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Having lost all her belongings, she went to Kalonge to get some charcoal to sell in order to buy clothes. When there she was abducted one night by three Rwandan members of a predominantly Hutu armed group who came to the house where she was staying at around 8 p. When Marie G. She offered the assailants a goat if they would leave her alone but they turned down the offer saying they needed girls. She was joined by two girls who had been captured that same day while on their way to buy charcoal in Kalonge, Chantal R. There they were told they had to cook and prepare a bed with grass and a sheet of plastic.
The three abductees said the men were called Lukala, Nyeka, and Vianney. They were dressed in civilian clothes and were armed with guns and machetes. Among themselves they spoke Kinyarwanda; with the girls they spoke Kiswahili. Each of the combatants took one of them. It was Lukala who demanded sex from Marie G. She refused. Lukala told her: "You are no better than my wife and she was shot dead. She heard the other two girls screaming. The man said to me, 'They have already begun working-why are you creating problems for me? He made me suffer greatly," Marie G.
He threatened to shoot her and after several hours began to rape her again. He raped her five times during the first night. After that night, Vianney, leader of the group, also wanted to "have" her. After a dispute with Lukala over this, she spent the second night with Vianney.
He told her that he was going to be much nicer to her than Lukala and that she only would have to sleep with him once per night and could then sleep. She told him it was not easy for her to sleep in the circumstances. Frightened and afraid of being traced later, Marie G. She also lied to her captors, claiming that she had two children, and begged to be released.
Vianney told her he could release her only if Lukala agreed. She appealed to Vianney's moral sense by telling him that he would not want members of his own family treated this way. The assailants let Marie G. They accused her of being a "friend of the Tutsi.
When she cried, they told her, "You are not going to change the situation with your tears. You are not more important than those we have left behind in Rwanda. The captors raped the girls repeatedly and made them cook and do other household work.
Seven men in uniforms and armed with guns who spoke Kinyarwanda-Banyamulenge, she claimed-broke into the house. The people in Congo have yet to realize the full extent of the destruction brought upon them by the sexual violence used against women and girls. Different legal regimes apply to acts committed by different forces in eastern Congo, described in this report. She married Joe Biden in , becoming stepmother to Beau and Hunter , his two sons from his first marriage. But they have to keep doing it even after they are raped. They are the people of the village.
It appears that this group of men had abducted many women and girls before, one of them claiming that they had had forty women. Three weeks after the capture of Beatrice and Cecile and one week after Valerie J. Marie G. According to the girls, the three men said they were receiving orders from a "commander" but they believed this was a ruse to intimidate them. The three men were never together with any others and had no radios or mobile phones, which indicates that they might have been acting independently of other Hutu forces in the area.
Over a period of several weeks, they moved several times within the forest, perhaps because they were aware that RCD troops were pursuing them. A representative of a women's organization explained that sexual violence had increased recently, in part because assailants found little to rob from people who had been repeatedly attacked, and wanted to punish them as a result for their perceived lack of support:. Twenty-five-year-old Elisabeth S. She said,. Bijou K. She said:.
Fifteen-year-old Jeanette T. The data gathered by our researchers on rape and other sexual abuse in the area around the Kahuzi-Biega National Park was consistent with that collected independently by two local human rights organizations. A second organization reported that "men in uniform identified as Interahamwe" killed, raped, and pillaged so frequently in villages near the Kahuzi-Biega National Park that residents had abandoned their homes to sleep outside in the search for security.
Shabunda town, kilometers southwest of Bukavu in the territory of Shabunda, is strategically located for controlling the east of the province and its vast mineral wealth. The town is surrounded on three sides by the Ulindi River, beyond which thick equatorial forest stretches for hundreds of kilometers.
Residents of the town, like people who inhabit nearby villages, depend on the forest for most of the necessities of life: they grow crops and hunt and gather food and firewood there.
Given the distance from other centers and the poor state of the roads, Shabunda imports few supplies from the outside and those brought in usually come by air. With the ongoing conflict the town has become increasingly isolated. In late it had the atmosphere of an embattled fortress. Mai-Mai have been able to occupy the town only occasionally and briefly, such as in early , but they control much of the surrounding forest.
As the U. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs OCHA said, "Shabunda town is the only place, in the whole territory where one has access to population without the danger of interference from armed bands. As fighting increased in early , nearly half the population of Shabunda town fled-most of it to the forest-reducing the number of inhabitants from more than 32, in to 17, in early Residents of nearby villages also sought refuge in the forest.
In their struggle to control territory, each side used violence, including violence against women and girls, to win or keep control over the local population. Residents who fled to the forest when the Mai-Mai advanced hesitated to return afterwards to homes in areas where the RCD had regained control, fearing the RCD would see them as supporters of the Mai-Mai and take reprisals against them.
Others wished to return home but feared attack by Mai-Mai if they tried to do so. To hurry their return, the RCD reportedly announced in a public meeting that civilians who did not come back from the forest would be considered enemies and subject to attack. For a period the RCD soldiers prohibited town residents from going to cultivate fields and to gather food and wood in the forest-or limited the times when they could do so-apparently hoping thus to impede any collaboration between them and the Mai-Mai.
In March RCD troops organized a Local Defense Force, an armed, minimally-trained paramilitary force that is recruited in the area and continues to live at home while carrying out patrols and other military duties. Each household in the community is required to contribute two glassfuls of rice every two days to support the Local Defense Force.
Shabunda town is exceptional for the number of women and girls who have admitted publicly to having been raped, most of them by Mai-Mai. The governor of South Kivu estimated that 2, to 3, women and girls had been raped between late and mid and a religious congregation reported having assisted some 2, raped women and girls.
As one humanitarian aid worker commented: "Whatever the number, it's a systematic pattern of abuse. In other places they don't," a nurse with an international agency who has worked extensively in South Kivu told us. Family members, friends, or other captured women were forced to watch.
In several cases, children were reportedly forced to hold their mothers down while they were raped. In addition, many women abducted by the Mai-Mai were held for long periods, up to a year and a half. Women and girls returning home after being held for so long were generally assumed to have been raped and most saw no reason to pretend otherwise. Other women and girls came back with obvious injuries that could only have been inflicted in sexual assaults. Sometimes women and girls were raped with objects such as sticks of wood and hot peppers.
Some women and girls also became pregnant as a result of having been raped. Other circumstances have apparently contributed to the willingness of women and girls in Shabunda to speak about rapes and other sexual abuse which they have suffered.
A support group assists victims, one of the few operating in the region, and an international aid organization has experimented with treating women and girls free of charge for rape-related injuries and complications. RCD authorities see political advantage in drawing attention to rapes and other abuses committed by their opponents. The governor of the province has encouraged humanitarian organizations and journalists to examine the problem. The majority of women and girls described those who raped them as "Mai-Mai," a term which can mean simply members of the local population.
As a priest from the territory of Shabunda commented, "Who are the Mai-Mai?
Bukavu is a city in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), lying at the extreme south-western edge of Lake Kivu, west of Cyangugu in Rwanda, and. Our network of embassies and consular posts around the world will provide you with up-to-date local advice and support throughout this difficult.
They are the people from here…the youth from around here, the Interahamwe. Sophie W. She told us that her family was targeted in part because the Mai-Mai thought her husband was linked with the RCD:. Mai-Mai sometimes killed and raped local people who it held had shown an acceptance of RCD authority by leaving the forest. In one such case in early September , Mai-Mai attacked a group who had left the forest shortly before under RCD escort and who were gathered for worship in a church in a Masanga village, about forty kilometers from Shabunda.
Natalie R. She had been in the forest with her family near Minoro, a village about fifty-five kilometers from Shabunda. Her husband had been taken a year previously by the Mai-Mai and she has not seen him since:. Mai-Mai preyed upon women who sought safety by moving temporarily to the forest as well as those who remained in town but continued to go to the forest to cultivate, seek food, or make charcoal to keep themselves and their families alive.
They are the ones who go looking for wood, food, fruits, and they are taken when they are doing that. But they have to keep doing it even after they are raped. Solange C. Her neighbors came to her assistance when they heard that the Mai-Mai had gone. She took some traditional medicines from the forest that her mother knew of, "the kind they give to girls who are just beginning to menstruate. She continued to live in the forest for one year and one month and on occasion was obliged to labor for the Mai-Mai.
Describing her living conditions during that time Solange C. Our research team also spoke with a man whose wife had been taken by the Mai-Mai in June of He remains in Shabunda with their two young children. His wife has not been seen since but some other women who had likewise been kidnapped had escaped with the help of the Local Defense Force and the RCD and gave him news of his wife. They told him that she had been taken by the Mai-Mai even deeper into the forest.
In addition, some of the women and girls of Shabunda said that their assailants had been young men from local villages or bandits from the area who simply used the name Mai-Mai to cover their crimes. She referred to the three rapists as Mai-Mai but also said that she recognized them as coming from her village.
She said: "Everyone is Mai-Mai. At the beginning they were good, but then they became bad. She did not know them but said that they were "boys from the village.