DRC: Women Bear the Brunt of DRC Violence

First the rebel soldiers told residents of the villages in the mineral-rich eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) 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 that 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 just 20km from a camp of UN peacekeepers. The UN says the peacekeepers drove through one of the villages while it was being held by the fighters, but the peacekeepers took no action because no one told them what was going on.

Violence is reaching new levels of savagery and spiralling out of control in this corner of the DRC, 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 the eastern DRC came last month, bringing international outrage. The UN 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 a reporter a list with names of victims and pointed to those he said were the mother, wife, two sisters and three cousins of the militia commander whose fighters apparently 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 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 learnt 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.

At Bisie, the DRC's biggest tin mine at the top of a mountain near Walikale, thousands of civilians are obeying Kabila's decree and have halted their illegal digging. Workers have been streaming down the mountain this week. They complain, however, that the soldiers are still exploiting the mine.

It's not clear whether Kabila's government can control even its own military commanders and soldiers, who were hastily cobbled together from numerous rebel groups and militias. Lines of command are murky.

Greed that plunged this nation of 48 million into back-to-back civil and regional wars now threatens to fracture the army and escalate the low-level conflict.

This week, Kabila sent Brigadier General Bosco Ntaganda, a former commander of a Tutsi-led rebellion in the eastern DRC in 2008, to enforce his mining ban.

Ntaganda came to Walikale as hundreds of troops moved into the remote region for an offensive to rid the area of Rwandan-led rebels grouped under the banner of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Rwanda, or FDLR.

General Didier Etumba, the army chief of staff, has arrived in Walikale and threatened to post elsewhere those commanders who are enriching themselves from the mines, according to two witnesses.

Resentment has been growing that rebels of the former Tutsi-led People's National Congress, known by its French acronym CNDP, have used their 18-month integration into the national army to expand their influence and take over productive mines.

They make up 70 percent of the armed forces in the eastern DRC.

Ntaganda is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, including a massacre of civilians in 2002 and forcing children to fight. The DRC's government says it won't arrest Ntaganda in the greater interest of keeping peace.

In Walikale, opinion is divided about the mining ban. Some want the mine shut, seeing it as the source of evil, so that the people will focus on neglected agriculture.

Others would like to see proper roads built, providing easy access to the mineral wealth. Still others simply want law and order.

Kabila's ban came as the prime minister said the economy will expand by a better-than-projected 6.1 percent, largely on the back of tin prices that increased by nearly 40 percent this year. The DRC is Africa's largest tin producer.

Bisie is the DRC's largest mine of cassiterite, a tin product. Porters walk for two days down the mountain to deliver 50kg bags of the red and brown mineral.

Prices in the nearby village of Ndjingala dropped this week from $5.60 (R40) a kilo to $3 after the ban, complained Jean-Marie Rugamika Chika, local secretary of the Mineral Exploiters' Association. The price has fallen in part because those who plan to abandon the mine want to see a quick sale of their product.

"Who is this ban serving?" complained Gertrude Matondo, who had just arrived in Ndjingala from the "hole" she and her husband mine in Bisie. "The soldiers are still there, exploiting. Only we, the ordinary people, are suffering."

She said armed bandits had attacked her on Wednesday, stealing $300 and all her belongings.

As in all of the DRC's conflicts, it's the civilians who are killed and driven from their homes, while military casualties are negligible.

"We fear that this latest offensive will follow the pattern of previous military actions," said Charles Masudi Kissa, head of the Civil Association of Walikale region.

"Both the rebels and the army |will punish civilians, but there will be little real fighting."