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News Africa

Rape used as weapon in DR Congo


The Democratic Republic of Congo is grappling with rampant rape, which has become an every day practice and is used as a weapon of war, the UN has said.

It said almost 5,400 cases of rape against women were reported in the South Kivu province during the first six months of the year.

Elisabeth Byrs, a spokeswoman for the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said South Kivu, near Rwanda, was an increasingly dangerous place for civilians, especially for women.

"Night-time attacks against civilians by unidentified armed elements, and rape against women, remain widespread," Byrs said.

About 90 per cent of the rapes are allegedly committed by armed groups or regular forces.

Nabwemba Natabaro, a woman in South Kivu, told Al Jazeera that she had been held in the bush for two months and repeatedly gang raped, after being abducted from her village.

"My family thought I had been killed and lost all hope of ever seeing me. Then I managed to escape. I was very sick," she said.

Her family brought her to a hospital where she was diagnosed with HIV.

'Tortured by attackers'

Rossette Kavira, a gynaecologist at a hospital in the town of Goma, said: "There isn’t a single day that we don't get raped women coming to the hospital. This explains how widespread the problem is.

"Almost all victims require surgery due to bleeding or wounds inflicted through torture by their attackers."

Due to the huge numbers of rape victims, some women have to wait for months for reconstructive surgery.

Dede Amanor-Wilks, Action Aid's director for West and Central Africa, said many rape cases go unreported.

"Currently the DRC [Democratic Republic of Congo] is thought to have the highest incident of rape in the world, but statistics that come to surface are only a fraction probably of the rapes that actually occur," she told Al Jazeera.

"Different statistics are coming up in different parts of the eastern DRC all the time. One commonly used statistic is that there are about 400 rapes a day."

Al Jazeera's Mohammed Adow, reporting from Goma, said there were growing fears that the use of rape was turning into a norm in the DR Congo conflict.

"Rape has been used by all armed groups as a weapon that is more readily available than bullets and bombs.

"In many cases the social stigma associated with rape leaves the survivors shunned by husbands, parents and their communities," he said.

The fighting in the eastern DRC between UN-backed Congolese government forces and Rwandan Hutu rebels have worsened in recent months.

The country hosts one of the biggest UN aid operations. Hundreds of thousands of people in the east of the country have been driven from their homes due to fighting, many of whom need protection from violent attacks.


Source: Al Jazeera and agencies





Obviously there are things that make the news around the world that never make the news here. That's for good reason. Things like this bring too many emotions out of the average American. It can scare, enrage and engage us all at once. Some are too sickened to read, and some might just cry because Americans never really know how to handle their emotions anyway. The prior article might have been commonplace reading in say, South America, where passion and war and suffering are all understood, and the news is much different. Americans, in their comfort with the with the seclusion of the United States are usually intrigued, but not too intrigued by the sad story so far away. Stories like this though, scare the daylights out of everyone. It brings back the American's deepest fear, the lowest elements of life.

This country's resounding fear is obvious-we fear things that are beneath us. We fear dirt, poor people because they're belligerent, homeless people and rats because they live on the lowest and most basic level of life. We fear those without compassion, or compassion for themselves or their people. We fear those with no compassion for life, babies, for the female reproductive system. These are the things in our minds that we want furthest away from dirt, and the lowest things that exist. So our view of war and the several continuing wars on this earth is a slightly blindfolded one. We are semi-conscious of the ones we are involved in, a few more than half are against what we're doing, and for the most part, all of us "support the troops" whether it means clapping in stadiums or sporting a bumper sticker.

But war is obviously more real than a bunch of white guys in tan tanks rolling through the desert. War happens everywhere. It breaks out in villages and cities all over the world. Despicable tactics are used all the time, and people suffer. In Congo, just as in some other African nations, war means pillaging. It means making the scars, wounds and losses of that war permanent. We're used to civilized war, shooting from far away, and traveling to the other side of the world. We're not used to war in our homes and in our beds. In no way do we understand how sex and rape could be used as a weapon, and for all of those reasons, stories like this aren't ones that reach the average American.

If you've never understood it before, it's why we're obviously so hated. Being able to feel so untouchable and civilized that we live above things that are realities breeds resentment. The United States marketed itself for so long as a free, capitalist, free-enterprise place that those multitudes of immigrants who came here in the last two-hundred years saw the disconnect between foreign and domestic affairs as a positive if things were so positive in the United States. The American people have enjoyed it so much that it's increased year-to-year. War is nothing but a television show in a far off place unless you know people fighting, and most Americans can't name three African nations. Suffering around the world is simply far less important than an all-new One Tree Hill, or a Facebook status update about the weather. So, if you were sickened by the article, I was too, but the same way those people who committed those atrocious acts had no regard for the suffering of humans, neither do we, really.

Putting it into words...Why Tony Romo Sucks

I've always said that your NFL team is like your girlfriend. You think all week about what you're going to to with your alone time on Sunday. Getting to see her on Monday nights means that she's special. Opening the season on Thursday night means that you've just had a good year. You work all week to save money to travel with her and if you see her and she disappoints you, you question your relationship. Your team's running backs are her breasts, the things that visually get the most play, and if they're big and move quickly, they're an asset. The wide receivers are her stomach, if their routes are crisp, they make everything look good, if not, nothing can ever look just right. On the flipside, her back is the defensive line, where an up-and-down rush is most coveted. Her legs are the linebackers, lean, fast, and thought by some to be better than any pair of running backs. Her butt is the combination of defensive backs, evenly distributing to cancel out a bad wide receiver group. Her hair is the special teams, the wild-card or the afterthought, although some coaches preach the importance of special teams. Her face is the offensive line, working always to protect the quarterback, which is her personality. Her parents are the coaches, and your girlfriend will be pretty to other men with or without you.

My team's, or girlfriend's personality unfortunately is Tony Romo, and that's only because I've always had the same girlfriend, disappointing as life with her has been for this common-law marriage. I've seen every snap that Tony Romo has taken in the NFL, including wild under- or over-thrown interceptions where his real girlfriend was shown on camera immediately after, multiple fumbles in single games, Favre-like meltdowns, losses where all of the opposing team's points were results of his turnovers, and fumbled holds that result in ended seasons and Bill Parcells quitting (again).

My estimation?

Tony Romo sucks. There is no player costing his team more points on a week-to-week basis. There are fifteen million problems with the Dallas Cowboys, and even more people out there who simply hate them, and right now, they're one of the five worst teams in the league. Their roster isn't very talented, and their coaches, from top to bottom are even less talented. Wholesale changes need to and will come, but right now, my girlfriend's personality is killing me, and you can see it all over her face. She's erratic. Everyone thinks she's pretty, and you know how a pretty girl's head can get when everyone out there thinks that everyone else likes her. She gets away with a lot from everyone because of how she looks when she's dressed up. Otherwise, she can't handle responsibility, to please me, to be faithful even to herself, to be a positive reflection of her parents, or to be someone I want to stay around. I liked her before people thought she was pretty, even back when we were both young and she was the cutest girl in school. But this personality she has now is hurting me and everyone around me. Now I find myself fantasizing about girls with even personalities. Now that's sexy-just let the whole package carry them through, I like that. They're not always the prettiest, but they win, and wins feel good.