Atrocities of a war without end

Congo is officially at peace, but the horrors go on for thousands of women and children who suffer sexual abuse in violence fuelled by guns and greed. A tiny child with a gaping, bloody gash between her legs. A young woman whose breasts are stretched grotesquely out of shape. A woman whose lower face resembles a skull, her mouth carved away by vengeful rapists. These are the pictures that Justine Masika Bihamba carries with her on her travels, in the hope that the world will see the plight of sexually abused women in the mineral-rich provinces of Democratic Republic of Congo. For many Westerners, stories of the savage five-year war that crushed the country and killed some 3 million people are part of the horrific past, now that Congo is officially at peace.But for the broken and desperate women who call on Masika in her threadbare office in Goma, the atrocities are ongoing. For them it is war without end. "This is sexual violence that amounts to torture," says Masika, a quiet-spoken, solid woman who co-ordinates the collective Synergie des Femmes pour les Victimes de Violences Sexuelles. She was attending a women's human rights forum yesterday at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. "Eighty per cent of the violence is around the mining areas," Masika said. "Those areas are all about guns and greed. There is no government control and people take what they want." Including women. For the gun-toting men who prey on them “many of them battle-hardened ex-fighters“ toddlers, teenagers or elderly women are fair game for sadistic attacks that defy the most twisted imagination."Women are not just raped, but assaulted with sharp objects to mutilate them, including razor blades," says Masika.