Breaking the Silence

Eastern Congolese women are at last able to speak about their long ordeal

by Joseph M. Kyalangilwa, President of the Civil Society of the Province of South Kivu/Congo and President of the International Great Lakes Forum

It is a fact – although a painful one – that in wars anywhere in the world soldiers who have spent a long time at the front have always acted violently towards defenceless civilian populations they come across and among other evil deeds have also raped women. If asked about these degrading crimes present and past troop commanders always answer in the same way: «That is war.» It is as if there was nothing that could be done about it.

Acts of rape committed by soldiers have always shown a total disregard for any respect for women because any sexual act involving force violates the law, since the sexual act in civilized society is legally a matter between those who really love each other.

The rapes with which we powerless witnesses have been confronted in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo since the 2nd August 1998 and which the aggressors and soldiers of the regular armies of Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi disrespectfully boast about, are loathsome crimes devoid of any human feeling. They are committed indiscriminately and with unparalleled brutality against Congolese women, girls and even children. What is also new and a scandal of huge proportions is that even soldiers among the official contingents of the Blue Helmets Mission of the UN in the Congo (MONUC) have been involved in the very same crimes against the Congolese civilian population, instead of doing their job of protecting the civilian population and their belongings, as their mission states.

The responsible persons in the UN have finally begun to punish those men found guilty of rape and other sexual acts of violence against women and young Congolese schoolgirls by fining them five or ten dollars. However, not only are such fines such ridiculously small punishments, but it must also been said that human right activists in the region have been reporting such crimes and been officially informing the UN about what has been going on since 2000. Outrageously, nothing was done about these reports for a long time; and if the local MONUC people responsible did react, they negated the facts and accused the leaders of the civil society of inciting panic, that is if they were not insulting them for being good-for-nothings, or poor, embittered and notorious pessimists. Western media, many of which never miss an opportunity to discredit the civil society and its leaders, often went along with this smear campaign. Fortunately, the truth is persistent; it cannot take the comfortable and fast elevator up to the executive floors of public opinion as falsehood does, but is used to taking the arduous route up the backstairs. This is what happened to the eastern Congolese civil society. As so often in the past, it made use of the Internet to inform all the decision makers of the international community and the NGOs of the north about the ordeal of the women in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Unbearably horrific evidence

In the following, I will quote at length from reports of courageous women who were victims of rape. These women feel it is important for other women to know how Congolese women endure such inhuman acts, committed by heartless and soulless men. The offenders mainly come from Rwanda or from the ranks of their collaborators and the traitors of the RCD Goma (Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie), which are totally at the service of the present regime in Kigali.

The atrocities were committed in the south Kivu, the east province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo which borders on Rwanda. A short introductory explanation precedes each report to help the reader in the north better understand the situation.

Since September 2004, kidnappings for ransom have multiplied in Kivu. Imprisonment for the women, who are raped continuously by armed men, is a terrifying ordeal. Shootings are very frequent, too. The villages are terrorized. One of these women courageously agreed to speak about her ordeal.

At the end of December 2004, the village Chinjoma in the territory of Walungu, fifty kilometres south of Bukavu, the capital of the province south Kivu (it borders on the Rwandese town Cyangugu to the south of Lake Kivu), was subjected to kidnappings and ransom money was demanded. Today, only half the people remain in Chinjoma. Most inhabitants fled to the football stadium of Mafundwe.

Two months later, a forty-eight-year-old woman from this village returns home from hospital. She is the widely respected president of Shirika, a Christian movement. She is very sad after having lost her parents, and in her language (Mashi) she speaks about the terrible days she went through. In the following, passages of her report are quoted in full.

In the church

«It was on Wednesday, 29 December 2004, and I was just returning from the fields. When I arrived at the village entrance, I noticed a disturbing silence. I hid behind the wall of the small Catholic chapel to observe what was going on. There was not a soul to be seen in the large village square. Suddenly, a voice behind me made me jump: «Hagarare!» (Don’t move!). I suddenly found myself standing very close to a huge man carrying very dirty, long rifles on both shoulders. I immediately realised that he was a member of the notorious Interahamwe(*), which was terrorizing our area and had been spreading despair among our villages for several months. The barbarian made me understand with large gestures of his dagger that I should put my sack of food on my head and go to the wooden Protestant church. Almost all the village inhabitants were there, sitting on the floor, with their hands on their heads.

My father, my brothers and my cousins were there, too. Everyone I had known since my birth and all those born after me were present. Only about twelve armed soldiers stood around us. I recognized two of them who I had regularly seen at the market of Mudusa (one of the villages in the territory of Walunga). I had always found it difficult to believe those who said that Congolese soldiers of the RCD Goma made common cause with the Rwandese rebels, but now I no longer had any doubts. Two of the soldiersI knew well: one was a member of the Agence Nationale de Renseignement (secret service). I would be very surprised if he spoke a single word of Kinyarwanda (Rwandese language). The things they had plundered from the huts of the village were piled up in the corners of the church: Radios, dresses, the chapel’s generator and all the goods of the three boutiques in the village.

The one who had found me instructed me to lie down in the centre of the church with my back on the floor. He pulled up my skirt, tore my blouse and raped me in front of everyone! Afterwards he moved over for the next man. My father-in-law, who is seventy-four years old, rose in order to protest loudly. I only heard the shot fired behind me. Then I saw the old man sink to his knees.» (to be continued)

Reports like these, from which we publish excerpts, are not easy to digest. It is, however, the duty of the media, bound to uphold the dignity of man, to identify such excesses. Unfortunately, it is not enough today to supply the responsible people, in this case the UN Human Rights Commission, with the appropriate documents containing names and details of the responsible persons, as the civil society of east Congo has been doing in an exemplary way for years. Only if the public reacts and political pressure applied do things start moving.

The atrocities, which have been going on in eastern Congo for years – and unfortunately this region is not the only one – are very difficult to understand, let alone explained. One thing is clear. They are not simply the result of the «badness» of human beings. The cruelties described here overstep any mark. There is, however, in all their perfidiousness and extreme sadism something planned. It is not just about perverse impulses running free here; a civilian population is being systematically intimidated. These «soldiers» are being pushed to behave in this way, probably even trained to do so. By whom? The answer lies among those who are interested in the region. For those who have read our previous reports about east Congo, this search for an answer is not so difficult. We have to search among those who are interested in weakening a people’s courage to stand up for its beliefs and civil society itself, because they stand to gain personal material profit from the chaos. We have to look at all the footpads who are interested in the rich supplies of natural resources in east Congo and who are interested in everything but peace and a return to the rule of law. In Kivu there is everything that feeds crimes: gold, diamonds, coltan and immense deposits of oil, as the new discoveries at Lake Albert (in the Ituri region in north Kivu) have shown. In addition there are: a large number of jobless soldiers lacking any perspective and who only know how to do one thing, to torture and kill. As long as this problem is not solved, the civilian population will continue to suffer. For how long?

Peter Kuepfer

(*) The Interahamwe is the main militant Hutu-militia from Rwanda which was heavily involved in the genocide of April 1994 against the Tutsi minority and whose fighters fled by the hundreds of thousands into Kivu after the conquest of Rwanda by exile Tutsi. From there, they undertook further military operations to destabilize the Kagamé government. Many of these fighters are still in south Kivu (which accepted them as asylum-seekers at the time!) and terrorize the population. For understandable reasons they refuse to return to Rwanda, where in the meantime the Tutsi are in power again.