The Power of Women by Denis Mukwege

Author:Denis Mukwege
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Flatiron Books

7

FIGHTING FOR JUSTICE

In early 2014, I couldn’t take it anymore. Over the previous two years, we had admitted a succession of children with appalling injuries at the hospital, all from the same village, Kavumu, about twenty miles from Bukavu. It began with a few isolated cases, but over the following years we received dozens more.

They had all been seized in similar circumstances. In the dead of night, men broke into their family homes and would often administer a powerful sleeping agent to their victims. Once kidnapped, they were raped, then returned, bloodied and confused, in the morning. Each devastating case represented a childhood wrecked; the extent of the injuries and scarring meant as adults most would never be able to have normal sexual relations or bear children.

In the first five months of 2014, we had fifteen very young girls. The final straw was a four-year-old who was brought to the hospital with severe recto-vaginal injuries. It was disgusting, heartbreaking, and simply beyond my comprehension.

I operated on her with my friend and longtime partner, Guy-Bernard Cadière, the Belgian surgeon who is a specialist in laparoscopy, a type of abdominal keyhole surgery, and treating fistulas. He visits Bukavu regularly with his team from the ULB medical university in Brussels. As well as fundraising for our work and serving as a constant source of advice, he has helped train our surgeons to use his noninvasive techniques.

There are few things that can shock a surgeon. The inside of the body holds no mysteries for us, but we operated on that girl while choking back tears. As we examined the injuries, we wondered aloud how they had been inflicted. We worked by turns in shell-shocked silence and in animated fury.

At the end, I flicked off my gloves, changed into my coat, and walked back to my office, lost in angry contemplation, feeling nauseated and repulsed. How many other girls would they mutilate before being stopped?

Once I had calmed down, I resolved to visit Kavumu in person. I needed to see with my own eyes and hear from the community about what was happening. Why were families unable to protect their children? What were the parents doing when their children were grabbed and abused like this?

I struggled again with a feeling of powerlessness. It felt as if I were always picking up the pieces, stitching back together shattered bodies, traumatizing myself in the process, but without ever being able to envisage an end to the violence. I needed to hear from the mothers and listen to the fathers in person.

Working with several humanitarian groups, we set up a meeting at a local community center a week later. I traveled with my escort of UN peacekeepers. We invited the top prosecutor from Bukavu, who agreed to attend, as did a senior officer from the Congolese armed forces and a representative of the police. The governor of the province and the regional interior minister agreed to attend but backed out at the last minute.

The level of interest could

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