'The Lord executeth righteousness and judgement for all that are oppressed.'
Lord, we thank you in advance for saving the Congo!
Amen.
Friday, August 21, 2009
'What I Saw in Goma'
By Hillary Rodham Clinton
In 11 days of travel across Africa, I saw humanity at its worst – and at its best. In Goma last week, I saw both.
The Mugunga Internally Displaced Persons Camp sits in a land of volcanoes and great lakes on the edge of Goma, a provincial capital in the eastern Congo. The camp is now home to 18,000 people seeking refuge from a cycle of violent conflict that has left 5.4 million dead since 1998. Chased from their homes and villages by armed rebels and informal militias, these men, women and children walked for miles with little food or water until they reached this relatively safe haven.
Now they live in tents, one next to the other, row after row, some clinging to life, others hanging on to whatever glimmer of hope remains in a region plagued by years of brutality. Many of these people have been robbed of their homes, possessions, families and, worst of all, their dignity.
Women and girls in particular have been victimized on an unimaginable scale, as sexual and gender-based violence has become a tactic of war and has reached epidemic proportions. Some 1,100 rapes are reported each month, with an average of 36 women and girls raped every day.
I visited a hospital run by the organization Heal Africa and met a woman who told me that she was eight months' pregnant when she was attacked. She was at home when a group of men broke in. They took her husband and two of their children and shot them in the front yard, before returning into the house to shoot her other two children. Then they beat and gang-raped her and left her for dead. But she wasn't dead. She fought for life and her neighbors managed to get her to the hospital – 85 kilometers away.
I came to Goma to send a clear message: The United States condemns these attacks and all those who commit them and abet them. They are crimes against humanity.
These acts don't just harm a single individual, or a single family, or village, or group. They shred the fabric that weaves us together as human beings. Such atrocities have no place in any society. This truly is humanity at its worst.
But there is reason to hope. We have seen survivors summon the courage to rebuild their lives and their communities. We have seen civic leaders and organizations come together to combat this appalling scourge. And we have seen health care workers sacrifice comfortable careers so they can treat the wounded.
In Goma, I met doctors and advocates who work every day to repair the broken bodies and spirits of women who have been raped, often by gangs, and often in such brutal fashion that they can no longer bear children, or walk or work. Caregivers like Lyn Lusi, who founded Heal Africa in Goma, and Dr. Denis Mukwege, who founded the Panzi hospital in Bukavu, represent humanity at its best.
The United States will stand with these brave people. This week I announced more than $17 million in new funding to prevent and respond to gender and sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We will provide medical care, counseling, economic assistance and legal support. We will dedicate nearly $3 million to recruit and train police officers to protect women and girls and to investigate sexual violence. We will send technology experts to help women and front-line workers report abuse using photographs and video and share information on treatment and legal options. And we will deploy a team of civilian experts, medical personnel and military engineers to assess how we can further assist survivors of sexual violence.
While I was in the DRC, I had very frank discussions about sexual violence with President Kabila. I stressed that the perpetrators of these crimes, no matter who they are, must be prosecuted and punished. This is particularly important when they are in positions of authority, including members of the Congolese military, who have been allowed to commit these crimes with impunity.
Our commitment to survivors of sexual and gender-based violence did not begin with my visit to Goma, and it will not end with my departure.
We are redoubling our efforts to address the fundamental cause of this violence: the fighting that goes on and on in the eastern Congo. We will be taking additional steps at the United Nations and in concert with other nations to bring an end to this conflict.
There is an old Congolese proverb that says, "No matter how long the night, the day is sure to come." The day must come when the women of the eastern Congo can walk freely again, to tend their fields, play with their children and collect firewood and water without fear. They live in a region of unrivaled natural beauty and rich resources. They are strong and resilient. They could, if given the opportunity, drive economic and social progress that would make their country both peaceful and prosperous.
Working together, we will banish sexual violence into the dark past, where it belongs, and help the Congolese people seize the opportunities of a new day.
In 11 days of travel across Africa, I saw humanity at its worst – and at its best. In Goma last week, I saw both.
The Mugunga Internally Displaced Persons Camp sits in a land of volcanoes and great lakes on the edge of Goma, a provincial capital in the eastern Congo. The camp is now home to 18,000 people seeking refuge from a cycle of violent conflict that has left 5.4 million dead since 1998. Chased from their homes and villages by armed rebels and informal militias, these men, women and children walked for miles with little food or water until they reached this relatively safe haven.
Now they live in tents, one next to the other, row after row, some clinging to life, others hanging on to whatever glimmer of hope remains in a region plagued by years of brutality. Many of these people have been robbed of their homes, possessions, families and, worst of all, their dignity.
Women and girls in particular have been victimized on an unimaginable scale, as sexual and gender-based violence has become a tactic of war and has reached epidemic proportions. Some 1,100 rapes are reported each month, with an average of 36 women and girls raped every day.
I visited a hospital run by the organization Heal Africa and met a woman who told me that she was eight months' pregnant when she was attacked. She was at home when a group of men broke in. They took her husband and two of their children and shot them in the front yard, before returning into the house to shoot her other two children. Then they beat and gang-raped her and left her for dead. But she wasn't dead. She fought for life and her neighbors managed to get her to the hospital – 85 kilometers away.
I came to Goma to send a clear message: The United States condemns these attacks and all those who commit them and abet them. They are crimes against humanity.
These acts don't just harm a single individual, or a single family, or village, or group. They shred the fabric that weaves us together as human beings. Such atrocities have no place in any society. This truly is humanity at its worst.
But there is reason to hope. We have seen survivors summon the courage to rebuild their lives and their communities. We have seen civic leaders and organizations come together to combat this appalling scourge. And we have seen health care workers sacrifice comfortable careers so they can treat the wounded.
In Goma, I met doctors and advocates who work every day to repair the broken bodies and spirits of women who have been raped, often by gangs, and often in such brutal fashion that they can no longer bear children, or walk or work. Caregivers like Lyn Lusi, who founded Heal Africa in Goma, and Dr. Denis Mukwege, who founded the Panzi hospital in Bukavu, represent humanity at its best.
The United States will stand with these brave people. This week I announced more than $17 million in new funding to prevent and respond to gender and sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We will provide medical care, counseling, economic assistance and legal support. We will dedicate nearly $3 million to recruit and train police officers to protect women and girls and to investigate sexual violence. We will send technology experts to help women and front-line workers report abuse using photographs and video and share information on treatment and legal options. And we will deploy a team of civilian experts, medical personnel and military engineers to assess how we can further assist survivors of sexual violence.
While I was in the DRC, I had very frank discussions about sexual violence with President Kabila. I stressed that the perpetrators of these crimes, no matter who they are, must be prosecuted and punished. This is particularly important when they are in positions of authority, including members of the Congolese military, who have been allowed to commit these crimes with impunity.
Our commitment to survivors of sexual and gender-based violence did not begin with my visit to Goma, and it will not end with my departure.
We are redoubling our efforts to address the fundamental cause of this violence: the fighting that goes on and on in the eastern Congo. We will be taking additional steps at the United Nations and in concert with other nations to bring an end to this conflict.
There is an old Congolese proverb that says, "No matter how long the night, the day is sure to come." The day must come when the women of the eastern Congo can walk freely again, to tend their fields, play with their children and collect firewood and water without fear. They live in a region of unrivaled natural beauty and rich resources. They are strong and resilient. They could, if given the opportunity, drive economic and social progress that would make their country both peaceful and prosperous.
Working together, we will banish sexual violence into the dark past, where it belongs, and help the Congolese people seize the opportunities of a new day.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Clinton demands end to sexual violence in Congo
By MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press Writer Matthew Lee, Associated Press Writer – 28 mins ago
GOMA, Congo – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton toured an African refugee camp Tuesday crowded with victims of violence and malnutrition, pledging $17 million in American aid to help stem the tide of rampant sexual abuse that has staggered war-ravaged eastern Congo.
Clinton's voice cracked with emotion as she described an epidemic of rapes that has convulsed the Congo over 10 years of internecine conflict. "We say to the world that those who attack civilian populations using systematic rape are guilty of crimes against humanity," she said.
Clinton toured Magunga Camp, a dust-choked warren of tents and tin-lined huts in eastern Congo that is home to 18,000 men, women and children. Most were uprooted from their villages by the on-again, off-again conflict between Democratic Republic of Congo troops and rebel forces that killed more than 5 million people since 1998.
"We believe there should be no impunity for the sexual and gender-based violence committed by so many — that there must be arrests and prosecutions and punishment," she said during a press conference with Congolese Foreign Minister Alexis Thambwe Mwamba in the eastern city of Goma.
At least $10 million of the $17 million pledged by Clinton will be used to train doctors to treat victims of brutal sexual attacks. Some of the funds will also be aimed at preventing abuse.
She met with several residents of the camp, who told her that they are suffering from malnutrition, malaria, tuberculosis and diarrhea. The residents told Clinton that women and young girls and boys are often victimized by rape when they leave the camp to go into a nearby forest to gather wood for cooking.
One camp official said a young boy had been raped on Monday.
"We really want to return home, that's why we are asking America to help stop the fighting," Chantale Mapendo, who lives in the camp, told Clinton.
"That's why I'm here," Clinton replied. "I want you to be able to go home."
Clinton appeared visibly moved when she was shown a four-year-old child, held in his mother's arms, who was suffering from extreme malnutrition. Belly distended, eyes hollow, the skeletal boy weighed less than 15 pounds.
"We're proud to help you," Clinton said.
Picking her way through a path littered with volcanic rock, Clinton said she "wanted to see for myself what was happening here."
Clinton flew to came to Goma, the regional capital of war-pocked of the eastern Congo, aboard a U.N. plane over the objections of some top aides who worried about her security and logistics for the visit. Clinton is the first U.S. secretary of state to visit the city, according to the State Department historian's office.
The United Nations has recorded at least 200,000 cases of sexual violence against women and girls in the region since conflict erupted in 1996, something Clinton deplored as "one of mankind's greatest atrocities" before she arrived.
The figures, Clinton told a group university students in the Congolese capital of Kinshasa on Monday, are "astonishing and horrible." She urged the youth of Congo to mount nationwide protests against such abuses and said she would push the government hard on the issue.
Clinton said Tuesday that the people of eastern Congo were still suffering from a "reign of violence" at the hands of rebel groups and the national army, which in January launched a U.N.-backed campaign to pacify the region.
Rights groups have called for a suspension of the operation, which has displaced some 800,000 people from their homes and left hundreds of civilians dead.
Clinton said the U.S. is "very concerned about the civilian casualties, both deaths and rapes and other injuries, from the military action."
But she also said the U.S. supported efforts to eliminate the threat from insurgents and said the U.S. wants the Congolese military professionalized to prevent abuses from the government.
Earlier in the day, Clinton delivered a strong message to Congolese President Joseph Kabila when they met in a tent at a compound in Goma, on the shore of Lake Kivu. Goma is the epicenter of an epidemic of gang rapes and other sexual crimes amid continuing fighting between the army and rebel groups.
After meeting with Kabila, Clinton said impunity for the perpetrators "runs counter to peace and stability for the Congolese people."
She said the U.S. will send a team of legal and financial and other technical experts to come up with specific recommendations for overcoming Congo's problems with corruption. She said Kabila had accepted that offer.
"We do support the efforts to end the militias and the violence they have visited so terribly on the people of the eastern Congo," Clinton said. But she added: "We believe that a disciplined, paid army is a more effective fighting force. We believe that more can be done to protect civilians while you are trying to kill and capture insurgents."
Although fighting has eased since a 2003 peace deal, the army and rebel groups, fighting over eastern Congo's vast mineral wealth, are still attacking villages, killing civilians and committing brutal atrocities.
Members of Kabila's armed forces are accused of taking part in the brutality, including gang rapes that have led to unwanted pregnancies, serious injuries and death to tens of thousands of women and girls.
Earlier this month, a leading human rights group demanded that Congo crack down on sexual violence often perpetrated by military generals and other top officers. It cited U.N. data showing that 7,703 cases of sexual violence by soldiers were reported last year.
Human Rights Watch said the Congolese authorities have failed to prevent the attacks and called on the U.N. Security Council to take tough steps, including travel bans, against individuals or governments that commit or condone sexual violence in Congo and elsewhere.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090811/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/af_clinton_africa
GOMA, Congo – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton toured an African refugee camp Tuesday crowded with victims of violence and malnutrition, pledging $17 million in American aid to help stem the tide of rampant sexual abuse that has staggered war-ravaged eastern Congo.
Clinton's voice cracked with emotion as she described an epidemic of rapes that has convulsed the Congo over 10 years of internecine conflict. "We say to the world that those who attack civilian populations using systematic rape are guilty of crimes against humanity," she said.
Clinton toured Magunga Camp, a dust-choked warren of tents and tin-lined huts in eastern Congo that is home to 18,000 men, women and children. Most were uprooted from their villages by the on-again, off-again conflict between Democratic Republic of Congo troops and rebel forces that killed more than 5 million people since 1998.
"We believe there should be no impunity for the sexual and gender-based violence committed by so many — that there must be arrests and prosecutions and punishment," she said during a press conference with Congolese Foreign Minister Alexis Thambwe Mwamba in the eastern city of Goma.
At least $10 million of the $17 million pledged by Clinton will be used to train doctors to treat victims of brutal sexual attacks. Some of the funds will also be aimed at preventing abuse.
She met with several residents of the camp, who told her that they are suffering from malnutrition, malaria, tuberculosis and diarrhea. The residents told Clinton that women and young girls and boys are often victimized by rape when they leave the camp to go into a nearby forest to gather wood for cooking.
One camp official said a young boy had been raped on Monday.
"We really want to return home, that's why we are asking America to help stop the fighting," Chantale Mapendo, who lives in the camp, told Clinton.
"That's why I'm here," Clinton replied. "I want you to be able to go home."
Clinton appeared visibly moved when she was shown a four-year-old child, held in his mother's arms, who was suffering from extreme malnutrition. Belly distended, eyes hollow, the skeletal boy weighed less than 15 pounds.
"We're proud to help you," Clinton said.
Picking her way through a path littered with volcanic rock, Clinton said she "wanted to see for myself what was happening here."
Clinton flew to came to Goma, the regional capital of war-pocked of the eastern Congo, aboard a U.N. plane over the objections of some top aides who worried about her security and logistics for the visit. Clinton is the first U.S. secretary of state to visit the city, according to the State Department historian's office.
The United Nations has recorded at least 200,000 cases of sexual violence against women and girls in the region since conflict erupted in 1996, something Clinton deplored as "one of mankind's greatest atrocities" before she arrived.
The figures, Clinton told a group university students in the Congolese capital of Kinshasa on Monday, are "astonishing and horrible." She urged the youth of Congo to mount nationwide protests against such abuses and said she would push the government hard on the issue.
Clinton said Tuesday that the people of eastern Congo were still suffering from a "reign of violence" at the hands of rebel groups and the national army, which in January launched a U.N.-backed campaign to pacify the region.
Rights groups have called for a suspension of the operation, which has displaced some 800,000 people from their homes and left hundreds of civilians dead.
Clinton said the U.S. is "very concerned about the civilian casualties, both deaths and rapes and other injuries, from the military action."
But she also said the U.S. supported efforts to eliminate the threat from insurgents and said the U.S. wants the Congolese military professionalized to prevent abuses from the government.
Earlier in the day, Clinton delivered a strong message to Congolese President Joseph Kabila when they met in a tent at a compound in Goma, on the shore of Lake Kivu. Goma is the epicenter of an epidemic of gang rapes and other sexual crimes amid continuing fighting between the army and rebel groups.
After meeting with Kabila, Clinton said impunity for the perpetrators "runs counter to peace and stability for the Congolese people."
She said the U.S. will send a team of legal and financial and other technical experts to come up with specific recommendations for overcoming Congo's problems with corruption. She said Kabila had accepted that offer.
"We do support the efforts to end the militias and the violence they have visited so terribly on the people of the eastern Congo," Clinton said. But she added: "We believe that a disciplined, paid army is a more effective fighting force. We believe that more can be done to protect civilians while you are trying to kill and capture insurgents."
Although fighting has eased since a 2003 peace deal, the army and rebel groups, fighting over eastern Congo's vast mineral wealth, are still attacking villages, killing civilians and committing brutal atrocities.
Members of Kabila's armed forces are accused of taking part in the brutality, including gang rapes that have led to unwanted pregnancies, serious injuries and death to tens of thousands of women and girls.
Earlier this month, a leading human rights group demanded that Congo crack down on sexual violence often perpetrated by military generals and other top officers. It cited U.N. data showing that 7,703 cases of sexual violence by soldiers were reported last year.
Human Rights Watch said the Congolese authorities have failed to prevent the attacks and called on the U.N. Security Council to take tough steps, including travel bans, against individuals or governments that commit or condone sexual violence in Congo and elsewhere.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090811/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/af_clinton_africa
Girl, 9, details rape in Congo to photographer
By Wayne Drash
CNN
(CNN) -- The young girl whispered in a hushed tone. She looked down as she spoke, only glancing up from her dark round eyes every now and then. She wanted to tell more, but she was too ashamed. She was just 9 years old when, she says, Congolese soldiers gang-raped her on her way to school.
The young girl on the right says she was raped by Congolese soldiers. She was just 9 when it happened.
"These two soldiers nabbed her, put a bag over her head and pulled her into the bushes. She explains it as, 'They got me,' " says Sherrlyn Borkgren, who spent a month in the Democratic Republic of the Congo late last year.
Borkgren, a wedding photographer and freelance journalist, traveled to the war-torn region of eastern Congo after being awarded the ShootQ Grant, a $10,000 award to free photographers from everyday life to pursue a project that raises awareness of an important global issue.
Borkgren pauses when she speaks of meeting the girl. "She was obviously very traumatized to repeat this out loud, and I don't think she had repeated it to anyone." The young girl lied to her about her age when they first spoke.
"She said she was 15 when she was raped," Borkgren says. "I figured she probably wanted to say she was 15 because it's more acceptable than to say, 'I was 9 when they raped me.' "
The United Nations estimates 200,000 women and girls have been raped in Congo over the last 12 years, when war broke out with Rwanda and Uganda backing Congolese rebels seeking to oust then-Congo President Laurent Kabila. Rape became a weapon of war, aid groups say.
"It is one of the worst places in the world to be a woman or girl," says Anneke Van Woudenberg, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch who has spent the last 10 years focusing on Congo. "These are often soldiers and combatants deliberately targeting women and raping them as a strategy of war, either to punish a community, to terrorize a community or to humiliate them."
Most times, the women are raped by at least two perpetrators. "Sometimes, that is done in front of the family, in front of the children," Van Woudenberg says. She sighs, "What causes men to rape -- I wish I had an answer to that."
Against this backdrop, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, one of the world's strongest voices for women's rights, traveled to Congo as part of her whirlwind trip to Africa.
Clinton arrived in Goma in eastern Congo Tuesday where she is to meet with rape victims during her visit. "I hope that here in the [Congo] there will be a concerted effort to demand justice for women who are violently attacked, and to make sure that their attackers are punished," Clinton said Monday after a tour of a Kinshasa hospital.
Human rights groups are eager to see if Clinton pressures Joseph Kabila, president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the son of Laurent Kabila, to do more to pursue charges against top army commanders accused of rape.
"Soldiers have committed gang rapes, rapes leading to injury and death, and abductions of girls and women," a report released last month by Human Rights Watch says. "Their crimes are serious violations of international humanitarian law. Commanders have frequently failed to stop sexual violence and may themselves be guilty of war crimes or crimes against humanity as a consequence."
Van Woudenberg says punishment, unfortunately, is all too rare for sex crimes. "If you rape, you get away with it," she says.
According to the United Nations, there were 15,996 new cases of sexual violence registered throughout Congo in 2008. Nearly two out of every three rapes were carried out against children, most of them adolescent girls, the Human Rights Watch report says.
A paltry 27 soldiers were convicted in military courts last year. Under the current court system, the military handles accusations of rape against its soldiers -- something aid groups say must be changed for real accountability.
Since January of this year, aid organizations say there's been a surge of violence against civilians as a result of Congolese operations against Rwandan Hutu rebels, some of whom are believed to have participated in 1994's Rwandan genocide. The fighting has left more than 1.8 million people displaced in the volatile region, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
Aid groups have started to see an uptick of rapes of men this year, although women and girls remain the primary targets. "The brutality has increased on a huge scale," Van Woudenberg says.
She says she interviewed one 15-year-old girl who was held in a hole for five months and gang-raped nearly every day. She had gone out shopping when soldiers approached.
"They asked me to take off my clothes, and I did. There wasn't much I could do," the girl told her. "They took me into the bush. I stayed for five months with these people, and when I came back, I was five months pregnant."
Van Woudenberg adds, "Gosh, the brutality against the women and girls is unimaginable."
Congo has taken some measures to try to curb the sexual violence. In 2006, its parliament passed a law criminalizing rape, with penalties ranging from five to 20 years. Penalties are doubled under certain circumstances, including gang-rape and if the perpetrator is a public official. Kabila's wife, Olive Lemba Kabila, has launched a public campaign speaking out against rapes of the nation's women and girls.
The army has also started a zero-tolerance campaign in which commanders have emphasized to troops that they must respect human rights and protect civilians from harm, according to the U.N.
In May, the United Nations handed over the names of five top military officers accused of rape. Two of the senior officers are now detained in the capital of Kinshasa and the three others must report to authorities under close observation. "It's expected that a trial could happen soon," said U.N. spokesman Yves Sorokobi. "It certainly is a big development. ... It's important. It's significant."
Still more must be done, aid groups say, starting with the establishment of a special court made up of Congolese and international judges and prosecutors to investigate rape allegations.
Borkgren, the photographer from Eugene, Oregon, says she went to the Congo after having a dream in which two women yelled at her to "come over here." She won the grant and traveled there for four weeks, beginning in November of last year. She hitchhiked her way around the country, something she now admits was "a little bit stupid."
She says she once came face-to-face with soldiers when she was shopping at a market by herself. One of the men said he wanted to "take me up to his camp." She still can't shake the looks of the local women who were there.
"That was interesting," she says. "When the soldiers were harassing me, the women looked ashamed of the soldiers. And when they saw me tell them, 'No, go away,' the women looked at me quite surprised."
Eventually, she found the girl who touched her heart -- "the great, great kid." Borkgren first spoke with her father, who was initially reluctant to introduce her to his daughter. He explained that the family had gone to authorities, only to be ignored.
Borkgren says that when she met the girl, they got along instantly. At times, the young child didn't know how to describe what happened. "She would say, 'I don't understand what it is, and I don't know what words to use.' "
"It just turned my heart to think that here's this little girl who doesn't even have the words to describe what happened to her, and has to live her life having had this violence put upon her. Just this thoughtless violence that she didn't deserve or ask for. It's so inhumane."
Her images capture a glimpse into that world, of savagery and lost innocence. The soldiers and rebels carrying out the rapes, she says, are misguided people who need help.
Caught in the middle are the innocents: women, girls and fathers struggling to get justice.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/08/11/congo.rape/index.html
CNN
(CNN) -- The young girl whispered in a hushed tone. She looked down as she spoke, only glancing up from her dark round eyes every now and then. She wanted to tell more, but she was too ashamed. She was just 9 years old when, she says, Congolese soldiers gang-raped her on her way to school.
The young girl on the right says she was raped by Congolese soldiers. She was just 9 when it happened.
"These two soldiers nabbed her, put a bag over her head and pulled her into the bushes. She explains it as, 'They got me,' " says Sherrlyn Borkgren, who spent a month in the Democratic Republic of the Congo late last year.
Borkgren, a wedding photographer and freelance journalist, traveled to the war-torn region of eastern Congo after being awarded the ShootQ Grant, a $10,000 award to free photographers from everyday life to pursue a project that raises awareness of an important global issue.
Borkgren pauses when she speaks of meeting the girl. "She was obviously very traumatized to repeat this out loud, and I don't think she had repeated it to anyone." The young girl lied to her about her age when they first spoke.
"She said she was 15 when she was raped," Borkgren says. "I figured she probably wanted to say she was 15 because it's more acceptable than to say, 'I was 9 when they raped me.' "
The United Nations estimates 200,000 women and girls have been raped in Congo over the last 12 years, when war broke out with Rwanda and Uganda backing Congolese rebels seeking to oust then-Congo President Laurent Kabila. Rape became a weapon of war, aid groups say.
"It is one of the worst places in the world to be a woman or girl," says Anneke Van Woudenberg, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch who has spent the last 10 years focusing on Congo. "These are often soldiers and combatants deliberately targeting women and raping them as a strategy of war, either to punish a community, to terrorize a community or to humiliate them."
Most times, the women are raped by at least two perpetrators. "Sometimes, that is done in front of the family, in front of the children," Van Woudenberg says. She sighs, "What causes men to rape -- I wish I had an answer to that."
Against this backdrop, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, one of the world's strongest voices for women's rights, traveled to Congo as part of her whirlwind trip to Africa.
Clinton arrived in Goma in eastern Congo Tuesday where she is to meet with rape victims during her visit. "I hope that here in the [Congo] there will be a concerted effort to demand justice for women who are violently attacked, and to make sure that their attackers are punished," Clinton said Monday after a tour of a Kinshasa hospital.
Human rights groups are eager to see if Clinton pressures Joseph Kabila, president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the son of Laurent Kabila, to do more to pursue charges against top army commanders accused of rape.
"Soldiers have committed gang rapes, rapes leading to injury and death, and abductions of girls and women," a report released last month by Human Rights Watch says. "Their crimes are serious violations of international humanitarian law. Commanders have frequently failed to stop sexual violence and may themselves be guilty of war crimes or crimes against humanity as a consequence."
Van Woudenberg says punishment, unfortunately, is all too rare for sex crimes. "If you rape, you get away with it," she says.
According to the United Nations, there were 15,996 new cases of sexual violence registered throughout Congo in 2008. Nearly two out of every three rapes were carried out against children, most of them adolescent girls, the Human Rights Watch report says.
A paltry 27 soldiers were convicted in military courts last year. Under the current court system, the military handles accusations of rape against its soldiers -- something aid groups say must be changed for real accountability.
Since January of this year, aid organizations say there's been a surge of violence against civilians as a result of Congolese operations against Rwandan Hutu rebels, some of whom are believed to have participated in 1994's Rwandan genocide. The fighting has left more than 1.8 million people displaced in the volatile region, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
Aid groups have started to see an uptick of rapes of men this year, although women and girls remain the primary targets. "The brutality has increased on a huge scale," Van Woudenberg says.
She says she interviewed one 15-year-old girl who was held in a hole for five months and gang-raped nearly every day. She had gone out shopping when soldiers approached.
"They asked me to take off my clothes, and I did. There wasn't much I could do," the girl told her. "They took me into the bush. I stayed for five months with these people, and when I came back, I was five months pregnant."
Van Woudenberg adds, "Gosh, the brutality against the women and girls is unimaginable."
Congo has taken some measures to try to curb the sexual violence. In 2006, its parliament passed a law criminalizing rape, with penalties ranging from five to 20 years. Penalties are doubled under certain circumstances, including gang-rape and if the perpetrator is a public official. Kabila's wife, Olive Lemba Kabila, has launched a public campaign speaking out against rapes of the nation's women and girls.
The army has also started a zero-tolerance campaign in which commanders have emphasized to troops that they must respect human rights and protect civilians from harm, according to the U.N.
In May, the United Nations handed over the names of five top military officers accused of rape. Two of the senior officers are now detained in the capital of Kinshasa and the three others must report to authorities under close observation. "It's expected that a trial could happen soon," said U.N. spokesman Yves Sorokobi. "It certainly is a big development. ... It's important. It's significant."
Still more must be done, aid groups say, starting with the establishment of a special court made up of Congolese and international judges and prosecutors to investigate rape allegations.
Borkgren, the photographer from Eugene, Oregon, says she went to the Congo after having a dream in which two women yelled at her to "come over here." She won the grant and traveled there for four weeks, beginning in November of last year. She hitchhiked her way around the country, something she now admits was "a little bit stupid."
She says she once came face-to-face with soldiers when she was shopping at a market by herself. One of the men said he wanted to "take me up to his camp." She still can't shake the looks of the local women who were there.
"That was interesting," she says. "When the soldiers were harassing me, the women looked ashamed of the soldiers. And when they saw me tell them, 'No, go away,' the women looked at me quite surprised."
Eventually, she found the girl who touched her heart -- "the great, great kid." Borkgren first spoke with her father, who was initially reluctant to introduce her to his daughter. He explained that the family had gone to authorities, only to be ignored.
Borkgren says that when she met the girl, they got along instantly. At times, the young child didn't know how to describe what happened. "She would say, 'I don't understand what it is, and I don't know what words to use.' "
"It just turned my heart to think that here's this little girl who doesn't even have the words to describe what happened to her, and has to live her life having had this violence put upon her. Just this thoughtless violence that she didn't deserve or ask for. It's so inhumane."
Her images capture a glimpse into that world, of savagery and lost innocence. The soldiers and rebels carrying out the rapes, she says, are misguided people who need help.
Caught in the middle are the innocents: women, girls and fathers struggling to get justice.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/08/11/congo.rape/index.html
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Clinton's trip to Africa her biggest yet
By Jill Dougherty
CNN Foreign Affairs Correspondent
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is embarking on her biggest international trip yet: Africa. Seven countries in 11 days. Issues as diverse as economic entrepreneurship and gender-based violence.
Hillary Clinton's trip to Africa will be her biggest international yet as secretary of state.
The trip comes just three weeks after President Obama's trip to Accra, Ghana. She will highlight many of the themes he struck.
The State Department notes it is the earliest trip by a secretary of state and a president to Africa of any previous U.S. administration. In an administration that prides itself on a plethora of "priorities," officials say they are putting Africa toward the top of the list.
The secretary opens her Africa trip in Nairobi, Kenya, at the U.S.-Sub-Saharan Africa Trade and Economic Cooperation Forum, delivering a speech Wednesday at the forum's ministerial opening ceremony.
In Kenya, she plans to meet with President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga, encouraging them to proceed with their intention to rewrite the country's constitution. The East Africa country was hit with a wave of violence a year and a half ago following flawed presidential elections.
Also in Kenya, she will meet briefly with Somalia's president, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed. His country is under intense pressure from Islamist extremist movements affiliated with al Qaeda, al-Shabaab and Hizbul Islam.
On her next stop, South Africa, she will meet with the country's new leader, President Jacob Zuma, and the foreign minister. At the top of the agenda for the country, under severe economic pressure, are the crisis in neighboring Zimbabwe and the battle against HIV/AIDS.
The State Department describes her next destination, Angola, as a country with "enormous economic potential." Angola, in southern Africa, is one of the largest energy producers south of the Sahara and is a major supplier of both petroleum and liquified natural gas to the U.S. market.
There are some trouble spots on the secretary's trip, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Central Africa is one of them. For more than 15 years, eastern Congo was torn by civil strife and massive use of rape. Clinton will meet with some of the victims of that violence to underscore the United States' commitment ending gender-based violence.
In Nigeria, Secretary Clinton will see what the State Department calls "probably the most important country in sub-Saharan Africa." With 140 million people, it is a major source of petroleum imports for the United States. The secretary will discuss security in West Africa, democratic development, fighting corruption and promoting economic development with the Nigerian government.
In Liberia, founded by slaves from the United States, Clinton will reaffirm U.S. support for President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the only female African president. Besieged by violent conflict for 20 years, the West African nation, still fragile, now is strengthening its democracy, and Clinton will highlight development assistance.
Last stop: Cape Verde, which the State Department calls "an African success story." The island nation, off the coast of West Africa, is democratically run and well-managed.
In its briefings for reporters on Clinton's African trip, the State Department has not specifically stressed human rights although, as with other parts of the world, it links development and human rights.
Amnesty International Executive Director Larry Cox, in a letter to Clinton, is urging her to discuss human-rights concerns with the African leaders she will meet this week.
"Failure to discuss human rights abuses in a meaningful way," he says, "would send the wrong signal about the seriousness with which the United States views the human rights situation in those countries."
China has launched a broad economic outreach to Africa. Asked whether Clinton's trip is a way of sending a message to Beijing, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson said, "Our presence there has nothing to do with anyone else's operations on the continent. The mention of our colleagues from Asia is a Cold War paradigm, not a reflection of where we are today."
Evaluating the prospects for Clinton's African trip, J. Stephen Morrison of the Center for Strategic & International Studies said Clinton "may be signaling through the scope and timing of her trip that Africa has graduated into a mainstream U.S. foreign policy priority and that she intends to guide U.S. policy. That would be a significant shift."
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/08/03/clinton.africa.trip/index.html
CNN Foreign Affairs Correspondent
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is embarking on her biggest international trip yet: Africa. Seven countries in 11 days. Issues as diverse as economic entrepreneurship and gender-based violence.
Hillary Clinton's trip to Africa will be her biggest international yet as secretary of state.
The trip comes just three weeks after President Obama's trip to Accra, Ghana. She will highlight many of the themes he struck.
The State Department notes it is the earliest trip by a secretary of state and a president to Africa of any previous U.S. administration. In an administration that prides itself on a plethora of "priorities," officials say they are putting Africa toward the top of the list.
The secretary opens her Africa trip in Nairobi, Kenya, at the U.S.-Sub-Saharan Africa Trade and Economic Cooperation Forum, delivering a speech Wednesday at the forum's ministerial opening ceremony.
In Kenya, she plans to meet with President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga, encouraging them to proceed with their intention to rewrite the country's constitution. The East Africa country was hit with a wave of violence a year and a half ago following flawed presidential elections.
Also in Kenya, she will meet briefly with Somalia's president, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed. His country is under intense pressure from Islamist extremist movements affiliated with al Qaeda, al-Shabaab and Hizbul Islam.
On her next stop, South Africa, she will meet with the country's new leader, President Jacob Zuma, and the foreign minister. At the top of the agenda for the country, under severe economic pressure, are the crisis in neighboring Zimbabwe and the battle against HIV/AIDS.
The State Department describes her next destination, Angola, as a country with "enormous economic potential." Angola, in southern Africa, is one of the largest energy producers south of the Sahara and is a major supplier of both petroleum and liquified natural gas to the U.S. market.
There are some trouble spots on the secretary's trip, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Central Africa is one of them. For more than 15 years, eastern Congo was torn by civil strife and massive use of rape. Clinton will meet with some of the victims of that violence to underscore the United States' commitment ending gender-based violence.
In Nigeria, Secretary Clinton will see what the State Department calls "probably the most important country in sub-Saharan Africa." With 140 million people, it is a major source of petroleum imports for the United States. The secretary will discuss security in West Africa, democratic development, fighting corruption and promoting economic development with the Nigerian government.
In Liberia, founded by slaves from the United States, Clinton will reaffirm U.S. support for President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the only female African president. Besieged by violent conflict for 20 years, the West African nation, still fragile, now is strengthening its democracy, and Clinton will highlight development assistance.
Last stop: Cape Verde, which the State Department calls "an African success story." The island nation, off the coast of West Africa, is democratically run and well-managed.
In its briefings for reporters on Clinton's African trip, the State Department has not specifically stressed human rights although, as with other parts of the world, it links development and human rights.
Amnesty International Executive Director Larry Cox, in a letter to Clinton, is urging her to discuss human-rights concerns with the African leaders she will meet this week.
"Failure to discuss human rights abuses in a meaningful way," he says, "would send the wrong signal about the seriousness with which the United States views the human rights situation in those countries."
China has launched a broad economic outreach to Africa. Asked whether Clinton's trip is a way of sending a message to Beijing, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson said, "Our presence there has nothing to do with anyone else's operations on the continent. The mention of our colleagues from Asia is a Cold War paradigm, not a reflection of where we are today."
Evaluating the prospects for Clinton's African trip, J. Stephen Morrison of the Center for Strategic & International Studies said Clinton "may be signaling through the scope and timing of her trip that Africa has graduated into a mainstream U.S. foreign policy priority and that she intends to guide U.S. policy. That would be a significant shift."
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/08/03/clinton.africa.trip/index.html
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