‘Dr Miracle’ calls for tougher line against mass rape

Rape must be treated as an illegal weapon of war in the same way as chemical weapons, the campaigning gynaecologist Denis Mukwege said Wednesday.
The specialist reconstructive surgeon, who has treated 45,000 victims of sexual violence in the strife-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, said a tougher line had to be taken against this “cheap and efficient” form of terror.
Mukwege, who has been nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work with gang rape victims from the conflicts that have ravaged his homeland, said the world cannot remain indifferent to the suffering.
“We have been able to draw a red line against chemical weapons, biological weapons and nuclear arms,” he told AFP.
“Today we must also draw a red line against rape as a weapon of war,” said the 61-year-old known as “Doctor Miracle” for his surgical skill in treating the terrible damage done to many women.
In his newly published autobiography, “Plea for Life”, Mukwege recounts the “depths of horror” he encountered in conflict-riven South Kivu province that led him to found the Panzi hospital near Bukavu.
He came across the first horrific case in 1999, the same year he treated a woman whose rapists had inserted a gun into her genitals and then fired.
He treated 45 similar cases before the year was out, all victims of the two decades of mayhem in the region where whole villages of women had sometimes been raped in one night.
“In conflict zones battles take place on women’s bodies. When war is declared, when there is no law, no religion, it is the women and children who suffer,” said the son of a Pentecostalist pastor.
Since his unit opened, Mukwege — the subject of an acclaimed documentary last year, “The Man Who Mends Women” — said it has treated 45,000 women and children.
But in his book, he accused the Congolese government of President Joseph Kabila of being indifferent to the horror.
“The victims get a life sentence while the perpetrators” roam free, he said, demanding a “an international tribunal for the Congo to try all these unpunished crimes.”
While his work brought him the Sakharov Prize for human rights in 2014, it has also won him enemies at home.
He lives under constant protection from UN peacekeepers and “sleeps very little”, having survived a number of attempts on his life, including one in October 2012 when his guard was killed.
At the beginning, his Panzi hospital treated around 10 women a day, he said, but with “the drop in the number of conflict zones, that has fallen. This year we see between six and seven (new cases a day).”
However, what worries Mukwege is the rising number of young girls of five and younger that he is now treating.
“They are not just coming from conflict zones but from places considered to be more peaceful,” he said, adding that rape is “spreading like a cancer” in society.
“This is a consequence of the general indifference” to sexual violence, he said.
“If we pull together and draw a red line,” he argued, it could help put a brake on mass rape being used in conflicts, pointing to the systematic molestation of women in Syrian prisons and “Yazidi women in Iraq being sold like bread rolls” by their Islamic State captors.
Despite being included among the “100 most influential people” in the world by Time magazine, Mukwege insisted that he has no intention of ever going into politics.
“This is not a combat for power. It is a battle for liberty and for justice,” he declared.
Once they are “free and have a justice system which works”, the Congolese people will have “peace which will lead to durable development,” the doctor added.
“That will help restore their lost dignity — starting with the women who have been humiliated.”