Gang Rape in Congo
17 November 2003
Adapted from www.thestar.com
She walks slowly in padded slippers inside a hospital ward.
Bohoro Nyagakon, 30, is a woman with gentle eyes and a frail 5-foot-frame, with a friendly 5-year-old daughter, Farjeka, playing nearby.
Bohoro is waiting in this cramped room – with dozens of others – to undergo a harrowing procedure: reconstruction of her vagina.
Gang rape has been so violent, so systematic, so common in eastern Congo during the country's five years of war that thousands of women are suffering from vaginal fistula, leaving them unable to control bodily functions and enduring ostracism and the threat of debilitating lifelong health problems.
Around the world, cases of ruptured vaginal tissue are usually caused by early childbirth. What makes the fistula cases in Congo so jarring to medical professionals here is the large number of them caused by rape.
In the past few months, as a peace agreement has taken hold and fighting has slowed, the extent of the brutality has become evident, physicians say. There are so many cases being reported that the destruction of the vagina is considered a war injury and recorded by doctors as a crime of combat.
Young soldiers from the dozens of factions that roam eastern Congo have turned rape into a primary weapon of war, as common as looting or setting a hut afire. Rape has even been encouraged by commanders as a way to gain control of food, water and firewood.
Rape has become so prevalent that some aid groups estimate that one in every three women is a victim. With Congo lacking a functioning court system, no one has been punished.
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