May 25, 2006 6:46 AM

Just when I'd begun to think that humanity couldn't possibly sink any lower....

Rape, brutality ignored to aid Congo peace

“Some of them have knives and other sharp objects inserted in them after they’ve been raped, while others have pistols shoved into their vaginas and the triggers pulled back,” said Dr. Denis Mukwege Mukengere, the lone physician at the hospital. “It’s a kind of barbarity that only savages are capable of.” He added that “these perpetrators cannot be human beings.”

Sadly, we live in a world in which there is in fact no bottom to the barrel when it comes to man’s inhumanity and capacity for brutality to his fellow man. Whether it’s Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Darfur (I know, the list never seems to end, does it?), or now Congo, it seems that Evil is a travelling roadshow always ready, willing, and able to move on to the next tour date.

I suppose we should be used to this by now. Take a few thousand desperately poor, uneducated boys and young men, teach them how to kill, give them weapons and power, and then promise them the sun, moon and stars - if only they will follow you and treat you as a god-like figure who wields near-absolute power. Make them feel important, add the promise of political power and untold wealth…and then stand back and watch the carnage begin. So it ever was; so it shall ever be.

The truly sad thing about this reality is that the ones who suffer most are the ones least able to defend themselves. No, despots and thugs don’t pick on able-bodied, weapons-toting men. They pick on unarmed women, children, and the sick and infirm. Yeah, it takes a real man to carry a gun and brutalize those unable to defend themselves, eh?

Here we go with another desperately poor African nation imploding in a paroxysm of senseless violence and brutality…and once again those doing the suffering are those unable to defend themselves - in this case, women.

BUKAVU, Democratic Republic of Congo (CNN) — At a makeshift recreation center at a hospital here in eastern Congo, about 500 women surround one of their own, who’s lying on the floor.

She clutches a cane as she struggles to get up. The women begin singing, slowly at first and then the song picks up momentum. Before long the young woman lifts herself, drops the cane and begins to walk around the room as if in a trance, singing and clapping. The other women clap along with her as the singing gets louder and louder.

The young woman’s name is Tintsi and she’s barely 20 years old. She arrived at the hospital three weeks ago on a stretcher carried by relatives who walked 100 miles to get here. Doctors weren’t sure Tintsi would ever walk again.

Tintsi, like everyone else in this room, is a victim of the worst kind of sexual violation imaginable….

The alleged perpetrators are men in uniform, part of the Congolese army. These troops are a compilation of various militia groups that had been fighting each other for years until a truce was reached two years ago.

Yes, you read that right; the Congolese army is responsible for some of the worst abuses one could imagine a woman having to endure. What makes it even worse is the response of the international community, which ranges from studied indifference (if not outright ignorance) to sheer political calculation. The end result in any case is that women who have suffered in ways that no human being should ever have to suffer have been at worst ignored, and at best have seen their fate sacrificed to political calcuation.

[A]id money designated for victims of sexual abuse here may run out at the end of June despite the relative success of this program, the only one of its kind in the region.

“It’s so tragic that the world can afford to sit back and let these atrocities continue like this,” said aid worker Marie Walterzon of the Swedish Pentecostal Mission. “Possibly because it involves poor, voiceless Africans,” she said.

Oh…and there’s no oil, which means, of course, that the Bush Administration has no dog in this fight.

Sadly though, many of the people responsible for these rapes — what is being described as the new weapon of war in a time of peace — have yet to be arrested, tried or convicted. The peace process is too delicate at this stage, officials say.

The peace process is too delicate. And at this hospital in the eastern Congo, the rooms are too full.

Hmm….sacrificing people for peace. Anyone else convinced that this is a damn poor way to achieve “peace”?

And in developed nations around the world, yet another human crisis goes largely unnoticed. So much for thinking that there’s still any hope left for humanity….

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on May 25, 2006 6:46 AM.

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