Chris Milosi / EPA, The Coversation
February 6th
Civil unrest has broken out in Goma, a Congolian city on the border of Rwanda, for the past month. The M23 has returned to the masses, where the rebel group continues to battle the government’s military, constructing the city streets into battlegrounds. Ignoring the peace treaties made between government officials in 2013, the rebels returned over a decade later after they surrendered and made their way to Uganda, leveling the masses with machine rifles and fire.
The Democratic Republic of Congo has not escaped media attention in the last three months, as their crises expand to food insecurity, sexual assault, ecological devastation, and modern slavery from cobalt.
Centered around a jailbreak, the men once housed in cells targeted 165 women within the jail, raping them, and then setting fire to the building whilst they were inside. 150 women were killed by the blaze and it was reported by officials that 13 inmates, that were raped, did survive the fire. Gender-based violence has terrorized the DRC for decades, targeting children and women of all ages, as they were shunned from communities or killed before their families. Cases of rape continue to plague news reports, displaying another 52 women gang-raped by Congolese troops in South Kivu just before this report.
A humanitarian ceasefire has once again made rounds from the UN to government officials as the death toll rises to 3,000, as videos depict streets filled with bodies and houses crumpled by fires. Currently, as countries in Africa handle the insurgence of Congolese citizens past their borders, leaders like President Lazarus Chakwera of Malawi, have ordered their peacemakers to retreat from the DRC after three were killed in the conflict. While crisis conventions are consistently being held to tackle rebel groups, negotiations are proving to be fatal as the death toll continues to rise.
More specifically, the grave escalation in violence has targeted women and children within the DRC taking the lives of hundreds as both the rebel groups, the Congolese military, and the government as they continue their assault.
The Connection, Critical Threats Project
Cobalt, Shunning, and Genocide: Congo’s History of Colonization Fuels the Republics Instrastate Conflict after the Pan-Africanism Movement.
“Back home, we were sleeping when the army came in and attacked us. After they killed the children and my husband, they grabbed me and cut my body up, poured hot water and burned me. Then they all raped me. There were twenty of them. After two days, I was lying there with the corpses, all seven children and my husband right next to me. And I was in shock. And when my heart was shocked, I lost my mind”
Vice, The Disturbing Use of Rape in the DRC
The Social: The Shunning Of Women In the DRC — How Refugee Camps Formed Communities For Women After Their Sexual Assault
Rape has become a weapon of war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The ancient tactic of martial rape dominates military groups and rural territories in the DRC. The target is broad, lacking in age and gender and the assault is lethal. Born from the vice of control, the land that is Congo bounced between Belgium’s imperialism, the Atlantic Slave Trade, coups backed by the US and the Soviet Union, alongside the First and Second Congo War. What was formally known as the Kingdom of Kongo dissolved, rather abruptly by a list of profitable materials the land had supplied, a demoralization inflicted by first-world countries as the power seeped from the land to the people. So how does this lead to shunned women in refugee camps and civil groups armed with AK-47s? A message, the desire for violence, or a re-establishment for pride, nationalism, wealth — each targeted victim is the causality of Congolian history, of its colonizations and centuries of enslavement.
“The subordinate condition of women is maintained and enforced by the hidden violence of men. There is war between the sexes. Rape victims, battered women, and sexually abused children are casualties. Hysteria is the combat neurosis of the sex war.” Judith Herman’s classification of ‘war’ is of critical substance, which naturally posits that both sides have the ability to fight in some equal manner, whether this be of words, weapons, or money. By such contrast, Herman’s classification dictates the unequal war, and further genocide, that is Congolian history, and by default, their present — a demoralization of Congolian citizens from internal sexual abuse and external slavery.”
Since their independence in 1960, militia groups and secessionist movements plagued a weak government. It was clear since the 15th century, the country lacked the control it once had in Africa, a plight that made divide and conquer seem feasible, and eventually desirable to European powers. It wasn’t until 2012, that systemic militia gangs, like the M23, whose international attention is still prominent a decade later, posit Congo as a country in crisis.
Now, where does this leave Congo socially? Scattered, laundered, enervated, etc., until collectivism is nulled? They are stripped of a national community, shunned, beaten, raped until the individual succumbed to extortion or lack of justice. The body becomes void of rights, forced into extreme exposure from forced labor or the hands of milita groups. The headlines will often appear as such:
“Reports from the DRC indicate that sexual violence is widespread and includes gang rape, abduction for purposes of sexual slavery, forced participation of family members in rape, and mutilation of women’s genitalia with knives and guns, among other atrocities.”
Passed by the hand of colonization, the individual in Congo is forced by the hands of others to succumb. The women, the children — a body that has become a sign of war, are left desecrated. The physical devastation of rape on the body is fatal; the bruising, the blood, its permanence since childbirth — they are often dead upon arrival at the hospital. The lands segregated and heavily targeted have blended until a daily occurrence of sexual assault was to send a message.
“In contrast, a recent study using population estimates and data from the nationally representative Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) conducted from 2006–2007 showed that the rate of rape among women aged 15 to 49 years in a 12-month period was 26 times higher than the estimates based on reports to United Nations authorities.” The estimates reported from that year alone was 15,000.“
Yet, the criticism falls short, ironically onto women sexually abused, in a practice of cultural shunning. A fear tactic, of women and children, huddled in remote villages, lacking in resources and abundant in cobalt, surrounded by men with military-grade weapons and questionable morals. The destruction of communities was apparent: how is a country made to survive lacking community, and most importantly a society? It is apparent
“I will never forget that day. They started raping me while I was on top of my husband’s corpse.I counted the first, second, third, one up to the twelfith rapist. When I got to the tweltfth one, I heard my children crying out to me from another room. “Mother!” I lost my mind. My first child was fourteen years old, the other one was twelve years old. And on that day, both were impregnanted.”
Vice, The Disturbing Use of Rape in the DRC
The fight against gender-based violence is stilted as political action continues to corner rebel groups and milita oppositions. The future remains unclear toward the safety and justice of Congelese women killed or sexually assualt by these groups.
sites:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgyrxz4k6zo
Coltan Red, Siddharth kara
Vice, The Disturbing Use of Rape in the DRC, Youtube
The Olive Press Review 
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