Male Rape Victims of Congo War

Principessa

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Symbol of Unhealed Congo: Male Rape Victims
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
GOMA, Congo — It was around 11 p.m. when armed men burst into Kazungu Ziwa’s hut, put a machete to his throat and yanked down his pants. Mr. Ziwa is a tiny man, about four feet, six inches tall. He tried to fight back, but said he was quickly beaten down. “Then they raped me,” he said. “It was horrible, physically. I was dizzy. My thoughts just left me.” For years, the thickly forested hills and clear, deep lakes of eastern Congo have been a reservoir of atrocities. Now, it seems, there is another growing problem: men raping men.


According to Oxfam, Human Rights Watch, United Nations officials and several Congolese aid organizations, the number of men who have been raped has risen sharply in recent months, a consequence of joint Congo-Rwanda military operations against rebels that have uncapped an appalling level of violence against civilians. Aid workers struggle to explain the sudden spike in male rape cases. The best answer, they say, is that the sexual violence against men is yet another way for armed groups to humiliate and demoralize Congolese communities into submission. The United Nations already considers eastern Congo the rape capital of the world, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to hear from survivors on her visit to the country next week. Hundreds of thousands of women have been sexually assaulted by the various warring militias haunting these hills, and right now this area is going through one of its bloodiest periods in years. But aid organizations say that the military maneuvers have provoked horrific revenge attacks, with more than 500,000 people driven from their homes, dozens of villages burned and hundreds of villagers massacred, including toddlers thrown into open fires.

And it is not just the rebels being blamed. According to human rights groups, soldiers from the Congolese Army are executing civilians, raping women and conscripting villagers to lug their food, ammunition and gear into the jungle. It is often a death march through one of Africa’s lushest, most stunning tropical landscapes, which has also been the scene of a devastatingly complicated war for more than a decade. “From a humanitarian and human rights perspective, the joint operations are disastrous,” said Anneke Van Woudenberg, a researcher for Human Rights Watch. The male rape cases span several hundred miles and possibly include hundreds of victims. The American Bar Association, which runs a sexual violence legal clinic in Goma, said that more than 10 percent of its cases in June were men.

My heart goes out to these men. :frown1: How courageous they are to report their rape in a society where they know they will be forever shunned and thought less than a man for something they had nothing to do with.:mad:
 

UpwardCurve

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Most all of the atrocities in Africa are fueled and manipulated by more powerful forces.

For instance I did a capstone research project about the arms trade. And guess who the 5 biggest arms exporters were? Why, they were the same 5 nations that sit on the UN Security Council (Russia, China, Uk, France, and U.S.). Ain't that wonderful?

No wonder UN "peacekeepers" were busy sunbathing in Rwanda when hundreds of thousands were being butchered just nearby.
 

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Most all of the atrocities in Africa are fueled and manipulated by more powerful forces.

For instance I did a capstone research project about the arms trade. And guess who the 5 biggest arms exporters were? Why, they were the same 5 nations that sit on the UN Security Council (Russia, China, Uk, France, and U.S.). Ain't that wonderful?

No wonder UN "peacekeepers" were busy sunbathing in Rwanda when hundreds of thousands were being butchered just nearby.

so now, Rape in the Congo is the fault of arms exporting countries?

give me a break.

and you are wrong...Germany was the #3 arms exporter. Behind the US, Russia, but ahead of UK and France.

most of these third world armies secure weapons through private arms dealers, not the major exporters, because the major exporters specialize in the type of expensive exports that little jungle militias and insurgents cannot afford and do not need.

when was the last time you saw an african militia armed with F16 fighters, Apache Helicopters and Virginia-Class Sumbmarines?

you don't...because these people concentrate on easily obtained, small caliber arms.

they can't use tanks in jungles and don't have the money, they do not have air forces, do not have ships and submarines.

all they need are rifles, pistols, mortars, grenades, ammunition and other small caliber, low-intensity warfare weapons.

and those are easily obtained through arms dealers and the black markets.
 

UpwardCurve

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so now, Rape in the Congo is the fault of arms exporting countries?

give me a break.

and you are wrong...Germany was the #3 arms exporter. Behind the US, Russia, but ahead of UK and France.

most of these third world armies secure weapons through private arms dealers, not the major exporters, because the major exporters specialize in the type of expensive exports that little jungle militias and insurgents cannot afford and do not need.

when was the last time you saw an african militia armed with F16 fighters, Apache Helicopters and Virginia-Class Sumbmarines?

you don't...because these people concentrate on easily obtained, small caliber arms.

they can't use tanks in jungles and don't have the money, they do not have air forces, do not have ships and submarines.

all they need are rifles, pistols, mortars, grenades, ammunition and other small caliber, low-intensity warfare weapons.

and those are easily obtained through arms dealers and the black markets.

Just because African countries dont make up the largest market in the arms trade (and don't buy the most expensive goods) doesn't mean that Security Council nations (who are SUPPOSED to help keep the peace as they are the most powerful body in the UN) don't influence what was going on there.

And as I can recall, it was UNSC member China who sold all the machetes to the Hutus for a dime a piece just before the massacre began....
 
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Principessa

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Sheesh! :eek:fftopic: Three posts and we are already way off topic. :mad: What I want to know is what if anything can be done to help male rape victims, both here and abroad. They are a severely underserved community. :frown1:
 

houtx48

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looks like someone is getting pissy because they have not been raped over a small caliber hand gun.. patience sweetie they'll get to you.
 

joyboytoy79

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looks like someone is getting pissy because they have not been raped over a small caliber hand gun.. patience sweetie they'll get to you.

Look, I usually just shrug off your asinine, off base, and otherwise irrelevant quips. This one, however, is just flat out inappropriate and uncalled for.

Rape is not something you joke about. Period.

If you actually have some content to contribute, by all means, do. But don't belittle those who've been brutalized because you think it's funny. It's not funny, and it just shows how small you really are.
 

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Just because African countries dont make up the largest market in the arms trade (and don't buy the most expensive goods) doesn't mean that Security Council nations (who are SUPPOSED to help keep the peace as they are the most powerful body in the UN) don't influence what was going on there.

And as I can recall, it was UNSC member China who sold all the machetes to the Hutus for a dime a piece just before the massacre began....

yes...selling $750,000 worth of machetes to a country completely dependent on an agrarian economy.

who could have seen that coming? :rolleyes:

a country of 7.7 million people at the time, with no other viable economic production, dirt poor, with only agriculture to sustain it...

obviously, it is all China's fault now. :rolleyes:

if you want to blame someone for Rwanda, blame the French...they were most directly responsible.

but as for whose true fault it was, one need look no further than the Rwandans themselves.

Rwandan journalist and Writer Kamilindi: “Who taught us to kill each
other? No outsider...If we are incapable of resolving our problems
ourselves, the international community cannot do anything for us”

-

The fact is, that Hutus and the Tutsis lived peacefully together prior to the late 1800s

the total population was less than two million as opposed to 7.7 million
in 1993 and land was plentiful.

as the population boomed, land situations changed and there was a total imbalance by the mid 1980s, Rwanda was the most crowded population in Africa, with too many people and not enough land and there were already serious warning signs of famine on the horizon...10 years later, the population had grown 40% and food production had not increased at all.

95% percent of all those employed in Rwanda, were in *AGRICULTURE*
You had a country whose agrarian economy and food supply was decimated over and over due to drought, soil problems, overgrazing, erosion and lack of technology

Famine and Hunger was a regular and everpresent situation for the decade before the genocide. Most of the young and angry youths who were relied upon during the genocide, had no land, jobs, food and no education

The genocide hadn othing to do with what the UNSC or the powerful countries were doing...The Rwandan Hutu leaders decided that the best way to save "themselves" was to eliminate the Tutsis

instead of doing rational things, they chose the path of violence.
 

Flashy

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looks like someone is getting pissy because they have not been raped over a small caliber hand gun.. patience sweetie they'll get to you.


wow...another highly intelligent claim by the master of the absurd.

making jokes about rape is always so enlightening as to one's true intellectual power.
 
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faceking

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Sheesh! :eek:fftopic: Three posts and we are already way off topic. :mad: What I want to know is what if anything can be done to help male rape victims, both here and abroad. They are a severely underserved community. :frown1:


Thank you... great call.

I started to get my minor in Middle Eastern Politics (w/ an emphasis on Africa... lest we forget... Sudan, Ethiopia, et al are considered under that umbrella) as an undergrad in college and it's unfathomable what happens. Especially at a smaller scale. We hear about plights in larger scales (i.e. 150,000 refugees), but the shit that happens in villages trapped inbetween. Crazy.