Victims of Congo rape epidemic: how you can help (update).
Last month here on BoingBoing, we pointed to a New York Times story about the rape epidemic in the Congo, "Rape Epidemic Raises Trauma of Congo War." Susannah Breslin tipped us to that story, and she provides an update.
The [NYT] piece painted a horrifying portrait of mass rapes in war-torn Eastern Congo. According to the UN, 27,000 women were raped in the South Kivu Province in 2006, and “[t]he sexual violence in Congo is the worst in the world." These rapes are particularly brutal: "Many have been so sadistically attacked from the inside out, butchered by bayonets and assaulted with chunks of wood, that their reproductive and digestive systems are beyond repair," wrote Jeffrey Gettleman, the East Africa bureau chief of the Times. "'We don’t know why these rapes are happening, but one thing is clear,' said Dr. Mukwege, who works in South Kivu Province, the epicenter of Congo’s rape epidemic. 'They are done to destroy women.'"Information on how to make financial donations and provide other forms of support are detailed in the full text of Susannah's post: Link.(...) In the [Boing Boing] comments, a reader asked: "Does anyone know of anyway people could help?" So, I wrote an email to Gettleman, asking if there was something people could do. Gettleman suggested I get in touch with Erika Beckman, Project Manager of the Female Victims of Sexual Violence project at the Panzi Hospital. I've posted her email in full. Let others know how they can help stop the Congo rape epidemic by posting about it on your blog.
Previously on BB:
Africa -- rape epidemic in Congo war worsens
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Now that we've got 2*10^5 eyes looking at this, somebody with some official-type name, like "vvsp@boingboing.net" should start a paypal account so that those of us who'd like to donate _now_, while our attention is still spanned, could do so and trust that y'all would forward the money to the Panzi Hospital folks on a timely basis. (I'm not even sure what my bank tellers would _do_ if I walked in wanting to wire money to the Congo.) Maybe even a little donation meter on the right side-bar there...
This Friday is "Black Friday" and I was contemplating spending my check on cool stuff I've seen in boingboing gadgets.
But I think I'll just call my bank (Don't worry, Phil. Your bank will be happy to wire your money.)and let the (family members who are of means)know where I sent their Christmas present.
"Now that we've got 2*10^5 eyes looking at this, somebody with some official-type name, like "vvsp@boingboing.net" should start a paypal account so that those of us who'd like to donate _now_, while our attention is still spanned, could do so and trust that y'all would forward the money to the Panzi Hospital folks on a timely basis. (I'm not even sure what my bank tellers would _do_ if I walked in wanting to wire money to the Congo.) Maybe even a little donation meter on the right side-bar there..."
YES! PLEASE DO!! Thanks to the wonders of Paypal I have managed to free myself from the stresses of dealing with banks. I, too, would feel very anxious about wiring money to the Congo... Just getting a replacement ATM card is a fiasco... But, besides my fear of bank tellers... I find that I am more prone to donate to causes if there is an instant option to do so presented to me. Donations, like any other "purchase", are impulse buys. For BoingBoing to really help these women in the Congo they should offer the ability for people to respond to their impulse to be helpful immediately.
This is the great tragedy of "developed" society. I am completely willing to click on a few buttons to donate a hundred dollars in the hopes that it might help in some way to help the victims of this travesty, but I hesitate to write down the information I need to do so and then actually go to the bank and tell them what I want to do with my money.
This is so terrible that I don't even fully believe it. People are raping other people so badly that they are causing damage to their digestive tracts?! The rapists wear LA Laker jackets? There is an epidemic?! It reads like some sick dystopia's version of the future where LA is the new Mecca and the only things that make god happy are Basketball and Violent Rape.
Anyway, I'm going to go ahead and write that money transferring information down and try to go to the bank and try to explain to them what I want to do with my money, though I do have some doubts that it will actually work. I feel like they are going to tell me that I need something fancier than "basic checking" or that half my money will actually go back to them.
Heal Africa in Goma, DRC is the other hospital ( I think along with Panzi one of 3 in the world) that performs fistual surgery on these women.
I've visited them a number of times (as a film maker) and witnesses first hand the work they do sewing up the hundreds of women that come for surgery after being brutally torn apart:
http://healafrica.org/
Anderson Cooper 360 did a piece on them last year and is again this coming January.
A friend of mine, Christine York of Healing Arts, through Heal Africa, works with these women creating jewelry and textiles - helping them earn enough money to go home after surgery with cash in hand, so that they are accepted by their families and not shunned for being brutally raped.
http://www.soulsinstride.com/main/?healingArts
Another friend, Melinda Kerr a fabulous photographer in Aus, is selling Calendars to raise funds for Heal Africa:
http://www.zazzle.com/mellykerr/product/158537203382907423
I don't know exactly what they plan on doing with the money donated. Another productive activity would be to just send malaria preventing nets that cost a quarter.
tsol: You're probably right, the UN must be the problem, or it could be the countless Congolais who prefer to destroy their country. All the Congolais I know got out during the last revolution, or the one before that, or the one before that.
The problem isn't just having security forces it's finding a way to change a culture.
As for the UN, name something good they've done that hasn't screwed up five other things.
My thoughts and prayers go out to the families and individuals going through such sadistic torture...
Resolution for all these sick atrocities in Congo and other places around the world is left in the hands of a higher power, Jah, who can completely and justly handle such crimes because man cannot and does not have the ability to do it. Peace!
http://savvmari.com
Ok dont get me wrong I dont agree with what is happening over there. Trust me I cant think of a more horrid bunch of crimes. Be that as it may am I the only one tired of hearing of entire countries, under cruel regimes and being expected to bail them out nonstop? What ever happened to the people of a country standing up to their oppressive governments and overthrowing them? Where do we draw the line.
This isnt much different (other than scale) than having a woman friend who is abused by her husband. In the end you can put all the bandages on her you want, you can give her all the money for bus tickets you want, you can tell the husband he is being an evil prick. Unless she leaves or someone kills the bastard there aint much more than you can do. In the end the victim has to stop being victimized or the cycle will always continue.
@red eye
Your comment can be compared to asking 11th century Europe to give up feudalism.
In these countries, rape (and other violence) has become part of the social order. While many Africans would rather not deal with threats of rape, they see no alternatives to it, and they don't have a way of organizing mass efforts against rape. Moreover, many Africans profit through the system which condones or encourages rape - they have even less of a reason to change the social order.
Efforts to help individual women (as opposed to addressing social change) may seem like small measures, but they're actually very important. As timzilla mentioned, the "bandages" and "bus tickets" we send to Congo aren't one-time use, they're monies which are used to train African medical personal and support hospitals. Sending a hundred bucks to the Congo isn't paying for a hundred women to be treated, it's paying for doctors or equipment who will help thousands of Congolese in their lifetime.
Considering that these kinds of atrocities have been associated with warfare since prehistory, it seems that there might be some adaptive reason for it.
In animal behaviors, we see competing groups killing each other when food is scarce. Competing males kill infants in order to send the females back into estrous so that the winner's genes are propragated.
What we are seeing here is a combination of the two behaviors - rape so that the conquerers genes are dispersed into the conquered population, but the brutality of the acts killing or reproductively maiming, so that there is less competition for finite resources.
The most effective ways to stem these behaviors would be to address the issues of food and birth control. Unfortunately, the leaders of these countries rarely care about what is best for their people, individually or as a whole, and Western humanitarian efforts are siphoned into the coffers of those using it to their own ends.
Which is not to say that donations to these women are wasted - I'm sure the individual women appreciate them very much. But it won't stop this from happening next time.
Be that as it may am I the only one tired of hearing of entire countries, under cruel regimes and being expected to bail them out nonstop? What ever happened to the people of a country standing up to their oppressive governments and overthrowing them?
Hear hear! I'm sick of hearing about other people who have been born into inescapable environments of torture and brutality. It's time they took responsibility for their own problems. Don't like being violently raped? Don't be a Congolese woman - it's that simple!
Why do other people insist on asking for help with their "life-shattering problems"? I've solved every problem I've ever had by myself, most of them much worse than these women. Not once have I ever asked for or received help from society to get me where I am today.
Amoral libertarianism FTW!
Red Eye (9):
Expected? Nonstop? We give a little charity. In the meantime, we continue to be prosperous, and the world continues to have problems.That's kind of how this got started.It's entirely different. These women are not in relationships with their rapists. They're being grabbed and assaulted by hostile strangers.All of which help. Do we withhold medical treatment because not everyone recovers?If someone is wounded, you bind up their wounds. If they're attacked, you protect them from their attackers. Has no one ever given you help that you failed to take full advantage of? Wasn't it help all the same? We all hope to be forgiven for our backsliding and imperfections; and therefore we should treat the needy with no more severity than we ourselves would hope to meet with from our friends.Yes. And it occasionally happens that the victim is the one who can put a stop to it. When they can't, as is usually the case, and is certainly the case here, others have to step in to help stop the victimization.KFraser (11):
Considering that atrocities aren't occurring on this level in any other current or recent war, there must be some cause for it other than biology. I recommend you read Belief in Evolutionary Psychology May Be Hardwired, Study Says for insights into this argument.Alternately, you can raise your right hand and swear that all of your interactions with the opposite sex are governed by your concern over the available food supply and your desire to reproduce.
We do not consistently see this kind of violence or this level of violence accompanying food shortages or famines; and the violence that is taking place is not a function of competition over food.Have you by any chance noticed that human sexual reproduction doesn't work that way? Insufficient calories in a woman's diet will suppress fertility, but that's in direct conflict with your previous point about competition for food.The kind of physical damage many of these women are suffering is incompatible with your theory that the rapes are motivated by a desire to reproduce.It doesn't affect the rapists' food supply.The most effective way to address this problem is to give help to the women who've been hurt, protect women in these areas from further assaults, and reestablish peace and the rule of law.In this case, I think not; and the possibility of that happening does not excuse us from giving aid where we can.Nonsense. Do we refuse to give medical treatment because it won't bring an immediate end to human disease and suffering? Do we neglect public health measures because curing one disease just means people will get sick from something else instead? We do not. We give help where we can, and the world gets better.Nonsense, also, because we aren't such slaves to our biology.
You know why these guys are committing these appallingly brutal rapes? Because they can, and because they're egging each other on to worse and worse behavior. That's stoppable. It's hard, but it can be done. And we can help do it.
What Teresa said. I plan to donate to the organization providing aid to these women. Fine, my small donation may not stop the mass rape epidemic immediately. But it might help one or more victims who didn't deserve what happened to them, and when we pool our focus and our resources together, we can help instigate change.
I believe that people are mixing Apples and Floorwax again.
This program is not about funding an end to attrocity - it's about helping rape victims survive the attrocities committed against them.
These are lives, people.
They need help and cherishing.
Not to sound cliche, but this IS about not seeing the forrest for the trees.
Thanks for the link to my EvPsych piece, Teresa. It's unsettling how quick some folks are to jump to EvPsych parlor behaviorism when the topic of discussion is indigenous people, especially in Africa.
Not that such specious argument isn't EVER applied to people in the developed world, but still, I'd love to see more speculation that the annato coloring of the Cheeto stains on male bloggers' fingertips is likely an attempt at sexual display than I would more relentless bestializing of non-white folks.
In any event, as I wrote at Pandagon a couple months back, it's not so much that people in the developed world are working for a living, minding their own business, and being asked to bail out a nation of people who have screwed things up in their own backward country.
The Congo is one of those places that reminds us that "underdeveloped" is the adjectival form of a transitive verb. We underdeveloped the Congo Basin: these horrific wars are one result.
And the underdevelopment didn't just take place back in the days of King Leopold and Belgian imperialism a century ago. Every person reading this, myself included, has likely helped to create the conditions in which the rape war continues. From my Pandagon post:
Teresa (13):
Alternately, you can raise your right hand and swear that all of your interactions with the opposite sex are governed by your concern over the available food supply and your desire to reproduce.
Tell me you honestly believe that no woman has ever married a man because she believed he would be able to provide for her and her current and/or future children.
We do not consistently see this kind of violence or this level of violence accompanying food shortages or famines; and the violence that is taking place is not a function of competition over food.
You mean like in New Orleans after the hurricane?
The kind of physical damage many of these women are suffering is incompatible with your theory that the rapes are motivated by a desire to reproduce.
Have you never known people who do things without thinking them through or realizing why? I wasn’t positing that these explanations were on a conscious level. Do all the men you know who have sex with their wives and girlfriends do it because they're trying to make babies? And yet it appears to be a basic human drive.
It doesn't affect the rapists' food supply.
Do you think they feed these women after brutalizing them? Do you believe they don’t take whatever food is there? Do you think that if they were well-fed and safe in their hometowns they would even be in the military?
The most effective way to address this problem is to give help to the women who've been hurt, protect women in these areas from further assaults, and reestablish peace and the rule of law.
Helping the women who have been hurt does indeed address their immediate problem at this moment in time. But just how would you propose protecting them in the future, and reestablishing peace and rule of law? Sending in Blackwater?
You know why these guys are committing these appallingly brutal rapes? Because they can, and because they're egging each other on to worse and worse behavior. That's stoppable. It's hard, but it can be done. And we can help do it.
Yes, because they can. And because they were raised that way. In an environment where life is cheap and people die all the time, so what’s another woman, more or less, especially one that isn’t even related to you.
Nonsense, also, because we aren't such slaves to our biology.
-WE- aren't such slaves to our biology. Those of us who are lucky enough to have been born into a place where we don't have to worry about if we're going to eat tomorrow, or finding the best place to hide from raiders, or watching over half our children die from disease or starvation. Not being a slave to the basic issues of staying alive long enough to produce and raise at least a couple of children to adulthood is, indeed, a luxury we enjoy. Not everyone in the world has that luxury.
I wasn’t trying to diminish the plight of these women, or rationalize why one shouldn’t offer help to them. What I WAS trying to do was make some sense out of this, because I can't help but believe that such things could be prevented if one is able to determine the root causes.
So, yes – help the women who are hurting now. AND seriously try to figure out why it is happening now in order to prevent this from happening to their daughters and granddaughters.
While sending money is a feel good thing what is the core of the problem.
First and foremost, who supplies these countries with weapons so they can have these wars. The U.S., China and Russia and the list goes on. Stop the weapons sales and slow down the carnage.
I am by the way not a anti gun rights supporter in this country.
But when sending billions of dollars worth of weapons to countries where w know what they will be use for, and sometimes in line with our political views. This is wrong.
Second, there is no education in these countries, education leads to a higher level of understanding of human rights and the beginning of an economy that fits into the world.
Third. Jobs, what are we as the biggest consumers in the world doing to make sure people are paid fairly and the world economy spread out to be more even. As long as we buy $200.00 shoes made by someone who makes a 2.00 a day, the rate at which 70% of the world lives on then we will be faced with the ignorance that causes this kind of genocide. That's why they rape and destroy the women , so they can not bear the next generation.
Kill the last women and you have destroyed the race.
The U.S. government understood this and used it in our genocide of the Native Americans, although women scalps were worth less then a mans, they still paid 50% and 25% for children.
So it's great that people want to help send money to a hospital to help individuals, and it's refreshing to see that some people care. To stop this means we must stop the way we do business and conduct our own activity. Hard to berate a country a country for crimes against humanity when we ourselves are involved in the same thing, only with higher tech weapons.
So possibly, a rethinking of what has been said is historically true is needed. Do we want to continue down the same path humans have always followed or, change our way and put our resources into education, exploration of medicine, space, oceans, new power supplies and create a better life for ourselves, and those who follow us and around he world.
We are at a turning point. Albert Einstein said he did not know how the would fight WW 3, but he did know how WW 4 would be fought, with sticks and stones. Are we destined to repeat our history all over again, or change our way life by changing what we support and who we support.
Geoffrey
Hello, is there the pay pal account ready yet? any news on that?