I found a gruesome story in the Guardian today. It told of how hundreds of thousands are raped in the Congo wars in the past decade.
It seems to me, that as horrible as rape is, it is almost a common occurrence to hear of it in the news. It always seems to be reported in a blaze manner.
But this story affected me like no other newspaper story has done before. These attacks are not just being noted ‘for their scale but also their brutality.’
One 54 year old woman was attacked by people from a group called Mai Mai. This is an ethnic militia who are recognised by their wearing of animal skins and amulets.
After being raped several times over, and lay bleeding ‘the attackers thrust the barrels of their guns into her vagina.’
Rape is being used as an act of war. By one group named the interahamwe (an extremist Hutu Militia that fled to the Congo after the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda) rape is used as a tool of genocide.
They tell women that they would bear Hutu children and how that would be the end of the Tutsis.
A doctor told the Guardian how some women are raped so severely that they can be raped by up to ten men. Others have their vaginas pulled out.
At this I was quite distressed. I do not think I remember reading something so graphic before and yet the horror of it has not left me.
Normally, I read news stories and forget about them. I admit like the rest of the world, when one day’s news is done, I look for what else is new.
What else that is terrible has happened in the world now? We almost come to expect it.
I do not think I will be forgetting this story so easily.
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2 comments:
I read this story too, and it chilled me to the bone.
No matter how much I think about it I just can't understand how even one man can do this to another human being, certainly not how it can be done in gangs, with several men agreeing to let it happen, knowing the unimaginable physical and psychological torture they're putting their victim through.
Living in a country where the worst crimes possible are committed all the time, actually expecting to be violently assaulted during your life, these people face more hardship in one week than some of us face in a lifetime.
And it's so embarrassing to see our rich governments, and indeed their own corrupt governments, stand by and do nothing.
Like Kate, I'm appalled that this kind of thing is allowed to happen.
Unfortunately, it does happen and in the case of the Congo, it has been happening for years and only occasionally crops up on page 23 of the nationals.
My most recent blog is about the continuing crisis of Darfur and now Chad at the hands of the Janjaweed.
There is a small glimmer of hope for this atrocity, but again it gets forgotten so easily.
If you want to learn more about the Hutu-Tutsi violence try reading a book by a Journalist called Philip Gourevitch. Its called 'We are writing to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families'. It looks at the Rwandan genocide and how the world turned away.
This genocide had pretty much started during the 50s and only finally came to a head in 1994.
I studied this as part of my degree - a really fascinating but disturbing read.
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