Protecting the Women of Congo
By Stephen Lewis
The Nation

Monday 28 April 2008

Today is a day that has largely - and rightly - been given over to Dr. [Denis] Mukwege and his astonishing and heroic work in the Congo. (For those who may have missed his panel, he is, of course, the internationally famed doctor who heads the resolute and magnificent staff of the Panzi Hospital in Eastern Congo.) Driving the work is the endlessly grim and despairing litany of rape and sexual violence. All of us assembled in the Superdome, talk of V-Day and The Vagina Monologues; in the Congo there's a medical term of art called "vaginal destruction." I need not elaborate; most of you have heard Dr. Mukwege. But suffice to say that in the vast historical panorama of violence against women, there is a level of demonic dementia plumbed in the Congo that has seldom, if ever, been reached before.

That's the peg on which I want to hang these remarks. I want to set out an argument that essentially says that what's happening in the Congo is an act of criminal international misogyny, sustained by the indifference of nation states and by the delinquency of the United Nations.

For the full story, please visit: http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/042808WA.shtml

Betty's response to the above article posted on Truthout.org:

Although we’ve had our differences in the past, Today I admire and support Eve Ensler and her V day organization that is raising money to help women, especially in the Congo. These women not only get raped but they have their insides destroyed with sticks and gun barrels by their attackers. A brave woman filmmaker interviewed some of the men who said raping women gave them magic power to destroy their enemy. When asked if a soldier did that to one of their sisters or mothers, one replied, “I’d kill him.” They showed no remorse or regret toward their victims. The horrors of war makes it all the worse that our troops remain in Iraq.

Betty

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