The rape victims in the Panzi Hospital in Bukavu are stark representatives of the «forgotten, permanent tsunami of the Congo».
Writing in the Norwegian magazine Samtiden, Jan Egeland, Director of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) tells of his visit last year to the Panzi Hospital in Bukavu in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). At that stage he was Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Emergency Relief Coordinator.
A twenty six year old women told him how she was raped by 30 militiamen after being tied to four stakes in the ground. The violence was repeated for three weeks. Then one day the militias fled. She was left lame in both feet and hands as well as suffering from vaginal fistula. The violence was so brutal that the wall between her vagina and anus was ruptured. A nun brought her for treatment to Panzi Hospital’s fistula clinic run by the Pentecostal church network CEPAC and CRN.
«As on so many other field trips the realization grows: We cannot rest until such Dark Age-violations and such vast injustices are ended. And this generation has shown, in some places, that when we want, it is possible to stop such massive suffering,» writes Egeland in Samtiden.
«The terrible violence against women in the Democratic Republic of Congo is a rarely spoken about aspect of the wars of this country,» writes Egeland in Samtiden. In his book «Det nytter» – It helps – due later this year, he says the war in Eastern Congo is «the worst of our generation». Between 1998 and 2003 more than four million people died. And people are still dying.
While pointing out that the suffering in the Congo hardly ever makes international news, Egeland does not despair:
«With the help of amongst others the UN, Norway and this years Norwegian Medical Students´Humanitarian Campaign, thousands of women are getting help at Panzi.» He also emphasises that without the effort of UN peacekeeping troops to disarm over ten thousand militiamen, the situation in Eastern Congo would have been much worse.
Text: Jan Speed
Photo of Jan Egeland by © Tugela Ridley/IRIN




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