23rd October 2010 - Congolese Women
Speak Out: Meeting REPORT 'ENOUGH IS ENOUGH, IT MUST STOP'


The United Nations has accused Rwanda of wholesale war crimes, including possibly genocide, during years of conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. An unprecedented 600-page investigation by the UN high commissioner for human rights catalogues years of murder, rape and looting in a conflict in which millions were slaughtered. This UN report published on 01 October 2010 by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights confirms a draft version of the report leaked earlier. The report says gross human rights violations and abuses over a period of 10 years (from 1993 to 2003) and two invasions by Rwanda, amount to ‘crimes against humanity, war crimes, or even genocide' because the principal targets of the violence were Hutus, who were killed in their tens of thousands.

Among the accusations is that Rwandan forces and local allies rounded up hundreds of men, women and children at a time and butchered them with hoes and axes. On other occasions Hutu refugees were bayoneted, burned alive or killed with hammer blows in large numbers. It is the first time the UN has published such forthright allegations against Rwanda, a close ally of Britain and the US. The Rwandan government reacted angrily to the report, dismissing it as ‘amateurish' and ‘outrageous' after reportedly attempting to pressure the UN not to publish it by threatening to pull out of international peacekeeping missions. Rwanda's Tutsi leaders will be particularly discomfited by the accusation of genocide when they have long claimed the moral high ground for bringing to an end the 1994 genocide in their own country. But the report was welcomed by human rights groups, who called for the prosecution of those responsible for war crimes.

On Saturday, the 23rd October 20120, Congolese women held a meeting to discuss what was to be done to stop the Killing and Raping of Congolese Women in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The event took place at the Church Hall, Lancing Street off Eversholt Street, NW1 (Opposite Euston Station).

Congolese women are concerned that hundreds and thousands of women and girls have been raped and mutilated over the past decade in the Democratic Republic of Congo, while the world watches in silence. The aim of the meeting was to raise awareness of this catastrophic situation. Congolese women are convinced that, unless the truth of what is really happening in the DR Congo is told and defended forcefully, the Congo crisis would continue for another decade. They are determined to expose the underlying forces that produce the war, rapes and the biblical suffering of the people of Congo in order to help people grasp the reality of the crisis.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo has remained under the aggression of Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi with the support of the Big Powers of the Western World for sixteen years.

Past and present on-going human rights violations committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo have remained largely uninvesigated and those responsible not held accountable.

Jeremy Corbyn MP and Chair of Liberation told of his visit to the DR Congo, and explained why Liberation decided to help our Congolese sisters here in the UK to help inform the British Public what was taking place and called for Liberation to raise the issue with the UN in Geneva in February.

Jeremy, who first visited the DRC as an election observer on behalf of the UN in 2006, described what he saw and the hopes of that time. On a later visit to Goma, in the east of Congo, Jeremy met many rape victims and had a dialogue with womens organisations and also visited some of the Refugee Camps. He condemned the violence against women and the militia forces. He expressed concern at the ineffective actions of the Congo Army and the dangers of the militia and foreign interventions. The mining companies and their exploitation are a major factor in the modern history of the Congo and have systematically denied the people their share of the resources.

Jose Musau Kalanda spoke of the ugly paradox of the 21st century, which is that some of our elegant symbols of modernity; smart phones, laptops and digital cameras are built from minerals that are fuelling mass slaughter and on-going rapes in the DR Congo, the impact and consequences of rape on women, children, families and the whole community.

She also spoke about the two types of systematic rapes that are taking place in the Congo; one is the violent raping of women and the second is raping of the resources by multinational corporations; and how they are both inextricably linked.