V-Day Blog Archive

Breaking The Silence: DRC Rape Survivors Take Campaign To The Capital (UNICEF)

DRC rape survivors take their campaign to the capital and call for a move beyond pledges to concrete action

United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/PSLG-7SUFUN?OpenDocument

Kinshasa, 9 June, 2009 – Five women from various provinces around the country, all victims of sexual violence this weekend took their campaign to the doorsteps of the highest decision-makers in Kinshasa, the capital city of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). They came to participate in the day’s event dubbed “Breaking the Silence” around sexual violence.

The event was organized by UNICEF and the international NGO V DAY under the patronage of Madam Olive Kabila, First Lady of the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is part of a global campaign: being organized under the theme “Stop Raping Our Greatest Resources. Freedom to Women and Girls in DRC”. The Minister for Human Rights represented the government.

The five survivors of sexual violence are all mothers aged between 40 and 60. They publicly spoke out about their ordeal and called for nation-wide mobilization in support of the “Stop au Viol” Campaign. In the presence of a packed audience made up of Members of the Diplomatic Corps, Government Ministers, UN officials, Members of Parliament and the Senate, international NGOs and civil society, the women told their horrific stories of rape and violence, and its impact on their lives. They issued a call to the people of power and influence in the country to take concrete action beyond public declarations of goodwill and effectively end the sexual violence that has ravaged and humiliated thousands of women and girls in the DRC.

The women explained to the gathering that they have decided to speak out because, as one woman put it, ” it is a cry on behalf of all women, those who have spoken out, and those still in hiding because of the stigmatization and the shame. …. in my eyes, all those who tolerate sexual violence, turn a blind eye, refuse to denounce and condemn these barbaric acts – they are all as guilty as those who commit these crimes.……. ” Another survivor said ” we have chosen to speak out so that we can help each other to get back to our families and our lives…I know now there is a network of activists all over the country. I myself am now a member, but until you speak up you cannot be heard. The solidarity from these groups helps a lot with the healing.”

In her address to the gathering, Pierrette Vu Thi, UNICEF Representative in the DRC deplored the widespread negative attitude and behavior towards the rights of girls and women. “This is a result of the degradation in social values… Impunity needs to be addressed as a priority. The State has an adequate judicial system at its disposal which it must put to use. That is one most efficient ways to deal with these crimes and human rights violations.”

Eve Ensler, writer and founder of V-DAY accompanied the women to present over 4,000 letters from all corners of the world, addressed to the President of the Republic of Congo. The letters expressed both support to the survivors of sexual violence as well as indignation against impunity.

In 2007, UNICEF and V-DAY organized similar “Breaking the Silence” events with other survivors of sexual violence in Goma (North Kivu province) and in Bukavu (South Kivu province) in Eastern DRC where over a decade of war has ravaged the population. Saturday’s event was first to be held in the capital of the country, as part of the global campaign.

About UNICEF:

UNICEF is on the ground in over 150 countries and territories to help children survive and thrive, from early childhood through adolescence. The world’s largest provider of vaccines for developing countries, UNICEF supports child health and nutrition, good water and sanitation, quality basic education for all boys and girls, and the protection of children from violence, exploitation, and AIDS. UNICEF is funded entirely by the voluntary contributions of individuals, businesses, foundations and governments

For further information, please contact:

Pierrette Vu Thi, UNICEF DRC, + 243 81 3330202 pvuthi@unicef.org,
Joyce Brandful, UNICEF DRC, + 243 81 8846746 jbrandful@unicef.org,

Eve Ensler Calls for Rape-Free Cellphones at D7 Conference

by Beth Callaghan
“Vagina Monologues” creator, V-Day founder, playwright and activist Eve Ensler took the stage at D7 to talk with Kara Swisher about the Democratic Republic of Congo, columbite tantalite and rape as a weapon of war in a mining industry that provides material essential to the manufacture of high-tech devices.

Read the live blog of the D7 inter with Kara Swisher and Eve >

Watch the video >

Commentary: War on women in Congo by Eve Ensler (CNN.com)

Editor’s note: Eve Ensler is the playwright of “The Vagina Monologues” and the founder of V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls. V-Day has funded over 10,000 community-based anti-violence programs and launched safe houses in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Kenya, South Dakota, Egypt and Iraq. This commentary was adapted from remarks Ensler made Wednesday to the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs and the Subcommittee on International Operations and Organizations, Human Rights, Democracy and Global Women’s Issues.

I write today on behalf of countless V-Day activists worldwide, and in solidarity with my many Congolese sisters and brothers who demand justice and an end to rape and war.

It is my hope that these words and those of others will break the silence and break open a sea of action to move Congolese women toward peace, safety and freedom.

My play, “The Vagina Monologues,” opened my eyes to the world inside this world. Everywhere I traveled with it scores of women lined up to tell me of their rapes, incest, beatings, mutilations. It was because of this that over 11 years ago we launched V-Day, a worldwide movement to end violence against women and girls.

The movement has spread like wildfire to 130 countries, raising $70 million. I have visited and revisited the rape mines of the world, from defined war zones like Bosnia, Afghanistan and Haiti to the domestic battlegrounds in colleges and communities throughout North America, Europe and the world. My in-box — and heart — have been jammed with stories every hour of every day for over a decade.

Nothing I have heard or seen compares with what is going on in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where corporate greed, fueled by capitalist consumption, and the rape of women have merged into a single nightmare. Femicide, the systematic and planned destruction of the female population, is being used as a tactic of war to clear villages, pillage mines and destroy the fabric of Congolese society.

In 12 years, there have been 6 million dead men and women in Congo and 1.4 million people displaced. Hundreds and thousands of women and girls have been raped and tortured. Babies as young as 6 months, women as old as 80, their insides torn apart. What I witnessed in Congo has shattered and changed me forever. I will never be the same. None of us should ever be the same.

I think of Beatrice, shot in her vagina, who now has tubes instead of organs. Honorata, raped by gangs as she was tied upside down to a wheel. Noella, who is my heart — an 8-year-old girl who was held for 2 weeks as groups of grown men raped her over and over. Now she has a fistula, causing her to urinate and defecate on herself. Now she lives in humiliation.

I was in Bosnia during the war in 1994 when it was discovered there were rape camps where white women were being raped. Within two years there was adequate intervention. Yet, in Congo, femicide has continued for 12 years. Why? Is it that coltan, the mineral that keeps our cell phones and computers in play, is more important than Congolese girls?

Is it flat-out racism, the world’s utter indifference and disregard for black people and black women in particular? Is it simply that the UN and most governments are run by men who have never known what it feels like to be raped?

What is happening in Congo is the most brutal and rampant violence toward women in the world. If it continues to go unchecked, if there continues to be complete impunity, it sets a precedent, it expands the boundaries of what is permissible to do to women’s bodies in the name of exploitation and greed everywhere. It’s cheap warfare.

The women in Congo are some of the most resilient women in the world. They need our protection and support. Western governments, like the United States, should fund a training program for female Congolese police officers.

They should address our role in plundering minerals and demand that companies trace the routes of these minerals. Make sure they are making and selling rape-free-products. Supply funds for women’s medical and psychological care and seed their economic empowerment. Put pressure on Rwanda, Congo, Uganda and other countries in the Great Lakes region to sit down with all the militias involved in this conflict to find a political solution.

Military solutions are no longer an option and will only bring about more rape. Most of all, we must support the women. Because women are at the center of this horror, they must be at the center of the solutions and peace negotiations. Women are the future of Congo. They are its greatest resource.

Sadly, we are not the first to testify about these atrocities in Congo. I stand in a line of many who have described this horror. Still, in Eastern Congo, 1,100 women a month are raped, according to the United Nations’ most recent report. What will the United States government, what will all of you reading this, do to stop it?

Let Congo be the place where we ended femicide, the trend that is madly eviscerating this planet — from the floggings in Pakistan, the new rape laws in Afghanistan, the ongoing rapes in Haiti, Darfur, Zimbabwe, the daily battering, incest, harassing, trafficking, enslaving, genital cutting and honor killing. Let Congo be the place where women were finally cherished and life affirmed, where the humiliation and subjugation ended, where women took their rightful agency over their bodies and land.

Read Eve’s full testimony >

Dawson calls for men to prevent rape (The Eagle)

BY LINDSEY ANDERSON

“What allows a man to undress a woman when she is completely intoxicated with no ability to give consent or even know what is going on, and stick himself into her?” she read from Ensler’s speech.

It is time for men to “break the secret code of dudes” and speak up against violence against women, Dawson said.

“The majority do not stand up and say or do anything about the violence that is going on to their mothers, sisters, daughters, girlfriends, wives, grandmothers,” Dawson read. “They remain silent and passive, and the silence consolidates their loyalty and solidarity in the circle of men … To stand up as men against violence against women is to break the secret code of dudes.”

Dawson invited all men in the audiences to stand up and affirm their commitment to advocacy against sexual violence.

Other men are beginning to take action against violence against women, including Vice President Joe Biden, who helped push the Violence Against Women Act through Congress in the 1994.

“The Obama administration is a vagina-friendly administration,” Dawson said.

Men hold most of the positions that allow them to legislatively condemn sexual assault, yet most activists against sexual assault are women, she said.

“Fifty-two percent of the human population is women, and yet they are the ones who are suffering the most violence, and that’s really not going to change unless men become a part of that conversation,” Dawson said.

The conference addressed the prevalence of sexual assault from the widespread rape of women in the Democratic Republic of Congo to domestic violence incidents involving celebrities, such as the Chris Brown-Rihanna case.

Brown is accused of hitting girlfriend Rihanna in February – an incident Dawson said should be a platform to talk about dating violence issues.

“There are so many violent acts that we can quote inside the media,” she said.

“I think it’s really important to use those opportunities to really talk in the greater whole.”

You can reach this staff writer at landerson@theeagleonline.com.

Afghan Women Protest New Restrictive Law (New York Times)

By DEXTER FILKINS
KABUL, Afghanistan — The young women stepped off the bus and moved toward the protest march just beginning on the other side of the street when they were spotted by a mob of men.

“Get out of here, you whores!” the men shouted. “Get out!”

The women scattered as the men moved in.

“We want our rights!” one of the women shouted, turning to face them. “We want equality!”

The women ran to the bus and dived inside as it rumbled away, with the men smashing the taillights and banging on the sides.

“Whores!”

But the march continued anyway. About 300 Afghan women, facing an angry throng three times larger than their own, walked the streets of the capital on Wednesday to demand that Parliament repeal a new law that introduces a range of Taliban-like restrictions on women, and permits, among other things, marital rape.

It was an extraordinary scene. Women are mostly illiterate in this impoverished country, and they do not, generally speaking, enjoy anything near the freedom accorded to men. But there they were, most of them young, many in jeans, defying a threatening crowd and calling out slogans heavy with meaning.

With the Afghan police keeping the mob at bay, the women walked two miles to Parliament, where they delivered a petition calling for the law’s repeal.

“Whenever a man wants sex, we cannot refuse,” said Fatima Husseini, 26, one of the marchers. “It means a woman is a kind of property, to be used by the man in any way that he wants.”

The law, approved by both houses of Parliament and signed by President Hamid Karzai, applies to the Shiite minority only. Women here and governments and rights groups abroad have protested three parts of the law especially.

One provision makes it illegal for a woman to resist her husband’s sexual advances. A second provision requires a husband’s permission for a woman to work outside the home or go to school. And a third makes it illegal for a woman to refuse to “make herself up” or “dress up” if that is what her husband wants.

The passage of the law has amounted to something of a historical irony. Afghan Shiites, who make up close to 20 percent of the population, suffered horrendously under the Taliban, who regarded them as apostates. Since 2001, the Shiites, particularly the Hazara minority, have been enjoying a renaissance.

President Karzai, who relies on vast support from the United States and other Western governments to stay in power, has come under intense international criticism for signing the bill into law. Many people here suspect that he did so to gain the favor of the Shiite clergy; Mr. Karzai is up for re-election this year. Previous Afghan governments, during the Soviet era and before the arrival of the Taliban, did not impose such restrictive laws, although in practice many rural women’s freedoms have long been curtailed. Rights advocates say the law for Shiites could influence a proposal for Sunnis and a draft law on violence against women.

Responding to the outcry, Mr. Karzai has begun looking for a way to remove the most controversial parts of the law. In an interview on Wednesday, his spokesman, Homayun Hamidzada, said that the legislation was not yet law because it had not been published in the government’s official register. That, Mr. Hamidzada said, means that it can still be changed. Mr. Karzai has asked his justice minister to look it over.

“We have no doubt that whatever comes out of this process will be consistent with the rights provided for in the Constitution — equality and the protection of women,” Mr. Hamidzada said.

The women who protested Wednesday began their demonstration with what appeared to be a deliberately provocative act. They gathered in front of the School of the Last Prophet, a madrasa run by Ayatollah Asif Mohseni, the country’s most powerful Shiite cleric. He and the scholars around him played an important role in drafting the new law.

“We are here to campaign for our rights,” one woman said into a megaphone. Then the women held their banners aloft and began to chant.

The reaction was immediate. Hundreds of students from the madrasa, most but not all of them men, poured into the streets to confront the demonstrators.

“Death to the enemies of Islam!” the counterdemonstrators cried, encircling the women. “We want Islamic law!”

The women stared ahead and marched.

A phalanx of police officers, some of them women, held the crowds apart.

Afterward, when the demonstrators had left, one of the madrasa’s senior clerics came outside. Asked about the dispute, he said it was between professionals and nonprofessionals; that is, between the clerics, who understood the Koran and Islamic law, and the women calling for the law’s repeal who did not.

“It’s like if you are sick, you go to a doctor, not some amateur,” said the cleric, Mohammed Hussein Jafaari. “This law was approved by the scholars. It was passed by both houses of Parliament. It was signed by the president.”

The religious scholars, Mr. Jafaari conceded, were all men.

Lingering a while, Mr. Jafaari said that what was really driving the dispute was the foreigners who loomed so large over the country.

“We Afghans don’t want a bunch of NATO commanders and foreign ministers telling us what to do.”

Eve Ensler helps rape victims speak out (ODE Magazine)

How does anyone find the courage to speak out against unspeakable crimes? Eve Ensler’s answer: Mobilize a movement to support the victims and stand by them while they tell their stories. Ensler, author of the play The Vagina Monologues and founder of V-Day, which works to stop violence against women, is speaking out against the brutal rapes of hundreds of thousands of women in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). This year, V-Day campaigners have spread the word that many women in the DRC are fighting back. “I’ve seen the power of vagina warriors all around the world to transform their situations and become great leaders in their communities,” Ensler says. “The women in the DRC are so fierce and so ready. With a little bit of support, there are so many powerful women there who are ready to emerge.”

Though the conflict in the DRC ended in 2002, the sexual violence has continued, with militia groups vying to control natural resources. Last fall, with help from V-Day and UNICEF, thousands of women organized in the DRC to protest the rapes. In December, survivors testified at emotional public meetings, telling their stories in front of neighbors and government officials. “I am speaking today so that women who have been raped can come out, so they can be taught how to live,” said one survivor.

A central part of Ensler’s campaign is to build a women’s safe house that will arm survivors with tools to lead their communities. The center will include leadership classes, career skills and counseling. Though she believes the international community must protect the country’s female population, Ensler says the women themselves can also be part of the solution. “I believe things will change when the women of Congo are supported and create their own movement,” she says. “That’s beginning to happen.”

Congo: Rights group documents mass rapes, killings (AP)

By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI
DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — At least 90 women have been raped and 180 villagers killed over the past two months by rebels as well as government forces in volatile eastern Congo, a top human rights group said in a report Thursday.
New York-based Human Rights Watch said it documented the rapes, killings and burning of dozens of villages by the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda.

The FDLR is made up primarily of Rwandan nationals that fled across the border into Congo after orchestrating Rwanda’s 1994 genocide of a half-a-million people. Their continued presence in Congo 15 years later has been a major point of contention between the Congolese and Rwandan governments — and in January, Congo allowed Rwandan troops to enter the country in a joint effort to root out the FDLR.

But while the offensive led to capitulation of dozens of FDLR rebels, who turned themselves in to U.N.-organized repatriation camps, the military operation was devastating for civilians.

“The FDLR are deliberately killing and raping Congolese civilians as apparent punishment for the military operations against them,” said Anneke Van Woudenberg, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch and an expert on Congo.
Woudenberg says that the militia was temporarily pushed out of their military positions in January and February, but after the withdrawal of Rwandan troops on Feb. 24, the FDLR reoccupied many of their former bases.

Among the attacks documented is the murder of a 10-year-old girl who was battered against a brick wall in the village of Kibua on Jan. 27 — one of the FDLR’s former bases. Dozens of other civilians were hacked to death by the FDLR.
While the majority of the killings are being perpetrated by the Rwandan militia, Human Rights Watch also found evidence of major abuses by the Congolese army, which is chronically ill-disciplined.

Last month, a group of women from the town of Ziralo were stopped by troops at a checkpost. They gang raped them. One of the four women was six-months pregnant and suffered a miscarriage as a result of the rape, said the rights group.
The United Nations estimates that a quarter-of-a-million people have fled their homes in eastern Congo since the military operation began. That’s in addition to hundreds of thousands of others who fled earlier outbursts of violence.
Among the sources of instability cited by Human Rights Watch is the fact that the Congolese army has recently added 10,000 new soldiers who were previously fighters for local rebel groups. These ex-rebels turned themselves in, as required under a U.N.-organized reintegration plan, but the process is flawed, says the rights group.

“The rapidly mixed brigades of former enemies have been sent to the front lines with no salaries, rations, or any formal training, increasing the likelihood of future human rights violations,” Human Rights Watch said in a statement.
Among the former rebels integrated into the regular army are Bosco Ntaganda, who was recently promoted to the position of general. He is wanted on an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court for enlisting child soldiers and is accused of commanding the rebel troops that massacred 150 villagers in the town of Kiwanja last November.

Yesterday a victim, today an oppressor: how aid funds war in Congo (The Times)

Catherine Philp, Diplomatic Correspondent
Tonight a hush will fall over the national stadium in Kigali as, one by one, a sea of candles is lit to commemorate the 800,000 lives lost in the Rwandan genocide. A screen will fill with the faces of luminaries from the actress Sandra Bullock to David Cameron, the British Conservative leader, speaking of the candles they have lit for Rwanda’s victims and survivors.

Presiding over it all will be Paul Kagame, the Rwandan President, self-styled liberator and darling of Western aid donors who rushed billions to the tiny nation in the guilty aftermath of foreign inaction to stop the killing.

But 15 years on, Mr Kagame finds himself cast more as a perpetrator than victim, with the unveiling of Rwanda’s role in the plunder and killing in eastern Congo, a war that has claimed the lives of five times as many people as the genocides in Rwanda and Darfur combined. So why are British taxpayers still supporting him?

Since the genocide, Rwanda has relied on foreign aid for half its national budget. Britain is its single largest donor, committed to a disbursement of at least £46 million a year until 2015. The United States is close behind in direct contributions to Rwanda’s budget, a form of aid-giving reserved for what the European Union calls a “privileged” few who have proved their transparency and good governance.

In December Sweden and the Netherlands abruptly revoked aid to Rwanda after the revelations about its meddling in Congo – not just as punishment but also in response to the contention that without foreign aid Rwanda could not have financed its deadly but highly profitable operations over the border.

Rwanda originally invaded eastern Congo in 1996 in pursuit of the Hutu genocide perpetrators who fled there to evade justice. Uganda came too, in pursuit of its own rebels. Timothy Reid, a senior United Nations peacekeeping official in Rwanda and Congo, calculated that even factoring in the profits of the mineral wealth Rwanda pillaged from Congo, the war there would have put it $100 million (£70 million) into the red, had it not been for the cushion of foreign aid.

After Rwanda pulled out of Congo officially, it continued the war there by proxy, supporting Tutsi rebels led by General Laurent Nkunda. It always denied the support, until December, when the damning results of a UN inquiry proved the link beyond question. The Nkunda forces had marched to the gates of Goma, slaughtering hundreds, in the company of uniformed Rwandan soldiers with covering fire from Rwandan tanks over the border. Rwandan soldiers have forcibly recruited children on his behalf – a war crime that landed Thomas Lubanga, a Congolese warlord, in the dock at The Hague as the first defendant of the permanent International Criminal Court.

The investigation unearthed e-mails between General Nkunda’s men and a close associate of Mr Kagame, Tribert Rujugiro, detailing the transfer of funds to the general. Mr Rujugiro is a member of the same Rwandan presidential advisory panel as Tony Blair. Mr Rujugiro is in London awaiting extradition to South Africa on charges of tax evasion. He appeared in a previous UN report as a big profiteer from the illegal plunder of minerals by Rwandan forces in Congo. That same report details the highly systematic nature of the Rwandan military looting, compared with the much less structured Ugandan plunder.

Western diplomats described to The Times the electric effect of the UN report on the Kagame regime as realisation dawned that the flow of aid might be imperilled. Military commanders, in particular, were said to be alarmed at the prospect of losing their military ties with Britain by which scores of Rwandan officers have passed through Sandhurst. Their training has made them favourite for highly lucrative UN peacekeeping missions in places such as Darfur, where Western troops are loath to go.

“They knew the game was up and they had to distance themselves from Nkunda or risk losing Western aid and support,” a senior diplomat said.

The Netherlands and Sweden stopped their aid to Rwanda immediately. Kigali’s answer was to cut a deal with the Congolese Government: it would neutralise General Nkunda if Kinshasa allowed it to help to neutralise the Hutu genocidaires in Congo – as long as Nkunda could never spill his secrets. He was arrested, diplomats say, not as he fled Congo, as widely reported, but in a trap set for him by the Rwandan army chief of staff, who called him to an urgent meeting at a house in Rubavu, just over the border in Rwanda.

Two months later, he has not been handed over to Congo, as expected. The man who replaced him as rebel leader, Bosco Ntaganda, has already been indicted by the International Criminal Court and General Nkunda is also in its sights. Rwanda, extraordinarily, has never signed up to the ICC but Congo has. “The last thing Rwanda wants is Nkunda spilling the beans in The Hague,” another diplomat said.

Something close to that might still happen. Lubanga, on trial at The Hague, is expect to open a defence case claiming that he was taking orders from above, and outside Congo. Uganda, also a huge aid recipient from the Anglophone world, is more closely implicated, but Rwanda will feature too. Uganda has been taken to task in the International Court of Justice for its plunder in eastern Congo and has been charged the reparations for it. Rwanda, which has not signed up to the ICJ either, has not.

Did British pressure twist Mr Kagame’s arm to drop Nkunda? British officials privately admit not. The Rwandan leader, they concede, had reason for concernbut there was no explicit threat to end aid. Angry UN officials contrast Britain’s stand on development aid to Zimbabwe – refusing to give it until Robert Mugabe’s thugs are removed from economic office – to its generosity towards another regime so recently embroiled in the deaths of millions.

“It is a classic guilt syndrome,” one said. “The West’s neglect of Rwanda’s agony has morphed into a gross indulgence of its worst behaviour.”

But has that behaviour now ended? Many are sceptical. The proxy war in Congo has been enormously profitable – for individuals, not the national budget, well cushioned by foreign aid. Rwandan customs accounting regularly show it exporting tonnes of minerals that it does not even produce – but which are mined feverishly over the border in Congo.

The price of such minerals has dived in recent months, leaving many Congolese miners destitute. With aid at risk, the balance sheet may no longer look so appealing. Meanwhile, the proof that Rwanda has its own fair share of rapacious warlords has made even the most pro-Kagame allies look again at the French and Spanish indictments against his top leadership for the shooting down of the President’s plane that precipitated the genocide as something more than spiteful conjecture.

A respectful hush will descend on Kigali tonight. As well it should. Over the border in Congo the killing goes on. Since the Rwandan troops who went there to flush out Hutu rebels left, the rebels have hit back, massacring civilians in their hundreds. Suffering, in eastern Congo, is not a memory. And there will be no candles for its five million dead.

UK Women Leaders Urge G20 to act in Congo (Times of London)

Tackling sexual terrorism in Congo
We must take steps to stop the war of violence against women in Congo

Sir, As concerned British women we wish to draw attention to what we believe is the most devastating and atrocious situation for women anywhere in the world.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has suffered through a 12-year economic war, where horrific sexual violence and torture have devastated the population of the eastern region.

This sexual terrorism is being used as a means of intimidating, fracturing and destroying communities. Women and girls live in daily fear of brutal rape, rejection and murder. Recent democratic progress in the region has been encouraging, yet while national armies no longer face off, militias and bandits representing local and, most worryingly, foreign economic interests continue to rape, torture and kill with impunity.

We wish recognise all the efforts of the UK Government, the international community and non-governmental organisations in the region to date, but it is now time for everyone involved to increase the level of commitment and take ever more meaningful steps to end the horror of this war of violence against women in Congo.

As part of our commitment to supporting V-Day – and Unicef’s global campaign to educate, advocate and take action under the “Stop Raping Our Greatest Resource: Power to the Women and Girls of the DRC” banner – we urge world leaders to put more political pressure on governments in the region to find a political solution and end the economic war; to provide resources to the DRC Government to assure both the rule of law and an end the culture of impunity for perpetrators of sexual violence; to insist that women be a central part of the peace making process and that their voices are heard.

Baroness Amos, Jenny Eclair, Glenys Kinnock MEP, Rula Lenska, Meera Syal, Sandi Toksvig, Zenna Atkins, Carol Bagnald, Maggie Baxter, Jana Bennett, Karren Brady, Fern Britton, Mary Creagh MP, Alex Darbyshire, Caroline Dudley-Williams, Marie-Claire Faray, Francine Fletcher, Jose Fonseca, Lynne Franks, Dwina Gibb, Rosie Hammond, Jane Hanson, Noreena Hertz, Lady Holmes, Gloria Hunniford, Oona King, Carol Lake, Tamsin Larby, Kathy Lette, Fiona Lloyd-Davies, Lyn Lusi, Seema Malhotra, Lady Malloch-Brown, Mary McPhail, Penny McDonald, Tanya Moodie, Baroness Morgan of Huyton, Shawna Moss, Dianne Nelmes, Thandie Newton, Lindsay Nicholson, Rachel Nicholson, Baroness Northover of Cissbury, Mica Paris, Eve Pollard, Gail Rebuck, Baroness Rendell of Babergh, Sam Roddick, Edina Ronay, Amanda Ross, Tessa Ross, Lady Sawers, Lucy Scarlett, Susan Schulman, Mary Soan, Janet Stahelin Edmondson, Trudie Styler, Stephanie Trotter, Natasha Walter, Sue Walton, Professor Alyson Warhurst, Karen Welman and Dr Jules Wright

‘Stop raping our greatest resource’ – In the Congo, in Antigua

by ZIA

With the first lens, in the myopic sense, the opinions will immediately be given that there is no comparison. Geography alone separates us. Their political system is nothing like ours. “Those” people are nothing like us. Some will even go so far as to comment that we in the diaspora are more “civilised”, that they in the Congo are far behind in all integral parts of human and economic development. Never mind that the wars are being waged over the diamonds, gold and colton (a mineral used in cell phones and laptops) and other natural resources in the Congo, while in Antigua our natural resources are … are … (to be continued).

So is there some connection? Besides the fact that we’re all a part of the diaspora, there is the fact that we continue to ignore the environment despite efforts from local concerned bodies to remind us that we are not immune from the global environmental crisis. But there’s also the nature of the crimes committed. While the actual numbers differ tremendously for now, the sexual crimes against women and children continue to be the same. If nothing else, Antigua and Barbuda is connected to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in the nature of the crimes committed against the world’s greatest resource – our women.

While some of the crimes in the DRC are unspeakable, while fear continues to plague the majority of women preventing them from sharing their stories and coming forward, so too does fear cripple many women and children in Antigua and Barbuda. Fear and the negative stigma we continue to place on the victim more than the perpetrator continues to make the number of reported rapes, incest and sexual abuse cases inaccurate.

In the DRC, many women are faced with the fact that if they speak out against what happens to them either they or their families will be killed. How many women are given the same threat by their assailant husbands, boyfriends, attackers? How many more children are threatened with similar threats by their un-convicted fathers, step-fathers, uncles, cousins, siblings, and family friends?

The fact remains that we have much in common with the Congo, namely the attitudes toward sexual crimes.

Over there in the Congo

Google the DRC and you may just find that it has the second largest rainforest in the world. This small fact is buried in the description of their treatment of the rainforest “over there”, where the harsh word “carving” is used to describe its disregard for this natural resource.

But what of the other greater resource of the women? The headlines are flooded with the inhumane treatment of the women there. “Sexual violence in the DRC”; “Congo women need your help”; “War against women”; “Not women anymore – Survivors share their stories” and the list continues. The gruelling tales of women and young girls, as young as two years old, as old as in their 80s continue to trickle into the global headlines. They fight to have their stories told in hopes that someone, somewhere can stop this side-effect of a war that is doing more harm to them than to any other party in the DRC.

In a New York Times article by Bob Herbert, The Invisible War, he wrote, “For years now, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, marauding bands of soldiers and militia have been waging a war of rape and destruction against women. The sustained campaign of mind-bending atrocities … has been one of the strategic tools in a wider war that has continued, with varying degrees of intensity, since the 1990s.”

He continues, “Women and girls of all ages, from old women to very young children, have been gang-raped, and in many cases their sexual organs have been mutilated. The victims number the hundreds of thousands. But the world for the most part, has remained indifferent to their suffering.”

I remember Lebrechtta Nana Oye Hesse from Gender Affairs calling me one night last year to remind me of a documentary that was about to start on HBO. Involved with the 2008 Vagina Monologues, I was interested in watching this, having known since last year that the 2009 Spotlight piece was going to be on the Congo.

Titled The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo, this documentary which was shot in the war zones of the Congo gives a small visual of the traumatic and horrifying lives of the tens of thousands of women who for over a decade have been kidnapped, raped, abused and mutilated by Congolese militia, and in some instances foreign militia, who are supposed to protect them.

It documents some of the women and their tragic experiences.

One woman in the documentary, her eyes showing no visible signs of emotion, repeats her story as if on cue. She admits at the end that she feels absolutely nothing. Emotions for her have become mechanical. This woman recalls Congolese militia breaking into her home and beating up her husband. She remembers him begging them to take the only money he had – US$20. She recalls them gang raping her in front of him, while they beat him up and force him to watch. She remembers the horror of them forcing her to watch as they then chop him to pieces.

She’s since been remarried, and although her second husband is a good man, she still feels nothing. Her experience has left her void of all emotion.

There is a four-year-old shown in the film. Her mother lifts her arms as she tells Emmy award winning film-maker Lisa Jackson (who is, herself, a survivor of gang rape), that she knows who raped her little girl. And even though this woman is brave enough to go to the police, they do nothing about it.

One woman comments that one of the main problems, besides the threats against speaking out, is the fact that many of those who are policymakers and in power were/are criminals themselves, so there will never be justice for them as women until that fact changes.

In an interview with a captain from one of the foreign militia, he recounts his experience to Jackson. Walking through the rainforest to deliver relief to villages, they happen to come across an unchartered village of women. There’s almost 100 women in the village from as young as eight years old to as old as 80. The captain and his troop are shocked to discover that this “village” is comprised of women who were lucky enough to escape sex camps and sex enslavement. The women tell Jackson that what has been experienced by one has been experienced by all, irrespective of age. They have all shared the experience of being gang raped by at least 20 soldiers a day for two weeks straight. At this point, while the voice over is heard, the camera frames an eight year old girl, whose eyes are down cast, they then show an elderly woman, wrinkled and needing the support of a stick to walk.

His voice thick with the emotional burden of the experience, the captain tells Jackson that in all his years of being in the army he’s never come across such a travesty as what he’s witnessed in the Congo by these women.

Questioning why this decade-old atrocity has continued to devastate these women without much external intervention, Jackson, in an interview asked the question: “Is there something about sexual violence that makes us all turn away? In what human context does it become intentional, programmatic, a weapon of choice? Where are the voices of women themselves? If they tell their stories, will others listen?”

Here in Antigua

Sounds familiar? Can we, here in Antigua and Barbuda, provide answers? Can we say that we’ll listen to the stories of rape victims without lavishing on the sordid details? Can we say that we’re genuinely interested in seeing sexual violence come to an end, when we continue to ignore the cries from neighbours who are being abused by their male counterparts? When our children come to us with tales of being molested, can we honestly say that we listen and not turn them away, call them rude and tell them they’re just making it up to cause trouble?

We read about a step-father who chose to “punish” his step-daughters by raping them – we say, “coo yah… he nuh easy!” and pretty much leave it there.

We read that a man abused his wife, attempted to murder her, succeeded in permanently scarring her body and chopping off her thumb, yet he remained out of jail for an entire year before his care was tried. Our response? Obviously indifference, as he was not in police custody.

We remember the Toussaint case, where this woman followed all protocol, but the day after her horrific murder, the blood trails to neighbours’ doors speaks volumes of our indifference to help, her murder shouts of the inadequacy, or is it just the fact that despite bodies erected to “help” with these things, the saying, “we don’t get involved in domestic affairs” continues to fly.

We hear of a serial rapist who victimised so many women, and the police refused to disclose identity, or valuable information, such as the man’s evidence of military background, and his ability to pick locks, including deadbolts. We accept the stories printed in the newspapers and the police reports which always blame the women for not “securing” their homes accurately.

We continue to point a finger at a popular “character” here in Antigua who is openly trans-gendered, but we forget that as a child he was “allegedly” gang-raped by prominent members of society – an incident orchestrated by one of his own family members. Speaking with his then welfare officer, she grows angry as she recounts the events and how hard she worked on the case. But a simple “pay off” was enough to throw the case out. We continue to mock, laugh and some continue to openly abuse this young man who is just another victim of sexual violence. We forget that his misfit demeanour is a result of our neglect as a society, or deliberate lack of reinforcement of the law to protect him.

Here in little Antigua and Barbuda, while our numbers are nowhere near as high as those in the Congo, attitudes remain similar. More urgency is given to a drug bust than a domestic disturbance. There is more care given to a narcotic investigation, than an investigation of a sexual crime.

As a society, we continue to point at the victims and survivors, making them feel that in some way they induced their traumas. We continue to be more interested in the sordid details than the welfare of the woman to regain her confidence and personal security.

The result? The culture of silence continues in Antigua and Barbuda. It’s not just the Congo, but right here in little Wadadli, the statistics continue to only cover a small portion of women who come forward. But it only scratched the surface. In many cases, the number of Hispanic women and women of other nationalities who are victims of sexual abuse continue to go unreported.

When Vaginas speak

Last year, Women Of Antigua, a young group of women staged Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues for the first time in Antigua. These monologues became a global movement to end violence against women around the world. These monologues are designed to eradicate negative stereotypes about women; to let survivors and victims of sexual crimes know that they are not alone; and most importantly, to celebrate women.

This year, Eve Ensler and her V-Day team certainly added more light to the devastating experiences in the Congo by making the DRC the spotlight of the 2009 season. In one of her pieces, she talks of meeting an eight-year-old at the Panzi Hospital who had had most of her internal reproductive organs damaged and removed. Having been abducted, after seeing her father murdered and her mother raped, this child had been gang raped by soldiers for two weeks consecutively. She’d also had the muscle that controls her bladder destroyed, so this child, at age nine, can no longer control her bladder.

This is just one of thousands of experiences by young girls in the Congo.

While some believe that V-Day and The Vagina Monologues takes the intimacy and reverence out of the “vagina” or the woman, others see it differently. For one, since its inception 11 years ago, the V-Day campaign has shed more global light on countries where women have gone unnoticed for decades as victims of sex crimes. It raises awareness, and sends a strong message of comfort to many of these women.

By sharing with the rest of the world the production of The Vagina Monologues with its spotlights serves to remind countries of their own status with sex crimes and violence against women, and cautions that if attitudes and laws don’t change, many countries, like Antigua and Barbuda could very well become like these other places, such as the Congo.

During this V-Day season, Eve Ensler toured with Dr. Denis Mukwege embarked on a five-city tour last month to make people more aware of what has been happening to women in the Congo. Dr. Mukwege stated in an interview with the New York Times, “Once they [the militia] have raped these women in such a public way … sometimes maiming them, destroying their sexual organs – and with everybody watching – the women themselves are destroyed, or virtually destroyed. They are traumatised and humiliated on every level, physical and psychological. That’s the first consequence.”

Winner of the 2008 UN Human Rights Prize and founder of the Panzi Hospital in the Congo, Dr. Mukwege continued to explain in the interview that “the second consequence is that the whole family and the entire neighbourhood is traumatised by what they have seen. The ordinary sense of family and community is lost after a man has been forced to watch his wife being raped, or parents are forced to watch the rape of their daughters, or children see their mothers being raped.”

Sounds familiar? Just last year we’d read of the serial rapist raping a woman in front of her young children.

We continue to think that these tales of sexual violence are so foreign to our shores. In essence, it is the numbers that may be foreign, for the moment. But should attitudes toward women and children and sexual crimes continue, it won’t be long before the Congo’s reality becomes Wadadli’s reality.