The Congo Problem

Hot Air linked to this as the worst thing you'll ever read. The horrifying thing- the shocking brutality and violence reported here is likely only the tip of the iceberg.

Eastern Congo is going through another one of its convulsions of violence, and this time it seems that women are being systematically attacked on a scale never before seen here. According to the United Nations, 27,000 sexual assaults were reported in 2006 in South Kivu Province alone, and that may be just a fraction of the total number across the country.

It appears that such violence against women has become a matter of normalcy in Congo. And the violence that occurs in these attacks is shocking.

Denis Mukwege, a Congolese gynecologist, cannot bear to listen to the stories his patients tell him anymore. Every day, 10 new women and girls who have been raped show up at his hospital. Many have been so sadistically attacked from the inside out, butchered by bayonets and assaulted with chunks of wood, that their reproductive and digestive systems are beyond repair.

Dr. Mukwege said his oldest patient was 75, his youngest 3.

These horrific crimes are being perpetrated by Congolese themselves and also by interlopers.

According to victims, one of the newest groups to emerge is called the Rastas, a mysterious gang of dreadlocked fugitives who live deep in the forest, wear shiny tracksuits and Los Angeles Lakers jerseys and are notorious for burning babies, kidnapping women and literally chopping up anybody who gets in their way.

In fact the epidemic of rape seems to have started when the Hutus, responsible for the 800,000 Tutsis massacred in Rwanda fled into Congo. Human monsters , truly evil people, who are still acting with impunity- despite the fact that the UN's largest peacekeeping force- 17,000- is in the country.

Recently, they initiated what they call “night flashes,” in which three truckloads of peacekeepers drive into the bush and keep their headlights on all night as a signal to both civilians and armed groups that the peacekeepers are there. Sometimes, when morning comes, 3,000 villagers are curled up on the ground around them.

Instead of hunting down and killing the scum responsible for mass murder and mass rape. And don't forget that the UN themselves have been guilty of abusing women there too.

The personal stories of the victims are terrible to read-

Honorata Barinjibanwa, an 18-year-old woman with high cheekbones and downcast eyes, said she was kidnapped from a village that the Rastas raided in April and kept as a sex slave until August. Most of that time she was tied to a tree, and she still has rope marks ringing her delicate neck. The men would untie her for a few hours each day to gang-rape her, she said.

“I still have pain and feel chills,” said Kasindi Wabulasa, a patient who was raped in February by five men. The men held an AK-47 rifle to her husband’s chest and made him watch, telling him that if he closed his eyes, they would shoot him. When they were finished, Ms. Wabulasa said, they shot him anyway.

Willermine Mulihano said she was raped twice — first by Hutu militiamen two years ago and then by Nkunda soldiers in July. Two soldiers held her legs apart, while three others took turns violating her.

“When I think about what happened,” she said, “I feel anxious and brokenhearted.”

She is also lonely. Her husband divorced her after the first rape, saying she was diseased.

The Sudan isn't the only part of Africa badly in need of real military force being applied to protect innocent people. I give the MSM a lot of criticism but the New York Times deserves credit for this piece.