Reality Check

Every now and again I encounter a news story that really shakes me to my foundations as a human being, and puts whatever day-to-day problems I deal with in perspective and see The Big Picture. This is the first in a wave of stories I hope to do in support of the One in Three Campaign to Raise Global Awareness About Violence Against Women.

Shortly after midnight last night CNN ran a story on what is happening in the Congo. Now, I'd previously read about what is happening there, including this story that prompted the TV story (watch the video link--it is deeply disturbing, but necessary to see). I vaguely knew about the 4 million people dead, the systemic rape of the country's women--12 per day in a single province, ethnic fighting that is fuelled by arms of the "state" itself, namely the military. Seeing the plight of these people, the women sheltered at hospital camps because if they stay in the cities they're likely to be gang-raped by soldiers patrolling the streets, was a really visceral point that honestly left me speechless for the better part of an hour afterwards. It is a testament to the power of television to truly alter our perceptions and attitudes. Hearing a testimony such as this:

Also in the room is 28-year-old Henriette Nyota. Her spirit is all but broken. Three years ago, she said, she was gang raped as her husband and four children were forced to watch. The men in uniform then disemboweled her husband and continued raping her and her two oldest daughters, 10 and 8. The assault went on for three days.
"I wish they'd killed me right there with my husband," she said, "What use am I now? Why did those animals leave me to suffer like this?"

It confirmed something that I have said many times over:
There is no such thing as an international community.

Mukengere [the town doctor], who attends to an average of 10 new cases a day, explains bed-by-bed the cruelty that has become the Congo.
"Helene, over there, is 19 years old. She first came here five years ago after having been raped," he said. "We treated her and discharged her, and off she went back to her home village. Five years later, she's back after being attacked and sexually violated over and over again. This is pure madness."

How can this be allowed to happen?

How can we stand by, with full knowledge, and let 4 million people just die? How can we allow soldiers to enter peoples' houses, rape a woman for hours while forcing her husband and children to watch, kill the husband, rape the children who are often between the ages of 8 and 12, and just before they leave, stick a knife in the woman or shoot her between the legs? How can we knowingly permit soldiers to abduct women and continuously rape them for over a week, leaving them broken psychologically and physically and wishing they were dead?
This is reality. This is actually happening as we speak. For people to claim that there is an international community while a significant segment of that community is being systematically killed and even worse (abused and degraded so badly, suffering such indignity, watching loved ones suffer violence and dying right in front, to the extent that they wish they were dead)...it all seems so hollow. If the authorities here, in Canada, know that a guy down the street is beating the shit out of women and killing them, they arrest him and stop it. But if we as an entire country know that a lot of guys marching and carrying out the orders of another state and doing so en masse in their country, nothing happens. Where is the doctrine of The Responsibility to Protect? Why is this a news story that only airs when most people are in bed? How can we claim that something like a global conscience exists when we stand by and allow this to happen so that we don't upset the delicate peace arrangements between warring factions?

"It's so tragic that the world can afford to sit back and let these atrocities continue like this," said aid worker Marie Walterzon of the Swedish Pentecostal Mission. "Possibly because it involves poor, voiceless Africans," she said.

Whatever the reasons, to ignore something like what is happening in the Congo betrays every principle of a common humanity.