Congo, the story of Solange: “We, gutted by the soldiers. Today I have nightmares: I think all men are like them”

Today marks ten years since the publication of Mapping report, an expert search He-she-it which documented 617 “crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes against genocide“Between 1993 and the 2003quoting me groups armed responsible and registering the identity of alleged authors “in a database confidential“. The report recommended the creation of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission and an international mixed court. I never started. And just for having clamored for its implementation, he received strong death threats and ended up in the custody of the gynecologist. Denis Mukwege, awarded in 2018 by Nobel Peace Prize to treat women war rape victims, but also for having denounced the causes and responsible for the war. Creating a International Criminal Court ad hoc is still mandatory for the pacification of the region and to end the impunity that perpetuates i crimes against civilians. As documented by the testimony of one of the thousands of victims of violence, received exclusively by ilfattoquotidiano.it.

We will call her Solange: lives in South Kivu, the same province as Mukwege. His is a horror story, which forces us to cut corners and omissions due to the extreme harshness of the memories. He has decided to speak now to join those who ask that the Mapping report be applied and on behalf of all women demand that the truth of their suffering be recognized.

Solange, what are your memories?
I speak of my suffering and that of the mothers who have suffered a lot during the two wars, the one of 1996 and especially the one that began in 1998, until today. In 1996, we were in our town of Urega, unaware of the war. Burundians and Tanzanians came first. They burned the houses and left. Forty-five kilometers from them, the “Songa mbele” advanced. They also burned the villages. They always started 45 kilometers from the others. If the first ones stayed five days, those who were behind did the same. It was a planned war, especially against us women. They said, “How is it that there is a baby in a woman’s womb?” And they gutted them. They killed women in all forms, without bullets: they penetrated the genitals with the spear and other sharp objects. The women died slowly, a week, a month later. In 1997, they killed my husband, the local chief, and a student. The military mainly attacked the leaders. They were unprecedented murders. We fled into the forest, running without food for even two days, and we stayed there for six months. If you showed that a boy was your son or he showed that you were his mother, they forced you to have sex.

And what happened next?
In 98 came the RCD movement (Rassemblement congolais pour le démocratie) and the war got even worse. At that time in Kasika, Father Stany Wabulakombe, the deacon, three nuns, the Mwami (the local king) and his pregnant wife were killed, gutting her and many people from the parish.

This is the massacre recently denied by the Rwandan ambassador to the Congo, against which the people have been demonstrating for weeks, demanding his removal.
Exact. We were there. We know what happened. It cannot be denied. One group escaped, another took us: in 1999 the Interahamwe, a mix of Burundians and Rwandans, took us into the forest with our children, and some took us as wives. They did what they wanted with us. My daughter, who was not yet twelve years old, was taken away with others. They told them: “We will give them the medicine, they will not give them the bullets.” They lined up in front of them, legs spread. And they passed one after another.
Our daughters fled by the grace of God, almost all became pregnant and gave birth to children, in a climate of discrimination. We arrived in Bukavu, yellow with illness and exhausted, on foot. Among those who fled, many have already died, because they hid the abuse they had suffered in the forest, out of shame. How could a mom say that five men had taken advantage of her for days or months?

Were only women affected?
No. My older brother hid the fact that his penis had been cut off out of shame: he couldn’t speak. He simply said, “They hurt us.” When in 2004 we started the meetings in the parish, a young woman agreed to speak: “They put a stick on me like this and like that.” “Is that why your period never ends?” “Yep!”. Her husband was injured like my brother, he was sent to Bukavu hospital, where he died two months later.

What are you waiting for now?
I am heart sick, I have no joy in this world. Until now my daughter is not getting married, she is insulted on the street. She stays home, smart but still traumatized, with her growing son. Today I live by the grace of God, I have constant nightmares. And if I see a man tremble, I think all men have the same behavior as those soldiers.

What do you ask?
The war is not over. On behalf of all mothers, I ask that the war end. No one can say that these things did not happen, we are witnesses. The truth is the truth. It can not forget. Sorry, we already forgive, we leave it to God, but we want the truth to be known. Covering is letting these things happen again. The world must know.

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