Dr. Denis Mukwege, the founder, director and chief surgeon of Panzi Hospital in Bukavu.
Doctor Denis Mukwege repairs damaged women, helping each find a little dignity where they had only shame.
The doctor is quick to smile; his tired eyes shine with kindness, but also with anger at the unspeakable things done to the mothers and daughters of his community, tens of thousands of them, by men without conscience. Where they torture and violate, Dr. Mukwege and his staff heal.
This year alone 3,500 women were treated at Panzi Hospital, located on the outskirts of Bukavu, just down the bumpy road from one of the several UN peacekeeping bases around the city. Most of the women come here with internal wounds, including fistulas, humiliating and painful effects of their violation. The other type of internal damage is psychological, and can last a lifetime. The only good news is that most of the time this physical damage can be fixed with a simple procedure, restoring at least the bodies of the women who come here.
A few dozen women who come here each year cannot be cured, and will live with the damage forever. Most of them will not be welcomed back to their communities, or by their husbands. Doctor Mukwege is undeterred by the enormous challenge of caring for so many- he is working to open a new transit center here at Panzi for these incurable women called the City of Joy; here at least they will be welcomed.
As we stand up to leave his office he hands us each a small Congolese flag, as a gift.
Lucienne was enslaved for months by the FDLR, which includes former perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide.
There is an unprecedented campaign to destroy women in eastern Congo. Its cruelty is evident in the frightened eyes, stories and bullet scars of the women here in Walungu. Its enormity is seen through the thousands of women and girls targeted each month.
We met three women at Women for Women’s center in Walungu who had been brutally attacked. Lucienne was 20 when the FDLR (some of the same people who perpetrated genocide 13 years ago now hiding in the forests nearby), attacked her while she was asleep in her bed with her children. They killed her brother, and enslaved her in their camp for months in unimaginable conditions.
In 2006, in South Kivu province alone, the United Nations received more than 27,000 reports of women suffering the same brutality as Lucienne. Women for Women staff tell us that more than 40% of their 5,000 participants in South Kivu are included in these statistics. And over the past months the numbers are rising to the worst level they have been since the peak of the war 7 years ago.
After their violation many women such as Lucienne are left by their husbands, and shunned by their villages. Others say their husbands can no longer look them in the eyes, so ashamed and guilty they are of being powerless to protect their loved ones from the FDLR or other soldiers.
Today Lucienne is homeless; her husband left the day she returned from the hospital. She is staying temporarily with another family, selling bananas by day. But Lucienne goes each night deep into the fields to sleep, so afraid that the FDLR might find her that she refuses to sleep in the house.
After breakfast, Jerry, Sara, Mike and I spent the morning with Women for Women International, an organization that supports female survivors of war around the world, from Iraq to here in eastern Congo. WWI supports more than 5,000 women in North and South Kivu, matching each woman with a sponsor abroad who provides $27 a month, and exchanges letters.
Last year I helped my sister Rachel set up a sponsorship for a woman in Congo. At the time, and up until today, I gave little thought to the fact beyond noticing that each month it was withdrawn from my bank account. After all, I thought, it’s less than a dollar a day- how much can this and a few letters a year really do to improve a woman’s life?
We were introduced to a group of women who had just been handed translated letters from their sisters abroad. The moment they had them in their hands, their guarded expressions turned to smiles, and they began to sing and dance- many of these women have suffered from intense brutality, and to see them happy from such a small gesture brought tears to our eyes.
Hundreds of women walked here this week from miles away to see if they can join the program. Most were turned away- a new member can be added only when someone who learns about their situation decides on behalf of a sister, daughter or mother to become a sponsor.
Click here to explore stories of women affected by war in Google Earth, from Women for Women International.
Click here to hear a podcast interview with Christine Karumba, DRC Country Director of Women for Women International.
Last night we crossed the border from Rwanda into Congo just before closing and arrived in Bukavu, a dusty city on the southern shore of Lake Kivu, one of the highest lakes in Africa. It is difficult to understand how such natural beauty can exist at the heart of one of the most destructive conflicts on earth.
What is happening today in Eastern Congo is not genocide, legally defined under the UN convention on the prevention and punishment of genocide as acts committed “with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”. But the violence does appear to constitute crimes against humanity, and in large part is a direct result of the genocide perpetrated 13 years ago in Rwanda. According to a report by the International Rescue Committee, 5.4 million Congolese have been killed from violence, preventable disease and malnutrition in the past ten years, and women today face a continuing campaign of brutal sexual violence that is tearing apart their families and entire communities.
Here in the province of South Kivu, former Rwandan government soldiers and the Interahamwe militias who perpetrated the genocide are at the origin of violence different from what is found in most wars. Known collectively as the ‘FDLR’, they want to maintain control of land held in Eastern Congo and the significal mineral wealth it provides. Part of its strategy is to strike fear into communities by targeting women; not just violating them, but completely destroying their bodies and families. Other groups, such as Congo’s undisciplined national army (FARDC) and local militias (Mayi Mayi), also bear responsibility for atrocities committed against women and their families.
Read traveling companion Michael Gerson’s column from this trip in the Washington Post- Thorns in the Congo.
Visit Angelina Jolie and John Prendergast’s interactive journal on the Museum’s website to witness what they saw and heard during a 2004 trip to Eastern Congo.
Posted By: Michael Graham | November 28, 2007 | Comments (0)
In 1994, Murambi was an unfinished school at the top of a hill near Gikongoro, Rwanda. When genocide erupted in April, tens of thousands of Tutsis in the area sought refuge here.
As our car pulled into the parking lot of Murambi, the site of one of the largest massacres of the genocide, Gasana mentioned casually that this was his first time coming here, thirteen years after he survived the genocide. We had hired him to take us to the Congo border in an SUV, and decided to pay our respects at this former school deep in the iridescent green hills of southern Rwanda, surrounded by terraced fields of coffee and banana trees. Despite a warning that it was a terrible scene, Gasana insisted that he wanted to see for himself.
We walked through room after room filled with the bodies of thousands of victims who had been retrieved from the mass graves and preserved in lime, and through a former dining hall filled with the clothes of tens of thousands who were surrounded by militia for a week without food or water, and then killed.
I asked him a question I immediately regretted. “Ca va?” Meaning, in French, ‘how are you doing’?
He shook his head slightly without looking up. A silent no. Gasana tells me later that he has asked himself since the genocide why he wasn’t killed, sometimes wishing he was. For him, life next to the genocidaires is beyond difficult, full of fear and memories of what they did to his family. For many survivors who have visited this school at Murambi, where the death of thousands is captured in lime, the reality is almost too much to bear.
Posted By: Michael Graham | November 27, 2007 | Comments (0)
World is Witness, a new “geoblog” from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's Genocide Prevention Mapping Initiatives, in partnership with Google Earth, documents and maps genocide and related crimes against humanity. The initial entries are from a Museum visit to Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to learn about the legacies of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, and the most recent entries are from a Museum visit to South Sudan and a return visit to the Congo. Visit us again soon for more posts from the field.
“ May justice find these women someday and the madness that is brought upon them so cease. My heart is breaking and crying at the same time for I feel so helpless. I wish all well…
“ Many thanks for your report and informing us of the situation in Darfur, my heart goes out to these people who have endured so much. What can I do to help?
“ This is so wrong and I don’t want to sit back and let this happen. I plan on taking action A.S.A.P. and in whatever ways possible. thank-you Dr. for taking such care of the women…
A bi-weekly audio series and podcast service, hosted by Committee on Conscience Project Director Bridget Conley-Zilkic, that brings you the voices of human rights defenders, experts, advocates, and government officials. The opinions expressed in these interviews do not necessarily represent those of the Museum.
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