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Democratic Republic of Congo
“A true feminicide is currently taking place in the Democratic Republic of Congo [... ] It does not compare to any other situation on the planet" (Stephen Lewis, UN special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa).[1]. An unspeakable barbarism is underway on the world’s doorstep, and no one intervenes. What is happening in eastern Congo is the continuation of the genocide in Rwanda. The rape epidemic "is intended to destroy women" (Physician working in the center of the epidemic) [2] and the local authorities will do little or nothing to stop or prosecute those responsible. They perpetuate the feminicide with impunity and immunity.
Rape and brutality against women and girls are "rampant and committed by non-state armed groups, the Armed Forces of the DRC, the National Congolese Police, and increasingly also by civilians", said Turkish lawyer Yakin Erturk, special reporter for the UN Human Rights Council on violence against women. The situation in South Kivu province, where rebels from neighboring Rwanda operate, was the worst she had ever encountered [3]. According to the United Nations, 27,000 sexual assaults were reported in 2006 in the province of South Kivu only, a figure that is only a fraction of all these crimes across the country.
The atrocities perpetrated there by armed groups, some of whom seemed to have been involved in the 1994 Rwandan massacres in which 800,000 people were killed, "are of an unimaginable brutality that goes far beyond rape", she said.
"Women are gang raped, often in front of their families and communities. In numerous cases, male relatives are forced at gun point to rape their own daughters, mothers or sisters," she said [4]. After rape, many women were shot or stabbed in the genital area - bursting their vaginas - and teenagers are abducted to make them pregnant. Survivors report that while held as sexual slaves by the gangs they had been forced to eat excrement or the flesh of their murdered relatives. The hundreds of women now rejected by their social environment find themselves at the Panzi hospital, at Bukavu. Their uterine system broken, the urine elapse without control and, waiting for a surgery, they circulate with a bag of plastic under the skirt [5]...
Melanie: “Your legs are useless to you, I will burn them”. This is what her husband told her when she returned home and told him she had been raped in the fields where she worked. Furious, instead of consoling her, her husband accused her of not having run away. He sprayed fuel on her and lit a match.
Marie: was raped with her 8-year-old daughter.
Euralie: was raped in front of her children by eight soldiers who had just killed her husband.
Noella: 18 year old, suffered 3 years of sexual slavery and her children were taken from her.
Ndamosu: 70 years old, was raped many times.
Emérence: 25 years old, was tied up and raped many times in front of her children in her own house. She remembers seeing 3 rapists before loosing conscience, blood flowing from everywhere. [6].
“The sexual violence that we face in the DRC has no match anywhere the world [...] the number of cases, the brutality of the aggressions, the impunity… It is shocking” (John Holmes, general jointed secretary of the UN in the humanitarian issues) [7].
Sources :
[1] [2] Audet, E. (27 octobre 2007) En toute impunité : Féminicide au Congo
[3] [4] Evans, R. (30th July 2007) Violence against women "beyond rape" in Congo
[5] Braeckman, C., envoyée spéciale à Walungu, Kaniola et Nzibira (Sud-Kivu, RDC) (25 septembre 2007)
[6] RODHECIC (décembre 2007) Bulletin d’information: Femmes Debout
[7] Documentaire de Susanne Babila (2007) Le viol, une arme de guerre au Congo
Last modified 2008-01-25 07:51 PM
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