NEW YORK — The violence in Congo is unspeakable. But, if the horror of Congo's recent wars — which have killed more people than any war since World War II — is to end, the unspeakable must be spoken.
Across the eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo, government soldiers, members of renegade government military units, and myriad militias are gang-raping untold thousands of women. They are making sex slaves of some women, branding some victims like cattle, and maiming and mutilating women and girls, some as young as 3 years old, by destroying their vaginas and other internal organs.
Sometimes, the gunmen force fathers, brothers and husbands to rape daughters, sisters and wives, or the women to eat the flesh of their murdered relatives. Afterward, many of the women find themselves utterly alone as they suffer the physical and psychological effects of trauma and cope with destitution, unwanted pregnancies and children, HIV/AIDS, and ostracism by their loved ones who shun them as "diseased" or "tainted."