Rebecca Harrelson
November 17
5:18
Luvungi, Demographic Republic of Congo, four armed men barged into Anna Mburano's hut, slapped the children and threw them out into the street. They flipped Mrs. Mburano's on her back, and said and raper her, repeatedly.
The fact that dozens of United Nations peacekeepers were based just up the road, or that Mrs. Mburano is around 80 years old.
As soon as they finished, they moved from house to house, along with hundreds of other rebels, gang-raping at least 200 women.
What happened in the remote, thatched-roof village on July 30, continued for at least three more days and is haunting and becoming an embarrassment for the United Nations mission in Congo. "Despite more than 10 years of experience and billions of dollars, the peacekeeping force still seems to be failing at its most elemental task:protecting civilians.
Many critics contend that nowhere else in the world has the U.N invested so much and accomplished so little. With the U.N failing to respond to a village under siege, is sadly similar to a massacre in Kiwanja in 2008, when rebels killed 150 people within an earshot of an U.N base.
Working with the women of the Congo, Eve Ensler author of "the Vagina Monologues" blames poor management, bad communication and racism. "If the women being raped were the daughters or wives or mothers of the power elites, I can promise you this war would have ended about 12 years ago."
Within the peacekeeping circles, Congo is becoming known as "the African equivalent of Afghanistan," said Annika Norberg, a director at the Peace Operations Training Institute in Virginia. A disturbing fact that in Congo's wars, the battleground is often woman's bodies. U.N officials call the sexual violence in Congo, "the worst in the world."
After the rapes, the United Nations set up a small base here, and just the presence of 20 or so peacekeepers in an abandoned mud-walled cinema draws countless refugees from surrounding areas to camp around them for the night.
These men, women and children are desperate for safety to just be able to sleep through one night without worrying about being killed, raped or robed. When I think of Human Rights, I do think of United Nations and humanitarian relief. I do not however think of aid being down the road, while women are being gang raped by local rebels. I understand that the U.N and other humanitarians can not be everywhere at once, but if this turns out to be a racial or money issue, there will be an extreme uprising on our hands. This war in Africa has lasted years on end, after the Holocaust we vowed to never let another genocide happen again, and yet that is what we are doing. How can society and government continue to let women be raped repeatedly, houses burned, and people be killed? When is it going to be too much? The United Nations and humanitarians can only do so much, so how are WE going to stop these things from happening as we speak?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/04/world/africa/04congo.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2&ref=africa
2 comments:
The quesiton is: what is the UN doing in areas like this if they aren't helping those in danger? Many humans in other countries are under the assumption that this crisis does not effect them. However, they are entirely mistaken. When people all over the world see stories like this and turn the other way, it is like saying that resources, money, or whatever the reason may be that crimes like this continue to go on, is worth more than ourselves.
I also wrote an article about the Congo problem. I think this is a horrible excuse and weapon of war. I do not understand, nor wish to understand, the men's motives behind rape.
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