World ‘wakes up’ to 50,000 rapes
When Dr Denis Mukwege first treated a woman for war rape at his hospital in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) he was so shocked by the barbarity that he thought it must have been carried out by a madman.
‘‘She had been raped 500 metres away from my place by several men and after raping her they shot her in the vagina. I thought this must be an isolated incident carried out by someone on drugs who wasn’t really conscious of what he was doing,’’ Mukwege, a father of four, said.
Three months later, in September 1999, 45 more women turned up. Their experiences horrified him. ‘‘They all told the same story,’’ he said.
‘‘They had been at home with their husbands when men with guns came and killed the husbands, then raped the women in front of their children. They put bayonets in their genitals or sticks soaked in fuel then set on fire. Some were raped by five or more men till they lost consciousness.’’
He added: ‘‘I realised then these militias were using rape as weapons of war.’’
It has not stopped. Almost 20 years on Mukwege has treated an astonishing 50,000 or more rape victims at the Panzi hospital in Bukavu, a city in eastern DRC.
The rapes are carried out by militias fighting over control of precious minerals such as gold and cobalt that he believes have ‘‘cursed’’ the DRC’s women. There has been a recent upsurge in violence in the run-up to much delayed elections due to be held later this month.
Tomorrow Mukwege, 63, will receive the Nobel peace prize along with Nadia Murad, the young woman captured by Isis as a sex slave who has used her story to highlight what has happened to thousands of her fellow Yazidis, some still in captivity.
While many recipients are recognised for bringing peace, both Murad and Mukwege have tried to turn the world’s attention to the shocking effects of war on women – sexual violence in conflict.
‘‘The Nobel peace prize is a sign that the world is waking up and starts to recognise what is happening in wars around the world,’’ Mukwege told me.
Although he has some highprofile friends such as the Hollywood star and campaigner Angelina Jolie, for far too long his has been a lonely struggle amid disbelief and frustration that political leaders in his country and worldwide were turning a blind eye.
‘‘I thought the world would not allow this to happen,’’ he told me sadly over a lunch of Ethiopian curry earlier this year.
He recounted how back in 2001 he was so desperate at what he was seeing that he contacted Human Rights Watch. It sent a team to Panzi and published a shocking report, The War Within the War, about widespread sexual violence in eastern DRC.
‘‘I thought it would be a turning point where the international community would say, ’This can’t go on’, but since this time I am still waiting,’’ he said. ‘‘I am still treating victims of sexual violence. Indeed it’s my impression we are going backwards.’’
Not only does he find himself attending to women he had previously treated who have been raped again, but the victims have been getting younger: ‘‘Over the past five years I’m seeing a new phenomenon: we are now treating even babies who are completely destroyed, some as young as six months.’’
– The Times