Archive for the "Press Releases" Category
For Immediate Release
For more information contact:
Susan Swan
Managing Director, Communications
V-Day
press@vday.org
(917) 865-6603
Sarah Martino
Communications Coordinator
Students Active for Ending Rape
sarahm@safercampus.org
(347) 293-0953
New York, NY, December 1, 2009—V-Day and Students Active for Ending Rape (SAFER) are proud to announce the launch of their joint “Campus Accountability Project: A Demand for Sexual Assault Policy Reform.” For the past ten years, both V-Day and SAFER have been helping college and university students organize to fight sexual violence and challenge rape culture on their campuses. By combining forces on the multi-phase Campus Accountability Project (CAP), both organizations hope to empower more students to take an active role in changing the ways in which their campuses prevent and respond to sexual assault, and spark a nationwide dialogue on what schools should be doing to properly educate and protect their students.
Sexual assault on college campuses is a pressing issue. One in four women will survive rape or attempted rape during their college career and rape is the most common violent crime committed on college campuses. Colleges and Universities have the power to change these statistics and foster healthy sexual attitudes on campus by implementing comprehensive and easily accessible sexual assault policies and prevention programs. V-Day and SAFER believe that students have the power to hold their schools accountable for these key provisions and to fight for and win reforms when necessary.
The CAP kicks off this winter as V-Day and SAFER invite college students across the country to become part of the movement by researching their school’s current sexual assault policy and providing feedback. Students can register for the V-Day/Safer Campus Accountability Project Database where they will be guided through a thorough policy analysis process, answering questions meant to assess the policy’s thoroughness, inclusivity, and adherence to federal law. Once completed, these analyses will be reviewed by staff and submitted to the Database, creating a powerful tool for student activists and administrators to see how their schools match up to peer institutions and what improvements can be made.
After the first batch of policies have been submitted, SAFER trainers will be available for students who want to make changes on their campus. During the 2010–2011 school year, V-Day and SAFER will review the compiled information to assess the state of the nation’s campus sexual assault policy’s and establish a thorough list of key criteria to effectively prevent, track and respond to sexual assaults on college campuses. We hope to eventually integrate our database into existing college ranking systems, so students and parents have easy access to the information.
Please visit http://safercampus.org/campus-accountability-project or http://www.vday.org/cap for more information.
About V-Day
V-Day is a global activist movement shattering taboos, raising millions and transforming communities to end violence against women and girls. Annually, activists stage thousands of benefit productions of Founder/playwright Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues and other works. Working at the intersection of art, social action, and politics, V-Day empowers grassroots activists to become leaders, turning pain to power. To date, the V-Day movement has raised over $70 million, crafted international educational, media and PSA campaigns, reopened shelters, and funded over 11,000 community-based anti-violence programs and safe houses in Democratic Republic Of Congo, Egypt, Haiti, Iraq, Kenya, Pakistan, and South Dakota. V-Day was named one of Worth magazine’s “100 Best Charities” in 2001 and Marie Claire’s “Top Ten Charities” in 2006. The ‘V’ in V-Day stands for Victory, Valentine and Vagina. http://www.vday.org
About SAFER
Started by Columbia University students in 2000, Students Active for Ending Rape (SAFER) is the only organization that fights sexual violence and rape culture by empowering student-led campaigns to reform college sexual assault policies. An all-volunteer collective, SAFER facilitates student organizing through a comprehensive training manual; in-person workshops and trainings; free follow-up mentoring; our Campus Sexual Assault Policies Database; and a growing online resource library and network for student organizers. Committed to social change through community mobilization, SAFER arms students with the tools needed to mobilize communities and make lasting change on campus. www.safercampus.org
Agnes Pareyio, V-Day Kenya Director and founder of two V-Day Safe Houses for girls escaping Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Kenya, will take part in a Q&A following the Boston premiere screening of Africa Rising: The Grassroots Movement to End Female Genital Mutilation, a film by Paula Heredia. The Q&A, hosted by Ambassador Swanee Hunt will also feature Kadidia Aoudou Sibide of AMSOPT, Taina Bien-Aime, Executive Director of Equality Now, and FGM survivor Fanta Camera.
WHAT: Boston Premier of Africa Rising: The Grassroots Movement to End Female Genital Mutilation, followed by Q&A with leading FGM activists
WHERE: Weiner Auditorium, Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A
WHEN: Monday, November 9, 2009, 6:00pm
For tickets and more information please contact info@equalitynow.org
Due to the incredible efforts and support by activists such as yourselves, V-Day is pleased to announce that Gov. Schwarzenegger today signed SBX3 13, by Senator Elaine Alquist (D-San Jose) to restore $16.3 million of state funding to support California domestic violence shelters.
SBX3 13 provides for a one-time $16.3 million loan from the Alternative and Renewable Fuel and Vehicle Technology Fund to fund domestic violence shelters statewide for the 2009-10 fiscal year. The loan will be repaid with interest at the rate earned by the Pooled Money Investment Account by June 30, 2013.
Therefore, V-Day will NOT have a protest this Friday, as previously announced.
Though this is a great V-Victory, our work on this is not complete. V-Day will begin dialoguing and researching what actions will help make this funding permanent – as this bill is a one-time measure.
We’d like to thank you all for jumping in on this effort and for all the work you are doing! Stay tuned to V-Mail for further ways you can help bring permanent funding for DV groups in CA.
Agnes Pareyio, the internationally recognized leader dedicated to ending female genital mutilation (FGM) in Kenya, has been named Kenya Director for V-Day, the global activist movement to end violence against women and girls.
Ms. Pareyio, who was named the United Nations in Kenya Person of the Year in 2005, has worked with V-Day since 2002. She is the founder and director of the first V-Day Safe House for the Girls, which was established for young women and girls fleeing FGM in Narok, Kenya. The Safe House provides a safe haven for girls escaping from FGM and early marriage – a place where young women can safely celebrate an alternative “rite of passage,” enabling Masai women to follow their tradition without undergoing the cut.
“After witnessing Agnes and the power of her transformative work over 7 years, I am proud and honored that she will now be the director of V-Day in Kenya. Agnes is a force of nature with a vision as strong as her heart and I know that under her leadership she will bring about the day when we know longer know FGM in Masailand,” stated Ensler.
In the summer of 2009, Ms. Paryeio and V-Day opened the second V-Day Safe House in Kenya, the Sakutiek Rescue Center. The house is located in the Rift Valley in Masailand, 100 miles West of Nairobi and next door to two schools facilitating the continued education for the girls who are housed there.
As Kenya Director for V-Day, Agnes will lead efforts across Kenya and Africa, working with activists to further spread the Safe House model and the message of V-Day towards ending violence against women and girls.
“Being part of the V-Day movement, has allowed me to expand my work to end FGM and early marriage and to reach more girls and their communities than I could have imagined,” stated Pareyio. “Knowing that we in Kenya are connected to thousands of V-Day activists around the world inspires us to continue the work we do. I am proud to lead V-Day’s work in Kenya.”
Agnes began her efforts to end FGM by walking from village to village in the Rift valley of Kenya on foot in 2000, educating boys and girls, mothers and fathers about the dangers of the practice. By 2002, Agnes’ work had stopped 1,500 girls from being cut and, after V-Day bought her a jeep, Agnes had stopped another 4,500 girls from being cut by 2003.
Due to the incredible epidemic of rape in the military in which 1 in 3 women in the military have been raped or sexually assaulted, Veterans for Peace, a national veterans organization, has designated October 12-16 as “Military Rape Awareness Week.”
Eve Ensler will join Veterans for Peace on TUESDAY, OCTOBER 13th for a “Military Rape Awareness Week” public action:
WHO: Ann Wright, Colonel, 29 year veteran of the U.S. Army and U.S. Army Reserves; Leah Bolger, retired U.S. Navy Commander and National Vice President of Veterans for Peace; Sandra Lee, U.S. Army soldier survivor of sexually assault while in the military; Eve Ensler, Founder/Artistic Director of V-Day, the worldwide movement to en violence against women and girls.
WHAT: Veterans for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Granny Peace Brigade, Codepink: Women for Peace, World Can’t Wait, Artists Response Team, We Will Not be Silent, and V-Day will warn potential women recruits at the Armed Forces Recruiting Station in Times Square about the alarming rates of sexual assault and rape of women in the military.
WHEN: 10:30am ET, Tuesday, October 13
WHERE: In front of the Armed Forces Recruiting Station, Times Square, Broadway and 42nd, New York City
More Information on Military Rape Awareness Week >
Kenya
I have just returned from Nairobi with members of our V-team (Cecile Lipworth, Managing Director – Campaigns & Development; Purva Panday, Director – Programs and Development; and Rada Boric, Croatia Director), V-Board (Carole Black, Katherine McFate, and Pat Mitchell), photographer Paula Allen, and supporter Beth Karpfinger.
I want you to know that this has been a week of miracles. Our time in Kenya revealed that our work is bearing fruit, huge delicious successful fruit. Agnes Pareyio (Founder of the V-Day Safe House) has become a major leader and we are pleased to announce that she has just been appointed V-Day’s Kenya Director. She has helped to reduce FGM and child marriage in communities in Massailand significantly, and we can now see a future where it will end. Under her care, the V-Day Safe Houses have become places for girls who run for often long distances in order not to be cut, refuse child marriage (which is tantamount to slavery), go to school. At the new Safe House (which is utterly beautiful, several buildings on gorgeous property) there is a well for water with a windmill. It now provides water for the surrounding community and in a time of drought you can imagine how much this has made the community appreciate Agnes and embrace her ending FGM.
So many other women want Agnes to bring her work to their districts and want to end the practice, that we are now entering the next stage where the work spreads and multiplies. We witnessed classes at the Safe House school, a reconciliation ritual where a girl who ran away to the safe house for over a year to prevent FGM and being sold into early marriage was successfully reunited with her once very angry father and was accepted back into the family without the cut or marriage. We were all present when she came back into her house and it was so emotional. She will now go to school along with her younger sisters who will also be spared FGM. We witnessed the alternative rite of passage ceremony where so many girls graduated, came of age without the cut with their parents present and many male officials in the community who now support Agnes’ work and consider themselves V-Men. We watched girls sing, recite poetry, perform theater – all about their rights, all demanding respect, all refusing FGM. We were welcomed and fed and dressed in Masai jewelry and clothes.
In Nairobi, we watched Winnie Anyango and Duncan Bomba Omwani Papa Omundu Umundu train hundreds of school girls in self-defense at Dolphin Anti-Rape and listened to 15 year old Dorkas tell the tale of fighting off two of her potential rapists, both huge, grown men. They kidnapped her in a car and with the skills she was taught she escaped. We saw how many thousands Winnie and Duncan have trained and we saw the impact it has had and is having on girls’ self esteem and power.
We visited Kibera and Eastland and met new activists who suffered so terribly during the Kenyan post election violence. We had a meeting in Nairobi where many grassroots women came to talk about the terrible rapes, the poverty, the HIV and the lack of prosecutions and justice. We are envisioning a huge V-Day event in Nairobi – a march, rally, Breaking The Silence, in a stadium, a performance of The Vagina Monologues, produced by long time V-Day activist Mumbi Kaigwa to call for justice and rally the women of Kenya. Date soon to be announced.
We witnessed Agnes who is now a great leader, Winnie and Duncan deeply empowered and strong and Mumbi, fierce and kind and inspirational. (Editor’s note: A full photo gallery from the trip will be posted later this month).
Congo
While all this was happening Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went to Eastern Congo, propelled there by our campaign and the many groups and individuals joined in this effort. She met with our activists: Christine Schuler-Deschryver, Director of V-Day Congo, Esther Noto, V-Day Activist from Goma, Dr. Mukwege, Founder of Panzi Hospital and Godfather of the V-Men’s movement and Chou Chou Namegabe Nabintu, President of the South Kivu’s Association of Women Journalists (AFEM), her radio media group that V-Day is funding, who brilliantly and passionately put forward strategies and plans of actions that we have worked on for years. For maybe the first time in history a U.S. Secretary of State made the systematic raping of women the reason to visit a country. Clinton’s trip to Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) signaled to the world that what happens to women actually matters. She listened to rape survivors, on the ground activists, and will hopefully be moved to action.
For many years activists inside and outside of the Congo have worked tirelessly and invisibly to end the war and stop the insane violence being perpetrated against women and girls. They have built local organizations on shoe string budgets, given shelter and food and counseling to the violated, provided medical treatment for raped women in the middle of war zones, done everything in their power to wake up the world to the war in the Congo, talking, writing, blogging about the facts – the over 5 million dead; the hundreds and thousands of raped and tortured women and girls; the exploitation of minerals which fuels the war; the role of Rwanda and Uganda in fighting their lethal wars inside the Congo; the legacy of colonialism and murder that laid the path to all that is happening now. The visit of Secretary Clinton is a marker of this struggle. And, much work needs to be done. Pressure needs to be sustained.
We need to insist on diplomatic solutions to the war and say no to military solutions. We must make sure that the training of a Congolese women’s police force actually happens, hold U.S. corporations accountable for their dealings in the DRC, end impunity by arresting and charging sexual terrorists and making them accountable for their acts, find support for a new Congolese Army, and support local women’s groups on the ground.
The $17 million promised by Secretary Clinton is a fine appetizer, a beginning. I would suggest increasing that with $100 million, the equivalent of one months spending for MONUC, the UN Peacekeeping force in the DRC which has failed so miserably to protect women and girls. Give the $100 million dollars directly to grassroots women on the ground. The women of Congo carry up to 200 pounds on their back a day, not to mention the whole country. With this kind of support, I bet they would figure out how to end the war in a few months.
To cap this past week off, construction has begun on City of Joy! I am so proud to say that Congolese women are equally employed on the building crew. (See pictures)
My dear sisters and brothers, V-Day has entered our second wave! We have gotten the door open. Now we need to get our whole body through so it never closes again. We need to go further, to raise the funds needed for this work, to spread the word, to feel the success so it fuels us towards our goal of ending the violence so women can be free and safe.
My love to all of you,
Eve
READ the Los Angeles Times article – Hillary Clinton’s stop in Congo strikes a chord in Africa >
V-Day’s latest V-Moment comes to us from eight Congelese who are working every day to end violence against women and girls in the DRC. We are honored to have Jeanine Gabrielle Ngungu, Justine Masika Bihamb, Kongosi Onia Mussanzi, Chantal Moboni, Drocele Mugomoka, Nounou Booto Meeti, Lydia Masimango and Kenneth Enim Ampi share their words of strength, determination and faith with us.
Read It Here >
Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois has introduced The Crimes Against Humanity Act of 2009, a legislation that would make it a violation of U.S. law to commit a crime against humanity. Crimes against humanity are widespread and systematic attacks directed against a civilian population that involves murder, enslavement, torture, rape, arbitrary detention, extermination, hostage taking or ethnic cleansing. Such crimes are currently occurring daily in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Darfur and Burma to name a few. This new legislation would gives U.S. courts jurisdiction to prosecute people found in the U.S. who have allegedly perpetrated such crimes. V-Day has joined other national and international groups in supporting this new legislation.
Following is the letter of support signed by V-Day and other groups.
June 24, 2009
The Honorable Richard J. Durbin, Chairman
Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law
Senate Committee on the Judiciary
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Chairman Durbin:
We write to express our strong support for the Crimes Against Humanity Act of 2009. This legislation would fill an existing gap in U.S. law by allowing U.S. prosecutors to hold the perpetrators of mass atrocities accountable for their acts. While often less publicized than genocides, crimes against humanity are as devastating to their victims and as worthy of vigorous and unbending attention from the United States government. We must ensure that perpetrators of mass atrocities cannot evade justice by coming to the United States. We applaud your leadership in ensuring that the United States is well equipped to fight these grave crimes and we urge Congress to enact the bill with all due speed.
The United States government has long been at the forefront of global efforts to seek accountability for the perpetrators of the worst crimes known to humankind. In the years after World War II, the United States was an essential player in the formation of the Nuremberg Tribunal and the Genocide Convention, two key pieces of the foundation for all international justice efforts that have followed. Since then, in Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia, Sierra Leone, and Darfur, among others, the U.S. government has steadfastly supported justice for victims of crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide, whether by supporting national justice systems or by assisting in the creation of special tribunals.
The bill defines crimes against humanity as widespread and systematic attacks directed against a civilian population that involve murder, enslavement, torture, rape, arbitrary detention, extermination, hostage taking, or ethnic cleansing. This category includes some of the most atrocious crimes committed in recent history—the campaigns of mutilation and murder of civilians in Sierra Leone and Uganda, the systematic rape of women in ethnic areas of Burma and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo. These crimes might look like genocide to a layperson, but they are a distinct category of crime and separate legislation is needed to provide United States courts with jurisdiction to prosecute those who commit them if they are present in the United States.
Such legislation has not existed before today, despite the U.S. government’s sustained efforts to ensure accountability for crimes against humanity elsewhere. Alleged perpetrators of those crimes have therefore been able to escape prosecution in the United States. Though U.S. law prohibits grave human rights violations such as genocide and torture, alleged perpetrators of crimes against humanity may escape accountability due not to their innocence of unforgivable acts but to loopholes in the U.S. criminal code.
The Crimes Against Humanity Act of 2009 would close this illogical gap in U.S. law. Just as they may pursue those who have committed related and similarly horrific crimes, U.S. prosecutors would have the authority to ensure that those in the United States who have committed crimes against humanity may not evade accountability merely by fleeing to our country.
The United States has provided a means to prosecute those who commit genocide and torture as well as those who use child soldiers in war. Those who commit the similar crimes that constitute crimes against humanity should face no better future. We therefore urge Congress to enact this bill without delay.
Sincerely,
The Advocates for Human Rights
Africa Action
AIDS-Free World
Armenian Assembly of America
Caring for Kaela
Center for Justice and Accountability
Center for Victims of Torture
EarthRights International
Enough Project
The Episcopal Church
Equality Now
Citizens for Global Solutions
Genocide Intervention Network
Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program
Human Rights First
Human Rights Watch
International Justice Mission
Jubilee Campaign USA, Inc.
National Immigrant Justice Center
National Immigration Forum
Open Society Policy Center
Physicians for Human Rights
Refugees International
Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights
Rocky Mountain Survivors Center
Save Darfur Coalition
United Methodist Church, General Board of Church and Society
United Nations Association of the United States of America
U.S. Campaign for Burma
V-Day
Dear Friends,
It is almost four AM and I am awake in Bukavu. I find myself filled with so many images of the recent days here. I think being in the Congo, one is forced to hold the extreme duality of this century in almost every breath and image. I find myself alternatively believing we are at the beginning of real change and revolution and simultaneously at the end of all possibility.
I am there in Kinshasa where 5 brave women survivors break the silence in front of 500 people – members of Parliament, Senators, activists. There, as they tell their stories, Janet limping to the microphone on a cane as she vividly tells of how they ripped her legs over her head so violently when they raped her they made her permanently handicapped. I listen to the women form words around such cruelty and am simultaneously crushed by the horror and how easily one becomes accustomed to atrocity. How 500 people politely listen to such crimes against women’s bodies and do not stand, scream, rush into the streets demanding justice.
In Kinshasa I meet a core of totally empowered and engaged V-Day activists (many men) changing their communities, educating and mobilizing for change. In the same city on the same day, when we address the Parliament, I meet strong empowered women members of government like Eve Bazaiba and Mama Batchu and then there are others who are surprised to hear there is a war still going on in the East.
I see brilliant Congolese actors performing The Vagina Monologues at the Grand Hotel in front of hundreds, singing African songs, dressed in colorful panges. Their performance breaks taboos and frees a discourse that feels like true liberation.
At Heal Africa in Goma we are greeted with hundreds of women and girl survivors dancing with all their hearts and souls. The music is so powerful and I am reminded that women are the future of the DRC. In our meeting, I am told that since the first KIMYA 1 military operation more than 1000 women have been raped a month. I meet 4 girls who are going to school on V-Day scholarships. They are all under 10 years old, and all traumatized by rape.
When they talk about school they are somehow transformed and radiant. Freddie a fierce looking guard at Heal Africa, with huge muscles and intimidating sunglasses decked out in military gear, turns out to have no legs. They were blown off in a bombing of the airport. He does handstands on his knuckles, reminding me that survivors are strong beyond word and everyone has another story.
I dance with the women survivors at Panzi Hospital. All 300 are new since my last visit (it was the same at Heal Africa). Dr Mukwege is working around the clock. One day last week, 50 raped, injured women arrived on the same day, demanding operations. Together, we have excellent discussions, he has such a clear vision of what needs to happen in the Congo, and his love and respect of women and his desire to transform men is inspirational.
The poverty and hunger is so palpable here. People are so poor they jump off a truck each time it needs to stop to be its brakes, where a banana is a days meal, where the arrival of 8 stalks of sugar cane produces a mad riot of children, where the security guard investigating me asks to borrow my pen.
We walk the grounds of City of Joy and the earth is breathtaking. There is so much land and I can feel the future of the place, see the women, the gardens. It is lush and fertile. The physical space we are planning at the City of Joy aims to make women living there feel safe, secure, calm and empowered. We are taking special care to create a feeling of community on the grounds, which will mimic the setting of a typical Congolese village, including a cluster of 10 small structures where women will live and sleep, an orchard, an area for livestock, and many communal places to gather, learn, talk and enjoy each other’s company. A housemother will be responsible for running each of the ten houses and women residing there will be responsible for cleaning, cooking, gardening, and upkeep of the property. All staff will be Congolese.
During my weeks here our vision has really taken shape. We met with many grassroots women’s activists to finalize our plan for the programs. We all agreed that women survivors who are referred to the City of Joy will come from hospitals and NGOs working throughout the region, allowing for a diverse group of 100 women between the ages 14-30 to be served at a time (a period of 4 to 6 months). Candidates will be chosen on their demonstrated leadership abilities and their desire and commitment to lead and take responsibility for their communities.
The program plan we have finalized is innovative and holistic. Women will have access to programming in: group therapy; storytelling; dance; theater; self-defense; comprehensive sexuality education (covering HIV/AIDS, family planning); gardening; public speaking; leadership and advocacy; human rights; ecology and horticulture. We are also very excited that the South Kivu Women’s Media Association (know as AFEM), which is lead by celebrated journalist and activist Chouchou Namegabe Nabintu, will run a radio station out of the City of Joy and train women in radio reporting and broadcasting. We are in conversation with a local newspaper about providing the women a monthly space to write about issues important to them.
Another integral part of City of Joy will be community service in the village surrounding the City of Joy grounds and Panzi Hospital. A highlight of the program will be an economic empowerment program—we are currently considering a number of options for creating a City of Joy line of clothing or goods. When women transition out of the City of Joy, we will take measures to stay connected to them and provide them with support, either via solar cell phones we would give them or through informal networks of communication. We are also exploring the feasibility of helping women who leave the City of Joy to set up community centers in their villages as a means of economic empowerment. One idea is to display the products they sell at a crafts market at the City of Joy every three months.
We have meetings with all kinds of local groups and Unicef and begin to plan the campaigns next activities. There will be productions of The Vagina Monologues in various provinces performed by Congolese actors, followed by workshops for men and women on sexuality and sexual violence. Activist training will continue. Dr. Mukwege will speak and lead forums for V-Men in the Congo.
Circumstances are very difficult in the DRC. Often there is no electricity or water. The Internet is sporadic at best. I have a whole new appreciation of Christine, our V-Day Congo and City of Joy Director, and the work she has to do. She is so powerful and so beloved everywhere we go.
We participate in a V-Day/Unicef fora where hundreds come from all over South Kivu. There are excellent discussions and a very brave woman Mastica tells her very disturbing story. The forum lasts three days. I see the survivors who spoke at our last Break The Silence event and they are changed women. They are activists now, very powerful, no longer depressed and they are always together.
I visit the villages. No matter what women are doing, the possibility of rape is always lurking. In one village ten women were kidnapped the week before and not seen again. Women always travel in groups so they can help protect each other.
In Miti a village an hour outside of Bukavu, I meet a collective of survivors who have all fled their villages and found each other and have begun to build a new community. There group is called “The One Who has a Small Something Has to Help the Others”. They have literally built a school out of sticks for the 300 orphans, some of whom are children who are products of rape. The children are so hungry. They sing this song for us;
We want the massacres to finish
We lost so many parents
Since we were born we just know war
Every night when we go in our house
We are so afraid to sleep
It’s enough
We don’t want out parents to suffer anymore
We just want the war to end
The women in this collective believe they are blessed to remain alive so they help everyone they can. The teachers all volunteer. I see this phenomenon everywhere I travel – women survivors finding each other and building a new world.
This is true with the ten-year-old collective AFECOD, as well. Germaine, a powerful grassroots Congolese woman leader, takes us back to the fields where survivors are turning pain to power by planting and honoring the earth. V-Day made a $1000 dollar award to them six months ago and now there are more fields of sweet potatoes and peanuts and corn. The collective has grown to 1000. As I stand in these magnificent green fields I am so moved by these Green Survivor Mamas and see a whole new direction for our movement. We make a ten thousand dollar grant to them so they can grow and prosper. They have many plans to grow and bring more and more survivors into their collective. And they have agreed to train our survivors at City of Joy to grow their own crops.
Our last stop is of course the most painful stop of my three weeks in the Congo. It is a small village only one-and-a-half hours outside of Bukavu, yet no one has been here to help the women survivors living there for years. The survivors ask to meet us. We gather in a small shack with one light bulb. There are thirty women and what I think is one older woman. In this shack I see and feel and hear stories that should make the world weak with shame and regret. I think to myself is it possible in the year 2009 in this village, in this shack that these stories could be told? One woman drops her shirt and shows me her stump of an arm which she lost when she was raped by many and then shot, another shows me her missing foot, another shows me the gunshot wounds in her arm. All the women have been raped many times. Some can hardly lift their heads. There were hard rains a few weeks ago and they all lost their homes so they are now living in the road. (V-Day gives them a grant for sheeting for new roofs). There is a 17-year-old girl nursing a baby born of rape. I ask how she feels about the baby and she says: “How can I not love my baby?” The baby is very sick and is getting smaller and smaller every day. Clearly, the baby has AIDS. If it is this bad this close to the city, I am frightened to think what it must be like for women deep into the forests. At the end, the person I think is an older woman speaks and it turns out to be a man. He was once a tailor. His name is Emanuel. The militias broke into his house. They forced him to rape his family, his children and his wife. Then they killed all of them. Then they raped him and forced him to carry things that were heavy. When he didn’t move fast enough they cut off his arm. He is the saddest man I have ever seen. He travels only with the women survivors, unable to forgive himself for what he did to his family. This is one shack in one village. There are thousands of these shacks all over Eastern Congo. The women are being destroyed. As Dr. Mukwege says, “this is Genocide. If you destroy all the women the Congolese people will not exist in years to come.”
There is this terrible story and then there is the other – the women finding each other mystically, spiritually, bonding, refusing to kill themselves, helping the others with the little they have, breaking the silence, planting the fields, refusing to leave until they are operated on, bringing up orphans and the children born of rape. There are these two stories.
I choose to believe the story of women will be the story that triumphs. It will require all of us. The women of Congo need the world to stop exploiting minerals. They need the war to end so they can walk in the streets and fields and forests, so they can give birth to babies out of love, so they can have their bodies whole and in tact, so they can live
without fear.
Fight for them. Support them. Get more active.
I send you love from Bukavu,
Eve