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'I was raped for a week'
08/09/2006 15:29 - (SA)
Bukavu - Speaking softly, tears welling in her eyes, the 16-year-old Congolese girl tells how she was abducted from her home by militiamen, taken to the forest and gang raped for a week.
A girl, seated in a ward of Panzi Hospital for rape victims in Bukavu, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, said: "My father was away, he is a businessman, and a group of seven men came to the house. They took me and my mother into the forest and raped us."
The DRC's only specialised rape clinic had dealt with more than 10 000 cases in the last seven years.
But, its doctors said without a greater acceptance of rape victims by their communities, their psychological scars would never heal. And one doctor said once raped, women were more likely to be victims again.
Doctor Denis Mukwege Mukengere said: "Most women who come to this hospital do not want to leave after the surgery because when they go back to their villages, they are exposed to the same thing for the second time."
Militias terrorise civilians
The teenager at Panzi, who asked not to be identified, was just one of tens of thousands of women raped in the DRC, where armed militias and an undisciplined and unpaid army continued to terrorise civilians despite the end of a 1998-2003 war.
Landmark elections held at the end of July were aimed at bringing lasting peace to the giant central African state.
But, Panzi Hospital still received 10 victims a week, aged between two and 60 years old, often malnourished and had infections. Many of them were so brutally gang raped, they required reconstructive surgery on their vaginas.
Tears in the vaginal wall between the bladder or the rectum, known as fistula, left the women unable to control their bodily functions. They were often ostracised by their community, unable to have sexual relations and suffered lifelong health problems.
The clinic had performed surgery on more than 1 000 women, some of them requiring three or four painful operations to heal the damage.
DRC men 'to continue to rape'
United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland, who visited Panzi Hospital on Thursday during a three-nation African tour, condemned the culture of impunity, which allowed the DRC's armed men to continue to rape, pillage and kill.
The 1998-2003 war killed at least four million people through conflict, hunger and disease. Although the war was nominally over, an estimated 1.7 million Congolese were still homeless, fleeing attacks by militia groups and the predatory army.
Egeland said: "We have to stop these cowardly criminals and fight for justice in the DRC.
"I appeal to the men and the husbands of the victims to welcome these women back to their families and their villages. The stigmatisation of the victims has to stop."
As they had in other conflict zones, young soldiers roaming lawless eastern DRC had turned rape into a weapon of war.
Doctor Mukwege Mukengere said different militia groups had developed their own torture techniques. One group, for example, shot the victim in the genitals after the rape.
The 16-year-old girl said she was kept tied up in the armed men's camp and was beaten after she asked for food or to urinate.
The girl, dressed in a green and brown patterned dress, said: "Finally, I escaped when they took me to relieve myself. The man who followed me didn't come all the way so I ran off. I walked for four days to reach my village."
- Reuters
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