Update (previously covered topic on Luciole): Important video of hope, plus articles: "An apathetic, greedy west has abandoned war-torn Congo" -- "UN urges DR Congo to empower women in fight against rape" and "The War on Women"

Posted by kluciole at 6/21/2009 8:11 PM
Categories: International, Cultures, Human Rights, Politics, Conflict, news, Video








PREVIOUS entry on Luciole Press Blog: 

Brave women in Congo speak out about rape despite taboo (PLEASE READ)  (3/14/09)
 
HERE
 








Women for Women (dot.org) 


"One woman can change anything, but many women can change everything"






YouTube

(Taken from article below, "The War on Women")










An apathetic, greedy west has abandoned war-torn Congo

Despite an emerging women's movement, the rape of women and girls continues as the UN looks the other way

 

 

 

 

In 1996, I was sitting with 20,000 grieving women in a stadium in Tuzla, Bosnia. The women were holding photographs of husbands, fathers, brothers, sons and boyfriends who had been ­disappeared a year earlier in a place called Srebrenica, a UN enclave where Bosnian refugees had turned over their protection to UN peacekeepers who stood passively by as 10,000 men were marched off to be slaughtered. I will never forget the wailing of the women in that ­stadium as they cried out, demanding the ­international community explain how they could have allowed this horror to take place.
 
Now, 13 years later, I am in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo, where, this time, UN peacekeepers (Monuc) are not passively standing by and watching the massacres, but are actually supporting the perpetrators.
 
For nearly 12 years an invisible war has ravaged this beloved, beleaguered country. Over five million dead, hundreds of thousands of women and girls raped and sexually tortured in the most unimaginable ways, 800,000 internally displaced since January 2009 and close to 350,000 forced to flee to neighbouring countries. This violence is fuelled by the world's need for minerals, most recently due to the economic crisis. Congo, the sixth most mineral-rich country in Africa, has become the stage for a regional war fuelled by ­economic interests.
 
In January, military operations were launched in North Kivu. The so-called goal of this military plan was to arrest the rebel leader Laurent Nkunda and neutralise his troops, the CNDP, the former Rwandan Hutu militia, the FDLR, as well as other armed militias. Even though public spin on this operation touted its success, the statistics reveal another horrific story. Since the operation began, a thousand women and children have been raped each month in North Kivu, massacres have ravaged villages, displacing entire communities, and new, even more horrific tortures of women have surfaced (including the lighting of fuel in women's vaginas). There has been no accountability for these horrific crimes, no justice, hardly a mention in the world press.
 
Now on the heels of catastrophe, rather than learning something, the UN has joined with the FARDC (the Congolese army) to create an even more disastrous plan: Kimya II. This operation reads like a chapter from some psychotic science fiction novel. The plan is to bring together former enemy militias – FARDC, PARECO (Mai Mai), and CNDP – without reason, without training, without investigation into war crimes, without stepping back and considering what steps must be taken to integrate former enemy militias into one unified body. In essence, the war criminals who were responsible for raping, destroying and terrorising Bukavu in 2004 are now being charged with protecting it.
 
The most terrifying aspect of this operation is that Monuc is officially facilitating it by offering logistical support. What this means is that the international community is supporting this operation. A high-ranking Monuc official told me off the record that when the security council was in Goma a month ago he asked them: "Are you saying you support Kimya II? Does this mean you are supporting war criminals and rapists as commanders of this operation?" When one of the members of the council balked, he produced a blacklist of war criminals with their charges and evidence of their crimes. Security council members gave the list to President Kabila, but none of the commanders were removed and the operation moved forward.
 
As this ragtag group of starving ­soldiers spreads out into the forests and villages of South Kivu in preparation for operation Kimya II, the massacres have already begun. The FDLR as usual is revenge-raping women in the forests, and villages are being set on fire. ­Imagine what it will be like when ­operation Kimya II actually begins? When these hungry soldiers, thrown together from various militias and led by war criminals and rapists, are unleashed on the population in the forests, where no one is watching and where there is no means of protection. The mind boggles.
 
No one I have spoken to anywhere in Congo believes this operation will be anything but catastrophic, and this includes foot soldiers in Monuc who are meant to implement the operation, on up to high-ranking officials in the organisation. Yet not a single world leader, Congolese leader, international government or member of the security council is stopping it or offering a viable alternative.
 
So the war continues because the western world is hungry for Congo's minerals. It pushes for a military "solution", knowing full well that these are doomed. Despite a powerful emerging women's movement, despite the work of brave doctors giving their lives to perform day-long operations on raped women, despite local activists and survivors of rape working with their hearts to change the situation and wake up the world to a war that has destroyed their country, Congo still doesn't register in our consciousness.
 
It turns out that Kimya means "Sssh", quiet, invisible in Swahili. Ironic. Will we as humanity raise our voices before it's too late and prevent the next round of massacres in Congo?
 
 
 
 
 
 







Image: HERE







UN urges DR Congo to empower women in fight against rape

6 days ago

KINSHASA (AFP) — A United Nations envoy on Monday urged the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo to empower women politically and socially to help them fight the high rate of sexual crime in the country.

"You have to promote the participation of women in government, in the electoral process, in politics... and strengthen the status of women to settle issues of sexual violence," said the administrator of the UN Development Programme, Helen Clark, in Kinshasa.

Clark was addressing a press conference after a three-day visit to the vast central African nation, during which she went to Goma in Nord-Kivu province, a region where rapes take place in the thousands.

Both the eastern Kivu provinces are wracked by unrest and brutal insurgency and by ill-disciplined troops following succesive wars that raged across the country before 2003.

"One of the solutions is to give women much more power" in decision-making, Clark said.

The DR Congo government currently includes five women among a total of 54 ministers.

UN agencies and non-governmental organisations in the country often denounce repeated rape and other atrocities, frequently blamed on Rwandan Hutu rebels of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), particularly active in the Kivu provinces.

During the first quarter of the year, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs registered more than 1,330 cases of rape in Sud-Kivu.

At the beginning of the year, the Rwandan and Congolese army carried out a joint operation against the FDLR, estimated to be more than 6,000 strong. The offensive succeeded in driving the rebels away from urban centres.

However, the rebels are holding out in forests and the military operation reportedly led to heightened violence against villagers.




Article:

HERE






The War on Women

 

I recently came across a list of the Ten Worst Countries to be a Woman. It was a grim list of places where women have little opportunity or where they are actively discriminated against. The second worst country for women to live was the Democratic Republic of Congo. When I think about the different ways women’s bodies become sites for social and political control, it is imposible to escape the topic of sexual violence. It is a really horrible topic, but sexual violence against women is the most brutal and oldest form of attack against women’s bodies and psyches.


A few months ago, I wrote an essay on the impact of war on women’s health and bodies. It was around the time when the UN Security Council was passing a resolution to end sexual violence as a tactic of war. When it comes to war, women and children bear the brunt of









civilian casualties in all the recent conflicts in the DRC, Rwanda, Liberia, Sierra Leone, northern Uganda parts of the former Russian Federation among others. Women and girls are subject to sexual torture, sexual slavery, military rape, mutilation and other extremely violent acts. Military rape is actually a tactic of war, it is used to brutalize and humiliate civilians and weaken the communities.  It has even been used for ethnic cleansing by impregnating women. There are those who die a “clean death” from sexual violence, but for the women who survive, it is often a “living death” filled with life-long psychological trauma as well as social and cultural stigma, not to mention the morbidity from infections such as HIV and poor reproductive health outcomes. All in all, it is beyond devastating. Of all the many wars that are going on around the world right now, thousands of women (and girls) become targets simply because they are women.


Here is a video from Women for Women International on the situation in DRC and the organization’s initiative for rehabilitating victims of sexual violence and stigma (my note... I posted it at the top of this entry). This is one topic that seems so huge and hopeless, but it is one that definitely needs great attention and real intervention.

 

Read it: HERE





(My note: whilst I understand what the author was explaining, I don't think the phrase "clean death" applies to the circumstances)







Warning: Graphic Image of woman who was burned to death in the Congo

HERE






...

 

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  • 7/13/2009 11:40 PM Rizik wrote:
    MJPC blames the Congolese Government for Deteriorating Situation in East Congo

    "There is no excuse for missing to pay salaries to soldiers in lawless eastern Congo for six months"

    Following the deteriorating situation in east Congo, the MJPC called for the Congolese Government to pay the salaries of thousands of soldiers who have not been paid for over six months in east Congo, take swift action to enforce the International Criminal Court's (ICC) warrant against Bosco Ntaganda and to hold accountable perpetrators of sexual violence against women for their acts.

    "Faillng to hold accountable individuals who commit war crimes and crimes against humunity continues to be the leading cause of widespread and systematic sexual violence acts against girls and women in the easten Congo" said Makuba Sekombo, Community Affairs Director of
    the Mobilization for Justice and Peace in the DR Congo (MJPC). Mr. Sekombo again criticized the government of Congo for not only the continuing failure to protect women and young girls from sexual violence, but also for "encouraging conditions that create opportunities for sexual violence to occur". "There is no excuse for missing to pay salaries to soldiers in lawless eastern Congo for six months" said Sekombo.

    The MJPC has also renewed its call for the Congolese government to take urgent needed action to end human rights abuses in east Congo, hold perpetrators accountable and ensure reparation for the victims of sexual violence. The MJPC has been urging the Congolese government to compensate the victims of sexual violence in order to also help combat impunity in eastern part of Congo where sexual violence against women and children has been widely used as weapon of war for more than decade.MJPC online petition calling for for help to put pressure on Congolese Government to compensate victims of sexual siolence in Eastern DRC can be signed at http://www.gopetition.com.au/online/26180.html

    MJPC is a nonprofit organization dedicated to working to add a voice in the promotion of justice and peace in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in particular in the East where thousands of innocent civilians, including children and women continue to be victims of massive human rights violations while the armed groups responsible for these crimes remain unpunished.

    For more information on MJPC and the activities, visit the web site http://www.mjpcongo.org. E-mail: info@mjpcongo.org or call Makuba Sekombo at 1 408 806 3644
    Reply to this
  • 8/11/2009 7:33 AM Anonymous wrote:
    This is moronic brutality ,for whatever reason they are doing these.
    It is monstrous.
    Reply to this
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