A Rebel Soldier Speaks About Rape in Congo

by Michael Bear · 2009-06-19 09:29:00 UTC
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As part of a semi-regular series tracking rape as a weapon of war - Francois Grignon of International Crisis Group recently published an OpEd about rape in Congo.  According to Grignon:

"A census by UNICEF and related medical centres reported treatment of 18,505 persons for sexual violence in the first 10 months of 2008, 30 percent of whom were children. This year, the situation deteriorated further still, with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reporting a huge surge in sexual violence and rape in eastern Congo.

Reported cases represent only a fraction of the total - a vast number of cases go unreported...Most of the warring parties of the conflict in eastern Congo, including the Congolese Army, Rwandan Hutu rebels, and Congolese Tutsi rebels, have used rape as a weapon of war."

An article in The Guardian, interviewing a former Rwandan Hutu rebel, provides information from the perpetrator's perspective:

"We were never paid in the FDLR, we got nothing, only money from car-jacking. To get money and food we would approach civilians, take their crops, rob their villages. We would attack the civilians too, it’s true. But the rape, that was not policy, that was not organised like the stealing was. The rape and killing was down to individuals."

It's one thing to gather testimony from rape survivors - it's somewhat more difficult to gather such testimony from perpetrators.  Difficult, yet critically important.  Understanding more about why and how such atrocities occur is essential from both a programmatic and a legal perspective.

How do you prevent soldiers - or rebels, or militias - from committing rape?  And, can you hold senior commanders legally responsible for the rapes committed by their troops? For instance, according to a recent post by UN Dispatch:

"The International Criminal Court yesterday formally ordered that Jean Pierre Bemba, a former Congolese vice president and militia leader, stand trial on charges that he commanded his militia in a campaign of rape, murder and pillage in the Central African Republic. Bemba was arrested last year in Belgium where he was living in exile.

The case against Bemba is unprecedented in international war crimes tribunals for the fact that it will center on the crime of rape."

For more information, see the blog posted by Jocelyn Kelly a few months back, about interviewing soldiers in Congo who've committed rape.

[Photo from The Guardian / Susan Schulman]

Michael Bear
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