‘Dr Miracle’ – a Nobel Peace winner
Mukwege given recognition for helping many rape victims in DR Congo.
Bukavu: Lucie was just seven years old when the men took her. She was found the next day, naked and bleeding, on the edge of the vast forested hills of Kahuzi Biega Park, in violence-plagued eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
“The militants entered the family home during the night,” said her mother Adeline, recalling the day that her family was touched by the terror that gripped their small village as militiamen abducted and raped dozens of girls, some barely more than babies.
Lucie’s injuries were so serious she was taken to Denis Mukwege.
Known as “Doctor Miracle”, 2018 Nobel Peace laureate, Mukwege has treated thousands of women and girls brutalised in the country’s lacerating conflicts.
“She had several operations for two months,” Adeline said, in a secluded hut where she spoke alongside other mothers of victims of the three years of violence against girls in their village of Kavumu.
A total of 42 girls, aged between 18 months and 12 years, were abducted by the Djeshi ya Yesu militia, or “Army of Jesus”, between 2013 and 2016 in Kavumu, in the province of South Kivu.
Many were taken to Mukwege. At his Panzi hospital in Bukavu, the provincial capital of South Kivu, the doctor performs reconstructive surgery on women and girls who have suffered serious internal injuries.
“It was very hard, for me and all the staff. I have never before seen people weeping while they were tending to patients,” he said in a weekend interview ahead of accepting the Nobel award today.
“I believe that in my life I have never been as disturbed, shocked, I don’t have the words. When you see an innocent little baby, but bloody, with their genitals shredded, you ask yourself questions about humanity.
“How could we get to this point? What happens to humans who have no rules? It has no limit.”
Once Mukwege has staunched bleeding and rebuilt battered bodies, his focus turns to justice.
Panzi’s Legal Clinic, which provides forensic evidence and legal representation, took part in the trial against a provincial lawmaker and 10 militiamen who were convicted last year over the Kavumu abductions and rapes and sentenced to life in prison.
The UN’s peacekeeping mission in the country hailed the landmark case as a “major advance in the fight against impunity for sexual violence”.
The trial also provided US$5,000 (RM20,800) in compensation for each of the victims – although the families say they still have not received anything.
Around 40 cases are ongoing – either as complaints filed or trials.
Efforts to bring an end to impunity for sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo began to gather pace in 2011, when nine soldiers were convicted by a military court for ordering and carrying out mass rapes.
About 60 women were raped in one night that year in the town of Fizi, some 250km south of Bukavu.
Lieutenant Colonel Kibibi Mutware, two majors and a second lieutenant were sentenced to 20 years in jail for “crimes against humanity by way of rape and other inhuman and terrorist acts”.
Mukwege may have won his Nobel prize for his work to end sexual violence in war, but the crusading surgeon said the groundwork for equality must be laid in peacetime, as he praised movements like #MeToo.
Mukwege, whose work has made him a global expert on gang rape in conflict, will be presented with the Nobel Peace Prize that he shares with Yazidi activist Nadia Murad.
“When one does not fight against an evil, it is like a cancer, it spreads and destroys the whole society,” he said, noting that few perpetrators are ever brought to justice. — Agencies