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2009 Spotlight

The Democratic Republic of Congo is, as you hear this, engaged in a war that has raged on and off since 1998.

5.4 million people have been killed in the deadliest conflict since World War II. Millions have been displaced. Congolese women and girls have born the brunt of this vicious war with over 300 thousand raped, tortured and destroyed.

The current state of crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is intricately linked to the unfettered greed of colonialists a century ago. King Leopold II of Belgium, who in the 1880s exploited the country’s natural resources (mainly rubber) through cruel forced labor and murders, set a precedent for the pillaging of the Congo’s vast natural resources and exploitation of the Congolese people.

A hundred years later the link between the plundering of resources and the violence is evident. Congo is the richest country in Africa. The struggle for tin and coltan, a material used in our cell phones and play stations is driving the war.

You might ask why should we here in [your city] care about a 16-year-old girl in Goma, DRC being raped by 50 men? Why should we care about the Arctic melting when we live in Paris or middle America?

Femicide is the global warming of women.

Like the Arctic, the Congo is the place where the catastrophe has been made evident and where it is in its most extreme. But Femicide is raging throughout the planet - acid burnings, sex slavery, female genital mutilation, mass rapes, date rapes, honor killings, women buried alive.

The Congo is the heart of Africa and Africa is the heart of the world. Women live at the core of the heart. They hold the future in their bodies. If their bodies are destroyed, deadened, muted and traumatized, so is our future. If we focus now and give our attention and resources to this deadly war on women in the DRC. If we, as humanity support women and men of the DRC, on the ground who are breaking the silence and building a peace and justice movement. If we make this our priority and help support, cherish and empower the women there, the heart of the world will continue beating.

Eve wrote this piece after interviewing eight year old, Noella at Panzi Hospital. After the interview, Eve tried to hug Noella and she squirmed away. Eve realized then that Noella probably hadn't been hugged since she was raped by a group of Militia every day for two weeks straight. The rapes had destroyed her insides and given her fistula so she had no ability to hold her pee. Eve hugged her anyway and held her on her lap and after that, there was no turning back.

Baptized

Look out your window

The dead live everywhere

Think of your luxuries as corpses

Count the bodies

30 hacked children for Jed’s new play station

20 tortured women so you can SMS photos from the party

50 amputated men, waving their missing hands as your sweet Andrew

mindlessly bounces his rubber ball

I held an eight year old girl in my lap

Who had been raped by so many men

She had an extra hole inside her

When she accidentally peed on me

I was baptized

It isn’t over there

The Congo

It’s inside everything you touch and do

Or do not do.

With the support of the DAPHNE Programme (European Commission).
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