"Rape As A Weapon", Violence Spirals Out Of Control In The Congo - No "Darfur-Like" Coalition Of Celebrities Seen

MSNBC: Violence spirals out of control in east Congo

There are two tracks that could be taken in this report about the violence and rape that is taking place:

1. These women and other people who are terrorized with this violence in the country.  They deserve to have the standard level of protection that this world has committed to after centuries of a world that had no balance in its protection
2. Walikale Congo is a mineral rich town.  The violence seen is merely an off-shoot of the exploitation of the land and the organized greed known as "Capitalism".   Stop the exploitation of the area's mineral wealth and the violence will stop.

I will allow you to decide which is more likely.

WALIKALE, Congo — First the rebel soldiers told residents of the villages in the mineral-rich eastern Congo not to worry. They were just there for a rest and would do no harm. But as dusk fell, the fighters encircled five villages simultaneously, and the gang rapes began.

Six or seven men lined up to take their turn. The victims ranged from a month-old baby boy to a 110-year-old great great-grandmother.

They forced husbands and children to watch as they gang-raped the villagers for four days. Some victims told doctors the fighters raped them with their fists, saying "We're looking for the gold."

It took days for help to arrive, even though the villages are 12 miles (20 kilometers) from a camp of U.N. peacekeepers from India. The U.N. says the peacekeepers actually drove through one of the villages while it was being held by the fighters, but said peacekeepers took no action because no one told them what was going on.

Violence is reaching new levels of savagery and spiraling out of control in this corner of Congo, where the competition for control of mineral resources has drawn in several armed groups, including the Congolese army. Rape has become a military strategy by the various groups of fighters to intimidate, punish and control the population in the mining areas.

News of the most brutal gang rapes in eastern Congo came in August, bringing international outrage. The U.N. said more than 500 women were raped in that period, and Buna Altunbas, a regional director for Doctors Without Borders, said some Congolese women have been raped repeatedly.

The victims from the five villages near Walikale alone number about 250, with more coming for treatment this week, said Dr. Chris Baguma of Los Angeles-based International Medical Corps, and he expects the toll to rise. Some have infections resistant to antibiotics, he said. At the local hospital, there are no kits to test for HIV.

"I have seen many, many cases of rapes and many cases of medical emergencies, but I have never seen anything so planned, so systematic, so animalistic," Baguma said.

No one was killed in the attack and the villages are so poor that there is little to loot, leaving people to conclude that the rapes, and forcing families to watch, was some form of punishment — for what no one is sure.

A nurse whose responsibility included three of the villages showed an Associated Press reporter a list with names of 124 victims and pointed to those he said were the mother, wife, two sisters and three cousins of the militia commander whose fighters allegedly were among the attackers.

Victims told doctors they were attacked by a mixed group of fighters: members of the local Mai-Mai militia led by a man who calls himself Commander Cheka; Rwandan Hutu rebels led by perpetrators of that neighboring country's 1994 genocide; and some former fighters of a Congolese Tutsi rebellion that professed itself a sworn enemy of the Rwandan rebels.

Cheka denied that his fighters were involved. In an interview with Radio Kivu Un, he blamed the Rwandan rebels and denied they were allies. It's unclear if that statement might have come after he learned that his family also was raped.

Last week, President Joseph Kabila banned all mining in three eastern provinces, saying he was trying to halt violence such as the gang rapes near Walikale.

But the move appeared aimed more at reigning in officers who have been profiting from the mines despite previous commands to stop.