U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
Helena Rubinstein Auditorium
Voices from the Congo
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
(All photos by Alex Engwete)
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The Congo “has the worst record of violence on women of any nation.”--Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin—
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(Once again, I’ll start by expressing my many thanks to Dr. Lorraine Thompson for giving me the heads-up on this event.)
A major Congo event took place in the morning of July 26 in the Helena Rubinstein Auditorium at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. The event was cosponsored by the Holocaust Museum, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and the Eastern Congo Initiative (ECI). The event was billed as Voices from Congo: The Road Ahead.
The importance of the event was highlighted by the participation of PBS NewsHour heavyweight Gwen Ifill, a two-time moderator of US presidential debates, who moderated the first panel; and of US Illinois Senator Richard Durbin, who gave the closing remarks—followed by the NED’s Democracy Service Medal posthumously awarded to rights activist Floribert “Flori” Chebeya, murdered in Kinshasa in June 2010, and accepted on his behalf by his widow, Madame Annie Chebeya Mangbenda, whose heart-wrenching sobs and speech made me cry.
The event was broken down into two panels: 1) “Assessing the Human Rights Situation,” moderated by Ifill—with panelists Scott Campbell (UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights); women’s rights activist Catherine “Cathy” Kathungu (Association des Femmes Juristes pour les Droits de la Femme); and Anneke Van Woudenberg (Human Rights Watch); 2) “Elections: Challenges and Opportunities,” with Washington Post Colum Lynch as moderator, and panelists Barrie Freeman (National Democratic Institute), Donat M’Baya (of the advocacy group Journaliste en Danger), and activist Chouchou Namegabe Dubuisson (Association des Femmes des Médias du Sud-Kivu). Read short biographies of the three Congolese panelists here.
Assessing Human Rights
Gwen Ifill, Scott Campbell, Catherine “Cathy” Kathunga, Anneke Van Woudenberg
Michael Chertoff of the Holocaust Museum, who opened the event, asked the audience of the packed auditorium for a minute of silence to remember one of the panelists who perished in the air crash at Kisangani Airport on July 8. Chertoff then went on to remind the audience that his organization cannot sit by or be “complicit with repressive regimes.” While it’s true that no one can recover the loss suffered in the Holocaust, the duty today is to stand by people being persecuted through dislocation, repression, and mass insecurity. He touched upon the paradox of the vast mineral resources of the Congo and the poverty of the Congolese being cheated of their wealth. He commended the courageous Congolese civil society leaders whose representatives were among the panelists.
Mrs. Cindy McCain, who just returned from another stint in the rape fields of eastern Congo, was the keynote speaker of the event. But before she spoke, she introduced her unlikely bedfellow at Eastern Congo Initiative, Ben Affleck, who addressed the audience via video.
Ben Affleck
Via video
Affleck thanked Mrs. McCain whose action has brought the plight of the Congolese people to the attention of U.S. leaders and the American people. He also gave a brief history of the bane of the Congo which “has been plundered by generations of leaders,” from the dawn of the Belgian colonial enterprise to the present. He was indignant about the ongoing violence against women and particularly exercised by the unjustifiable “suffering of the civilian population.” Affleck also broached the topic of the upcoming elections. He was stark in presenting the Congolese government with two mutually exclusive sets of alternatives: either adopt good governance, free and fair elections, and reap the fruits of peace; or continue on the same path, but with no way out of the cycle of violence. He introduced the Congolese panelists and thanked the audience for their continuing support for the Congo.
Mrs. McCain talked about the terrible situation of women and children in eastern Congo, and the high stakes of the upcoming election. Mrs. McCain said that the focus in eastern Congo should be on “local approaches” to solving the predicaments women and children are confronting—with “community-based organizations on the ground,” such as the ones showcased at the event. This focus is all the more important as it is the children and the women who bear a “disproportionate burden” of the ongoing crisis: in some areas, 2 in 3 women had been raped; and the recruitment of child soldiers is “flourishing” unabated.
Again, Mrs. McCain dwelled on the prospects for the November general elections, which, she hoped, will be free, fair, and transparent. She urged America to stand by the Congolese people on that occasion and called for electoral observers as well. As she recently explained to an AP reporter in Nairobi, Mrs. McCain is worried by the looming electoral cycle in the DRC because, “If the election becomes violent, women can be targeted.” In the same AP report, she’s also said to be mulling tapping the International Republican Institute (chaired by her husband, Sen. John McCain) for some form of involvement in Congo’s November election.
Assessing the Human Rights Situation
In 2006, with the first democratic election ever held in the country since independence, the hope was that the “culture of impunity” would end and the government would assume its duty of protecting its citizens. But peace, which was supposed to provide the basic conditions of state sovereignty, has proven to be elusive. The situation has instead turned into a catch-22 of precarious “peace and non-peace.” The reality that has now dawned on people is that elections are by no means a “panacea.” The problem is further exacerbated by the “authority crisis” and the “power crisis” facing the Congolese state.
The fragility of the army, where former rebel groups have integrated helter-skelter, further worsens things. The impunity is such that to have your voice heard and to have access to the corridors of power and to resources, you have to “trample” human rights and perpetrate atrocities. A case in point: Gen Bosco Ntaganda, wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity, is now one of the most powerful people in eastern Congo. His power in Goma is unchallenged and the integration of his outfit into the national army nominal. Another instance: a few days ago, a major Congolese political party, the MLC, decided to have as its nominee for the presidential election Jean-Pierre Bemba, an ICC prisoner, who seems to be running his party from his jail cell at The Hague.
Those who are victimized by this situation are women who see every day their persecutors and rapists walk free or escape from prison—if there are even prisons where these criminals are sentenced (in fact only 4 or 5 in 100 rape cases are won by the victims). There are good laws but most of those who are supposed to enforce them are corrupt scofflaws. The ineffectiveness of the state has some militias and warlords upping the antes in their sexual terrorism against women. Recently, a group of FDLR militiamen held some villages to ransom and demanded that the villagers pay them $10,000, 5 virgins, and an unspecified number of sexual slaves.
Rapes are usually executed in broad daylight, in public, at times with sons and brothers forced to rape their own mothers and sisters. Women’s genitalia are targeted, destroyed by bullets, sticks, gasoline, or bayonets. There are also instances of forced cannibalism where body parts of a relative are cut off, cooked, and family members forced to eat them.
Ominously, the government routinely blocks or vehemently criticizes UN reports on rapes and gender violence. The pattern has now become one where rapes happen, then there’s interference by the government, and then unfettered impunity ensues—a “vicious circle,” as it were.
The right approach wouldn’t be to “isolate” the Congolese government but to kick it to life so that it fulfills its “international commitments,” to which it is legally bound by the various treaties and conventions it had signed. Bilateral and multilateral partners of the Congolese government should also hold it to account, by conducting follow-up audits of the funds it gets that are earmarked for curbing gender violence and for capacity-building in the judiciary sector. MONUSCO, which has the role of “accompanying” the post-conflict Congolese government, must continue to maintain its “tenacity” and “consistency” in reminding the government of its duty to protect citizens.
The gendercide against women—or femicide—[these expressions weren't actually used by panelists] is a no-holds-barred war being waged against women, who are reified (“chosifiées”) and “marginalized.” Women are rejected by their communities and left to hang by their government while rapists are rewarded. The world turned upside down. And unless the Congo and the international community start treating violence against women on a par with serious economic crises, not only Congolese women will be wiped out, but the country itself risks “disappearing” as well.
Elections: Challenges and opportunities
The disappointment of the Congolese people after the 2006 elections was again revisited, though the solution wouldn’t be, as some have recently suggested, of a renewed transition or dialogue with the involvement of all political parties.
When the incumbent government campaigned in 2006, it did so with a systematic campaign whose sole slogan was: “A vote for us is a vote for peace!” A lot of people voted on the sole basis of that slogan. But in some parts of the country, the situation has taken a turn for the worse.
The social and economic situation of the population has drastically deteriorated. Women, for example, voted en masse for the incumbent government in eastern Congo. In some rural areas women’s registration topped men’s, the very same areas where mass rapes by militias and government forces are now routine. In short, the government hasn’t delivered on its campaign promises of 2006.
The upcoming elections will therefore be seen by many as an opportunity to sanction the government.
Ethnicity isn’t a significant variable, however. All the tribes and ethnic groups of the Congo are in the minority. In order for any party to emerge on the national scene, it has to build ethnic or regional alliances. The real problem is voters’ illiteracy and “extraordinary poverty.” Political parties hold no debates, and they are all without any political platform. (And poverty allows sales of votes.) The media are culpable of dereliction of duty on that score.
Another challenge will be the possibility for candidates to campaign unhindered countrywide. Tshisekedi is planning to return to the Congo from his trip overseas via Lubumbashi. The test would be whether he will be allowed to hold a rally there.
Elections don’t necessarily bring expected outcomes, as already stated. Nonetheless, the priority in November general elections is security. Pressures should be borne upon neighboring countries to that end. A new republican army as well as the training of women police officers should also be one of the priorities of the government.
Political campaigns are hampered by the lack of access to new media—access to basic electricity being difficult.
The challenge for the opposition is to present a “unified front.”
The international partners of the DRC should also move past the old paradigm of the individual African leader seen as the guarantor of stability. An error that blinded western governments to the Arab Spring in Egypt and Tunisia. With rampant “institutionalized corruption,” Congo doesn’t need “big men,” but is in great need of people of integrity supported by strong institutions.
In the DRC, there could be an “explosion” if the election results are contested by the opposition. The ruling majority in Parliament for instance changed constitutional provisions to ensure the easy reelection of Kabila in the presidential election of November. This tampering with the Constitution might tempt the ruling majority, if reelected, to change the constitutional provision limiting a president’s mandate to two four-year terms. And parliamentary investigations on dubious mining contracts that do not benefit the Congolese nation are always obstructed by the government.
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COMIC RELIEF: “Doppelganger Anticitizen” (Comaroff and Comaroff)
In the Q & A session after the first panel, I noticed in the left wing of the auditorium a hyperactive hardcore “Kabila-doit-partir” (Kabila-must-go) Kinois type. The type I’ve called on this blog “Doppelganger anticitizens.” They are those who issue fatwas in Paris, Brussels, or London decreeing that any Congolese who disagrees with them is a Rwandan denizen. The guy was frantically raising his hand so that he’d be pointed at and allowed to ask his question. But Ifill somehow didn’t see him; and, in fact, those who had questions had to go down the length of both aisles to the front where there were microphones set up. Anyway, in the Q & A of the second panel, the guy duly went down the left aisles to join the two or three people asking questions. I don’t know if this was by gut feeling or deliberately, at the last moment, when Washington Post Colum Lynch turned to the left aisles, he said that the question coming from the man in front of the Congolese will be the last one! Oh, brother, the Kinois was really pissed off.
He started gesticulating.
The first 3 photos below are blurry because I having was a hard time anticipating the activist’s movements.
He made as if to go back to his seat but turned around, grumbling. A Museum official, seated on the left, told him to cool it off. He probably told her he got the right to ask his question:
Then, hell-bent on making his pitch, he ignored the Museum official and went back to queue behind the guy still asking his question, with maybe the wacky idea of seizing the microphone when the man was done speaking:
By this time, the Congolese’s shenanigans started being deemed annoying. Museum official stood up and maybe told him firmly to go back to his seat:
As things seemed to escalate, maybe the official told him that if he didn’t cease and desist, security would be loosed upon him (at long last, I've some control over my Cybershot, which by the way, flew from my hands at one point):
Well, the guy seemed to have understood that his only alternative was to unfurl his anti-Kabila banner in the wing. That seemed more civilized:
Wait a minute!, it appeared that the guy brought a lot of banners:
Well, maybe the guy's got a point, who am I to cast the first stone!
Senator Dick Durbin then delivered his remarks and left—with the brother Congolese displaying his banners.
Then a sobbing Madame Annie Chebeya Mangbenda accepted the award on behalf of her murdered husband and delivered a moving speech that got many people in the audience teary—especially, in my case, when she said, “Words fail me to express what I’m feeling at this moment…” against the background of a giant photo of her husband. However, she’s far from being a frail woman. Her speech established her as an “emerging voice” of Congolese rights activists in North America (I overheard someone say that she’s now living in exile in Canada) the government in Kinshasa has to contend with. Her sorrow isn’t abject; it’s indignant sorrow…
Floribert "Flori" Chebeya
"Il parlait au nom des victimes de la torture"
(He spoke for the victims of torture)
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