BobHarris.com - The D.R. Congo: The Most Horrible Thing You Will Read Today

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The D.R. Congo: The Most Horrible Thing You Will Read Today

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Sunday, 25 November 2007

The Sydney Morning Herald has reprinted this October Irish Times story about the incredible level of violence against women in the heavily populated eastern D.R. Congo:

For those who are apprehended, there is little impunity, thanks to antiquated gender laws. The attacks grow more numerous and sadistic by the day and the normalisation of sexual violence continues largely unabated.

The article has details about the types of attacks, and frankly they're so dreadfully inhuman I'm not comfortable even quoting them here, in case some of you are eating or just breezing through. It's not the sort of thing to glance across casually. But I do urge you to take a minute, put down what you're doing, and click over and read.

Alternatively, there's the latest report from the International Rescue Committee:

“It was not uncommon to hear accounts of armed groups seizing young women from farms or water points and enslaving them and raping them for one to three months,” says [IRC D.R. Congo Gender Based Violence team coordinator Sarah] Mosely. “Now women in North Kivu talk to me more about gunmen breaking into their homes and brutally raping them in front of their families.”

She says the attacks have become so frequent that families in the north cross into Uganda at night to sleep in the forest. It’s safer than staying at home.

The eastern D.R. Congo borders on Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi, and the current horrorshow is a direct descendant of the 1994 Rwandan genocide and the 1998-2003 Second Congo War (aka the African World War) which followed it. This Second Congo War, which at its height involved about two dozen factions from eight different countries, is almost certainly humankind's deadliest conflict worldwide since the end of World War II, with a death toll estimated by the International Rescue Committee at 3.8 million people as of early 2005.

Since the aftermath is still estimated to claim more than 1000 additional lives every single day (think malaria, malnutrition, dysentery, ongoing scattered violence, etc.), and about 1000 days have passed since the original estimate, at least four and perhaps more than five million Africans have died in less than ten years.

If you've barely or never heard of the Second Congo War, you are not alone. While the British and French press seem to have covered the topic in some depth, there's sparse mention in most U.S. newspaper archives. The Washington Post, whose coverage seems to have been much better than most, noted the entire war and its horrifying aftermath an average of about once every two and a half months, including the small passing mentions in the "World In Brief" bit on page A12.

Many Westerners have heard next to nothing about the violence in the D.R. Congo, despite the fact that even its aftermath is still deadlier on a daily basis than all other current wars on earth combined. (Hard to believe, but the math seems unavoidable.) Me, too, until recently; I only learned anything because I went looking, and that was only because I was getting paid last year to write a book about wars.

If you'd asked a year ago to name the most deadly conflict of our lifetimes, I might have guessed Vietnam. Most folks I've asked out of curiosity have guessed the same. But the Second Congo War surpassed its death toll in about half the time.) Ask what overseas conflict might merit more media coverage, and many Westerners may respond with Darfur. But the IRC estimated last year that Darfur's sparse coverage is still five times more than the D.R. Congo gets.

Ask where violence against women has reached crisis proportions, and you get all sorts of answers, ranging from Taliban-controlled areas to the unsolved murders in Juarez to people bringing up Natalee Holloway or whatever else they saw on CNN the night before.

As you read this, according to the IRC's local coordinator, whole families are night-communting to Uganda and sleeping in the woods just so their daughters won't be gang-raped for months on end.

Wonder when Nancy Grace will get around to those women.