I was driving back from Pasir Gudang when I heard a horrendous, horrendous story on BBC’s Outlook programme (check out the Wednesday, 23rd May 2007 edition). It featured a young mother from the Democratic Republic of Congo describing her experiences there. It was.. it was horrible. To paraphrase:
This young mother of four children was captured by militia. She was among.. fifteen people captured, if I recall correctly, and she was repeatedly raped by nineteen men. Then, two of her children were shot and killed in front of her. She had a young baby she carried on her back.
These men took her baby from her, tied a rope around her baby’s neck and forced her to pull the rope, killing her baby.
When they were done raping her and killing her children, they told her and some other survivors to dig the earth to grow cabbages. Another group of militia arrived at the scene and asked her captors why they bothered “with such filth”. Her captors said, “Don’t worry, they are digging their own graves”.
It is beyond tragic and worse: it is a common enough story.
Comments (3)
I haven’t heard the story told, yet reading even this simple short description sans graphic descriptions, I can’t think of anything to say that would be worthy of her and many others like her except:
Blessed are the meek indeed.
To endure such terrible things, non-violence must surely be a integral part of their spirit, their psyche. And that certainly takes more strength than it does to open the door to anger, revenge and justice.
yeah, while studying, i focused a lot on conflict in africa……….. :(
I can’t imagine the weight of such horrors on the future generations of the people of the DRC. I wonder how these tragedies will resonate in their collective histories.