The Moral Responsibilities that Come with Globalization

The Toronto Star (07/06, "A Sorority of Healing in a village of victims" by Rosie Dimanno) recounts a shattering tale:

"Goma, Dr Congo – The mutual nurturing in womenfolk has created a haven out of horror. Ward rooms are shared by the dozen. Food is cooked communally. Laundry of raggedy clothes hangs on the line. One woman's child is every woman's child, whether for scolding or cuddling.

"Theirs is the stigmatized sorority of rape. Behind these courtyard walls at Heal Africa, they've found a sanctuary and femaled a village of the otherwise damned.

"Erased as wives and daughters for a crime done to them, they've been cast out from their homes, expelled from their hamlets, reviled by husbands and fathers and brothers, ostracized by neighbors.

"Some are sent packing with their kids, who are even less to blame for their misfortunes of war. Others give birth to babies that are the seed of an enemy assailant, an armed fighter who pounced, took what he wanted, and left.

"In truth that's how wars have always been fought in the margins, on the backs of terrified women. But in the Congo these past 15 years, with the country engulfed in combat between multiple factions, rape as a weapon of war has exploded. It's an ethic de-cleansing, the soiling of female humanity.

"'I was on my way to the market to buy sorghum,' recalls Sifa Ushindi, who is 30 but has the haggard look of someone much older. 'There were three of them. They took me back to my own house and made my husband watch while they each raped me.'

"'That was a day of infamy in the village of Numbi, just outside the Hutu rebel stronghold of Massisi. The fighters came in waves, not only to loot and plunder but to defile. To Ushindi's knowledge, six other women were raped that day by fighters.
"'When they left, my husband wouldn't even look at me. I cried. I begged him. I said, 'What could I have done different? He said I brought the soldiers to go with them, he didn't want me any more because I was dirty.' With her parents both dead, Ushindi turned to her oldest brother for refuge. 'He said I was not welcome there either.'

"It was through the assistance of a local 'listening house' – a network of counselling shelters that functions also as an underground railroad for disenfranchised rape victims – that Ushindi made her way to the central Heal Africa establishment in the North Kivu capital.

"Heal Africa has 28 safe houses in the province and in the past seven years has trained about 470 village women as counsellors. Ushindi's husband kept their three children. Isaac was born here 18 months ago.

"When the child begins to fret, Ushindi picks him up, coos into his ear. 'When I look at him, I do not see the face of a rapist, the child of a rapist father. What happened is not my baby's fault.'

"She clutches him tightly.

"'He's all I have. After he was born, there was a problem with my womb. I can have no more children. And I will never have another husband.'

"When the subject of abortion is raised, if she'd ever considered ridding herself of the fetus, Ushindi gasps. Not only is the procedure illegal in the Congo – except when the mother's physical health is endangered – but she, like the majority of Congolese, is Catholic, not the pick-and-choose kind either.

"'That would be killing. There is already so much killing in my country. An abortion would make me just another killer, like the soldiers.'

"Many do, however, seek butcher abortions or turn to older village women who know the tribal ways of inducing miscarriage. Some give birth and abandon the infants or worse.

"What Ushindi can't envision is telling Isaac about how he was conceived. 'He will grow up believing his father died because so many of our men have been killed.'

"That, of course, will require leaving the sanctuary before Isaac comes to understand his surroundings. To that end Ushindi is being skills-trained, along with the other residents. They learn to sew, primarily or make simple crafts.

"The women aspire to nothing more than a bit of independence in a country that has no social safety net. Many of these women will hire out as day labour on farms or vend bananas and lemons and roast corn on the streets.

"None will be forced to leave until they're ready. Some likely will never do so.

"While there are psychologists and social workers on staff, these women draw their strength from one another. The main building has private rooms on three floors, mostly occupied by new arrivals in the assessment phase, their trauma raw."

Challenging that Humans are Civilized

"In the back are the ward room quarters, noisy with children, their mothers huddling on a concrete stoop to chatter. Most seem stone-faced and sluggish in their movements. But they do laugh, sometimes; they have shared their stories, but apparently moved past the need to revisit their individual ordeals. Collectively, their stories challenge the belief that humans are a civilized species.

"For some of the victims, raping was not brutal enough. One tells of having a gun but rammed into her vagina. Several were gang-raped. A few were kept as sex slaves in the militia camp.

"They arrived here often pregnant and even more frequently diseased. Many are suffering – and being treated for – fistula, a rip in the vaginal wall, commonly caused by violent penetration in which is torn from the area separating the rectum and vagina. As a result these women can't control their urine and sometime their bowels.

"In so many ways has sexual violence become the scourge of the Congo – women overwhelmingly the victims but, of late, men also have been coming forward to admit they've been raped by rebel fighters.

"What motivates these 'soldiers' to perpetrate such harm?

"There is a casual disregard for the humanity of the victim, There is rage at authorities, whether this government or – in the case of fleeing Hutus associated with the Tutsi genocide in neighboring Rwanda – against Tutsi usurpers of power, condemning them to endless soldiering in these volatile eastern provinces.

"There is also, culturally underlining the violations, a sense that all women are the property of men, that they're entitled to take their pound of soft flesh.

"With actual fighting sporadic amidst (largely transgressed) peace agreements, rape is now the dominant feature of the ongoing conflict in eastern Congo. There were an estimated 9,000 rapes last year, with no functioning legal system to arrest and try suspects.

"An exhaustive four-year report commission by Oxfam and carried out by Harvard University experts, released in April, found that 56% of sexual assaults were committed by armed men in homes in the presence of the victims' families.

"About 16% were reported in the field and 15% in forests. Incidents of sexual slavery were reported by 12% of the women surveyed, with some held for years as hostages.

"Rapes leaped proportionately during military operations, such as last year's offensive against rebel factions by the Congolese army, which was supported by UN troops, the study observed.

"More than half the women waited for at least a year before seeking help – too late to obtain effective treatment for the prevention of HIV.

"Worrisomely, in a country that feels increasingly inured to the commonplace of violence, the report found that civilian rape has burgeoned as well, with 38% of rapes committed by non-combatants in 2008 compared with less than 1% in 2004.

"'These findings imply a normalization of rape among the civilian population, suggesting the erosion of all constructive and social mechanisms that ought to protect civilians from sexual violence,' the report concluded.

"The overwhelming scale of such brutalities almost diminishes the individual impact of rape. Each accounts for a life forever fouled. 'I had a life before,' says Ushindi. 'It was a hard life but there was also happiness in it. Those rapists, those animals, took it from me.'

"She brushes a fly from her son's face.

"'All I have is Isaac.' Her eyes suddenly burn with something that might be fury.

"'I love Isaac. I do."

It is shattering how the complete fabric of human society can be ripped beyond recognition. It should be handled with care against whatever assailants.

W.K.

– from COMER, June 2010
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