Rape In Congo, A Year Later: Change?
One year ago, writer and blogger Susannah Breslin pointed us to a shocking, sad story by Jeffrey Gettlemen in the New York Times about widespread rape in the African nation of Congo. Rape is used as a tool of war and civil destabilization, and the sheer scope and violence of the epidemic here is unprecedented. Here is that BB post, and here is an update posted a a few weeks later.
Today, a year later, there is a powerful followup story by Gettlemen in the Times. You really must read it. Susannah has a post up about this, and reactions, and how you can help, on Slate's new femblog, XX Factor.
[T]he UN has [since] declared such grand scale acts of sexual violence "a tactic of war." Now, Gettleman returns with another report from the frontlines. "Congo, it seems, is finally facing its horrific rape problem," he writes, "which United Nations officials have called the worst sexual violence in the world." Today, due to international attention, outside aid, and local efforts, a "culture of impunity" is breaking down, ending the silence when it comes to rape. More arrests of perpetrators are taking place than ever before, but, Gettleman is quick to point out, the number of those charged remains relatively small, particularly in a culture "where women tend to be beaten down anyway."Rape In Congo, A Year Later: Change? (Slate XX Factor)In makeshift forums, women are telling their stories. "'There was no dinner,'" one woman's tale begins. "It was me who was dinner." In the audience, several women wore T-shirts that read in Kiswahili: "I refuse to be raped. What about you?" Eve Ensler, best known for having written "The Vagina Monolgues," is seeking to put an end to the worst rape problem in the world. Ensler deems the phenomenon "femicide": "'I have spent the past 10 years of my life in the rape mines of the world,' she said. 'But I have never seen anything like this.'"
Photo: Honorata Barinjibanwa, a child rape victim in Bukavu, Congo, who became pregnant as a result of her attack. (Hazel Thompson for The New York Times / Thanks, Susannah Breslin)
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The Congo may be the worst spot but it's hardly the only one in that part of Africa. In the neigbouring Cameroun, girls are often subjected to breast ironing to make them less likely to be raped.
A cure almost as bad as the disease.
http://drvitelli.typepad.com/providentia/2007/05/activists_seek_.html
"rp mn"? Sh's mkng t snd lk sm knd f nsn rsrc...
What central Africa needs is their own version of India's Gulabi Gang. When the authorities won't help you, what else is there but total resignation or vigilante justice?
This utterly breaks my heart. That sounds so limp but I feel dehumanized and despondent just reading about it.
i remember this from last year. then, as now, i wish i were a different person; one capable of dropping everything, going to the congo, and meting out some vigilante justice. i'm not that guy, sadly...
Where can I donate money to the manufacture and dissemination of anti-rape condoms (aka vagina dentata)?
But, If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the A-Team.
Thank you for sharing. It's unpleasant, but awareness is so important.
Rape is a tool of war and oppression because it disrupts the victims' view of themselves as autonomous and as able to control their environment. It should be a crime punished a whole lot more severely than a little jail time because it is a crime which causes lasting damage to the individual, their families and their environments. I think the courts should ask the woman what she would like to have done about it and then vote on whether it's humane enough. Rape is a symptom of a kind of sickness which should never be tolerated.
This is different than kink, just in case anyone feels the need to bring up consentual roughness (which, oddly enough, is a term that gets bandied about often in 'he said, she said' cases by people who cannot, for some reason, tell the difference between consent and non-consent.) There is a huge difference between rape and play.
Wow, that's horrible, I can't even imagine living in a situation that awful.
at #9 thanks for the explanation on that, I was kind of wondering myself, how and who are they using rape as a tool of war there.
It takes some brave souls to take such a problem head on. The women and activists who work with them are true heroes.
Sadly, rape as a tool of war is not going to go out of style. At least, not until war goes out of style, and I don't see that happening any time soon.
interesting how its an epidemic there but no one talks about how prevalent it is here. i have been raped and every woman i know (which is about 50 to 60) except for 2 have been raped or sexually assaulted. its an epidemic here too....
#12 Yes, yes it is. I don't think I know anyone personally who is a woman and has not assaulted, either in terms of domestic violence, in terms of childhood abuse or in terms of rape. Or all of the above. I can't count how many times I've gotten to know someone and had that conversation standing in thier kitchen, in hallways at school, after watching a movie, etc. Thier stories make me want to commit felonies involving hedge shears and gasoline, but this is one of my hot button issues. I'm not even slightly tolerant of 'she wanted it' or 'she should have known better' arguments.
I get shaking pissed about it when I read things in classes and workshops which suggest, even accidentally, that sort of male superior, every man for himself, if something happens it has to be your fault for wanting, earning or stupidly stumbling into it bullshit. It amazes me what lengths we can go to, as a society, to suggest that horrible things happen to people who deserve it (because they're stupid, or in the wrong place at the wrong time, or because they don't know what they want, or because someone said she was into that kind of thing, etc.)
MouthyB; it is not normal.
1. A great book "What is the What" it is not the Congo but a boy's tale from the Sudan. Great insight to what displaced persons sometimes experience.
2. Sherrlyn Borkgren's Blog http://www.lovesimplyhappens.blogspot.com
Pictures from the Congo and a personable story of a little girl. Worth the effort.
3. Heal Africa--worth supporting. The best Aid group in the Congo.