War Against Women

The Use Of Rape As A Weapon In Congo's Civil War

(CBS)  This segment was originally broadcast on Jan. 13, 2008. It was updated on Aug. 14, 2008.

Right now there's a war taking place in the heart of Africa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and more people have died there than in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Darfur combined.

You probably haven't heard much about it, but as CNN's Anderson Cooper first reported last January, it's the deadliest conflict since World War II. Within the last ten years, more than five million people have died and the numbers keep rising.

As Cooper and a 60 Minutes team found when they went there a few months ago, the most frequent targets of this hidden war are women. It is, in fact, a war against women, and the weapon used to destroy them, their families and whole communities, is rape.

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Dr. Denis Mukwege is the director of Panzi Hospital in eastern Congo. In this war against women, his hospital is the frontline. One of the latest victims he’s treating is Sifa M'Kitambala. She was raped just two days before the team arrived by soldiers who raided her village.

"They just cut her at many places," Dr. Mukwege explains.

Sifa was pregnant, but that didn't stop her rapists. Armed with a machete, they even cut at her genitals.

In the last ten years in Congo, hundreds of thousands of women have been raped, most of them gang raped. Panzi Hospital is full of them.

"All these women have been raped?" Cooper asked Dr. Mukwege, standing near a very large group of women waiting.

All the women, the doctor says, have been patients of his.

Within a week, Dr. Mukwege says this room will be filled with new faces, new victims.

"You know, they're in deep pain. But it's not just physical pain. It's psychological pain that you can see. Here at the hospital, we've seen women who've stopped living," Dr. Mukwege explains.

And not all the people the hospital treats are adults. "There are children. I think the youngest was three years old," Mukwege says. "And the oldest was 75."

To understand what is happening here, you have to go back more than a decade, when the genocide that claimed nearly a million lives in neighboring Rwanda spilled over into Congo. Since then, the Congolese army, foreign-backed rebels, and home-grown militias have been fighting each other over power and this land, which has some of the world's biggest deposits of gold, copper, diamonds, and tin. The United Nations was called in and today their mission is the largest peacekeeping operation in history.

Since 2005, some 17,000 UN troops and personnel have cobbled together a fragile peace. Last year they oversaw the first democratic election in this country in 40 years. But now all they have accomplished is at risk. Fighting has broken out once again in eastern Congo and the region threatens to slip into all-out war.

Each new battle is followed by pillaging and rape; entire communities are terrorized. Forced to flee their homes, people take whatever they can, and walk for miles in the desperate hope of finding food and shelter. Over the last year, more than 500,000 people have been uprooted. A fraction of them make it to cramped camps, where they depend on UN aid to survive.

One camp Cooper visited sprang up just two months before. It was already overcrowded, but more people kept arriving. They would go there seeking refuge, a safe haven, but the truth is in Congo, for women, there’s no such thing. Even in these supposedly protected camps, women are raped every single day.

"Has rape almost become the norm here?" Cooper asks Anneka Van Woudenberg, who is the senior Congo researcher at Human Rights Watch.

"I think because of the widespread nature of the war, because there has been so much violence, rape is now on a daily basis - rape is the norm," Van Woudenberg replies.

"Women get raped in wars all the time. How is it different here?" Cooper asks.

"I think what's different in Congo is the scale and the systematic nature of it, indeed, as well, the brutality. This is not rape because soldiers have got bored and have nothing to do. It is a way to ensure that communities accept the power and authority of that particular armed group. This is about showing terror. This is about using it as a weapon of war," she explains.

It's hard to imagine this war happening in the midst of such breathtaking natural beauty and abundance. But after decades of dictatorship and corruption, the country is broken. Most of the fighting and the raping takes place in remote areas difficult to get to.

Cooper and the team headed to an isolated village in the mountains in eastern Congo called Walungu. For years there's been armed groups fighting in this region; thousands of men emerge from the forest to terrorize villages and steal women. Congo’s government seems unable or unwilling to stop them.

[DamianaRaven]

This use of rape as a "weapon of war" speaks of a problem much deeper than the attacks by enemy soldiers. Maybe if the men of these villages CARED about their women and saw them as more than merely property, the rapes would diminish somewhat. As the reporter pointed out, this is more than just the depraved behavior of bored, ***** soldiers. They use rape as a means of destroying family unity and making the women of the village "worthless" in the eyes of their peers. It's sickening really, and should be addressed at the heart of the problem.

[nanigem]

Thank you to Anderson Cooper & crew for reporting on this horrible situation. Please continue to go to cover these neglected news stories and show us what exactly is going on in our world. I'd love to learn more about what is happening in the DRC, Rwanda and other nations which have been experiencing violence.

The situation in the DRCongo is beyond the norm, and I hope it doesn't become a cycle of violence for generations. Giving women economic stability, education and personal power has been proven to lift nations out of poverty. It's best to keep the spotlight on bad situations rather than to ignore it and hope it will go away. The media coverage helps protect people. People who send funds to reputable charities or contact their congressmen loud & clear can help these women. To donate, try womenforwomen.or or irc.org. Thanks again Anderson, please keep up the good work in tough places!

[nzunzu]

A powerful story. The war in a congo has always been neglected, and I was suprise that 60 minutes covered the story but forgot to mention the role the Australian mining companies have played in the rape of women in Congo, e.g. Anvil. The minister for foreign affairs should be ashamed for the "Africa DownUnder 2009" conference on 3-4 September 2009 which was about discussing how Australian mining companies are benefiting from the war in Congo. If you are interested in what happening in Congo, you can join us at the richmong town hall melbourne details at:
http://www.allag.org.au/

As a Congolese Australian I am privileged to be living here in Australia

[ctubbsmd]

When there is conflict between parties of unequal power, the weaker party often uses indirect but injurious strategies -- such as, in the political front, terrorism.

This situation or conflict in situations of unequal power occurs in male-female relationships. There are times when women engage in demeaning, insulting, and hurtful verbal attacks, and then are physically injured by their opponent.

To be sure, this does not justify the male's injurious response. However, if it is recognized that male violence is a possibility in a relationship, it might be good to discuss and consider the techniques the weaker female uses in expressing her disagreement or frustration.

[globalgram]

To Noella4 and Lalinda4:

Another group working to help women in the Congo is Run for Congo Women (www.runforcongowomen.org). All funds raised go to Women for Women International''s sponsorship program. Congolese women face the WORST conditions for women on the planet (UN, 7/2007) while recovering from these inconceivably brutal, mutilating gang rapes.

It isn''t only one town where 90% of the women have been gang raped...there are many, many such towns and villages.

These are brave, compassionate women who have nothing. We can give them the tools to help their children survive by signing up for a 1 year sponsorship.

Lisa Shannon, founder of Run for Congo Women, recently wrote: "One of our Run for Congo Women ''sisters'' that I met when I was in Congo this spring represents what it is all about. She was only 22. Her mother had died several years ago. In her own words, her father was ''useless.'' So at 19 or 20, she became the sole support and mother for her 6 young brothers and sisters. Struggling to find work, she moved them to the town of Walungu. Though she was doing her very best, they never had enough. When two of the children became seriously ill, she had no way to pay for medical treatment. She could only watch them die, completely powerless. Now that she is enrolled in Women for Women''s sponsorship program, she is over the moon. She finally has support in finding viable ways to raise her remaining brothers and sisters!

[pvinck-2009]

One out of five people living in Eastern Democratic Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has witnessed sexual violence; and one in eight has experienced sexual violence, according to a new survey undertaken in the region we released today (8/19/2008). Nearly half the adult population has faced death threats, suffered beatings or has been enslaved by armed groups. One third of the 2,620 people interviewed reported having been abducted for a week or more.
Those are among the key findings of %u2018Living with Fear%u2019, a 60-page report based on the survey conducted by the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley; the Payson Center for International Development at Tulane University; and the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ).
The report is available at http://repositories.cdlib.org/cgi/siteview.cgi/hrc/reports/2008_08Living-with-Fear-DRC.

Or
http://www.hrcberkeley.org/pdfs/LivingWithFear-DRC.pdf

[wonderfulyfe]

"There were many ways of not burdening one%u201Ds conscience, of shunning responsibility, looking away, keeping mum. When the unspeakable truth of the Holocaust then became known at the end of the war, all too many of us claimed that they had not known anything about it or even suspected anything." Richard von Weizsaecker

[wonderfulyfe]

Powerful title and report, it brought tears to my family%u2019s eyes yet again.

Adolf Hitler%u2019s political aim was %u201CRule or Ruin.%u201D Your crucial report revealed another %u201Cholocaust%u201D is happening now in the Congo. Systematic ruin. Millions killed and suffering continues. And by literally destroying vulnerable women and children this is the definition genocide. Brutal and unspeakable.

In the meantime rape and war victims need love and empathy. This report definitely gave beautiful examples of this.

I was also touched to the heart to hear the gentle words of dear Lucienne. Your interview with her is unforgettable.

These dear brave women, young and old deserve so much kindness and help after all they have suffered. Thank you for showing us, as viewers, ways we can do our part in helping too.

Thank you so much Anderson Cooper and %u201C60 Minutes%u201D for speaking up on behalf of these vulnerable fellow human family members. I wish you and all involved in helping many blessings. I cannot not give up hope of a better world where we can all learn to love each other on this beautiful earth.



"There were many ways of not burdening one%u201Ds conscience, of shunning responsibility, looking away, keeping mum. When the unspeakable truth of the Holocaust then became known at the end of the war, all too many of us claimed that they had not known anything about it or even suspected anything." Richard von Weizsaecker

Peace......Psalm 37:11

[palitikal]

I think that the first positive step would be for the women and children to learn to protect/ defend themselves. They must learn how to use their strength in numbers. At some point, they have got to stop running from their enemies and start fighting back. Otherwise, they will be intimidated and abused until they die. Although I do believe in charity, I have never believed in financing poverty or government greed, which is what the aid organizations end up doing once the government finds out that they exist and have valuable resources. They''re going to have to do it themselves since they can''t find anyone to do it for them. Hopefully, one day, the government of Congo will realize that it''s got to learn to take care of its own people. It is totally unfair of them to abandon their constituents and allow them to be abused and displaced onto the poverty rolls of other countries. If they have money to buy guns and support war ten then have money to help their own people.

[palitikal]

I think that the first positive step would be for the women and children to learn to protect/ defend themselves. They must learn how to use their strength in numbers. At some point, they have got to stop running from their enemies and start fighting back. Otherwise, they will be intimidated and abused until they die. Although I do believe in charity, I have never believed in financing poverty or government greed, which is what the aid organizations end up doing once the government finds out that they exist and have valuable resources. They''re going to have to do it themselves since they can''t find anyone to do it for them. Hopefully, one day, the government of Congo will realize that it''s got to learn to take care of its own people. It is totally unfair of them to abandon their constituents and allow them to be abused and displaced onto the poverty rolls of other countries. If they have money to buy guns and support war ten then have money to help their own people.