FIRST PUBLISHED: April 16, 2009 2:41 PM EDT
LAST UPDATED: April 16, 2009 3:35 PM EDT
LOS ANGELES, Calif. --
Nicole Richie has joined the likes of Ben Affleck, Mia Farrow and Emile Hirsch by speaking out about the situation in the African nation of Congo.
The celebutante-turned-celebumom posted a video on her blog, hoping to raise awareness about the sexual crimes being committed in the warring country.
“I’m about to tell you a true story about a place where babies and grandmothers are being raped on a daily basis and the reason they are being raped is directly connected to the purchases of our cell phones, of our laptops and of our iPods,” Nicole said in the clip.
With longtime pal John Prendergast from The Enough Project, and Kimberly Pinkson, from the EcoMom Alliance, the trio explain that minerals that are found in the Congo are used in the making of electronic products regularly purchased by consumers. They go about naming several products and companies that use the minerals, which Prendergast points out do not have to be bought in Congo, but can be mined in other countries not under crisis.
Nicole goes on to note that rape is being used as a control mechanism, but does not single out the group involved in the crimes.
“The No. 1 weapon out there — it’s not guns, it’s not knives, it is rape,” she says. “They are raping these women and not only is it — I mean it’s not just rape, these women are being raped in front of their husbands, in front of their children… I mean, this stuff is really inhumane. This is the worst thing that I’ve ever heard in my life.”
Nicole and her pals suggest people avoid buying products that include minerals from countries engaged in conflict.
“We are not as ignorant as people think we are. We simply don’t know. And it’s not our fault,” she says. “It is so easy to be just completely distracted and I really am optimistic that if I bring it to my peers attention that they are gonna wanna do the right thing.”
Copyright 2009 by NBC Universal, Inc. All rights reserved.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Sexual violence in Congo provides the backdrop for play 'Ruined'
NEW YORK — The photos in the lobby are a sobering reminder of the real people behind Lynn Nottage's "Ruined," a gripping play focused on Congo, where horrific rape Is Routinely Used As A Weapon In A Seemingly Endless War.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The women look at the camera in stark black and white, some of them stoic, some fighting to hold back tears. Some of them trudged long distances to share their stories of sexual violence with Nottage.
More than five million people have been killed in Congo since 1994 and untold thousands of women have been violated so aggressively, sometimes with bayonets, that their vaginal walls are ripped, leaving them "ruined" - too damaged to work or have children, and frequently shunned by their families.
The Congolese refugees who spoke with her during her visit to northern Uganda, just wanted someone to listen to them, Nottage said five years later, over coffee at a cafe in her Brooklyn neighbourhood.
"A lot of the women felt they weren't being heard," said Nottage. "I explained to them, 'I'm a storyteller, I can only give you an ear.' No one had ever listened to their stories from beginning to end."
A tribal chief's daughter shared her astonishment that a woman of her station could be raped by four soldiers. The fair-skinned daughter of a Belgian immigrant described how she couldn't get aid groups to believe what she had been through. Another woman broke off to sob for minutes straight.
Nottage was inspired by Bertolt Brecht's "Mother Courage and Her Children," which tells the story of woman who profits off war but loses all her children in the process.
Nottage's protagonist is Mama Nadi - an opportunistic Congolese bar-owner who survives by not picking sides in a region with many sides to choose from, protecting a small group of women but still implicated by the moral choices she makes.
Nottage refuses to judge her.
"She's a creature of the environment of the war. Is she right? Is she wrong?," she asks and leaves the question dangling.
The play is not journalism. Nottage drew on her interviews - she borrowed Mama Nadi's name, for instance, from one woman with whom she spoke - but she invented her narrative, one that is brutal, but also leavened by optimism and lively music. The history of the wars is kept muddy; the militia men are mostly undifferentiated. The women, who survive largely by prostitution, are the focus.
The play, which had its world premiere last year at Chicago's Goodman Theatre, opened in February to favourable reviews off-Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club's Stage I and has been extended for a third time to run through May 3.
It already has been nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award for best off-Broadway play of the season and it has received strong buzz as a possible finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for drama. The winner will be announced April 20.
Congo's dramatic spike in rape has been fuelled by rival militias, tribal conflicts and a national army described as one of the most badly-disciplined and corrupt in Africa.
No one is really sure how many Congolese women have been raped; estimates range from 60,000 to 400,000, said Anneke Van Woudenberg, a Congo expert with Human Rights Watch.
"There's no question that this is widespread," she said. "It is used as a weapon of war. It's not just bored soldiers with nothing better to do."
Van Woudenberg applauded the play for getting the details right: the way armed groups pretend they are fighting for the people; the survival tactic of trying to remain on friendly terms with everyone; militias' use of women as slaves, both sexually, and as cooks and maids. She hopes its audience will come out of the theatre wanting to learn more.
Nottage's husband, Tony Gerber, a filmmaker, took the photos during the Uganda trip. He has since travelled to Congo twice to make documentaries for National Geographic.
Gerber explained the role his photos played in his wife's creative process.
"The eyes of the women in those photos followed her. She could go back to those photos, back to the pictures, as a way of checking in with reality," he explained, adding, however, that the characters in the play are fully her own.
Nottage worked hard to tell a full story. Though her subject is brutality, her characters laugh, sing, dance and tease each other. The play is full of music and joy, even as the cataclysm in Congo casts a broad shadow.
The play offers a hint of hope in its poignant conclusion, a note that has bothered some audience members who complain the play cries out for a harsher ending. Nottage loses her normally calm, even demeanour over such criticism.
"It enrages me . . . I'm not going to fuel that image of Africa. We're constantly being sold the hopelessness," she said.
The Congolese say, "'We have the ability to find the beauty; that's why we survive."'
Copyright © 2009 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The women look at the camera in stark black and white, some of them stoic, some fighting to hold back tears. Some of them trudged long distances to share their stories of sexual violence with Nottage.
More than five million people have been killed in Congo since 1994 and untold thousands of women have been violated so aggressively, sometimes with bayonets, that their vaginal walls are ripped, leaving them "ruined" - too damaged to work or have children, and frequently shunned by their families.
The Congolese refugees who spoke with her during her visit to northern Uganda, just wanted someone to listen to them, Nottage said five years later, over coffee at a cafe in her Brooklyn neighbourhood.
"A lot of the women felt they weren't being heard," said Nottage. "I explained to them, 'I'm a storyteller, I can only give you an ear.' No one had ever listened to their stories from beginning to end."
A tribal chief's daughter shared her astonishment that a woman of her station could be raped by four soldiers. The fair-skinned daughter of a Belgian immigrant described how she couldn't get aid groups to believe what she had been through. Another woman broke off to sob for minutes straight.
Nottage was inspired by Bertolt Brecht's "Mother Courage and Her Children," which tells the story of woman who profits off war but loses all her children in the process.
Nottage's protagonist is Mama Nadi - an opportunistic Congolese bar-owner who survives by not picking sides in a region with many sides to choose from, protecting a small group of women but still implicated by the moral choices she makes.
Nottage refuses to judge her.
"She's a creature of the environment of the war. Is she right? Is she wrong?," she asks and leaves the question dangling.
The play is not journalism. Nottage drew on her interviews - she borrowed Mama Nadi's name, for instance, from one woman with whom she spoke - but she invented her narrative, one that is brutal, but also leavened by optimism and lively music. The history of the wars is kept muddy; the militia men are mostly undifferentiated. The women, who survive largely by prostitution, are the focus.
The play, which had its world premiere last year at Chicago's Goodman Theatre, opened in February to favourable reviews off-Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club's Stage I and has been extended for a third time to run through May 3.
It already has been nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award for best off-Broadway play of the season and it has received strong buzz as a possible finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for drama. The winner will be announced April 20.
Congo's dramatic spike in rape has been fuelled by rival militias, tribal conflicts and a national army described as one of the most badly-disciplined and corrupt in Africa.
No one is really sure how many Congolese women have been raped; estimates range from 60,000 to 400,000, said Anneke Van Woudenberg, a Congo expert with Human Rights Watch.
"There's no question that this is widespread," she said. "It is used as a weapon of war. It's not just bored soldiers with nothing better to do."
Van Woudenberg applauded the play for getting the details right: the way armed groups pretend they are fighting for the people; the survival tactic of trying to remain on friendly terms with everyone; militias' use of women as slaves, both sexually, and as cooks and maids. She hopes its audience will come out of the theatre wanting to learn more.
Nottage's husband, Tony Gerber, a filmmaker, took the photos during the Uganda trip. He has since travelled to Congo twice to make documentaries for National Geographic.
Gerber explained the role his photos played in his wife's creative process.
"The eyes of the women in those photos followed her. She could go back to those photos, back to the pictures, as a way of checking in with reality," he explained, adding, however, that the characters in the play are fully her own.
Nottage worked hard to tell a full story. Though her subject is brutality, her characters laugh, sing, dance and tease each other. The play is full of music and joy, even as the cataclysm in Congo casts a broad shadow.
The play offers a hint of hope in its poignant conclusion, a note that has bothered some audience members who complain the play cries out for a harsher ending. Nottage loses her normally calm, even demeanour over such criticism.
"It enrages me . . . I'm not going to fuel that image of Africa. We're constantly being sold the hopelessness," she said.
The Congolese say, "'We have the ability to find the beauty; that's why we survive."'
Copyright © 2009 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Congo Violence Fueled by Common Material in Cell Phones, Laptops...
By Rima Abdelkader
For many, one's cell phone has become a fifth limb. But, for Congolese lawyer Joseph Mbangu, it's more a case of life and death.
The New York-based lawyer is trying to alert cell phone and laptop users that a key ingredient in their devices has been at the center of vicious struggles over natural resources between rebel and government forces in the eastern Congo.
"So many people have to die for us to be innocent users over here," said Mbangu, who is also the outreach coordinator for the documentary, "The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo," recently aired on HBO.
Congolese miners have been killed, and women raped during the 11-year war over mineral deposits in the eastern Congo, Mbangu said. One of the deposits is a natural metallic ore, columbite-tantalite, or coltan, that, when refined, stores an electric charge in a capacitor used in common electronic devices.
The Congo region, which contains as much as 80 percent of the world's coltan reserves, yielded 300 tons and $5.42 million last year, up 50 percent over 2007, a recent U.N. Security Council report said.
There is some dispute over the percentage. The independent group of advisors put the figure as high as 80 percent, but Sasha Leshnev, a Washington-based researcher who is an expert on minerals in the DRC, puts it at 15 percent. For the Congolese caught in the conflict, it hardly matters.
"For women to be raped and mutilated so that some rogue army could sell it (coltan) and enslave people and have forced labor is really outrageous," Mbangu said.
The exploitation of mineral resources is one of several factors that is fueling the ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, said U.N. spokesman Yves Sorokobi.
DRC's U.N. ambassador Faida Mitifu, speaking recently in New York during a panel discussion on media coverage of sexual violence against Congolese women, said the exploitation of mineral resources is the driving force behind the conflict. The history of exploitation and conflict dates back to the Congo's colonial history with Belgium, she said.
But she said there's renewed hope for change.
After a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last year on sexual violence and conflict in the Congo, Sen. Sam Brownback (R. - Kan) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D. - Ill) introduced a bill last May that would prohibit the sale of certain products that contain coltan or cassiterite mined in the DRC.
Although the legislation stalled, Durbin will reintroduce the bill after Easter recess, his press secretary, Max Gleischman said.
The U.N. Security Council also is trying to bring attention to the issue. "Exporters and consumers of Congolese mineral products should step up their due diligence efforts by publicly disclosing evidence that would demonstrate that they are not knowingly purchasing tainted minerals from the Democratic Republic of the Congo," the 2008 UN report said.
To step up the pressure, the U.N. Sanctions Committee in February also listed two firms that operate in the Congo, the Bakavu Aviation Transport and the Business Air Services, that are allegedly involved in the illegal exporting of coltan and other natural resources from the DRC.
Mbangu, the Congolese attorney, called on electronics companies to come up with alternative minerals to replace coltan or to find the mineral elsewhere.
Leshnev, the expert on minerals in the DRC, agreed. He joined with 32 organizations, including The Enough Project, in a letter campaign asking CEOs of major electronic companies to change the way metals are purchased.
"If the major electronic companies would have independent supply chain audits for their metals as well as be able to trace their metals back to the mine of origin, then the average American consumer would know that their product would be conflict free," said Leshnev.
Tama McWhinney, a spokeswoman for Motorola, said the cell phone manufacturer is "concerned about what is happening with coltan in the Congo" and has asked vendors to "verify in writing that the coltan that is used" in their protects is not from the DRC.
With more than four billion cell phone subscribers worldwide, up from one billion six years ago, even Mbangu admitted it's very difficult to navigate in the 21st century without a cell phone or a laptop. He occasionally uses both devices but it hasn't stopped his campaign to protect innocent people in the Congo.
It's difficult to enforce the same kind of sanctions against those who were involved in the illegal mining of diamonds, Mbangu said. Unlike diamonds, coltan is not a luxury, and it is not as visible as a diamond necklace, he said.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nycity-news-service/congo-violence-fueled-by_b_184192.html
For many, one's cell phone has become a fifth limb. But, for Congolese lawyer Joseph Mbangu, it's more a case of life and death.
The New York-based lawyer is trying to alert cell phone and laptop users that a key ingredient in their devices has been at the center of vicious struggles over natural resources between rebel and government forces in the eastern Congo.
"So many people have to die for us to be innocent users over here," said Mbangu, who is also the outreach coordinator for the documentary, "The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo," recently aired on HBO.
Congolese miners have been killed, and women raped during the 11-year war over mineral deposits in the eastern Congo, Mbangu said. One of the deposits is a natural metallic ore, columbite-tantalite, or coltan, that, when refined, stores an electric charge in a capacitor used in common electronic devices.
The Congo region, which contains as much as 80 percent of the world's coltan reserves, yielded 300 tons and $5.42 million last year, up 50 percent over 2007, a recent U.N. Security Council report said.
There is some dispute over the percentage. The independent group of advisors put the figure as high as 80 percent, but Sasha Leshnev, a Washington-based researcher who is an expert on minerals in the DRC, puts it at 15 percent. For the Congolese caught in the conflict, it hardly matters.
"For women to be raped and mutilated so that some rogue army could sell it (coltan) and enslave people and have forced labor is really outrageous," Mbangu said.
The exploitation of mineral resources is one of several factors that is fueling the ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, said U.N. spokesman Yves Sorokobi.
DRC's U.N. ambassador Faida Mitifu, speaking recently in New York during a panel discussion on media coverage of sexual violence against Congolese women, said the exploitation of mineral resources is the driving force behind the conflict. The history of exploitation and conflict dates back to the Congo's colonial history with Belgium, she said.
But she said there's renewed hope for change.
After a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last year on sexual violence and conflict in the Congo, Sen. Sam Brownback (R. - Kan) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D. - Ill) introduced a bill last May that would prohibit the sale of certain products that contain coltan or cassiterite mined in the DRC.
Although the legislation stalled, Durbin will reintroduce the bill after Easter recess, his press secretary, Max Gleischman said.
The U.N. Security Council also is trying to bring attention to the issue. "Exporters and consumers of Congolese mineral products should step up their due diligence efforts by publicly disclosing evidence that would demonstrate that they are not knowingly purchasing tainted minerals from the Democratic Republic of the Congo," the 2008 UN report said.
To step up the pressure, the U.N. Sanctions Committee in February also listed two firms that operate in the Congo, the Bakavu Aviation Transport and the Business Air Services, that are allegedly involved in the illegal exporting of coltan and other natural resources from the DRC.
Mbangu, the Congolese attorney, called on electronics companies to come up with alternative minerals to replace coltan or to find the mineral elsewhere.
Leshnev, the expert on minerals in the DRC, agreed. He joined with 32 organizations, including The Enough Project, in a letter campaign asking CEOs of major electronic companies to change the way metals are purchased.
"If the major electronic companies would have independent supply chain audits for their metals as well as be able to trace their metals back to the mine of origin, then the average American consumer would know that their product would be conflict free," said Leshnev.
Tama McWhinney, a spokeswoman for Motorola, said the cell phone manufacturer is "concerned about what is happening with coltan in the Congo" and has asked vendors to "verify in writing that the coltan that is used" in their protects is not from the DRC.
With more than four billion cell phone subscribers worldwide, up from one billion six years ago, even Mbangu admitted it's very difficult to navigate in the 21st century without a cell phone or a laptop. He occasionally uses both devices but it hasn't stopped his campaign to protect innocent people in the Congo.
It's difficult to enforce the same kind of sanctions against those who were involved in the illegal mining of diamonds, Mbangu said. Unlike diamonds, coltan is not a luxury, and it is not as visible as a diamond necklace, he said.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nycity-news-service/congo-violence-fueled-by_b_184192.html
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Our Prayer for the Women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Dear Lord,
We come to you today with our head bowed and our heart heavy because of the violent attacks happening to our sisters in the Congo. We are pleading their cause to an ungodly nation and asking that you deliver them from deceitful and unjust men. (Psalm 43:1)
Lord, we ask that you heal their bodies and souls and let them know that this is not their fault. Please sow up what the devil has ripped apart and let them find strength in you. Be not far from them, O Lord, because you are their strength, hasten to help them! (Psalm 22:19) Please remind them on a daily basis that you are a shield around them, their glory and the one who lifts their head up high. (Psalm 3:3)
Lord, we are laying this cause before you because your word says that you perform wonders that cannot be fathomed and miracles that cannot be counted. You have the power to set the lowly on high and lift those who mourn to safety. Please save these women from the swords in their bodies and from the clutches of the powerful. (Job 5:8-9, 11 & 15) We ask that you reveal your plan in these women's lives and give them a hope and a future that prospers their mind, body and soul! (Jeremiah 29:11)
Lord, we are also seeking your guidance as we do your work in this world. Please be a light to our path and a lamp to our feet as we take on this righteous cause so that we are at all times, honoring you, your word and your people. (Psalm 115:105) We pray for a heart of love, faith and hope so that we may save our sisters in the Congo.
We ask these blessings in Jesus's name, in expectation that it SHALL BE DONE to bring YOU all the glory Father! (John 14:12-14)
AMEN
Monday, March 16, 2009
Congo Women Fight Back!
Congo women fight back, speak out about rape
Victims shatter local taboos around talking about violence against civilians.
By Michelle Faul
updated 9:37 a.m. CT, Mon., March. 16, 2009
DOSHU, Congo - Zamuda Sikujuwa shuffles to a bench in the sunshine, pushes apart her thighs with a grimace of pain and pumps her fist up and down in a lewd-looking gesture to show how the militiamen shoved an automatic rifle inside her.
The brutish act tore apart her insides after seven of the men had taken turns raping her. She lost consciousness and wishes now that her life also had ended on that day.
The rebels from the Tutsi tribe had come demanding U.S. dollars. But when her husband could not even produce local currency, they put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. When her two children started crying, the rebels killed them too. Then they attacked Sikujuwa and left her for dead.
The 53-year-old still has difficulty walking after two operations. Yet she wants to tell the world her story, even though repeating it brings back the nightmares.
"It's hard, hard, hard," she says. "I'm alone in this world. My body is partly mended but I don't know if my heart will ever heal. ... I want this violence to stop. I don't want other women to have to suffer what I am suffering."
Rape has been used as a brutal weapon of war in Congo, where conflicts based on tribal lines have spawned dozens of armed groups amid back-to-back civil wars that drew in several African nations. More than 5 million people have died since 1994. Women have become even more vulnerable since a rebel advance at the end of last year drove a quarter-million people from their homes and fighting this year left another 100,000 others homeless, according to aid workers.
Now some of the women are fighting back the only way they know how — by talking about what happened.
Breaking taboos
A campaign spearheaded by the U.N. Children's Fund is working with local groups to break traditional taboos around talking about the violence. They're using radio stations broadcasting in local languages, and more activists are getting to remote areas.
"Many more victims are coming forward. We receive a lot of SMS text messages and cell phone calls from women who have been raped and need help," says campaign leader Esther Ntoto.
Five months ago, U.N. officials began bringing together women to tell their stories to rooms full of local officials, community leaders, even children. One sign of success is that more men than women have volunteered for training to encourage victims to come forward and their communities to confront the issues.
Video footage of the campaign Women Breaking the Silence shows officials startled by the atrocities recounted. A provincial minister interrupted to ask reporters not to film a woman's face. But she took the microphone to declare: "I am not ashamed to show my face and publish my identity. The shame lies with those who broke me open and with the authorities who failed to protect me.
"If you don't hear me, see me, you will not understand why it is so important that we fight this together."
That woman, Honorata Kizende, described how her life as a school teacher and the mother of seven children ended when she was kidnapped in 2001. She was held as a sex slave for 18 months and passed around from one Hutu fighter to another until she escaped. She is now a counselor and trains others to help survivors of sexual violence.
One of the difficulties is the "huge problem of impunity," said Mireille Kahatwa Amani, a lawyer working at an office at HEAL Africa Hospital opened a year ago by the Chicago-based American Bar Association.
"It's difficult to prosecute perpetrators because they can buy off the police or a judge. There's no guarantee of justice," she says.
Still, with funding from the U.S. State Department, lawyers have interviewed more than 250 victims and pursued more than 100 cases. In 11 months, they have received 30judgments with only two acquittals. Those found guilty have been punished with sentences of five to 20 years in jail, Kahatwa says.
Her big success this year was against a man who has been condemned to 20 years in jail for raping a 6-year-old neighbor and infecting her with the AIDS virus. Kahatwa says the judgment came just a month after the complaint was filed, a record.
Surgery helps some wounds
Kasongo Manyema takes small, careful steps, fearful of unwrapping the cloth tied like a baby's diaper to catch the blood, urine and feces that has been dribbling from her body for 2 1/2 years.
She was 19 then, when men in military uniform attacked her as she weeded her family's cassava field.
A U.N. helicopter has brought her to HEAL Africa Hospital in Goma, where reconstructive surgery could help her incontinence and the stench that follows her and thousands of other Congolese women suffering from fistulas.
Fistulas usually result from giving birth in poor conditions. In Congo, they are caused by violent rapes that tear apart the flesh separating the bladder and rectum from the vagina.
Dr. Christophe Kinoma, one of only two surgeons who perform the reconstructive operations in east Congo, says there's a 50-50 chance that surgery can mend Manyema and others like her.
"Yesterday I did five fistula operations and we have more than 100 women waiting here and who knows how many out in the bush who never ever get to a hospital."
Kinoma says it has become the norm for armed men to use guns, knives and bayonets to rupture their victims' bodies. Sometimes they shoot bullets up women's vaginas. Victims often are rejected by their families, contract HIV, and are left to live in pain and shame.
In December, he operated on an 11-month-old baby raped by a 22-year-old neighbor. During one week in February, it was a 12-year-old girl who had been savagely raped by five soldiers. They stuffed a maize cob inside her.
Also treated last week was a 4-year-old whose mother sent her across the road to get something from a neighbor. She was kidnapped by soldiers and gang-raped.
"An American doctor who was here just burst into tears and collapsed. She couldn't believe what the soldiers had done to this child, just torn her body apart," he says.
Kinoma says he may be able to mend the physical damage, "but the psychological trauma never goes away for some." The hospital offers counseling but has no psychologists.
"The 11-month-old I operated on, every time she sees a man, including me, she starts screaming," he says.
The 4-year-old was infected with HIV, and they await results from a test on the 12-year-old. "If three, four, five soldiers rape you, you are almost assured of contracting AIDS," Kinoma says.
‘It’s like my brain is on fire’
The trauma that haunts these children and women also affects those who help them.
Hortense Tshomba, who has been counseling victims for three years, says she hopes to give them the courage to return to their homes. Many are rejected by husbands and fathers who say the attacks have left them "unclean."
"We try to counsel them as couples. For girls rejected by their parents, we try to intervene. Some families accept them back; others don't."
When counseling does not help, HEAL Africa offers lessons in sewing and handicrafts to teach them to survive financially. She says rejected women who don't get help often are forced from communities and become beggars.
"Sometimes I have nightmares," Tshomba says. "When I leave after hearing all these horror stories, really it's like my brain is on fire. I have to listen to some jazz to ease my soul."
But there are successes like 13-year-old Harriet, who came to HEAL Africa four years ago. Harriet's parents were killed by the rebels who attacked her and then burned down their home in Rutshuru, north of Goma. She now lives with a woman who counseled her at the hospital.
On this day, Harriet is so delighted she cannot stop grinning, a wide beam that's infectious in its joy. Her fingernails are black with dirt, but she is wearing lip gloss and eyeliner.
"Today, I got my results and I am top of my class," she announces, flaunting a report that shows she averaged 88.5 percent in math, French and English exams.
"When I came to HEAL Africa, I had never been to school. I was 9 years old. Now I'm beating students who have been to school all their lives," she says. "My teacher says I'm very intelligent, that I should go to school in the United States."
As for the future: "I think I want to be a doctor, so that I can help people the way these doctors helped me."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29719277/
Victims shatter local taboos around talking about violence against civilians.
By Michelle Faul
updated 9:37 a.m. CT, Mon., March. 16, 2009
DOSHU, Congo - Zamuda Sikujuwa shuffles to a bench in the sunshine, pushes apart her thighs with a grimace of pain and pumps her fist up and down in a lewd-looking gesture to show how the militiamen shoved an automatic rifle inside her.
The brutish act tore apart her insides after seven of the men had taken turns raping her. She lost consciousness and wishes now that her life also had ended on that day.
The rebels from the Tutsi tribe had come demanding U.S. dollars. But when her husband could not even produce local currency, they put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. When her two children started crying, the rebels killed them too. Then they attacked Sikujuwa and left her for dead.
The 53-year-old still has difficulty walking after two operations. Yet she wants to tell the world her story, even though repeating it brings back the nightmares.
"It's hard, hard, hard," she says. "I'm alone in this world. My body is partly mended but I don't know if my heart will ever heal. ... I want this violence to stop. I don't want other women to have to suffer what I am suffering."
Rape has been used as a brutal weapon of war in Congo, where conflicts based on tribal lines have spawned dozens of armed groups amid back-to-back civil wars that drew in several African nations. More than 5 million people have died since 1994. Women have become even more vulnerable since a rebel advance at the end of last year drove a quarter-million people from their homes and fighting this year left another 100,000 others homeless, according to aid workers.
Now some of the women are fighting back the only way they know how — by talking about what happened.
Breaking taboos
A campaign spearheaded by the U.N. Children's Fund is working with local groups to break traditional taboos around talking about the violence. They're using radio stations broadcasting in local languages, and more activists are getting to remote areas.
"Many more victims are coming forward. We receive a lot of SMS text messages and cell phone calls from women who have been raped and need help," says campaign leader Esther Ntoto.
Five months ago, U.N. officials began bringing together women to tell their stories to rooms full of local officials, community leaders, even children. One sign of success is that more men than women have volunteered for training to encourage victims to come forward and their communities to confront the issues.
Video footage of the campaign Women Breaking the Silence shows officials startled by the atrocities recounted. A provincial minister interrupted to ask reporters not to film a woman's face. But she took the microphone to declare: "I am not ashamed to show my face and publish my identity. The shame lies with those who broke me open and with the authorities who failed to protect me.
"If you don't hear me, see me, you will not understand why it is so important that we fight this together."
That woman, Honorata Kizende, described how her life as a school teacher and the mother of seven children ended when she was kidnapped in 2001. She was held as a sex slave for 18 months and passed around from one Hutu fighter to another until she escaped. She is now a counselor and trains others to help survivors of sexual violence.
One of the difficulties is the "huge problem of impunity," said Mireille Kahatwa Amani, a lawyer working at an office at HEAL Africa Hospital opened a year ago by the Chicago-based American Bar Association.
"It's difficult to prosecute perpetrators because they can buy off the police or a judge. There's no guarantee of justice," she says.
Still, with funding from the U.S. State Department, lawyers have interviewed more than 250 victims and pursued more than 100 cases. In 11 months, they have received 30judgments with only two acquittals. Those found guilty have been punished with sentences of five to 20 years in jail, Kahatwa says.
Her big success this year was against a man who has been condemned to 20 years in jail for raping a 6-year-old neighbor and infecting her with the AIDS virus. Kahatwa says the judgment came just a month after the complaint was filed, a record.
Surgery helps some wounds
Kasongo Manyema takes small, careful steps, fearful of unwrapping the cloth tied like a baby's diaper to catch the blood, urine and feces that has been dribbling from her body for 2 1/2 years.
She was 19 then, when men in military uniform attacked her as she weeded her family's cassava field.
A U.N. helicopter has brought her to HEAL Africa Hospital in Goma, where reconstructive surgery could help her incontinence and the stench that follows her and thousands of other Congolese women suffering from fistulas.
Fistulas usually result from giving birth in poor conditions. In Congo, they are caused by violent rapes that tear apart the flesh separating the bladder and rectum from the vagina.
Dr. Christophe Kinoma, one of only two surgeons who perform the reconstructive operations in east Congo, says there's a 50-50 chance that surgery can mend Manyema and others like her.
"Yesterday I did five fistula operations and we have more than 100 women waiting here and who knows how many out in the bush who never ever get to a hospital."
Kinoma says it has become the norm for armed men to use guns, knives and bayonets to rupture their victims' bodies. Sometimes they shoot bullets up women's vaginas. Victims often are rejected by their families, contract HIV, and are left to live in pain and shame.
In December, he operated on an 11-month-old baby raped by a 22-year-old neighbor. During one week in February, it was a 12-year-old girl who had been savagely raped by five soldiers. They stuffed a maize cob inside her.
Also treated last week was a 4-year-old whose mother sent her across the road to get something from a neighbor. She was kidnapped by soldiers and gang-raped.
"An American doctor who was here just burst into tears and collapsed. She couldn't believe what the soldiers had done to this child, just torn her body apart," he says.
Kinoma says he may be able to mend the physical damage, "but the psychological trauma never goes away for some." The hospital offers counseling but has no psychologists.
"The 11-month-old I operated on, every time she sees a man, including me, she starts screaming," he says.
The 4-year-old was infected with HIV, and they await results from a test on the 12-year-old. "If three, four, five soldiers rape you, you are almost assured of contracting AIDS," Kinoma says.
‘It’s like my brain is on fire’
The trauma that haunts these children and women also affects those who help them.
Hortense Tshomba, who has been counseling victims for three years, says she hopes to give them the courage to return to their homes. Many are rejected by husbands and fathers who say the attacks have left them "unclean."
"We try to counsel them as couples. For girls rejected by their parents, we try to intervene. Some families accept them back; others don't."
When counseling does not help, HEAL Africa offers lessons in sewing and handicrafts to teach them to survive financially. She says rejected women who don't get help often are forced from communities and become beggars.
"Sometimes I have nightmares," Tshomba says. "When I leave after hearing all these horror stories, really it's like my brain is on fire. I have to listen to some jazz to ease my soul."
But there are successes like 13-year-old Harriet, who came to HEAL Africa four years ago. Harriet's parents were killed by the rebels who attacked her and then burned down their home in Rutshuru, north of Goma. She now lives with a woman who counseled her at the hospital.
On this day, Harriet is so delighted she cannot stop grinning, a wide beam that's infectious in its joy. Her fingernails are black with dirt, but she is wearing lip gloss and eyeliner.
"Today, I got my results and I am top of my class," she announces, flaunting a report that shows she averaged 88.5 percent in math, French and English exams.
"When I came to HEAL Africa, I had never been to school. I was 9 years old. Now I'm beating students who have been to school all their lives," she says. "My teacher says I'm very intelligent, that I should go to school in the United States."
As for the future: "I think I want to be a doctor, so that I can help people the way these doctors helped me."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29719277/
Friday, March 6, 2009
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