Full report - International Alert

50 • Women’s Bodies as a Battleground: Sexual Violence Against Women and Girls During the War in the Democratic Republic of Congolabelled as witches means taking away their magical powers, destroying their sacred nature by‘sullying’ them through the act of rape, thereby nullifying the power and invincibility of the MaïMaï. However, many women have been stigmatised simply because of their old age and wronglyaccused of practising witchcraft on behalf of the Maï Maï. They have been raped and very oftenexecuted in a particularly brutal and cruel manner by the enemy forces. One of them declared:“Because of my age, I was suspected of being a witch in the service of the Maï Maï.The RPA soldiers raped me, saying that they were doing this because they wantedto neutralise the magical powers of the Maï Maï .”However, it should be noted that many other elderly women have been savagely raped and murderedin South Kivu without having been accused of witchcraft. The rape of elderly women is a relativelywidespread phenomenon during armed conflict. These women are often not very mobile, because oftheir age, and may live alone so are particularly vulnerable to being attacked by solders. 647.1.7 Rape as a tool for political repression against human rights campaignersWomen activists who mobilise within their communities to publicly condemn the rapes, sexualviolence, abductions and forced confinement committed against women and girls are often, in theirturn, abducted and raped. One of them, who was questioned by RCD security police and imprisonedfor nine days was raped every night by each of the policemen on duty in turn.7.1.8 Score-settling between individuals or between communitiesThe general climate of violence exacerbates the conflict and rape is used as a means of settlingdisputes between individuals and between communities. Thus men from the marginalised BanboutiPygmy community sometimes pretend to be FDD rebels or Maï Maï fighters and pillage and rapewomen from the neighbouring communities as a way of avenging the contempt and lack of respectwith which these communities treat them. Likewise, individuals can take advantage of the generallawlessness to attack women with whom they have quarrelled in the past. One interview said:“I saw a Maï Maï that I’d known for a long time and who had asked me to marryhim when I was still a girl. Now he asked me to leave my husband to go with him.I refused, and then he jumped on me and raped me.”7.1.9 Widespread banditry in the region – fertile ground for rape and sexualviolenceThe administrative neglect, absence of proper local administration, insecurity and general confusionprovide fertile ground for organised crime. Hordes of thieves pretending to be FDD militias,Interahamwe, Maï Maï and other fighters take advantage of the situation to perpetrate all sorts ofviolent crimes, pillage and rape against the already poverty-stricken local people. Many of the thievesoperate on the Ruzizi plain, where they pillage, in full daylight, the markets that are set up along themain road, or they steal cows which they then sell in the markets of Burundi. In Uvira, for example,some ‘false’ Maï Maï held families to ransom, threatening reprisals unless they each handed over thesum of $50 as a contribution to the ‘resistance’ of the Congolese people that they said theyrepresented and were defending against the foreign occupation. Acts such as these occur again andagain, because the perpetrators are assured of total impunity due to the complete breakdown ofadministrative and institutional authority.63.Lorentzen, L.A., Turpin, J., op. cit.