First-hand accounts from victims of unthinkable violence paint a gruesome picture of the brutality sweeping the central African country. How long is the West prepared to look away? They were looking for new ways to kill, ways to send fresh terror across North Kivu.
It was early afternoon when the M23 militia raided the Congolese town of Rubaya. In a marketplace, gunmen found a giant wooden pestle and mortar for crushing grain. They began rounding up children, wedging them tight in the mortar. Isabel, 32, watched the rebels stove in their skulls. The mortar turned red, overflowing with blood. Six children, said Isabel, were pummelled to death on 4 April She fled with two friends.
Isabel and a friend were raped. The other friend was executed. Her account is among new testimony of fresh M23 atrocities obtained by the Observer. They detail indiscriminate killing, torture and mass abductions; women raped at gunpoint in front of their children; others pinned down on main roads and attacked in broad daylight. Their collective testimony confirms an ongoing calamity that humanitarians hoped might never happen. The DRC, long synonymous with supercharged levels of sexual violence , has entered a bleak new chapter.
Rates of rape are far higher than ever recorded. But the M23 rebels largely responsible cannot be categorised alongside the scores of chaotic militia roaming North Kivu. The worst may be about to unfold. Another senior UN official admitted that a sinister masterplan might be under way. Kigali, they warn, might be planning to annex a chunk of DRC larger than Rwanda itself. The ongoing failure to rein in Rwanda risks broader repercussions, say analysts, exposing potentially fatal weaknesses in western liberal interventionism and conflict resolution.
As the killings continue, as women are raped in extraordinary numbers, how long is the west prepared to look away? Largely low-tech — performed mostly by machetes wielded by ordinary Hutus — it remains among the fastest mass killings in history. At least , died in days. Shortly after the massacre, more than 1 million Hutus fled to DRC, including many responsible for the slaughter.
