BULLET COSTS MONEY, RAPE IS FREE
There are human-caused cruelties that are very difficult to write about, and to experience them is even unimaginable for many of us. Yet, we must talk about the fact that these issues are very much present in countries far away from us, that these are how many live their everydays, that wars have neither winners nor heroic dead, only victims, and it does not matter in which part of the world turned inside out it happens, the civilizational shame is shared. A story of a disregarded war in Congo, cobalt mining, and a doctor who saves women in the midst of horrors.
Not only Denis Mukweg is not as known as he should be for most of the world, but neither is the war whose victims are treated in his hospital where he encounters every form of moral turpitude. More than 70,000 sexually assaulted women and children have been healed in Panzi Hospital located in Bukavu, a city in South Kivu province in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. It is the only hospital in Ibanda Health Zone, but they accept patients from throughout the region.
The Congolese doctor, who received Nobel Peace Prize together with Nadia Murad in 2018, says he finds his happiness ‘(…)in happiness of others and if I can lift up a soul, I can be happy myself as well.’ Strong words from someone who regularly faces human cruelty. Mukweg graduated with a medical degree in Burundi and began his career as a pediatrician. As soon as he had seen the serious injuries Congolese women endured during childbirth without proper medical care, he decided to become a gynecologist and traveled to France to study at the University of Angers.
Following his return to his home country, a brutal civil war broke out in Congo. In 1999, he founded Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, eastern Congo, where he originally wanted to help local women give birth safely to their children. Treating patients from the very beginning, it was rather obvious that Panzi will not function as a simple obstetrician. The woman who first entered the door of the hospital was shot and raped by several men. After the surgery, Mukweg and his medical team thought it was an isolated case — some barbarian madmen. However, since the first patient, women who had been abused by gunmen with particular brutality entered Panzi’s door on a daily basis. Although many come to the institution, which also offers physical and psychological healing, from hundreds of miles away, most of the women who have experienced violence do not even make it to the hospital. Many choose to stay at home because they are ashamed of what happened to them. Because in this world where men cause most cruelty and misery, women are the ones regarded disgraced.
Since the day it opened, thousands of women and children have been healed at Panzi whose founder not surprisingly has had enough of his fellow men’s barbarism against women and the politicians who turn a blind eye to this matter.
‘We are men and we know where we come from. Why do we remain silent when others want to destroy our origins? We were all given birth by women. Maybe I’ve lost my way and live in a world I don’t understand.’ — as early as 2012, Mukwege made a bitter statement about the hell and helplessness that characterizes the Democratic Republic of Congo till these very days. Violence continues to spread in the African country, while the doctor is treating generations of abused women. He had operated on a mother whose daughter also lay on Mukwege’s operating table 15 years later. And he also operated on the woman’s granddaughter. She was just a baby. ‘I have no words to describe and explain the brutality going on before my eyes,’ — he adds.
More than 200,000 Congolese women are survivors of rape
Seeing how much the world doesn’t care about the bloodshed and wave of violence in Congo, Mukwege asked his friends to visit Panzi and share the hospital’s story. One of his friends is photographer, Platon Antoniou, who became known for his portraits of the world’s leading politicians. In his presentation at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2018, Plato presented not only his photos taken in Congo, but also the stories of his models.
One of them is about the 17-year-old Esther. A girl who was 16 when her parents sent her for water. Esther was abducted by a group of men, tied to a tree, and raped several times for four days. On the fourth day, she managed to escape to a nearby village where she was rescued by a man who took her to his home to rape her. Esther was pregnant when she arrived to Panzi Hospital. Antoniou photographed the girl with her one-year-old boy. When he asked her why she wasn’t crying in the picture, she replied, “My dad and mom always said when I was a kid that I was born to give joy to the world. I want to keep that promise to them. ”
The photographer received an explanation from the South Kivu Police Commander as to why sexual assault is used as a weapon in Congo.
The brutal logic of the answer is harrowing: bullet costs money, rape is free.
However, there are also deeper causes of violence against women used in war in African society. Woman is the axis of community and family. If her strength and stability in life are broken, so is the life of the whole family. If this pervades the whole society, it is unlikely that broken families will confront gunmen.
The United Nations estimates more than 200,000 Congolese women who are survivors of rape. Mukwege says that although they are often accompanied by horror injuries which can be repaired with surgery, psychological processing of the trauma is just as important, which is why patients at Panzi are constantly told:
“They did not destroy you. They wanted to destroy you, but you remained a woman. You are a woman and you have to be strong.”
In 2012 the doctor survived an assasination attempt as his bodyguard saved him and his family. After the incident, he decided to leave Congo and relocated to Europe, although it did not last long: he returned to his homeland in January 2013 with some of his patients launching a fundraising campaign to buy his plane ticket. The Congolese government blocked Panzi Hospital’s bank accounts. The doctor who has five children himself still spends 18 hours at the hospital, and although he is training and passing on his knowledge to more and more young doctors, he still enters the operating room ten times a day. He was also performing surgery when Oslo announced that he would receive Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to combat sexual violence in war situations, along with Nadia Murad, who was abducted by the Islamic State.
The invisible bloodshed
There has been a civil war in Congo for more than twenty years, presumably the bloodiest conflict since World War II. In order to understand the situation we need to look behind the main reasons for the bloodshed. Congo is one of the richest mineral deposits in the world, with huge amounts of coltan, manganese and cobalt deep in the land of the country. Cobalt, for example, is a vital component of rechargeable batteries that also power our smartphones, laptops, and electric cars, making it at least as important a part of the world’s operations as oil or coal. The mined minerals are bought and used by car manufacturer and tech companies and the proceeds end up in the hands of Congolese warlords.
The control of mineral mines is largely conducted by militant groups, and in nearby villages the population is held in terror by them, with thousands of women and children being raped. According to a 2011 U.S. survey, 48 women per hour were raped by members of militant organizations in Congo at the peak of the civil war. The massacre destroyed bodies and souls of tens of thousands as soldiers systematically use violence against civilians as a weapon of war to destabilize and deprive their opponents of their human nature. It is a common practice for soldiers to dishonor women in the eyes of their male relatives in Congo, thus showing that they have unlimited power over the land.
This is how an entire community becomes part of the trauma.
The extent to which the violence is not easing in Congo has been highlighted by international aid organizations. When the second largest Ebola epidemic in history broke out in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where nearly 700 cases were registered immediately, with more than 400 dead, controlling a disease with the symptom of severe bleeding made more difficult by the fact that Congo is an active war zone. In this part of the country, approximately a hundred rebel groups are fighting each other to control the extraction of mineral resources, which was seriously hampering the fight against the epidemic.
The elections held at the end of December 2018 were not peaceful either. At least 890 people were killed in clashes in the wake of ethnic-based violence between December 16 and 18, in just three days. Not only does Ebola made life difficult for residents, but the doctors who treat them are regularly attacked by members of the rebel militias, abused women reported beheadings and defamation of teenage girls, random beatings occur in streets, and children are often killed in front of their parents.
A woman told the staff at the organization that she had been raped in her home, next to her husband’s corpse, in front of her children’s eyes. She had five children, three of them girls. Before they were killed, they were all assaulted too.
Amongst the victims treated by MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières), 32 were men. Many were forced to rape women from their own communities. At least 162 victims were girls under 15, and 22 under the age of 5. The organization’s staff is constantly collecting and recording the cases, trying to provide physical and psychological help to the survivors, as Mukwege heals them in Panzi Hospital.
In 2018, the Red Cross drew the world’s attention to the fact that at least seven million people need urgent help because of the violence and regular armed clashes in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where assaults against civilians and arbitrary killings, human rights abuses and looting are happening on a regular basis.
Transforming pain into strength
In Bukavu, broken women are not only being healed at Panzi Hospital. In 2011, Denis Mukwege co-founded a center with women’s rights activist Christine Schuler Deschryver and author of Vagina monologues, where faith and strength of female survivors are restored. The City of Joy functions as a school: women spend six months attending self-defense, legal, communication and language classes, as well as psychotherapy sessions to start a new life as strong women when stepping out the door of the City of Joy. Most of them arrive at the center with their children conceived in horrific violence.
The founders spent weeks figuring out what women who survived such barbaric abuse really needed. Almost all of them said they wanted to take care of their children in a safe place where they do not have to be afraid of gunmen and can get their strength back. However, Mukwege wanted to give his patients more because he was convinced that despite conducting surgery on thousands of women, he could not make a difference at the operating table. He was convinced that women who have experienced horrors could be leaders and teachers in their community as soon as they recover. In the City of Joy these women are being shown how to change Congo and nearly 2,700 of them have received job-skills or literacy training. Some have become school teachers, some run the local radio, and many help other women to get back on their feet.
