Symbol of Unhealed Congo: Male Rape Victims
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
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.
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
GOMA, Congo It was around 11 p.m. when armed men burst into Kazungu Ziwas 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 Africas 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.