Stephen Lewis
13 September 2007
(Page 2 of 3)
Jan Egeland, ever-engaged, ever-enraged, ever-eloquent, knew what was happening. And so it was, on June 21st, 2005, that he poured his heart out on the occasion of another report to the Security Council:
”Mr. President, the recurrent use of sexual violence is arguably one of the worst global protection challenges due to its scale, prevalence and profound impact. Often ostracized by their communities, survivors have to battle with the physical injuries, trauma and stigma of such violence for the rest of their lives. Although we repeatedly condemn such violence, it persists virtually unchallenged. Far from making general progress, we have in too many places regressed. We have information of more and more women being attacked, younger and younger children are victims of these atrocities.”
He goes on to say: “I could provide a devastating catalogue of violations, but let me highlight … where sexual violence is at its worst. In North Kivu, in the DRC, a local NGO just reported over 2,000 cases of gender-based violence in the month of April (2005) alone. An estimated 50% were committed against minors. MONUC estimates at least 25,000 cases of sexual violence a year in North Kivu alone, just one region of the DRC. The cultural breakdown and the disintegration of the line of command in the armed forces, has resulted in a culture of violence in which sexual violence had become endemic. If this is not stopped, such violence will have terrible long-term ramifications for Congolese society, threatening future peace and stability. The United Nations have recognized this as one our highest priorities. More forceful action should have been taken earlier.”
Well, action wasn’t taken. It’s entirely beyond belief that this war on women excited virtually no response from the United Nations. The establishment of MONUC is hardly a complete answer. Indeed, as has been shown by the United Nations itself, the situation for women --- more than two years later --- has progressed from despair to doomsday even as the UN forces are in the country.
And no one can claim ignorance. Not only was the Security Council regularly briefed (what an indictment of the five permanent members), but journalists and human rights organizations around the world had maintained a relentless drumbeat of concern.
In my own country of Canada, Stephanie Nolen of the Globe and Mail wrote searing stories of sexual violence in the eastern Congo, based on first-hand reporting. On November 27, 2004, the Globe headlined her story “The War on Women”, followed by the cutline: “… in battle-weary Congo, Stephanie Nolen finds that all the warring factions have one tactic in common: brutal, mass rape”. The article constituted a comprehensive review of what was happening in the eastern Congo, and no one who read it could come away unmoved. Then, in a special piece filed for Ms. Magazine in the spring issue of 2005, Nolen dealt with the very hospital and the very doctor that Eve Ensler reported on last month. She wrote of individual women mercilessly scarred by rape: “Across the DRC are tens of thousands of women like this: physically ravaged, emotionally terrorized, financially impoverished … Eight years of war have left the country in ruins, and Congolese women have been victims of rape on a scale never seen before.” And later in the article: “An estimated 30 per cent of the women raped in Congo’s war are infected with HIV …” She quotes Dr. Mukwege, the sole gynecologist at the Panzi hospital in Bukavu: “They rape a woman, five or six of them at a time --- but that is not enough. Then they shoot a gun into her vagina … In all my years here, I have never seen anything like it … to see so many raped, that shocks me, but what shocks me more is the way they are raped.” Further on, Nolen speaks of another hospital in Kibombo, where the only doctor, Jean-Yves Mukamba “… knows he is surrounded by women suffering raging venereal infections, HIV, prolapsed uteruses, torn vaginas.” She quotes the doctor: “Most cases were traumatization of the genitals: These women were raped with a tree branch or the barrel of a gun, or a bayonet. When you see a woman who was forced by ten men --- the trauma …”
What is so incredible about the inertia and passivity of the international community is the weight of evidence they had before them, and the total blank indifference with which the evidence was treated.
In 2004, Amnesty International produced a 39-page treatise titled “Democratic Republic of Congo: Mass Rape – Time for Remedies”. It makes very tough reading. But it’s almost unimaginable that it would engender almost no response whatsoever.
The study opens with what has now become a predictable preface: “In the course of the armed conflict in eastern DRC, tens of thousands of women and girls have been victims of systematic rape and sexual assault committed by combatant forces. Women and girls have been attacked in their homes, in the fields as they go about their daily activities. Many have been raped more than once or have suffered gang rapes. In many cases, women and young girls have been taken as sex slaves by combatants. Rape of men and boys has also taken place. Rape has often been preceded or followed by the deliberate wounding, torture (including torture of a sexual nature) or killing of the victim. Rapes have been committed in public and in front of family members, including children. Some women have been raped next to the corpses of family members.”
In the section on “Rape: A Weapon of War”, the report quotes a doctor: “In peacetime, the demands on Congolese women are limitless; but in this war, the most insane fantasies have found their expression. When seven soldiers rape a woman or little girl, and thrust a knife or fire shots into her vagina, for them the woman is no longer a human being, she is an object. And since there are no longer any laws or rules, combatants pour out their anger and their madness on to women and little girls.”
The Amnesty International report, with its unendurable accounts of victims of sexual violence -- brought to the attention of all governments -- is a tour de force of analysis, and of recommendations for the United Nations, the peacekeepers (who, agonizingly enough, themselves became implicated in episodes of rape and sexual abuse), the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the surrounding African states, the bilateral donors, the NGOs. As history has shown, those who could intervene, primarily the governments of the international community, remained impassive. It forces one to think of the meaning of misogyny.
I cannot, however, conclude this partial review of reports, statements and documents, without noting a 114-page monograph, produced back in June of 2002 by Human Rights Watch, entitled “The War Within the War: Sexual Violence Against Women and Girls in Eastern Congo”.
It is absolutely definitive, amassing a torrent of evidence to make the case that everyone subsequently mirrored. If we had paid any attention to Human Rights watch more than five years ago, we would have saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of women and diminished the inexpressible agony for millions of others.
The evidence presented by Human Rights Watch is unassailable. Again, after chronicling an infinite number of examples of sexual violence, rooted in hatred and power, HRW makes recommendations to every entity from the United Nations to the International Criminal Court. That was back in 2002, based on evidence gathered in 2001.
It is impossible to imagine what those past five years have been like for the women featured in those accounts.
Throughout this exegesis, and particularly in regard to the article by Eve Ensler with which I began, I have refrained from quoting the most terrible and dreadful of the crimes against women and girls. But lest there is anyone who is somehow unconvinced of the monstrous nature of what is transpiring, on a daily basis, in the eastern Congo, I shall quote but one piece of testimony from the Human Rights Watch report. As though one were watching an x-rated film, a warning must be given to the reader.
I quote: “ In some cases, rapists react with extraordinary cruelty to any efforts to resist their assault. One mother described the treatment of her daughter, Monique B., aged twenty, who was engaged to be married:
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