access to justice for the woman]. She meets her rapist in the bank, and he smiles at her.”

WN

Some activists say that the country is still too violent for its abolition.

Human rights activists are divided over parliament’s recent rejection of a bill seeking to abolish the death penalty in the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC.

The sentence remains on the DRC statute books, even though a moratorium means the last execution took place in January 2003. It is now automatically commuted to life imprisonment.

Normally, human rights defenders are the first to take a stand against the death penalty, but for many Congolese activists the standard abolitionist arguments do not hold up in the context of today’s DRC, where violence and human rights violations remain endemic.

Some of the strongest Congolese advocates for the retention of the death penalty – most recently agreed by parliament last November when the abolitionist bill was dismissed – have come from civil society campaigners in eastern DRC.

They feel that, due to the number of killings still taking place there, and more specifically in the Kivus, it is not yet the right time to abolish state-sanctioned executions.

“We are for the abolition of the death penalty, only not now. We think it is not timely because of the nature of the crimes committed here,” Jean-Paul Lumbulumbu, a human rights defender from local pro-democracy organisation RACID, said.

Many argue that capital punishment is a legitimate deterrent that the state should use to prevent atrocities by militias and individuals. They contend that the prevalence of crime in certain areas calls for a strong response from the government and the judicial system.

In March 2009, Kyungu Mutanga Gédéon, a Mai-Mai militia leader, was sentenced to death in the province of Katanga in eastern DRC.

Although Human Rights Watch condemned the sentence at the time, local observers say that the judge’s decision sent a clear message to the leaders of armed groups in the area, which was, apparently, heeded.
At the core of the debate over capital punishment lies the role of the judiciary and its capacity to render justice fairly.

Bogged down by corruption and inefficiency, the judicial system has failed the Congolese population on many accounts.

Magistrates are often corrupt and criminals can bribe their way out of jail while poor people remain in overcrowded prisons for interminable periods, often for the smallest infractions.

Some say that, to an extent, it is this absence of the rule of law that has contributed to the current lack of stability in the country.

For Lumbulumbu, this is a further argument for retaining the death penalty.

“Prisons are overcrowded and sometimes you can see a criminal on the street days after he was sentenced to jail. How do you deal with that? Because they do not have faith in the judicial system, people resort to vigilante justice and kill criminals anyway. It is better if it is done by the law,” he said.
But abolitionists argue that the inherently corrupt nature of the judiciary is a reason to put an end to the death penalty.

“Who will be sentenced to death? The same people who languish in jail or the real criminals?” Regine Ndamwenge, a local journalist, asked. “Corruption does not know degrees.”

She added that if someone can get out of jail with a bribe, he will be able to get around the death sentence.

Others note that keeping capital punishment on the statute books could make it harder for the International Criminal Court, ICC, to work with the DRC on setting up local war crimes trials.

Uganda struggled to gain ICC acceptance for a new bill to establish a war crimes tribunal because of the government’s determination to retain the death penalty. After lengthy debate, the bill was finally passed last year, after mention of the death penalty was dropped from its final draft, although it is still retained under Ugandan law for certain crimes.

Miscarriages of justice are another argument used to advocate for an end to capital punishment.

With a system far from perfect and a police force ill-equipped to investigate crimes, innocent people can be condemned easily and magistrates influenced to give unfair sentences.

The last execution in the DRC took place in January 2003, when 15 individuals were shot by firing squad. Following this execution, the human rights group Amnesty International raised questions about the safety of the convictions.

In particular, campaigners highlighted concerns that the condemned were not given the right to appeal their sentence, which was handed down by a military court.

“The law on the death penalty dates back to colonial times,” Samy Mukembozi, a lawyer and member of human rights NGO UCPDHO, said. “It was based on Talion law; in other words, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It is problematic today.”

Contrary to the arguments of some other rights campaigners, he says that retaining the death penalty is not the best way to develop Congolese law and order.

“The purpose of punishment is not simply to sanction but also to reform the person that violated the law,” he said. “In that sense the death penalty fails one of its purposes, since you cannot reform someone who is dead.”

Maitre Kalinda, a provincial legislator from North Kivu, is disappointed that the decision was made to retain capital punishment, since he thought the moratorium was the first step towards its abolition.

But he hopes that there might be another chance to scrap the sentence after the election later this year.
“The current parliament’s mandate is coming to an end in 2011,” he said. “We will carry on pleading for the abolition [of the death penalty] and a new parliament will mean a new possibility.”

IWPR

Second Phase of Immunization Under Way as Polio Outbreak Kills 200

A recent polio immunization campaign targeted some 72 million children in 15 countries across West and Central Africa.

The number of people killed by an outbreak of wild polio virus in the Republic of Congo has reached 200, officials said, as the second of three rounds of mass vaccination began.

“The first phase was a great success with a coverage rate of 105 percent. This rate reflects the fact that we identified 4,135,000 people and ultimately 4,300,000 people were immunized,” said the Minister of Health and Population, Georges Moyen.

“Since 2 December, the country has more reported cases of deaths from acute flaccid paralysis,” said Moyen, stating that the current balance is of 200 deaths from nearly 480 cases.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the second phase of the immunization campaign was aimed at targeting people who missed the first round of the immunization programme from 18-22 November 2010.

“We believe that after the second round of vaccinations, there will be no more new cases,” said Gianfranco Rotigliano, regional director of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

According to UNICEF and WHO, the outbreak of polio in Congo, considered eradicated for the past 11 years, originated in Angola and is the result of the instability that prevailed during the years of war (between 1992 and 2000), resulting in the disruption of the health system.

“Immunization campaigns have three phases because it takes at least three doses to be protected against polio. The impact of those three campaigns will be assessed to determine if more activities might be needed,” Oliver Rosenbauer of WHO told IRIN.

“The third round of vaccination in Congo Brazzaville will take place in late December,” said Rosenbauer.
In addition to the three-phase outbreak response in Congo Brazzaville, synchronized measures are being taken in border areas of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Angola, targeting respectively 1.5 million and 1.46 million people.

“Certainly countries across central Africa right now should do more sensitive disease surveillance, so that they could rapidly detect an eventual polio case and also boost population immunity, in order to minimize the consequences should they become re-infected,” Rosenbauer told IRIN.

IRIN

Aircraft Crashes After Crocodile on Board Escapes and Sparks Panic

A small airliner crashed into a house, killing a British pilot and 19 others after a crocodile smuggled into the aircraft in a sports bag escaped and started a panic.

One of the passengers had hidden the animal, which he planned to sell, in a big sports bag.

The plane came down despite no apparent mechanical problems during an internal flight in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

It has now emerged that the crash was caused by the concealed reptile escaping and causing a stampede in the cabin, throwing the aircraft off-balance.

A lone survivor apparently relayed the bizarre tale to investigators.

The crocodile survived the crash, only to be dispatched with a blow from a machete.

Danny Philemotte, the Belgian pilot and 62-year-old owner of the plane’s operator, Filair, struggled in vain with the controls, with Chris Wilson, his 39-year-old First Officer from Shurdington, near Cheltenham, Glocs.

The plane was on a routine flight from the capital, Kinshasa, to the regional airport at Bandundu when the incident unfolded, on August 25.

It crashed into a house just a few hundred feet from its destination. The occupants of the property were outside at the time.

According to the inquiry report and the testimony of the only survivor, the crash happened because of a panic sparked by the escape of a crocodile hidden in a sports bag.

One of the passengers had hidden the animal, which he planned to sell, in a big sports bag, from which the reptile escaped as the plane began its descent into Bandundu.

A report of the incident said: “The terrified air hostess hurried towards the cockpit, followed by the passengers.”

The plane was then sent off-balance “despite the desperate efforts of the pilot”, said the report.
The plane was a Czech-made Let L-410 Turbolet, one of more than 1,100 produced as short-range transport aircraft and used mainly for passenger services.

Telegraph.Co.Uk

Armed Men Rape 60 in Congo: New Wave of Sexual Attacks

Armed men have raped 60 people in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in the last ten days, the latest in a spate of mass sexual attacks in the region.

Two attacks took place in the villages of Nakatete and Kitumba in the Fizi area of South Kivu province from Jan. 19 to Jan. 21, Charline Burton, a spokesperson for the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said on Friday.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), the international humanitarian organisation, treated 60 people, including men, women and children, who said they had been raped in the attacks, Miss Burton said.
“The humanitarian actors have been on the ground only very recently, so it is too soon to know who did this. But we should know more in the coming days,” she said.

Several armed groups operate in eastern Congo since a 1998-2003 war that killed five million people in the central African state, and sexual violence has become a regular occurrence in the region.
Last year, fighters from the Rwandan Hutu extremist group FDLR were suspected to be behind the rapes of more than three hundred women in Walikale, North Kivu, over the span of several days. Earlier this month Congolese soldiers were accused of raping 67 people in the town of Fizi.

Those attacks caused an international outcry over the level of sexual violence in the region, where more than one hundred and sixty women are raped each month in North and South Kivu, according to UN figures.

The UN’s special representative on sexual violence last year called eastern Congo the rape capital of the world, a label the government has strongly rejected.

Telegraph.Co.Uk

Zephirin Sinamenye thought his 12- year-old-son, Maisha, was hiding safely as a hail of machine-gun fire swept across the town of Kiwanja in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. He was wrong.

Maisha was caught by a stray bullet on Nov. 5 as rebel fighters led by renegade general Laurent Nkunda clashed with pro-government militias and then executed dozens of civilians, witnesses in the village said.

“My boy is still in the field where they killed him,” said Sinamenye, 51, standing behind a house to avoid a rebel patrol. “It’s not safe for me to go and see him.”

As Sinamenye spoke, thousands of residents of Kiwanja, 75 kilometers (45 miles) north of Goma, the provincial capital, fled. Long lines of people bearing rolled-up mattresses and pots and pans, some with goats in tow, headed south.

For the quarter of a million people displaced in North Kivu since August, the fighting has followed a relentless cycle since the 1994 genocide in neighboring Rwanda, when extremist ethnic Hutus slaughtered more than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The 1997 end of President Mobutu Sese Seko’s three-decade rule over what was then Zaire, and the current government’s inability to address the strife, has left a hollow state where armed groups stir up ethnic tensions to rally support.

“This killing isn’t new,” said Sinamenye, wearing a soiled white shirt, gray slacks and black rubber flip-flops. “People have been coming here to kill for a long, long time.”

Tutsis, Hutus
The widening of Congo’s ethnic divide testifies to the use of tribal chauvinism by politicians and warlords battling to control a country the size of Western Europe, according to Onesphore Sematumba, a researcher at the Goma-based Pole Institute. “Many people still think of their ethnicity first and then their national identity,” he said.

For Sinamenye, a father of eight, the killing started in 1996, when Tutsi-led fighters from both Congo and Rwanda hacked his neighbors to death with machetes in Ntamugenga, a nearby village he had settled in because of its fertile soil. He fled with his family to Kiwanja, where he farmed beans, corn and peanuts on the outskirts of the town.

An ethnic Hutu, Sinamenye said there is little difference between Nkunda’s fighters and the original rebellion that helped Laurent Kabila, President Joseph Kabila’s father and predecessor, overthrow Mobutu.

Then and Now
“It was Tutsis who attacked us then and it’s Tutsis who are attacking us now,” he said.
Nkunda, who is also a Seventh-Day Adventist lay preacher, led his forces to within 10 kilometers of Goma by Oct. 29. His fighters overwhelmed Congo’s army despite the presence of over 5,000 United Nations peacekeepers in North Kivu. Nkunda, who said in the past that his National Congress for the Defense of the People, or CNDP, was essentially trying to protect his Tutsi minority, now speaks of the “total liberation” of Congo.

“I have national ambitions,” Nkunda, dressed in army fatigues and wielding a cane capped with a silver eagle’s head, said in a Nov. 13 interview near the border with Uganda. “Where we are is the safest in Congo. If we can do that, we are capable of doing it on a national level.”

New York-based Human Rights Watch and witnesses such as Sinamenye dispute Nkunda’s contention and say his soldiers executed tens of civilians in Kiwanja in November.

Conflicting Charges
Congo alleges that Rwanda, whose president, Paul Kagame, had Nkunda in his army, backs him now. Rwanda accuses Congo of being in cahoots with the Hutu militias. Both deny the charges.
Because Rwanda and Congo distrust each other, neither is willing to act against the rebel groups that the other side fears, according to Arthur Kepel, Congo analyst with the Brussels-based International Crisis Group.

Sinamenye, who grew up herding cattle in Nkunda’s native village of Jomba, says that the violence has shredded relations between Tutsis and other communities in Congo.

“I grew up with Tutsis, we were cow-herders together.” he said. “Now I can’t trust them. Always when they come they just come to kill.” While not all Tutsis agree with Nkunda’s rebellion, many complain of being considered foreigners and the targets of discrimination because they speak Rwanda’s national language. The state has backed several persecutions, they say. Since 1994, Hutu extremist militias that escaped Kagame’s forces by fleeing to Congo have repeatedly attacked and killed Tutsis in both Rwanda and Congo.

Makeshift Tents
Within two days of the fighting for Kiwanja, 5,000 people crowded together in a settlement of makeshift tents made from donated plastic sheeting wedged between a rice paddy and a base of the UN peacekeeping force in the town.

Until a settlement in eastern Congo is reached, farmers such as Sinamenye are too scared to return to their land, where the beans, corn and peanuts they once produced helped North Kivu export produce to the capital, Kinshasa, 1,700 kilometers to the west. Now his seven surviving children go hungry.
Outside his square mud house with a red corrugated iron roof a pot bubbled away as two of Sinamenye’s children played in the dust. His wife was away looking for food.

“We eat roots now,” he said. “They are for pigs, but we have to eat them.”

Sinamenye said he doesn’t know when he will be able to walk the roughly 10 kilometers to retrieve the body of Maisha, whom he described as a bright boy and eager learner, and bury him.

“There were so many people who were killed,” Sinamenye said. “I can’t go over there and risk my life.”

ChinaPost

Armed groups in eastern Congo, including the army, have bypassed international reform programs and have instead formed criminal networks to exploit the nation’s mineral wealth, with one group even trying to sell uranium, the United Nations said in a new report.

Monday’s report said the armed units have done so despite recent efforts to disarm illegal militias and reform the disorganized, ill-disciplined army. The report said the army has even formed a criminal gang within its ranks.

Investigators cited several examples of militants illegally exploiting minerals and natural resources, seizing land, recruiting child soldiers and poaching endangered wildlife.

The report said Rwandan-led Hutu rebels in Congo in 2008 attempted to sell six canisters of what they said was unenriched uranium – an amount that the report said would not be enough to create even a small amount of fissile material – but could not find a buyer for more than a year and gave up.

At U.N. headquarters in New York on Monday, the Security Council renewed its arms embargo for people and groups not associated with the government, along with a travel ban and a freeze on the assets of people linked to illegal armed groups.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice welcomed the extension of the sanctions, which she said “can play an important role in bringing stability to the (Congo) and holding accountable those who direct the massacre of civilians, recruit child soldiers, or use rape as a weapon of war.”

Rice also welcomed the council’s support for possible new guidelines for people and companies that import, process, or consume Congolese mineral products.

“If implemented, these guidelines could significantly limit the illicit minerals trade, which has for many years fueled violence” in Congo, she said.

Eastern Congo has been torn by violence since Rwanda’s 1994 genocide spilled war across the border. Hutu militias that participated in the massacres of more than 500,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus sought refuge in Congo.

The U.N. has documented numerous human rights violations and atrocities at the hands of armed groups in eastern Congo.

In October, the U.N. said more than 300 civilians were raped by militants in 13 villages between July 30 and Aug. 2. The numbers were shocking even for eastern Congo, where rape has become a daily hazard and some women have been sexually assaulted repeatedly over the years.

Efforts have been made to professionalize the army and to bring militia groups into the organization. But those efforts are struggling. In October, the top U.N. envoy said Congolese government troops were raping, killing and robbing civilians in the same area of eastern Congo where militias carried out the mass rapes.

JakartaPost

Witness to Rape in Congo: ”What is the Future When the Heart of the Community is Broken?”

On August 1, the BBC reported very troubling news that Congolese government forces and rebel troops in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo are rearming in spite of a January peace agreement. A source reported to the BBC that “six plane-loads of arms and ammunition” had been flown into Goma by the Joseph Kabila government in the last 10 days. Congolese Defense minister, Chikez Diemu, would neither confirm nor deny the reports. Mainstream media is not reporting this in the United States, except for ABC news, which had three lines posted on its Olympic News webpage.

MONUC (The United Nations Mission to Congo) and the Voice of America report that at least 150,000 more people have been displaced in Eastern Congo since the January agreement. Human Rights Watch supports that figure. Rape and other attacks against the civilian population have continued, unabated. This continuing horror story appears to have no end, despite eloquent appeals by Anneke von Woudenberg of Human Rights Watch and American playwright, Eve Ensler.

Perhaps the scale of the humanitarian tragedy is too much for people to comprehend, or perhaps the hidden corporate agenda of mainstream media in the United States will not allow this story to see the light of day. The rape and plunder of Congo’s resources is behind the great silence which surrounds this story. The proxy armies of Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda serve the international corporate agenda. The story is complicated, and will never be fully understood except within the confines of historical analysis.

Meanwhile, six million are dead in the last ten years, 1,200 people die every day, unspeakable crimes against women’s bodies go unreported, and the 1.2 million innocents in refugee camps cannot afford the time to wait for history’s analysis of the reasons behind their despair and misery. More than 2,000 rape cases were recorded last month alone in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s violent North Kivu province.

Foreign journalists have literally begged for western coverage of this carnage. Photojournalist Marcus Bleasdale, who has worked in Congo for eight years, told the UK Independent, “If journalists aren’t writing about it, or editors won’t run the stories, they are just as guilty as the warlords.”

Perhaps the only way to gain attention for this story is to let the witnesses speak for themselves. It will be shocking testimony, and anyone with a queasy stomach should read no further. What you will read is horrifying, sickening and disgusting, but perhaps it is time for the average American to look at what we are allowing to happen in the Democratic Republic of Congo so that junior can have his Playstations, and so that we have the minerals necessary to operate our strategic weapons programs and download music into our cell phones and Ipods.

The following is testimony from a witness. His story has been verified by his former associates. Heed what he has to say. The decision was made to not show photos of the victims. To do so would only compound their shame and feed voyeuristic instincts. The job of the writer is to paint the picture with words, hoping that the sword arm has the strength to do so.

The Congolese witness in this case is also the victim. The Post Traumatic Stress induced by his journey to hell and back does not allow him to sleep or live a life free from flashbacks. He struggles through the sunrise of each new day in exile in a foreign land, not knowing if the tears will flow — or not. His life is spent straddling the maws of Hades — redemption a false promise from a god that has abandoned all that is holy. Ironically, his real name is the Latin for the Supreme Being, “Deo.” God may not be dead, but god is certainly wounded, incapable of fixing all which greed, lust, anger and hate has destroyed.

Deo mailed his story to a writer. This damaged writer, Deo’s contact, is flawed, filled with anger, and also understands the stress of seeing too much and the hopelessness of despair and abandonment. But together the wounded will try to describe what must be seen and understood by anyone with a heart and soul willing to step forward and cry out that this heinousness must stop. For anyone who reads this account, anyone who can do something to raise public awareness, the victims with one voice shout, “Morituri te salutant!” in the language of their colonialist oppressors.

The Witness
Deo worked as a psychological consultant with refugees from Darfur and as a trauma counselor with World Vision in Congo. The job which eventually rewired the synapses of a compassionate man’s nervous system involved evaluating a living hell. This fiery forge of hate still stalks the victims of rape and other atrocities born of armed conflict in the Eastern DRC — specifically in Bukavu, Uvira, Kalehe, Bunyakiri, Katana, and the Mwenga conflict zones. Deo is Congolese by birth and his fluency in the Swahili, Lingala and Kinyarwandan languages and dialects of Kivu Province made him ideal for the job.
Fate found Deo telling his story to a writer who was recently in the same conflict zones. His testimony follows and has been minimally edited for flow.

“God’s” Testimony
I was working in Congo since 2004 as trauma counselor, and from my activities with women victims of rape, did my best to help women, girls, boys, and men cope with the trauma they faced due to the wars and assaults.

I found many psychological wounds in them but also I learned from them to be with hope myself. To share what I saw is a way to cope with the flashbacks that come to me as a result of what I saw and what I heard. A lot of countries around the world are at war, but what’s going on in Congo is something different — it is a war with the aim to destroy all of society by destroying women and girls.

Image: Village Women North Kivu 2007 © G. Nienaber

I’d like to share a bit about what exactly what women are facing in Congo as a witness.

Repetitive wars in DRC since 1996 and especially in the eastern Congo have destroyed social, economic, and family structures. It has also destroyed human beings. Sexual violence and rape have been used as weapon of war to destroy entire communities. Women have been raped in silence for long years, mainly since 1998, and they are also victims of the taboos that surround all sex in our culture.

This systematic crime and its horrible consequences have devastated communities and individuals. These heinous acts obliged victims to come forward and speak about what they faced. To accept the necessity to tell their stories was an S.O.S–women realizing it was acceptable to call for help.

I always remember a girl, “Mya,” 14 years old, from Bunyakiri village. During the counseling session I held with her in 2004, she shared with me that she was raped by 11 armed soldiers after her village was attacked. Orphaned due to the war in 1996, she was living with her mother and two brothers in the same house. One night, people with guns and knives and sticks came to her house. It was not difficult for them to force and open the door. Eleven men gang raped her mother after they killed the two brothers who tempted to shout and ask for help. Mya was injured during the rape and the executioners introduced sticks and bottles into her vagina creating a fistula — a unification of the anal and the urine tracts.

They said they want to punish her because she was resisting them during the rape and didn’t treat them nicely. With her mother, Mya decided not to share what happened to them to any one. So, they just presented the bodies of the killed boys to the community for mourning ceremonies.

But Mya could no longer remain in silence with her fistula. Her mother used to take her in the early morning to sit in the river near the house, as it’s believed that cold water from the river is a treatment. She also drunk several kinds of potions made by a mixture of grasses and roots for one full year.

As this treatment did not give any result, and hearing that I was in the area implementing a psychosocial project for victims of sexual violence, she decided to come and share with me what she faced.

I asked her why she didn’t go to the health center near the village. She answered that she couldn’t as all the nurses are from the village and her story of rape would be known. She was carrying after her a characteristic smell as the urine was passing without stopping — soaking her body and clothing.

As an emergency case, I referred her to the Panzi hospital, the only one hospital where she could find gynecologic expertise to deal with her case. After 6 operations, in one year and a half, Mya recovered physically. But she is carrying with her the deep wound of what she faced and what she saw. Panzi hospital is now specialized in repairing women’s’ vaginas that are being destroyed by rapists. At least 60 women are undergoing surgical operations per month. She told me that a lot of girls have been raped but no one wants to speak about it, as it’s shameful. And if the community know that a girl has been raped, it will be very difficult for her to find a husband, even after many years.

Raped women and girls can’t go to Panzi hospital (80 km from Bunyakiri) as they have to cross at least 50 km of forest. They are afraid to be again raped there (as the forest is infested by Interahamwe, Rwandese Hutu militias controlling the area after they committed genocide in Rwanda). It took me six hours to reach Bunyakiri by a 4×4 land cruiser, and I was not sure about my security in the forest during the travel.

No one will know exactly the precise number of women that were raped and murdered in DRC.
A lot of women, after they have been raped several times, are suffering from a prolapse of the uterus neck and others cannot contain their urine. This presents social death as they can not access public places or even share normal life with their relatives or neighbors because of the smell they emit.

Destroying Worth as a Human Being
“Doria,” 38 years old, told me during a counseling session in Kando that her husband and children are disgusted by her and run far from her as she smells so terrible. She can no longer access social places such as the market, water point, or even prepare food for her family. She feels like her worth as a being human being has been destroyed. She also feels like her femininity has been destroyed. She told me that she prefers death rather than her current situation.

You will want to ask me, “What is happening, exactly, in DRC?”
Mobutu, the previous dictator that ruled Congo since 1965, was overthrown by a rebellion supported by Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda in 2006. He left the country in poverty. Since 1994, eastern Congo has received about six million refugees fleeing from genocide in Rwanda. Among these refugees, there was Interahamwe, the authors of genocide, still with weapons and a continuing spirit of genocide.

In 2008, Laurent Kabila, who took power in 1996, was himself facing a rebellion from the east before being killed on the 16 of January 2001. This rebellion, which managed to occupy one third of the country (including all the eastern Congo) facilitated the emergence of several militias formed by people that mostly wanted to defend their land. The punitive attacks made by one militia against another produced victims among civilians and mostly among children and women. In fact, women were used as sexual slaves for a militia to demonstrate to the enemy side that he is the toughest, the one in control. When someone sleeps with your wife and takes your children in slavery, you must surrender to him.

Losing the Taste for Life
This strategy resulted in a lot of victims, women, children — and men that attempted to protect their wives.

“Pauli,” from Kaniola village, lost his virility for two years due to trauma accumulated after he was raped in front of his wife and children in 2002. The mistake he made was to try to protect his wife against a band of rapists. This man was crying for two years. You could see the way tears were flowing from his eyes, with a deep feeling that he was no longer a man. After intensive counseling sessions and chemotherapy at Panzi hospital, this man recovered but he is carrying within himself a deep wound. He has lost the taste of life.

In villages, health centers are regularly looted, and materials as well as drugs are taken. Since 1998, Congolese, especially people from the east (South Kivu, North Kivu, Maniema and Ituri) can not assess good health care.

International crisis groups in the area report that at least 1000 persons are dying everyday in Congo due to lack of medicine. Most of them die because of the endemic diseases in the area such as malaria, cholera, HIV and post traumatic stress syndrome diseases.

Until now, in a lot of villages (90% of the villages), people are sleeping in the bush where they expect to be more safe. They prefer the coldness and the tropical rain than to be raped or killed. Children and women are the most affected. In fact, in these conditions, children are supposed to continue going to school after a whole night in the bush, and women are expected to continue farming activities. Unfortunately, teachers are living also in the same conditions, and the whole education system is touched. In a lot of villages, schools just stopped.

Spoils of War
When it’s time to harvest crops from the field, most of the time it’s the Interahamwe or other militias that come, and after they have chased the villagers using extreme violence, they take everything; leaving people dying with hunger. Rare are the families that manage for now to have one meal per day in the villages. The World Vision Fund is supplying nutritional centers for sick children and adults because of malnutrition.

From reports in the field, a lot of women and girls are said to have been raped during their displacement at some check points by militias. It’s not understandable or believable from outside as the situation in Congo is defined as “post conflict” — meaning the elections have been held in 2007 and the country has a democratically elected government.

Several reports estimate the number of raped women and girls up to 200,000 (new figure added). 90% of the survivors lost everything during the assault and have to live on charity. In the deep east Congo, it’s hard to determine the number of victims as the area is not accessible.

Hellish Statistics
From a survey I made in 2004 in four different zones of Kivu Province, among 807 raped women interviewed, 75% of the victims were raped once, 22% twice, and 3% twice. Typically, 2-4 perpetrators were involved in 63.4% of the incidences. But in quite a number of incidents, there were 5-10 perpetrators.

In 90% of cases, women are raped in front of their children and husbands. The ages of the victims fluctuated between six months and 80 years, and were mostly women. The cases of raped children less than one year old were reported during the brief capture of Bukavu by rebels in 2004.

Different types of rape are observed in Congo.
Systematic Rape During a Village Attack.
For example in Kabona village (Kabare territory), all of the women were raped by at least 2-3 men in August 2003. A lot of other villages are in the same situation. In such villages, all of the social structure is destroyed.

Ongoing Rapes
This means that every day, a woman is exposed to be raped on her way going to market or while looking for firewood or water. The rapists will be hiding near water points or near farms, and then they will target a victim or group of victims. In her daily life, it’s impossible for an African woman to pass one day without going to look for water or for food for her family. This increases the danger of being raped. Sometimes, men will organize themselves to accompany their wives to the market but sometimes, some of them are shot by the rapists who are heavily armed.

Punitive Rape
I will explain this by an example. During the night of the 27th May 2007, Interahamwe Rwandese rebels coming from the Kahuzi Biega National Parc (sic) passed through several villages (Bumba, Birundu and Lwashunga) before they reached their targeted village of Kaniola in which they killed 17 people, wounded to death 13, raped all the women, and took with them five others as sexual slaves. Villagers were accused of collaborating with the “army” and had to be “punished.”

Sometimes it’s the army that accuses the population of collaboration with the militia and, in this case, the army will behave the same. Another kind of punishment occurs when the rapist, who wants to loot goats or money, finds that the family is too poor to give. The price will be to rape the mother and children and babies found in the house. It’s very rare that men have been raped.

Sometime also, “accidentally” a woman can encounter armed bandits on there way back to the bush (their home). She will be raped, but most of the time it will be in hurry. From the survey and the counseling sessions I was holding, these victims were more affected psychologically than physically. Some girls and women are taken to the bush and remain there for 2-4 years.

The perpetrators as mentioned by the victims are from Interahamwe Rwandese rebel groups, Congolese rebels called CNDP, the regular army, Mai Mai movement and other non formal bands. Rape inside the family is not mentioned at all. But for sure, it exists and victims prefer to keep quiet. The ones who decide to speak are those in medical treatment.

From the interviews I held with groups of returned women I met in Bukavu in June 2007, I heard that sometime they were gang raped in the bush and were forced into hard labor, such as carrying heavy weapons or fire wood or bringing water for soldiers. 90% of raped women with children said they faced sexual slavery. For now, it’s a big problem to integrate these children into the society. They are extremely stigmatized by the community.

More Grim Statistics
While working at Olame center in 2005, from a total of 1251 raped women, 50 were pregnant, 111 were with baby from the rape, 151 lost their husbands during the assault, 146 couples divorced because of the rape, and 15 women were infected with HIV.

70% of the perpetrators were Hutu Rwandese; the remaining 30% were CNDP militia, government soldiers, the Mai Mai group and other bandits.

Are There Solutions?
There can be no peace without justice and the rapists are identified. At least victims will feel the sin repaired if their executioners are judged and punished. It’s an ongoing genocide, which is happening in Congo now.

For now, until a solution is given to them, raped women are organizing self help groups to speak and share about what they have experienced and heal each other. They also use what little money they have to purchase pills such as aspirin and other anti-pain pills to share with those in need. All of this is done in secret as they fear to be stigmatized by the community.

Meanwhile, women are wondering if they have to commit a collective suicide rather than live with animals, called men in Congo. What is the government doing to protect its citizens? What is the future when the heart of the community is broken? — Deo

HuffingtonPost

The Republic of the Congo (French: République du Congo; Kongo: Repubilika ya Kongo; Lingala: Republiki ya Kongó), also known as Congo-Brazzaville, Little Congo, or simply the Congo, is a state in Central Africa. It is bordered by Gabon, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly known as Zaire), the Angolan exclave province of Cabinda, and the Gulf of Guinea.

The region was dominated by Bantu tribes, who built trade links leading into the Congo River basin. The republic is a former French colony. Upon independence in 1960, the former French region of Middle Congo became the Republic of the Congo.

The People’s Republic of the Congo was a Marxist-Leninist single-party state from 1970 to 1991. Multiparty elections have been held since 1992, although a democratically elected government was ousted in a 1997 civil war.

Civil wars and militia conflicts have plagued the Republic of Congo, which is sometimes referred to as Congo Brazzaville.
After three coup-ridden but relatively peaceful decades of independence, the former French colony experienced the first of two destructive bouts of fighting when disputed parliamentary elections in 1993 led to bloody, ethnically-based fighting between pro-government forces and the opposition.

Overview
A ceasefire and the inclusion of some opposition members in the government helped to restore peace.

Congo’s capital Brazzaville – a port city on the Congo river
But in 1997 ethnic and political tensions exploded into a full-scale civil war, fuelled in part by the prize of the country’s offshore oil wealth, which motivated many of the warlords.

The army split along ethnic lines, with most northern officers joining President Denis Sassou Nguesso’s side, and most southerners backing the rebels. These were supporters of the former president, Pascal Lissouba, and his prime minister, Bernard Kolelas, who had been deposed by President Sassou Nguesso in 1997.

By the end of 1999 the rebels had lost all their key positions to the government forces, who were backed by Angolan troops. The rebels then agreed to a ceasefire.

Remnants of the civil war militias, known as Ninjas, are still active in the southern Pool region. Most of them have yet to disarm and many have turned to banditry.

The Republic of Congo is one of sub-Saharan Africa’s main oil producers, though 70 percent of the population lives in poverty. Oil is the mainstay of the economy and in recent years the country has tried to increase financial transparency in the sector.

In 2004 the country was expelled from the Kimberley Process that is supposed to prevent conflict diamonds from entering the world supply market. This followed investigations which found that the Republic of Congo could not account for the origin of large quantities of rough diamonds that it was officially exporting.

IMF debt relief to the country was delayed in 2006 following allegations of corruption.

Facts
Full name: Republic of the Congo
Population: 3.7 million (UN, 2010)
Capital: Brazzaville
Area: 342,000 sq km (132,047 sq miles)
Major languages: French, indigenous African languages
Major religions: Christianity, indigenous African beliefs
Life expectancy: 53 years (men), 56 years (women) (UN)
Monetary unit: 1 CFA (Communaute Financiere Africaine) franc = 100 centimes
Main exports: Oil, timber, plywood, sugar, cocoa, coffee, diamonds
GNI per capita: US $1,830 (World Bank, 2009)
Internet domain: .cg
International dialling code: +242

Leader
President: Denis Sassou Nguesso
Denis Sassou Nguesso is one of Africa’s longest-serving leaders having first come to power three decades ago.

Denis Sassou Nguesso
He gained his latest seven-year term after elections in July 2009 which were boycotted by the opposition, and from which the main opposition candidate was excluded.

He was installed as president by the military in 1979 and lost his position in the country’s first multi-party elections in 1992.

He returned to power in 1997 after a brief but bloody civil war in which he was backed by Angolan troops.

A French-trained paratroop colonel, Mr Sassou Nguesso is seen as a pragmatist. During his first presidency in 1979-92 he loosened the country’s links with the Soviet bloc and gave French, US and other Western oil companies roles in oil exploration and production.

He abandoned the one-party system in 1992, making the ruling Congolese Workers Party (PCT) fight for its political life after more than 20 years as the sole party.

A French judge announced in May 2009 that he would launch a landmark investigation into whether Sassou Nguesso, Omar Bongo, the late president of Gabon, and Equatorial Guinea’s President Teodoro Obiang Nguema plundered state coffers to buy luxury homes and cars in France.

A complaint filed by Transparency International France accused the leaders, who deny any wrongdoing, of acquiring millions of dollars of real estate in Paris and on the French Riviera and buying luxury cars with embezzled public money.

Denis Sassou Nguesso was born in a village in northern Congo in 1943. In 2006 he became chairman of the 53-nation African Union.

Media
News broadcasts on state-run radio and television stations generally reflect the government line.
Stations from nearby Kinshasa, in DR Congo, can be received in the capital and rebroadcasts of the BBC, Radio France Internationale, and the Voice of America are available.

A 2001 press law abolished jail sentences for libel and insult, but retained the punishment for incitement to violence and racism.

The newspapers which appear in Brazzaville are all privately-owned. Some of them carry criticism of the government.

The Press
Le Choc – Brazzaville
L’Observateur – Brazzaville
L’Humanitaire – Brazzaville
Le Tam Tam – Brazzaville
Les Echos du Congo – Brazzaville
La Semaine Africaine – run by the Catholic church

Television
TV Congo – operated by state-run Radiodiffusion Television Congolaise

Radio
Radio Congo – operated by state-run Radiodiffusion Nationale Congolaise
Radio Brazzaville – state-run station for capital
Radio Liberte – private
Canal FM – Brazzaville community station

News Agency
Agence Congolaise d’Information – state-run

Transnational Issues

Disputes – International
The location of the boundary in the broad Congo River with the Democratic Republic of the Congo is indefinite except in the Pool Malebo/Stanley Pool area

Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons
Refugees (country of origin): 46,341 (Democratic Republic of Congo); 6,564 (Rwanda)
IDPs: 48,000 (multiple civil wars since 1992; most IDPs are ethnic Lari) (2007)

Trafficking in Persons
Current situation: Republic of the Congo is a source and destination country for children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation; girls are trafficked from rural areas within the country for commercial sexual exploitation, forced street vending, and domestic servitude; children are trafficked from other African countries for domestic servitude, forced market vending, and forced labor in the fishing industry

Tier rating: On CIA’s Tier 2 Watch List – Republic of the Congo is on the Tier 2 Watch List for its failure to show evidence of increasing efforts to combat trafficking in persons in 2007; struggling to recover from six years of civil conflict that ended in 2003, the Republic of the Congo’s capacity to address trafficking is handicapped; the government neither monitors its borders for trafficking activity nor provides specialized anti-trafficking training for law enforcement officials; the government does not encourage victims to assist in trafficking investigations or prosecutions, and has not taken measures to reduce demand for commercial sex acts in the Republic of the Congo (2008)