August 23, 2010
By JOSH KRON
GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo — A mob of Rwandan rebels gang-raped at least 179 women last month during a weekend raid on a community of villages in eastern Congo, the United Nations said Monday.
The Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, or F.D.L.R., was blamed for the attack. The F.D.L.R. is an ethnic Hutu rebel group that has been terrorizing the hills of eastern Congo for years, preying on villages in a quest for the natural resources beneath them.
The raided villages are near the mining center of Walikale, known to be a rebel stronghold, and are “very insecure,” Stefania Trassari, a spokeswoman for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said Sunday. “Rape is something we get quite often.”
But she and other United Nations and humanitarian officials said that this attack was unusual because of the large number of victims and the fact that they were raped by more than one attacker simultaneously.
On the evening of July 30, armed men entered the village of Ruvungi, in North Kivu Province.
“They told the population that they were just there for food and rest and that they shouldn’t worry,” said Will F. Cragin, the International Medical Corps’ program coordinator for North Kivu, who visited the village a week after their arrival.
“Then after dark another group came,” said Mr. Cragin, referring to between 200 and 400 armed men who witnesses described as spending days and nights looting Ruvungi and nearby villages.
“They began to systematically rape the population,” he said, adding, “Most women were raped by two to six men at a time.”
The attackers often took the victims into the bush or into their homes, raping them “in front of their children and their families,” Mr. Cragin said. “If a car passed, they would hide.”
The rebels left on Aug. 3, he said, the same day the chief of the area traveled through the villages and reported horrific cases of sexual violence. “We thought at first he was exaggerating,” Mr. Cragin said, “but then we saw the scale of the attacks.”
Miel Hendrickson, a regional director for the International Medical Corps, which has been documenting the rape cases, said, “We had heard first 24 rapes, then 56, then 78, then 96, then 156.”
“The numbers keep rising,” she said. The United Nations maintains a military base approximately 20 miles from the villages, but United Nations officials said they did not know if the peacekeepers there were aware of the attack as it occurred. A United Nations military spokesman, Madnoje Mounoubai, said information was still being gathered.
The F.D.L.R., which began as a gathering of fugitives of the Rwandan genocide in 1994, has grown into a resilient and savage killing machine and an economic engine in the region.
The United Nations, Congo and Rwanda began a military offensive against the group in early 2009, but since then, humanitarian organizations say, cases of rape have risen drastically.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited eastern Congo in 2009 to raise awareness about widespread rape in the region, calling it “evil in its basest form,” and the United States pledged $17 million to the Congolese government to fight sexual violence. The raid came two weeks before three armed Indian peacekeepers were slaughtered during an ambush by Mai-Mai rebels who were carrying only spears and machetes.
Monday, October 4, 2010
31/08 U.N. E-Mail Shows Early Warning of Congo Rapes
August 31, 2010
By JOSH KRON and JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
GOMA, Democratic Republic of the Congo —United Nations officials had been warned about rape ocurring in a remote Congolese area much earlier than officials originally said, according to an internal United Nations e-mail and a humanitarian bulletin.
The United Nations’ beleaguered peacekeeping mission in Congo, which costs more than a billion dollars a year but has failed to stop widespread violence against civilians, has been harshly criticized since the news broke 10 days ago that United Nations peacekeepers did not respond to a rebel attack in which nearly 200 women were raped.
According to an e-mail sent within United Nations agencies on July 30, as the attack was unfolding, United Nations officials knew that the rebels had infiltrated the area and that at least one woman had been raped.
“The town of Mpofi, 52 kilometers from Walikale, has just fallen into the hands of the F.D.L.R. A woman was raped there,” said the e-mail, which was sent by the United Nations’ humanitarian office in eastern Congo to several other United Nations agencies and private aid groups. “Humanitarian workers are said not to go there,” the e-mail continued.
The F.D.L.R is the abbreviation for the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, a fearsome rebel group that includes former Rwandan genocidaires who have been hiding out in Congo for years and preying upon the local population. Over the next three days, from July 30 to Aug. 2, hundreds of F.D.L.R., along with gunmen from another rebel group, raped at least 179 women. Many victims said they were assaulted in front of their families, with up to six men raping them at the same time.
United Nations peacekeepers were stationed nearby, around 30 kilometers away, but none went to the area until Aug. 2, when a patrol passed through one of the stricken villages, though according to United Nations officials, none of the villagers came forward about the rapes.
On Aug. 10, a United Nations humanitarian bulletin reported that 25 people had been raped in the Mpofi area between July 30 and Aug. 1, in a reference to the same attack.
The two documents raise questions about earlier statements made by several United Nations officials that the peacekeeping mission was unaware of the rapes until an aid organization brought it to the mission’s attention on Aug. 12.
When asked about the e-mail sent on July 30, Roger Meece, a United Nations special representative to the peacekeeping mission, said: “At the time, there was one alleged rape and no reason to believe that this was happening on a mass-scale as later reported.”
Other United Nations officials said that it was fairly common to receive reports about rebel movements and that the Rwandan rebels had been in the area on and off since 1994, when Rwanda exploded in genocide.
Still, the criticism toward the United Nations’ Congo operations seems to be spreading, the latest blow to a peacekeeping mission that, since it began in 1999, has been hampered by corruption, thickly forested terrain, morphing rebel groups, sexual abuse scandals and complaints from the Congolese people and the Congolese government, which recently began pushing the United Nations to downsize the mission.
“There is a kind of general state of incompetence, which is linked to apathy,” said Karl Steinacker, a longtime United Nations official who worked in Congo until this year. “If you realize you can’t deal with the situation, you may just decide to do nothing.”
“If you do little, you do little mistakes,” he said. “We have seen it so many times.”
The United Nations Security Council held an emergency meeting last week in New York to discuss the rapes and the peacekeepers’ ability to respond to similar crises.
“We are reviewing a broad array of what we are doing,” Mr. Meece said. “We can’t do everything. We are not a government, and obviously there are always limits, especially given the vast size of the area to be covered and the difficulties of a lack of transport and communications infrastructure.”
He added, “That is not an excuse — we want and need to do better — but it is a reality.”
Analysts and some officials within the United Nations say the rapes in Mpofi area were not the first time that the United Nations mission in Congo delayed in sharing information about widespread atrocities.
The most prominent example may have been a massacre of approximately 300 villagers last December by the Lord’s Resistance Army in northeastern Congo, which was first publicized by the media in late March. According to a document on a Web site for humanitarian workers, United Nations officials were aware that the L.R.A. had killed more than 80 people in that attack, as far back as January.
As for the rapes in Mpofi, Madnoje Mounoubai, a United Nations spokesman in Congo, said the United Nations was first alerted to the attacks on Aug. 12, by International Medical Corps, a humanitarian organization working in the area.
International Medical Corps says it told the United Nations about the rapes on Aug. 6.
Josh Kron reported from Goma and Jeffrey Gettleman from Nairobi, Kenya
By JOSH KRON and JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
GOMA, Democratic Republic of the Congo —United Nations officials had been warned about rape ocurring in a remote Congolese area much earlier than officials originally said, according to an internal United Nations e-mail and a humanitarian bulletin.
The United Nations’ beleaguered peacekeeping mission in Congo, which costs more than a billion dollars a year but has failed to stop widespread violence against civilians, has been harshly criticized since the news broke 10 days ago that United Nations peacekeepers did not respond to a rebel attack in which nearly 200 women were raped.
According to an e-mail sent within United Nations agencies on July 30, as the attack was unfolding, United Nations officials knew that the rebels had infiltrated the area and that at least one woman had been raped.
“The town of Mpofi, 52 kilometers from Walikale, has just fallen into the hands of the F.D.L.R. A woman was raped there,” said the e-mail, which was sent by the United Nations’ humanitarian office in eastern Congo to several other United Nations agencies and private aid groups. “Humanitarian workers are said not to go there,” the e-mail continued.
The F.D.L.R is the abbreviation for the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, a fearsome rebel group that includes former Rwandan genocidaires who have been hiding out in Congo for years and preying upon the local population. Over the next three days, from July 30 to Aug. 2, hundreds of F.D.L.R., along with gunmen from another rebel group, raped at least 179 women. Many victims said they were assaulted in front of their families, with up to six men raping them at the same time.
United Nations peacekeepers were stationed nearby, around 30 kilometers away, but none went to the area until Aug. 2, when a patrol passed through one of the stricken villages, though according to United Nations officials, none of the villagers came forward about the rapes.
On Aug. 10, a United Nations humanitarian bulletin reported that 25 people had been raped in the Mpofi area between July 30 and Aug. 1, in a reference to the same attack.
The two documents raise questions about earlier statements made by several United Nations officials that the peacekeeping mission was unaware of the rapes until an aid organization brought it to the mission’s attention on Aug. 12.
When asked about the e-mail sent on July 30, Roger Meece, a United Nations special representative to the peacekeeping mission, said: “At the time, there was one alleged rape and no reason to believe that this was happening on a mass-scale as later reported.”
Other United Nations officials said that it was fairly common to receive reports about rebel movements and that the Rwandan rebels had been in the area on and off since 1994, when Rwanda exploded in genocide.
Still, the criticism toward the United Nations’ Congo operations seems to be spreading, the latest blow to a peacekeeping mission that, since it began in 1999, has been hampered by corruption, thickly forested terrain, morphing rebel groups, sexual abuse scandals and complaints from the Congolese people and the Congolese government, which recently began pushing the United Nations to downsize the mission.
“There is a kind of general state of incompetence, which is linked to apathy,” said Karl Steinacker, a longtime United Nations official who worked in Congo until this year. “If you realize you can’t deal with the situation, you may just decide to do nothing.”
“If you do little, you do little mistakes,” he said. “We have seen it so many times.”
The United Nations Security Council held an emergency meeting last week in New York to discuss the rapes and the peacekeepers’ ability to respond to similar crises.
“We are reviewing a broad array of what we are doing,” Mr. Meece said. “We can’t do everything. We are not a government, and obviously there are always limits, especially given the vast size of the area to be covered and the difficulties of a lack of transport and communications infrastructure.”
He added, “That is not an excuse — we want and need to do better — but it is a reality.”
Analysts and some officials within the United Nations say the rapes in Mpofi area were not the first time that the United Nations mission in Congo delayed in sharing information about widespread atrocities.
The most prominent example may have been a massacre of approximately 300 villagers last December by the Lord’s Resistance Army in northeastern Congo, which was first publicized by the media in late March. According to a document on a Web site for humanitarian workers, United Nations officials were aware that the L.R.A. had killed more than 80 people in that attack, as far back as January.
As for the rapes in Mpofi, Madnoje Mounoubai, a United Nations spokesman in Congo, said the United Nations was first alerted to the attacks on Aug. 12, by International Medical Corps, a humanitarian organization working in the area.
International Medical Corps says it told the United Nations about the rapes on Aug. 6.
Josh Kron reported from Goma and Jeffrey Gettleman from Nairobi, Kenya
03/10 Frenzy of Rape in Congo Reveals U.N. Weakness
October 3, 2010
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
LUVUNGI, Democratic Republic of Congo — Four armed men barged into Anna Mburano’s hut, slapped the children and threw them down. They flipped Mrs. Mburano on her back, she said, and raped her, repeatedly.
It did not matter that dozens of United Nations peacekeepers were based just up the road. Or that Mrs. Mburano is around 80 years old.
“Grandsons!” she yelled. “Get off me!”
As soon as they finished, they moved house to house, along with hundreds of other marauding rebels, gang-raping at least 200 women.
What happened in this remote, thatched-roof village on July 30 and continued for at least three more days has become a searing embarrassment for the United Nations mission in Congo. Despite more than 10 years of experience and billions of dollars, the peacekeeping force still seems to be failing at its most elemental task: protecting civilians.
The United Nations’ blue-helmets are considered the last line of defense in eastern Congo, given that the nation’s own army has a long history of abuses, that the police are often invisible or drunk and that the hills are teeming with rebels.
But many critics contend that nowhere else in the world has the United Nations invested so much and accomplished so little. What happened in Luvungi, with nearby peacekeepers failing to respond to a village under siege, is similar to a massacre in Kiwanja in 2008, when rebels killed 150 people within earshot of a United Nations base.
“Congo is the U.N.’s crowning failure,” said Eve Ensler, author of “The Vagina Monologues,” whose advocacy group, V-Day, has been working with Congolese women for years.
She blamed poor management, bad communication and racism. “If the women being raped were the daughters or wives or mothers of the power elites,” she said, “I can promise you this war would have ended about 12 years ago.”
United Nations officials admitted that the peacekeepers failed to respond fast enough to Luvungi, though they said the primary responsibility fell on the Congolese Army, which continues to be in grievous disarray.
“I felt personally guilty and guilty toward the people I met there,” said Atul Khare, the assistant secretary general for peacekeeping, who recently visited Luvungi. “They told me, ‘We’ve been raped, we’ve been brutalized, give us peace and security.’ Unfortunately, I said, that is something I cannot promise.”
Within peacekeeping circles, Congo is becoming known as “the African equivalent of Afghanistan,” said Annika Hilding-Norberg, a director at the Peace Operations Training Institute in Virginia, because of the conflict’s enduring violence and complexity.
Luvungi, a village of about 2,000 people, is a crucible where so many of Congo’s intractable problems converged: the scramble for minerals; the fragmentation of rebel groups; the perverse incentives among armed groups to commit atrocities to bolster their negotiating strength; the poverty that keeps villages cut off and incommunicado; and the disturbing fact that in Congo’s wars, the battleground is often women’s bodies. United Nations officials call the sexual violence in Congo the worst in the world.
A sense of menace hangs over this entire area, even the government-controlled outposts.
And people in the Luvungi area are now taking no chances. After the rapes, the United Nations set up a small base here, and just the presence of 20 or so peacekeepers in an abandoned mud-walled cinema draws countless refugees from surrounding areas to camp out at night around them.
During escorted trips to markets, thousands of villagers trudge up the hills behind a handful of Indian peacekeepers in trucks, begging the peacekeepers to drive “pole, pole” — or “slowly, slowly” — so as not to leave the slightest gap or opportunity for armed men to drop down from the jungle wall.
This area is spectacularly rich in gold, tin ore and fertile land, which is partly why it has been so bitterly contested by rebel groups and renegade army divisions. Surging brown rivers slice through the jungle, which is decorated with pink hibiscus flowers and birds of paradise. Rumbling up a road here is like driving through a greenhouse.
In mid-July, the Congolese Army contingent stationed in Luvungi suddenly pulled out, leaving the people here unguarded. The United Nations later learned that the soldiers had marched off to Bisie, where there is a huge tin ore mine — and illegal taxes to be extorted.
“This place was a total void,” said Maj. Radha Krishnan, an Indian peacekeeper.
Shortly after the rapes that month, the government ordered mines in eastern Congo temporarily closed, to starve armed groups of income. But the government does not control many of the mines or, for that matter, much of the area.
“The government’s able to dominate only the road,” explained Lt. Col. R. D. Sharma. “The rest,” he said, sweeping his hand over the treetops, “is the negative forces.”
The negative forces stormed into Luvungi on Friday, July 30, around 8 p.m. According to United Nations reports there were around 300 men, a mix of Rwandan rebels who have been terrorizing eastern Congo for years and fighters from a new Congolese rebel group, Mai Mai Cheka, which has been vying for attention as the government tries to absorb more rebels into the army.
Paradoxically enough, the effort to integrate certain rebel groups into the Congolese Army — intended to help stabilize the region — may have supplied a motivation for the rapes, analysts say. The more fearsome and powerful an armed group can appear, the more concessions it can extract in negotiations.
“These guys are trying to boost their ranks, to colonel or general,” said Lt. Hamisi Delfonte, a police officer in Walikale, about a two-hour drive from Luvungi.
The other day, several government soldiers suddenly unshouldered their rifles, clicked off their safeties and started chasing a man in camouflage pants through the middle of town. All heads swiveled in the same direction. Children broke away. “They’re going to kill that guy,” someone said.
But the soldiers did not shoot, and it was soon clear why. The fleeing man was an army major who had just pulled the pin on his grenade. It all stemmed from a dispute over 50 cents. The man was eventually talked down and arrested.
The Indian peacekeepers at the base nearest Luvungi, in Kibua, about 11 miles away, said that they started hearing reports of an attack on the following Sunday, but that they had been tricked many times before. Often, truck drivers claim a certain area is under attack, the peacekeepers said, when in fact they simply want a United Nations escort to the next town to ensure that no one steals their minerals.
Because there is no cellphone service in the area or electricity, it is not always simple to know when there is an attack. The United Nations, which has around 18,000 peacekeepers in Congo, is now trying to install solar-powered high-frequency radios in some villages.
On Aug. 2, that Monday, the peacekeepers agreed to escort truck drivers through Luvungi. Indian officers said that they saw ripped-up mattresses and clothes strewn along the road — evidence of looting — but that the villagers did not say anything about mass rapes.
“Sometimes,” Colonel Sharma said, “the women here are ashamed to tell a soldier, especially a male soldier, that they’ve been raped. And we don’t have any female soldiers.”
Several women in Luvungi said that after they were raped, the rebels hollered into the night, as if they were celebrating. Mrs. Mburano lay bleeding on her floor, listening.
“I know, I still look sick,” she said, though her cloudy eyes tried to smile as she spoke. “Just a few vegetables, that’s all I’ve eaten, since I was demolished.”
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
LUVUNGI, Democratic Republic of Congo — Four armed men barged into Anna Mburano’s hut, slapped the children and threw them down. They flipped Mrs. Mburano on her back, she said, and raped her, repeatedly.
It did not matter that dozens of United Nations peacekeepers were based just up the road. Or that Mrs. Mburano is around 80 years old.
“Grandsons!” she yelled. “Get off me!”
As soon as they finished, they moved house to house, along with hundreds of other marauding rebels, gang-raping at least 200 women.
What happened in this remote, thatched-roof village on July 30 and continued for at least three more days has become a searing embarrassment for the United Nations mission in Congo. Despite more than 10 years of experience and billions of dollars, the peacekeeping force still seems to be failing at its most elemental task: protecting civilians.
The United Nations’ blue-helmets are considered the last line of defense in eastern Congo, given that the nation’s own army has a long history of abuses, that the police are often invisible or drunk and that the hills are teeming with rebels.
But many critics contend that nowhere else in the world has the United Nations invested so much and accomplished so little. What happened in Luvungi, with nearby peacekeepers failing to respond to a village under siege, is similar to a massacre in Kiwanja in 2008, when rebels killed 150 people within earshot of a United Nations base.
“Congo is the U.N.’s crowning failure,” said Eve Ensler, author of “The Vagina Monologues,” whose advocacy group, V-Day, has been working with Congolese women for years.
She blamed poor management, bad communication and racism. “If the women being raped were the daughters or wives or mothers of the power elites,” she said, “I can promise you this war would have ended about 12 years ago.”
United Nations officials admitted that the peacekeepers failed to respond fast enough to Luvungi, though they said the primary responsibility fell on the Congolese Army, which continues to be in grievous disarray.
“I felt personally guilty and guilty toward the people I met there,” said Atul Khare, the assistant secretary general for peacekeeping, who recently visited Luvungi. “They told me, ‘We’ve been raped, we’ve been brutalized, give us peace and security.’ Unfortunately, I said, that is something I cannot promise.”
Within peacekeeping circles, Congo is becoming known as “the African equivalent of Afghanistan,” said Annika Hilding-Norberg, a director at the Peace Operations Training Institute in Virginia, because of the conflict’s enduring violence and complexity.
Luvungi, a village of about 2,000 people, is a crucible where so many of Congo’s intractable problems converged: the scramble for minerals; the fragmentation of rebel groups; the perverse incentives among armed groups to commit atrocities to bolster their negotiating strength; the poverty that keeps villages cut off and incommunicado; and the disturbing fact that in Congo’s wars, the battleground is often women’s bodies. United Nations officials call the sexual violence in Congo the worst in the world.
A sense of menace hangs over this entire area, even the government-controlled outposts.
And people in the Luvungi area are now taking no chances. After the rapes, the United Nations set up a small base here, and just the presence of 20 or so peacekeepers in an abandoned mud-walled cinema draws countless refugees from surrounding areas to camp out at night around them.
During escorted trips to markets, thousands of villagers trudge up the hills behind a handful of Indian peacekeepers in trucks, begging the peacekeepers to drive “pole, pole” — or “slowly, slowly” — so as not to leave the slightest gap or opportunity for armed men to drop down from the jungle wall.
This area is spectacularly rich in gold, tin ore and fertile land, which is partly why it has been so bitterly contested by rebel groups and renegade army divisions. Surging brown rivers slice through the jungle, which is decorated with pink hibiscus flowers and birds of paradise. Rumbling up a road here is like driving through a greenhouse.
In mid-July, the Congolese Army contingent stationed in Luvungi suddenly pulled out, leaving the people here unguarded. The United Nations later learned that the soldiers had marched off to Bisie, where there is a huge tin ore mine — and illegal taxes to be extorted.
“This place was a total void,” said Maj. Radha Krishnan, an Indian peacekeeper.
Shortly after the rapes that month, the government ordered mines in eastern Congo temporarily closed, to starve armed groups of income. But the government does not control many of the mines or, for that matter, much of the area.
“The government’s able to dominate only the road,” explained Lt. Col. R. D. Sharma. “The rest,” he said, sweeping his hand over the treetops, “is the negative forces.”
The negative forces stormed into Luvungi on Friday, July 30, around 8 p.m. According to United Nations reports there were around 300 men, a mix of Rwandan rebels who have been terrorizing eastern Congo for years and fighters from a new Congolese rebel group, Mai Mai Cheka, which has been vying for attention as the government tries to absorb more rebels into the army.
Paradoxically enough, the effort to integrate certain rebel groups into the Congolese Army — intended to help stabilize the region — may have supplied a motivation for the rapes, analysts say. The more fearsome and powerful an armed group can appear, the more concessions it can extract in negotiations.
“These guys are trying to boost their ranks, to colonel or general,” said Lt. Hamisi Delfonte, a police officer in Walikale, about a two-hour drive from Luvungi.
The other day, several government soldiers suddenly unshouldered their rifles, clicked off their safeties and started chasing a man in camouflage pants through the middle of town. All heads swiveled in the same direction. Children broke away. “They’re going to kill that guy,” someone said.
But the soldiers did not shoot, and it was soon clear why. The fleeing man was an army major who had just pulled the pin on his grenade. It all stemmed from a dispute over 50 cents. The man was eventually talked down and arrested.
The Indian peacekeepers at the base nearest Luvungi, in Kibua, about 11 miles away, said that they started hearing reports of an attack on the following Sunday, but that they had been tricked many times before. Often, truck drivers claim a certain area is under attack, the peacekeepers said, when in fact they simply want a United Nations escort to the next town to ensure that no one steals their minerals.
Because there is no cellphone service in the area or electricity, it is not always simple to know when there is an attack. The United Nations, which has around 18,000 peacekeepers in Congo, is now trying to install solar-powered high-frequency radios in some villages.
On Aug. 2, that Monday, the peacekeepers agreed to escort truck drivers through Luvungi. Indian officers said that they saw ripped-up mattresses and clothes strewn along the road — evidence of looting — but that the villagers did not say anything about mass rapes.
“Sometimes,” Colonel Sharma said, “the women here are ashamed to tell a soldier, especially a male soldier, that they’ve been raped. And we don’t have any female soldiers.”
Several women in Luvungi said that after they were raped, the rebels hollered into the night, as if they were celebrating. Mrs. Mburano lay bleeding on her floor, listening.
“I know, I still look sick,” she said, though her cloudy eyes tried to smile as she spoke. “Just a few vegetables, that’s all I’ve eaten, since I was demolished.”
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