Congo jails army commander and 8 soldiers over mass rape
Margot Wallström (C), the Special Representative of the Secretary General for Sexual Violence walks through a camp for Internally Displaced People (IDP’s) in the North Kivu town of Mungote on Oct. 3, 2010. According to a U.N. report, 2240 cases of rape have been reported the first part of 2010 in the North Kivu province.
A military court in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has sentenced an army commander, Lt.-Col. Kibibi Mutware, to 20 years in jail over the mass rape of women in South Kivu province.
Mutware, a former rebel leader reintegrated into Congo's army in 2009 as part of long-delayed peace agreement, was found guilty of crimes against humanity, along with eight of his soldiers.
Mutware sent troops to the town of Fizi on New Year's Day to rape, beat and loot the population.
Hundreds of people jeered at the convicted as the men were led away in handcuffs outside the makeshift courtroom in the lakeside Congo village of Baraka, near Fizu in the mineral-rich and lawless South Kivu province.
Forty-nine women came to testify in the court in Baraka, and as part of the verdict, the senior judge said they should receive up to $10,000 in compensation from the government.
According to the BBC, it is the first conviction of a commanding officer for rape in eastern DR Congo.
But civilians, defense lawyers and activists said it was just a small step in the fight against rampant rape in the war-torn country.
In August 2010, rebel forces were accused of raping hundreds of women, girls, men and boys around the town of Luvungi. The U.N. recorded some 11,000 rapes in 2010 — the true figure is believed to be much higher.
An activist against rapes in the Congo, Lisa Shannon, who has been following the trial from the United States and visited the area where the trial took place, told the Voice of America: "It was common in women's groups for half of the women to have been gang raped within the last six months. I visited villages in the area where 90 percent of the women had been raped. In all of the areas I visited in South Kivu, I did not visit communities that identified higher rates of rape than in that area. It was the highest."
Shannon said women faced an impossible choice of being stopped by competing groups of armed men and raped while going to farm their fields, or watching their children starve.
Ahead of the verdict, the BBC visited a rape victims' center in Fizi.
"I was fleeing the violence but unfortunately I met four soldiers," a 29-year-old mother of five said of the events on New Year's day. "They began to tear the pants I was wearing. They took my child from my arms and left him on the ground. Then they had sex with me."
The story you just read is accessible and free to all because thousands of listeners and readers contribute to our nonprofit newsroom. We go deep to bring you the human-centered international reporting that you know you can trust. To do this work and to do it well, we rely on the support of our listeners. If you appreciated our coverage this year, if there was a story that made you pause or a song that moved you, would you consider making a gift to sustain our work through 2024 and beyond?