Someone's sister, someone's daughter.
"They rape a woman, five or six of them at a time — but that is not enough. Then they shoot a gun into her vagina," says Dr. Mukwege. [Dr. Denis Mukwege of Panzi Hospital in eastern Congo] "In all my years here, I never saw anything like it. ... [T]o see so many raped, that shocks me, but what shocks me more is the way they are raped."
I encourage you to watch this video, although the content is extremely disturbing. With a nod to webranding, it should be mentioned that the doctor in the video below describes the practice of inserting sand and leaves into the rape victims' vaginas, or more aptly, remnants thereof.
Someone's beloved child, someone's precious granddaughter.
The [NYT] piece painted a horrifying portrait of mass rapes in war-torn Eastern Congo. According to the UN, 27,000 women were raped in the South Kivu Province in 2006, and "[t]he sexual violence in Congo is the worst in the world."
These rapes are particularly brutal: "Many have been so sadistically attacked from the inside out, butchered by bayonets and assaulted with chunks of wood, that their reproductive and digestive systems are beyond repair," wrote Jeffrey Gettleman, the East Africa bureau chief of the Times. "'We don’t know why these rapes are happening, but one thing is clear,' said Dr. Mukwege, who works in South Kivu Province, the epicenter of Congo’s rape epidemic. 'They are done to destroy women.'" Source: BoingBoing.
Let me tell you about Thérèse Mwandeko, a 47-year-old Congolese woman who has suffered unspeakable sexual violence and is happy to have saved $1.50 in Congolese francs to escape and find help.
She walked with balled-up fabric clenched between her thighs, to soak up blood that had been oozing from her vagina for two years, since she had been gang-raped by Rwandan militia soldiers who plundered her village in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Finally, she arrived at Panzi Hospital.
Here, Thérèse takes her place in line, along with 80 women, waiting for surgery to rebuild her vagina. Dr. Denis Mukwege, Panzi’s sole gynecologist and one of two doctors in the eastern Congo who can perform such reconstructive surgeries, can repair only five women a week. The air is thick with flies. It reeks from women with fistula: rips in the vaginal wall where rape tore out chunks of flesh separating the bladder and rectum from the vagina. Yet Thérèse, 47, is happier than she’s been in years.
"Until I came here, I had no hope I could be helped," she says. Source: Ms.
My friends, if you've made it this far with me, I thank you. If you feel appalled, sickened, outraged, you aren't alone. If you consider yourself a citizen of the world, not just George Bush's America, a sister or brother to all human beings, a witness to the incredible suffering that knows no borders, I stand with you and together we are strong and we are capable. Rape is a weapon of war.
"In peacetime, the demands on Congolese women are limitless; but in this war, the most insane fantasies have found their expression. When seven soldiers rape a women or little girl, and thrust a knife or fire shots into her vagina, for them the woman is no longer a human being, she is an object. And since there are no longer any laws or rules, combatants pour out their anger and their madness on to women and little girls." - Congolese doctor in eastern DRC specialising in the treatment of rape victims. Source: Amnesty International.
"The sexual violence in Congo is the worst in the world," said John Holmes, the United Nations under secretary general for humanitarian affairs. "The sheer numbers, the wholesale brutality, the culture of impunity — it’s appalling." (New York Times, cited above).
"My dad told me to hide. When the soldiers came in they shot my mum and my dad before my eyes. I stayed hidden but the soldiers found me and raped me... they were many. I really would like to go back to school, but the other kids insult me, calling me the enemy's woman."
This girls’ village was attacked her village was attacked by an armed group in 2002. She still suffers intense pains and long periods of depression. She is not alone; others suffer humiliation, abandonment and anxiety and are left with absolutely nothing, not even their families and husbands, who, in most cases, leave them. They are shunned by their communities and treated as if they were the ones who have committed a crime. Source: Petition Online.
I've never asked this, but I am asking now. Please read The Baculum King's earlier diary, Mass Rape in the Congo, and How You Can Help the Victims and recommend. Over 27,000 women have been brutalized by sexual violence in the Congo.
If you would be so kind as to help increase awareness of their plight, and ways to help them, with thanks to The Reverse Cowgirl, and Boing Boing, you can make a difference betweeen life, death and a painful existence as a shamed and shunned unwoman.