Full report - International Alert

35 • Women’s Bodies as a Battleground: Sexual Violence Against Women and Girls During the War in the Democratic Republic of Congobeaten, wounded with machetes, or they had their genitals mutilated or burnt with drops of plastic melted bya flame. Some women, after they had been raped, were killed by a shot fired into their vaginas. One woman,whose 17-year-old daughter had been tortured to death in front of her, gave this horrific testimony:“… my daughter refused to obey the order to get undressed. So they ordered her tochoose between rape and death. She chose death. So they started to torture her, cuttingoff her breasts one at a time with a knife, then her ears and then they completely cutopen her belly… after a time, my daughter breathed her last… I was powerless, I wasn’table to protect her. Since then I haven’t been able to do anything, I’m ill, sufferingextreme trauma.”Seventy per cent of the victims declared that their attackers were in a normal and lucid state of mind, evenwhile meting out such cruel treatment. The other 30%, however, noted that their attackers displayedextreme nervousness and irrational behaviour, which made them think that they were acting under theinfluence of drugs. One victim declared:“I was in the field and getting ready to go home when these men came out of theirhiding place. They tied me to a tree trunk that was lying on the ground. They tied mylegs, spread out, to two other tree trunks. All of them, one after the other, raped me.Then they took one of the unripe bananas that I had gathered and pushed it into myvagina, moving it about, several times, claiming that I had been acting like a whorebut that I had rejected the advances of one of them. They mocked me in Kiswahilisaying that four men were not enough for me, that I needed ten… The banana was theend of their raping… My attackers spoke Kinyarwanda very well among themselves. Iwas bathed in blood when my friends untied me. So far, I’ve had no medical treatmentbecause it’s very expensive. I still suffer bad pains low down in my abdomen. Theleaders of those troops ought to take care of us.”These acts of sexual violence have left the victims with profound physical, psychological and emotionaltrauma. All of them said that the manner in which they had been assaulted and raped constituted the mostdegrading and humiliating experience they had ever lived through. They said that they had lost theirdignity, their honour and their self-esteem. Their sense of self and their spiritual sensibilities had beenseriously damaged. Several women interviewed in Kalehe said they felt profound regret at having hadextra-marital sexual relations, which was contrary to their religious convictions. This trauma wasexacerbated by the fact that many women who had been raped were stigmatised and ostracised by theirspouse, family and community.5.2 Planned rapeAn analysis of the interviewees’ replies indicates that most of the rapes and sexual abuse seem to havebeen planned in advance by the attackers: seventy per cent of the victims said that this was the case. Forexample, the rapes and looting committed by the Interahamwe around the Kahuzi-Biega National Park,at Kalehe and Izege in particular, from 2000 onwards seem to have been planned and co-ordinated. Rapeand pillage nearly always went hand in hand. The attackers came with a specific aim in mind: to terrorise,loot, rape and then leave, taking with them the goods they had stolen (livestock, agricultural produce,kitchen utensils, farming implements, etc.). They picked out a number of villagers and forced them tocarry the heavy items for them.“They arrive in a band in the afternoon or after nightfall, overruning the whole village,barging into the houses in small groups and terrorising the people… one lot rape the girlsand women while the others pack up the goods to take away. And at the signal fordeparture, the attackers pick out from among the inhabitants the ones who are going tocarry the booty. They leave the village straight away. That makes you think there has beena certain amount of planning behind it all.”