Over 250,000 displaced as sexual violence erupts in DRC
‘The first soldiers killed my brother and his son, then I was raped as I fled’
More than a quarter of a million people have been displaced during the past three months
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Rob Crilly in Goma
The first soldiers kicked down the door to her house, killed her younger brother, his wife and son.
Then, as Ngiraganga fled barefoot towards safety, she came across the second wave of soldiers.
They asked her for money and when she explained that she had nothing to give they took her clothes, stripping the 42-year-old to her underwear.
The third group of soldiers took all she had left. “They beat me and raped me,” Ngiraganga said quietly in Swahili, sitting in the gloomy office of a women’s shelter. “They weren’t drunk, just dirty from the fighting.”
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More than a quarter of a million people have been displaced during the past three months of fighting as the Democratic Republic of Congo’s messy, forgotten war flares once again.
Rebels loyal to the renegade army general Laurent Nkunda have closed to within a few miles of Goma, the regional capital. Their front line is now only about 600 yards from the closest government positions.
Few analysts believe Nkunda’s claims that his National Congress for the Defence of People can take the city, much less hold it.
Government forces said yesterday that they had pushed the rebels back another three miles after heavy fighting earlier in the week.
With each tiny shift of the front line, however, and with each claim and counterclaim of a military breakthrough, thousands more people are forced from their homes and into the humanitarian statistics.
Families are being torn apart as sons and daughters run for their lives in different directions. And, as in so many miserable African wars, it is the women who are suffering most.
Ngiraganga was forced from her home in Rutshuru, 40 miles (65km) north of Goma, two weeks ago. With rebels closing in rapidly on the town, government soldiers began withdrawing.
She said that they went from door to door, killing husbands and fathers then raping the women. Ngiraganga survived by hiding in the bush for two days before walking for four more. She was naked and barefoot.
“I was tired and there seemed no way to keep going. My back and belly were sore and my head was hurting from where the soldiers beat me,” she said.
Exhausted and dressed in a few simple clothes she had found at the roadside, Ngiraganga reached the relative safety of Goma last week. Now she sleeps on the floor of a school and prays for the safety of the two sons and a daughter left behind in Rutshuru.
Goma is awash with thousands more with similar stories.
At night the smoke from scores of cooking fires mingles with mist rolling in from the mountains all around. Pitted basketball courts, football pitches and churches have all been turned into makeshift camps.
The start of the rainy season means that there is no escape from the cold at night. By day the thick stench of sewage fills the air.
Kahindo Françoise, co-ordinator of Univie, a charity that tries to help victims of sexual violence, said that it was impossible to gauge the extent of abuses. Many victims were still hiding in the bush, she said, unable to reach Goma.
“Soldiers of the Government are doing this. They are angry, they don’t have enough food or haven’t been paid their salaries, and they are not educated,” she added. “They are taking out their anger on local people. They take what they can and often the victims are women.”
The price of safety is pitifully little. When soldiers came calling at the house where 30-year-old Josephine was staying in Goma, she gave them all the money she had. She had been raped and displaced once, and knew what to do. “It was $10 which I had been saving to take the bus back to my place,” she said.
As so often in Central Africa, the roots of misery can be traced to someone else’s war: the Rwandan genocide of 1994.
Nkunda claims that his soldiers are protecting ethnic Tutsis from Hutu militias who have lived deep in the Congolese jungle since fleeing Rwanda and the threat of reprisals for their role in the killings. Dozens more armed groups, each with an eye on the region’s rich mineral resources, complicate the picture further.
The presence of so many factions raises the constant fear that the Congo could slide back into all-out civil war, like the one that ended in 2003. That sucked in half a dozen African countries and turned the Congolese jungle into a vast battle-ground. Already there have been unconfirmed reports that troops from Rwanda, Angola and Zimbabwe have arrived during the latest round of fighting.
Amid the chaos and confusion the world’s largest deployment of United Nations peacekeepers, numbering about 17,000 troops, has so far failed to keep the warring sides apart. With no prospect of peace any time soon, people are still arriving at the camp of Kibati, barely a mile from the front line, even as the UN prepares to move them to a safer site.
Denise Katungu, 20, fled from Kiwanja two weeks ago after villagers were attacked by one side and then the other. Mai Mai guerrillas, who support the Government, launched an assault on Nkunda’s soldiers before pulling back.
The rebels then took revenge on the local population, hunting out suspected Mai Mai sympathisers or anyone else they could blame. Human Rights Watch has said that 50 civilians were killed.
About 60,000 people are now crammed into Kibati. For Denise it is home for the time being. She said that she just wanted an end to the Congo’s chaos, confusion and killing. “I want someone to take the village and tell me to come back, everything is safe,” she said. “I don’t care who wins as long as we can go home.”
War without end
2002-03 Congo’s five-year war – sometimes termed “Africa’s world war” as it drew in Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Uganda and Rwanda – ends with formation of transitional Government and elections
December 2004 General Laurent Nkunda launches rebellion claiming to be protecting ethnic Tutsis from Hutu militias. The three-way conflict in the east of the country – between Nkunda’s rebels, Hutu militias and government forces – has continued in fits and starts
2006 Presidential and parliamentary polls are held – the first free elections in four decades. Incumbent leader Joseph Kabila wins run-off presidential vote
January 2008 The Government and rebel militias, including that of General Nkunda, sign peace pact
August Peace deal breaks down as heavy clashes erupt in the east of the country between army troops and General Nkunda’s 7,000-strong forces. Nkunda says Congolese Government has not done enough to disarm Hutu militias, responsible for the Rwandan genocide, and that he is unhappy with a £3 billion deal giving China access to region’s mineral resources
October Thousands flee as rebels advance on regional capital, Goma
Over 250,000 displaced as sexual violence erupts in DRC - Times Online
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