When will we se and end to the violence in South Kivu?

If you visit the city of Uvira in the Territory of Uvira/South Kivu as a female rights activist, if you walk through its various streets, you will have the impression that the situation for women and young girls is quite normal. But if you take a minibus or a taxi and head north of this small town, more precisely to the rural areas, you will discover quite a different reality. This reality is quite simply the difficult conditions in which the majority of women in this part of the territory of Uvira live.

Katogota, a village situated 80 km from the town of Uvira, is known for the notorious massacre of 14/05/2000, which cost the lives of over 300 people. This massacre left many orphans and widows.

Dear readers, I like to tell you about the physical abuse to which the women in this village were subjected every day, by soldiers who were thought to be guaranteeing their protection. The soldiers were form the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo, FARDC, taking part in the Kimya 2 operation. The Kimya 2 operation consisted of tracking a rebel Rwandan movement, which had been sowing terror and misery among the civil population of North and South Kivu since 1994. But instead of protecting the population against attacks, soldiers violated the women, taking over their fields, since more than half of the agricultural work is done by the women in this village.

The widows remain the potential target of these soldiers when it comes to sexual violence in this village. And why is this? It’s a difficult question to answer. A 36-year-old widow was raped in her home by two soldiers from the Kimya 2 operation on the night of the 12th of November 2009. “Around midnight, when I was fast asleep, two soldiers who were armed to the teeth turned up at my house then broke down the door of my house and ordered me not to cry out. They told me to stay on the bed and not move. The first soldier mounted me without a condom, then the second, and so they took turns. Afterwards they left and told me not to speak to anyone about what had happened or they would kill me. Two days later they returned, but this time I was able to cry out before they entered my house. After the second attack I decided to move and now I am staying with a neighbour. I recognise the faces of the soldiers who raped me but I can’t denounce them for fear of reprisals,” she says, who is by no means the only person to be subjected to rape in this village.

A young woman aged 23 was also the victim of sexual violence on the part of the military from the Kimya 2 operation. On the afternoon of the 27th of October 2009 while she was on her way to the river KISE, which is just a few hundred metres from where she lives. Her path crossed a group of eight soldiers who intimidated her with their weapons and forced her to undress and then to lie down on the ground. In this way, one after the other they mounted this woman and had sex with her. The rape must have lasted about one hour and after this cowardly act the rapists forbad this woman to talk to anyone about what had happened; this is a strategy they use to conceal their crime!

Acts of sexual violence against women are continuing to increase in the rural areas of South Kivu thanks to the impunity from which the perpetrators benefit. They are not worried, because they are never pursued. We believe that the local media could play a leading role in denouncing these crimes of rape but apart from a few, they never make it to these rural areas to gather information concerning sexual violence.

What is increasingly deplorable is that the majority of these rapes are carried out without the use of condoms, which increases the risk of catching HIV/AIDS because all forced sexual contact increases the probability of micro-lesions around the mucous membrane of the vagina, which could become points of entry for the HIV virus. There is also another aspect, related to the safety of the food, because the soldiers from the Kimya operation take over the fields from the local population, which creates a situation of famine in the village. The women of this village wish that the United Nations Organization Mission in DR Congo, MONUC, would come to their aid, and in particular keep them safe.

When will we se and end to the violence in South Kivu? This is a question that yet remains unanswered.