War on Women in Congo

I write today on behalf of countless V-Day activists worldwide, and in solidarity with my many Congolese sisters and brothers who demand justice and an end to rape and war.

It is my hope that these words and those of others will break the silence and break open a sea of action to move Congolese women toward peace, safety and freedom.

My play, The Vagina Monologues, opened my eyes to the world inside this world. Everywhere I traveled with it scores of women lined up to tell me of their rapes, incest, beatings, mutilations. It was because of this that over 11 years ago we launched V-Day, a worldwide movement to end violence against women and girls.

The movement has spread like wildfire to 130 countries, raising $70 million. I have visited and revisited the rape mines of the world, from defined war zones like Bosnia, Afghanistan and Haiti to the domestic battlegrounds in colleges and communities throughout North America, Europe and the world. My in-box -- and heart -- have been jammed with stories every hour of every day for over a decade.

Nothing I have heard or seen compares with what is going on in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where corporate greed, fueled by capitalist consumption, and the rape of women have merged into a single nightmare. Femicide, the systematic and planned destruction of the female population, is being used as a tactic of war to clear villages, pillage mines and destroy the fabric of Congolese society.

In 12 years, there have been 6 million dead men and women in Congo and 1.4 million people displaced. Hundreds and thousands of women and girls have been raped and tortured. Babies as young as 6 months, women as old as 80, their insides torn apart. What I witnessed in Congo has shattered and changed me forever. I will never be the same. None of us should ever be the same.

I think of Beatrice, shot in her vagina, who now has tubes instead of organs. Honorata, raped by gangs as she was tied upside down to a wheel. Noella, who is my heart -- an 8-year-old girl who was held for 2 weeks as groups of grown men raped her over and over. Now she has a fistula, causing her to urinate and defecate on herself. Now she lives in humiliation.

I was in Bosnia during the war in 1994 when it was discovered there were rape camps where white women were being raped. Within two years there was adequate intervention. Yet, in Congo, femicide has continued for 12 years. Why? Is it that coltan, the mineral that keeps our cell phones and computers in play, is more important than Congolese girls?

Is it flat-out racism, the world's utter indifference and disregard for black people and black women in particular? Is it simply that the UN and most governments are run by men who have never known what it feels like to be raped?

What is happening in Congo is the most brutal and rampant violence toward women in the world. If it continues to go unchecked, if there continues to be complete impunity, it sets a precedent, it expands the boundaries of what is permissible to do to women's bodies in the name of exploitation and greed everywhere. It's cheap warfare.

The women in Congo are some of the most resilient women in the world. They need our protection and support. Western governments, like the United States, should fund a training program for female Congolese police officers.

They should address our role in plundering minerals and demand that companies trace the routes of these minerals. Make sure they are making and selling rape-free-products. Supply funds for women's medical and psychological care and seed their economic empowerment. Put pressure on Rwanda, Congo, Uganda and other countries in the Great Lakes region to sit down with all the militias involved in this conflict to find a political solution.

Military solutions are no longer an option and will only bring about more rape. Most of all, we must support the women. Because women are at the center of this horror, they must be at the center of the solutions and peace negotiations. Women are the future of Congo. They are its greatest resource.

Sadly, we are not the first to testify about these atrocities in Congo. I stand in a line of many who have described this horror. Still, in Eastern Congo, 1,100 women a month are raped, according to the United Nations' most recent report. What will the United States government, what will all of you reading this, do to stop it?

Let Congo be the place where we ended femicide, the trend that is madly eviscerating this planet -- from the floggings in Pakistan, the new rape laws in Afghanistan, the ongoing rapes in Haiti, Darfur, Zimbabwe, the daily battering, incest, harassing, trafficking, enslaving, genital cutting and honor killing. Let Congo be the place where women were finally cherished and life affirmed, where the humiliation and subjugation ended, where women took their rightful agency over their bodies and land.

Note: Eve Ensler is the playwright of "The Vagina Monologues" and the founder of V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls. V-Day has funded over 10,000 community-based anti-violence programs and launched safe houses in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Kenya, South Dakota, Egypt and Iraq. V-Day has launched a joint global campaign with UNICEF - STOP RAPING OUR GREATEST RESOURCE: Power to the Women and Girls of the DRC. (http://www.vday.org) This commentary was originally adapted for CNN.com from remarks Ensler made Wednesday to the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs and the Subcommittee on International Operations and Organizations, Human Rights, Democracy and Global Women's Issues.

 

 

Comments

[ahuffreader]

Every war is a war against women.

[pene]

There is an excellent piece in a recent NYer on Rwanda which covers the presence of Hutu in Congo. This provides some background on the earlier accusation that the genocide is being committed by Hutu.

[Klimb]

The NYorker does not tell the full story...people need to read broader than the eyes see!

[Klimb]

Article from above...excellent and spot on!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/12/foreign-aid-arms-shipped_n_202429.html

[ianrthorpe]

Welcome to realty. This kind of thing goes on all over Africa all the time. it's time Americans woke up and African Americans read some factual history rather than the fairytale fantasies of preacher politicians. Africa is not generally a very nice place to be a woman.

Did you know that rape is a weapon of war and genocide in Africa. Tribal beliefs hold that is a woman is "impure" (not a virgin on marriage, er womb is tainted with the seed of the man who raped her for the rest of her life. If the man who had sex with her is not of her own tribe her children can never be accepted as full members of the tribe and so a man of her tribe will never marry her. So raping a woman of the enemy takes her out of the breeding stock.

http;//www.greenteethmm.com/theotherslaves1.html

[Klimb]

It has been a worldwide culture...not only in Africa.

[Lisa-G]

Thank you for bringing attention to this problem. You work on behalf of women all over the world is truly inspirational.

[justthefacts17]

Do what? Remember when Clinton did nothing in Rwanda when
3500 troops would've made the difference. Nothing will be done by this
admin. either.

[libslayerguy]

Are trying to be a partisan on an issue as painfully sad as this? If we're throwing around blame for failing to do something, then you missed blaming the administration between Clinton and this one. Or did I miss hearing about the African wars coming to halt during that time and starting up again only last January.

[Lazslo]

You are appealing to the wrong audience. The U.S. in concert with the UN has a history of supporting totalitarian governments in the Congo and Africa since the sixties, the very same governments that deny women their rights. If you want to get something done, write to Cuba and Raul Castro. Cuba has a long history of fighting imperialism in Africa.

[MrsFonebone]

Protecting women and children would be a great cause for the First Lady to adopt!

[MomfromTexas]

Here is a list of organizations working to try and make a change on behalf of women in the Congo, if anyone is interested in the work they are doing and want to be a part of it:

http://www.peacewomen.org/campaigns/DRC/DemocraticRepCongo.html

[LeBelAge]

The root of this horror is economics.

Does every cell phone or computer company use such material? Maybe we can support the ones that do not and start a campaign against those that continue to use the resource in the Congo , which is feeding this genocide? What material can we encourage cell phone and computers companies to use in replace of the materials found in the Congo?

[chaos4700]

I think the wiser thing to do would be to use the economy as leverage. We need that material, I'm not intimately familiar with the exact composition of cell phone components, but replacing the material with stuff gained elsewhere only means we ignore the Congo and things get worse. What would work better would be an international boycott were we (by "we" I mean those nations in the world who are willing to put human concerns before economic ones) refuse to import /any/ of this material, or put it under heavy sanction or tariff, until those in control in Congo either change their ways or step aside.

[dadw5boys]

I most of those countrys women are not even seen as human. Medical records are not kept on women. Drug use and addiction rates are high among women but the government ignors it. In Turkey a shodow government runs to keep the drugs flowing.

[lisa12345]

This is devastating, a combination of femicide but also racism, and killing off Black people to "rape" a land of resources. The recent Sundance documentary on this and its coverage/repeat playing by mainstream media sources has helped to raise awareness, Eve Ensler will help by drawing attention to this as well. Thank you Eve for lending your famous name to this, and being sincere as well. Many less-famous people who have tried to bring awareness are appreciative of you.

[Phillup Textfield]

There is no critical distance from these atrocities, not for us commentors, not for empathic Eve, not for any petit-bourgeois jeremiad on the horrors of transnational slash-burn­/mine/depl­ete and maybe build a road or dam now and then capitalism.----on a closer reading I saw that Eve actually mentioned the blood-mineral Coltan that keep our motherboards humming and our Ipods and Blackberries (that we would "like totally DIE without one") chirping and bleeping. Tin and cadmium are a couple other tech industry minerals that are FAR more important that homosapiens, simply because there is a finite amount of ore on the planet, but hey no shortage of the Wretched of the Earth. I am typing on a computer now of course. I am guilty. We are all guilty. We all have it coming.---- The only thing we can hope is that the Congolese take a lesson from Franz Fanon, slaughter their current puppet government, agents of the transnationals, and that another home-grown Marxist strongman like Patrice Lumumba will emerge.

[lisa12345]

I have long struggled to "figure out" what to do about these situations with the limited insight I have from afar, even though as you stated, we aren't really distant...Look at Burma/Myanmar, even with an embargo, even with world condemnation from leaders and human rights champions. All the media in the world, all the boycotts, what helps? Can we help? I am losing patience. Look at Tibet, and many other places. When you say the hope is the people themselves, that they will overthrow their government, I am reminded of a book I read and still have that I was jolted into recalling when reading about white land holders in Kenya recently. Did you read Matigari by wa Thiong'o? He decides to rise up against the puppet regime and transnationals. What else is there in terms of options? I want to help but what can I do but "raise awareness". How far does that take anyone?

[justthefacts17]

Keep your guilt to yourself. If you think it helps anyone
in the Congo or wherever to call others guilty then
good luck with all that. And wasn't P. Lumumba
just wonderful? Get real, collectivists.

[Phillup Textfield]

furthermore, culture industry profiteers and technocrats of the west should not committ an an attributive fallacy on the issue of Rape. There is not a single experiential Uber-Rape that unites all 3.5 billion women on Earth. Rape in the developing world is INCOMMENSURABLE:

See Slavoj [time 30 sec - 2:00] : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9notgADJDk&feature=related

[Klimb]

Rwanda and Uganda have heavy hands in destabilizing Congo. Rwanda tutsis continue their propaganda against Hutus while haboring Gen. Laurent Ngunda (leader of rebel group in e.congo until January 2009; a tutsi and friends with Presid. Museveni (Uganda) and Paul Kagame(Rwanda)) who is guilty of killings, rapes and many atrocities in the Eastern Congo. Once People begin to carefully examine Uganda and Rwanda's role and their invisible hands in the DRC atrocities, the problems will be partially (60%) solved. Uganda and Rwanda govts want Kabila's (DRC) govt destabilsed to pave way for Laurent Nkunda and crew (Tutsi rule in that whole region) yet, Kabila is the only one among the 3 who came into power as a democratically elected leader without a military war.

Then, look at foreign interests who are there for mineral resources and the war will be eradicated...so Eve does not matter what people like you do. The best you can do "TRULY' for these women is to condemn the specific people (countries) involved in the atrocities b/c even the UN has failed and fully employed with special interest groups.

There is too much propaganda in the Greatlakes region with UN acknowledging other genocides but not the genocide of Acholi in Northern Uganda, DRC...that is why these problems never stop all over the world. However, thank you to internet and other media, we can all exchange info and do not have to listen to PR and propaganda media!

[socialtalker]

the stories i have heard out of the congo in last few years are so painful i cant bear to read them. and i feel so helpless because i know its about killing off the black population to rape the minerals.

[Lorianne]

Hearts for Hope: Helping Women Victims of the Congo Conflict
http://arkansasmatters.com/content/news/fulltext?cid=222451

[Lorianne]

Congo ex-rebels accused of rape and killings

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hgh5suxPEmPF6L19iqBMVc7e-B_wD988N8500

Africa peacekeeping problems abound for UN envoys

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN15537599