Kinshasa — Azarias Ruberwa, one of four vice-presidents of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and leader of the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD-Goma) former rebel movement, now party to the national unity government, has asked for the forgiveness of female victims of rape and other abuses suffered during recent years of war in the country.

"In the name of all people of the Congo and the nation's leadership which is composed of all parties to the inter-Congolese dialogue, I beg the forgiveness of Congolese women for the violence and abuse to which they were subjected during the war," Ruberwa said on Monday in the capital, Kinshasa, during a ceremony to mark International Women's Day.

However, Ruberwa's declaration was met with boos and heckling from many of the approximately 3,000 women who had gathered for the occasion in the Salle de Congres of the Palais du Peuple, seat of the transitional parliament.

"To rape a woman is to rape one's mother or one's sister," Fabiola Faida Mwangilwa, the minister of women's affairs, told the gathering. "The women of Congo are fed up with this and demand that it be brought to an end immediately."

Crimes against women reached horrific levels during nearly five years of war in the country that cost the lives of at least 3.5 million people and forced the displacement of at least three million more. Despite the inauguration of a transitional national government and related institutions in mid-2003, widespread rape of women and children has continued to increase, according to organizations involved in the fight against sexual violence. [See related IRIN item, "Focus on rampant rape, despite end of war", at http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=39912]

Ruberwa and President Joseph Kabila recently announced that those guilty of rape after wartime would pay for their crimes, which Ruberwa qualified as "crimes against humanity".