Democratic Republic of Congo – Women and War

Is there any country in the world that has “Democratic Republic” in its name that is actually a functioning democracy?  I can’t think of one.

I recently read an article in the Sydney Morning Herald written by a World Vision aid worker about rape being used as a weapon in the Democractic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The article is disturbing to say the least, and the concept that this has been happening for such an extended period of time is appalling, so I decided to investigate.

History

A quick background check of the DRC shows that it was originally a land-holding of the Belgian King and known as the Congo Free State. As was typical of colonial ventures of the period the King made a great deal of money by oppressing the natives and using them as cheap labour.

In this case the product was rubber and to ensure that their quotas were met the local army used various incentives. One that has survived and is used in the current wars was to hack off a persons limbs ensuring if they survived the punishment they would be a constant reminder of ‘justice’. It is estimated that half the people living in the country died as a direct result of this kind of treatment.

Through international pressure the country was taken away from the King and administered by the Belgian Parliament (and renamed the Belgian Congo). They achieved independence in 1960 and promptly had a coup. Since then the country has suffered from one war after another (and changed its name to Zaire then finally DRC) till the current conflict which has been raging since 2004 and has conservatively estimated to have claimed over 5.4 million (some sources estimate over 6 million) lives making it the worst conflict since WWII.

International Recognition

by Julien Harneis

It would seem reasonable to expect that a conflict that was causing 45,000 deaths each month would attract a large degree of international media attention, and yet we hear almost nothing. The UN believes that fighting is currently based around gaining access to natural resources. The resources are coltan, diamonds, copper, cobalt and gold.

A cynical look at the lack of international interest in this situation might conclude that the lack of international pressure is somehow related to those resources. It has been shown in recent past that countries will be invaded for access to resources even though we post-rationalise to try and claim moral high-ground. Is it such a long stretch to believe that a country would be left alone if it might disrupt access to resources?

Could mainstream media miss something like this?

So what’s happening?

by Cheka Kodogo

The sad thing is that while this issue isn’t getting much traction in the nightly news or our public consciousness the information is depressingly easy to find when you take a look.

Ban Ki-moon addressing the UN Security Council recently said that both sides in the conflict are carrying out arbitrary executions, mass killings, rape and torture (he seems to have missed sexual slavery, kidnapping and the use of child soldiers). That means that the UN peacekeeping force who have been in country since 2004 have failed in what would seem a significant part of their mandate.

When we read abstract descriptions like above it is a bit difficult to really understand it emotionally, so let’s take a couple of examples from two Sydney Morning Herald articles published in the last 12 months.

Heavily pregnant 15-year-old Furaha Tajiri is from the Ninja province. The forces came for her at night, tied her hands and started beating her and her parents repeatedly. “I then saw them take my parents and kill them,” she says.

“After that they took me with them to the forest. They started raping me there – I counted 17 who attacked me. I stayed in the forest for six months and each day I was raped by two men.”

or

“They came and took all our belongings and then they told my husband he was a dead man,” she says. “They took the machete and started to cut him. They chopped him up into pieces like a cow or goat at the market.

“When they had finished, they yelled at me to pick up the pieces of his body and put them in a pile. There was blood everywhere and on everything in the bedroom. They told me they would kill me if I cried.”

When she had finished piling up her husband’s body, they took a knife and started cutting her face, neck, arms and legs.

“Then they told me to lay on top of my husband’s body parts and that is when they began raping me. There were 10 of them and one by one they raped me.”

While Martha was being raped, two other soldiers raped her daughters, 14 and 16, in the next room.

“I could hear my girls screaming and I couldn’t help them. Then I stopped thinking and my mind was not there any more.”

If you look the stories are out there, they go on (2001) and on (2003) and on (2004) and on (2005) and on (2008). In a country that has been constantly at war with itself and where rape and HIV are used as weapons, where the combatants have lost their sense of humanity the only chance is external intervention.

by Foreign and Commonwealth Office

In January a peace deal was organised and broken, now there is a summit being organised. Why? The UN has troops in country already (17,000 of them) however this is blatantly not adequate. Certainly Laurent Nkunda (leader of the rebels) doesn’t seem to think they are relevant, he breached the recent ceasefire and forced the peacekeepers to retreat prompting the addition of another 3,000.

The country has been of international concern in one shape or the other since the 1880’s and the current crisis has been extant since 2004. Isn’t it about time we did something?

Anything?