Rapes Shatter Congo Women

33 women beaten, bound

(NEWSER) - Women were restrained with ropes or beaten unconscious when some 33 of them were raped in the latest mass assault in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The coordinated New Year's Day attack, in front of some of the women's children, involved several men in each assault, said Doctors Without Borders. All the women were treated at local hospitals the following days, and two severely injured—one beaten with a rock, the other shot in the chest—were transported to a more sophisticated care facility, reports the Guardian . More»

Women fill the streets with a call to end sexual violence

(NEWSER) - Congo’s rape survivors “have had enough, enough, enough, enough,” says one activist—and to show it, many of them marched yesterday to protest the country’s rash of sexual violence. Some victims even left hospital beds to join up, singing, “My heart is in pain, why are you raping me?” The rape crisis, which has been going on for years , recently led the UN to name the Democratic Republic of Congo the “rape capital of the world,” CNN reports. More»

Peacekeeping forces couldn't stop attacks

(NEWSER) - The United Nations has launched an investigation into reports that close to 200 women and baby boys were gang raped over a series of days by Congolese rebels and Rwandan fighters—just a few miles from a UN outpost. "The secretary-general is outraged by the rape and assault," a UN spokesman tells the BBC . "This is another grave example of both the level of sexual violence and the insecurity that continue to plague Congo." More»

(NEWSER) - Hundreds of thousands of women have been sexually assaulted in the ongoing war in eastern Congo, but suddenly, the region is seeing a sharp increase in rapes of men. More than 10% of the victims of sexual violence in the region are male, and victims are often ostracized by their own families and communities. "The people in my village say: ‘You’re no longer a man,'" one victim tells the New York Times. "'Those men in the bush made you their wife.'" More»

New survey finds numbers even worse than thought

(NEWSER) - Reports of mass rape as a weapon of war have been common in Congo for years, but a new survey shows the problem to be far worse than thought. An estimated 1,152 women are raped every day, or 48 per hour, according to a study to appear in the American Journal of Public Health. That's 26 times higher than a previous UN estimate. "The numbers are astounding," says a Johns Hopkins expert. More»