The child killers of eastern Congo
Akwero Florence is 54 now. She has never seen a dollar bill in her life. When she tried to explain this to the teenage soldiers, they shot her husband. Her children started screaming. So they shot them too. Then they raped her - all 10 of them. As she lay bleeding the boys of the Mai Mai thrust the barrels of their guns into her vagina. That afternoon, more young men came to Kindu and raped her again.
Today, Akwero is bent double over a stick after surgery to save her womb. She says the second group of armed men are interahamwe, the extremist Hutu militia that fled into the Congo 12 years ago after leading the genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda. The interahamwe use rape as a tool of genocide, telling women they would bear Hutu children and that would be the end of the Tutsis.
Thousands still hide in the forests of eastern Congo. Hundreds of thousands of women and girls have been raped over the past decade by young soldiers. The Doctors On Call Service hospital in Goma alone has seen close to 4,000 women for rape over the past four years. One in four required major surgery. More than a third are under 18. "They really come with very bad wounds," said Doctor Justin Paluka. "Some have their vaginas pulled out. Most of them have been raped by four, five or even ten men."
Beni Richard is 16 now. He is a child killer- not because he is an adult who kills children but because he was a child who killed adults. During his five years as a child soldier he also raped women like Akwero. Beni says he was often forced at gun-point into committing brutality. He took many women because he was told it would make him powerful, bullet proof. The more he raped, the stronger he became. He even saw five year-old girls being gang raped.
" I was happy as a small boy," says Beni. "Even when my mother couldn't feed me I still played and laughed. But all that came to an end during the war. When I was 11 the soldiers came to my home and made me join the army. They promised to feed and educate me. And they promised my mother they would pay me in dollars to help support my family while I was gone. I was taken to the front-line and given a gun. I was trained and told I had a job for life." Today, Beni is Kotelengana. The Lingala term literally means "the trash of the army". It is used to describe an ex-child soldier turned vagrant. They are often malnourished, in poor health, out of school and have no adult support. They often have their own dependants - girlfriends and babies.
According to research by the aid organisation War Child, 70% of all child soldiers are struggling to reintegrate. They remain a marginalised, threatened and increasingly neurotic subculture. Yet as the politicians speak of peace in the region, and on the eve of the first International Criminal Court trial of the alleged child soldier recruiter Thomas Lubanga in The Hague on June 23, a new secret war has already started. It is a battle between what some see as an army of foreign aid spin doctors and local tribes who say they can't stomach the tsunami of propaganda aimed at reintegrating Lubanga's lost children. In this emerging Newspeak Beni is not a rapist, he is a lover. According to War Child, his girlfriend Marie Agathe, herself abducted at the age of 12, says he saved her from the other soldiers. They fell in love and now they have a handsome baby boy called Moise.
"Very touching", says Mutumbo Nganga, a tribal councillor in the village of Kindu. "You know we are sick of the white man's lies. The Kotelengana, they hide behind your words. Just as Thomas Lubanga will hide behind your so-called justice system in June. I heard a woman from Christian Aid talking about forgiveness. Has she been gang raped? Have her children been executed in front of her own eyes? One hundred years ago we had Belgian colonialists. Today, we have totally unrealistic aid agencies who refuse to accept the worthiness of our local laws."
Nganga may be right. Some Africa experts believe many of the continent's most brutal wars have been ended by deals that have incorporated warring factions into the democratic process through amnesties and the conciliatory processes of traditional justice. Meantime, it is the under fire aid agencies who shoulder the unenviable task of convincing battle scarred victims of rape that their perpetrators are capable of reform, that the duality of man can be overcome. Only when that argument is won can Akwero and Beni truly begin to live in harmony in the same village.
"There is some negativity but community reaction to reintegration is positive overall," said Unicef worker Chulho Hyun. He may be right. Unicef's basis livelihood scheme has allowed returning child soldier Patrick Okodo, 17, to sell fish with assistance from a community based organisation. Many others, including teenagers like Beni, are set to follow Patrick's example. One day, Beni hopes Akwero will come to his stall. "Maybe we can talk. I want to help, that's all, says Beni. "That is my hope, my big plan for 2008."
Geoffrey Keele is Unicef's spokesman in New York. He said: "As we try to move towards peace in the region there will be many, many more former child soldiers trying to reclaim their lives. What we must concern ourselves with is the return home, looking at tomorrow with dignity and resilience, beyond the trauma of yesterday."
So Keele and others look ahead to a time when yesterday's rapists are accepted as today's lovers, yesterday's child killers - tomorrow's child rearers. It is time, in other words, for the boys of the Kotelengana to become the men of the DR Congo.
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Jean-Louis Kayitenkore
Procurement Consultant
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Home: +250-55104140
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Kigali-Rwanda
East Africa
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