Allerede få dage efter den congolesiske hær, FARDC, indtog styringen i den provinsielle hovedstad Goma den 1. december, er antallet af voldtægter steget markant.
MINOVA, 6 December 2012 (IRIN) – Sexual violence is on the rise as armed groups continue to move across the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo’s North Kivu Province, officials say.
“There are more than 10 [FARDC] battalions here and they are raping the women,” said Nestor Bulumbe, who has worked as a medical professional there for 17 years.
Bulumbe’s Kalere clinic alone has attended to 26 women, some of whom were gang-raped. His wife said that she has attended the funeral of an 80-year old woman who was raped by three men and died as a result.
“By day, they [the soldiers] raped them in the fields and by night they entered their houses. There is no discipline; smoking hemp (hash, red.), drinking, behaving very badly,” he said of the soldiers, adding of the many armed groups that had come through the town in the past 17 years, the FARDC “are the worst”.
UNICEF reported on 4 December that the Minova Hospital had recorded 72 cases of rape since the latest wave of violence started. The organization has provided the hospital with 200 doses of medicine used to prevent HIV infection following exposure (eksponering, red.) to the virus.
Since mid-November, the provincial capital, Goma, has been the scene of fighting that saw rebel group M23 take control of the city; following negotiations with neighbouring countries, M23 relinquished (overgav, red.) control of the city on 1 December, and the Congolese national army, FARDC, is back in charge.
Days after FARDC troops arrived in Minova, 54 km southwest of Goma, in late November, local women began to show up at local hospitals with injuries sustained from rape.
UN human rights investigators in Goma have been unable to confirm allegations (påstande, red.) of sexual violence due to insecurity, according to a UN source not authorized to speak to the media. NGOs have also struggled with access.
Earlier in the year, rights group Human Rights Watch accused M23 of committing a number of war crimes, including rapes.
Læs videre her: http://www.irinnews.org/Report/96981/DRC-Surge-in-sexual-violence-in-North-Kivu
Begynd fra: “According to a 4 December report..”
