RUTSHURU, DR Congo // Streaks of dried blood stain the walls of the white United Nations tent in the centre of the camp. Slits in the plastic where bullets penetrated allow shafts of light to illuminate the dark interior. The Kinyandoni camp for displaced people was supposed to be a refuge for Congolese fleeing the recent violence that has gripped their villages. But less than two months ago, an armed militia attacked the camp, looting, raping women and killing six.
"At first we were afraid," said Jack Mukatak, the assistant camp manager. "We didn't want to go on working. But when we see the thousands of people who need assistance, there's no way we can abandon them." Authorities say that a peace accord signed by a handful of armed groups in January brought stability to eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The 5,300 residents of Kinyandoni, who live in cramped huts made out of banana leaves, just shake their heads at such statements.
"The agreement was signed, but the insecurity exists," said Kasengole Bahati, who fled his village in April after a militia attacked. "In our daily lives, there is no change. When our women go to work in the fields, they get raped and come back running. There is no change at all." Mr Bahati, one of the victims of the 10-year conflict in eastern Congo, has stayed alive long enough to tell horror stories of killings and torture. Sexual violence is also used as a weapon in this war, and women tell of being raped, some repeatedly.
The war in eastern Congo has its roots in the 1994 genocide in neighbouring Rwanda, where Hutus killed 800,000 Tutsis. After a Tutsi militia stemmed the bloodbath and took control of Rwanda, the genocide perpetrators, known as the Interahamwe, crossed the border into the lush mountains of eastern Congo. From 1998 to 2003, Congolese and allied forces fought armies from neighbouring countries and militia fighters for control of the vast eastern region and its wealth of natural resources, including gold, diamonds, tin and coltan, which is used to make cellphones.
A peace deal in 2003 officially ended the war, but clashes continue to this day. More than 5.4 million people have died in the war, according to the International Rescue Committee, making it the deadliest conflict since the Second World War. The recent clashes in North Kivu province have pitted a Tutsi militia led by Laurent Nkunda, a renegade general, against a Hutu militia made up of some perpetrators of the genocide. The Congolese army and about two dozen smaller militias are also involved in the fighting. The United Nations has 14,000 peacekeepers in the region.
Human rights organisations have said the armed groups have violated the ceasefire agreement that was signed in the provincial capital of Goma in late January. More than 100,000 have fled to camps, such as Kinyandoni, in the past six months, according to Human Rights Watch, putting the total displaced at nearly one million. The Kinyandoni camp is in Rutshuru, about 60km north of Goma. "Six months after the peace agreement was signed there has been no improvement in the human rights situation, and in some areas it has actually deteriorated," said Anneke Van Woudenberg, senior Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch.
"While the parties to the peace agreement attend talks in Goma, their troops continue to kill, rape and loot civilians. The peace process is meaningless if it fails to protect civilians from the worst abuses." The World Food Programme warned of the growing humanitarian crisis that the recent fighting has caused. Because of the swelling population in the camps, the organisation has had to cut food rations in half. The rate of malnutrition has soared to 17 per cent, well above emergency levels, the organisation said. "Thousands more people have run for their lives in recent months and are now in urgent need of help," said Charles Vincent, the Congo director for the WFP. "There are enormous and growing needs across North Kivu in particular."
Officials with the UN peacekeeping mission, known as Monuc, admit that the security situation is not completely peaceful, but they say that it is improving. Last week 67 rebels from the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda surrendered their weapons to the Congolese authorities. But these small steps forward provide little solace for the victims of the war, who listen to reports on their radios that some militias are rearming and recruiting for a protracted conflict. Women are still being raped at an alarming rate with 2,200 new cases reported in June, according to Congo Advocacy Coalition, a group of aid organisations in Congo.
The use of sexual violence is a disturbing feature of the Congolese conflict. Large hospitals in Goma and Bukavu, capital of South Kivu province, have treated some of the 40,000 rape cases. The Kyeshero Medical Centre in Goma is currently caring for around 60 rape victims and more arrive each day, according to Jean Kitambala, a nurse at the clinic. "Some women are raped by six to 10 men," he said. "They are affected both physically and mentally."
The rapes are usually violent, Mr Kitambala said, and many of the women need surgery to repair a ruptured bladder or uterus. The soldiers committing the rapes often carry sexually transmitted diseases, such as HIV, that they pass on to the women. Men see raped women as damaged, and husbands often abandon wives who have been raped, leaving the women with nowhere to go except the clinics in towns. Jolie, who has big brown eyes and skin the colour of milk chocolate, arrived at the clinic last week complaining of back and stomach pain. The 31-year-old mother of five was raped by six soldiers who attacked her village at night.
"They were very rough. They began first by beating me," was all Jolie managed to recall about her experience. She said she does not know which of the militias raped her, and she does not really care. All that matters is that her homeland is still engulfed in conflict. "There are many armed groups still active in my village," Jolie said in a hushed voice. "There is no chance to go home. What we lived with in the past is the same as what we live with today."
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