Post date: Sep 09, 2010 2:30:8 PM
Residents of Luvungi village in eastern Congo describe the horrors they went through after more than 500 rapes were reported in July and August .
LUVUNGI, DR CONGO (SEPTEMBER 09, 2010) REUTERS - Rape survivors in the village of Luvungi in eastern DR Congo described on Thursday (September 9), the recent horrors they suffered at the hands of rebels.
The rebels are said to have mass-raped hundreds of women over a two-month period, just a few kilometres from the base of a UN protection force.
On Tuesday (September 7), two top U.N. officials urged the Security Council to consider sanctions against the masterminds of what they said appeared to be organized mass rapes in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Deputy U.N. peacekeeping chief Atul Khare told the 15-nation Security Council during a meeting on Congo that over 500 people were raped, some of them children, in July and August in the North and South Kivu provinces of eastern Congo.
The United Nations said last week its MONUSCO peacekeeping force in the Congo found at least 242 people had been raped over the course of several days in late July and early August in the town of Luvungi, near a U.N. camp at Kibua in North Kivu.
Zaina Nyangoma is one of the rape survivor and talked about her ordeal.
"They came with torches when they entered the house and they beat us using torches. They would beat us for quite a while and hey would then force they hands in the anus under the pretext that they were looking for gold. They would then smear faeces all over our bodies like lotion and they would then rape us, sometimes they would be five at a time or three at a time," said Nyangoma.
"After they raped us, they would walk out and we would do our best to escape in the bush and sometimes we would have to crawl on the ground, while they would rape others until dawn. They would also sometimes follow us in the bush or wherever we are hiding at night, and if we were found, they would then rape us again, and that's how they managed to rape all the women of Luvungi," she said.
Khare and U.N. special envoy on sexual violence Margot Wallstrom suggested that Rwandan Hutu FDLR rebel leaders might be among those responsible for organizing the Luvungi rapes.
Seven years after a 1998-2003 war that claimed more than 5 million lives, Congo is still plagued by insecurity, with Rwandan Hutu and local Mai Mai militias at large in its mineral-rich east and brutal Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army rebels in the north.
Mai Mai and FDLR rebels occupied Luvungi from July 30 to Aug. 3.
Wallstrom supported the idea of the council blacklisting any rebel leaders involved in the mass rapes, which she said appeared to be "part of a planned and organized attack."
Kinshasa's U.N. ambassador, Atoki Ileka, told council members that sanctions on individual FDLR members would have no impact on rebels in the forests of eastern Congo.
Ndakola-Bijoux, a Luvungi rape survivor says that many people in the village would not be alive if it were not for the UN peacekeepers.
"When people had fled the village, we were around 180 women, but today, people have started coming back to the village, and we are now at 284. People are coming back to the village because of MONUSCO, that is the only reason we are still alive," Bijoux said.
Safari Nkuba, a Luvungi entrepreneur says that foreign rebels committing these atrocities should be removed from the country.
"Kagame should make an effort and take back his people from where they came from or he should organise a dialogue amongst Rwandans, in order to find a solution so that the people of Walikale can breathe again," said Nkuba.
The Security Council has already imposed travel bans and asset freezes on several FDLR members for the recruitment of child soldiers and sexual violence in eastern Congo.
MONUSCO said initially it was informed of the Luvungi mass rapes nearly two weeks after they happened, even though it had a base just 20 miles (30 km) from the scene. That surprised the U.N. Security Council, which suggested MONUSCO should improve communication with locals.
U.N. officials have since said the force had information of multiple rapes within days.
Khare acknowledged the U.N. blue helmets did not do enough to prevent the rapes and said they would increase their patrols and take other measures to prevent them in the future.
MONUSCO, Khare said, launched an operation last Wednesday to protect civilians and provide "security cover" for Congolese authorities to hunt down and apprehend those behind the recent violence.
He said the operation had already led to the capture or surrender of nearly three dozen FDLR rebels.