The rubber quota

(ES)

Women raped in the DRC face several problems to access justice. The 43 year old woman raped in Kamina, in Katanga province says: "I cherish the clothes I wore when I was raped and used it to prove rape in front of the court. I've been asked to pay Fc 7000, 3000 Fc for typing and another 50 sheets of paper for printing. I also had to carry the costs of all medical expenses and still forced to live in Kamina. The rapists are now free, and I was asked to pay $ 20 for the complaint and withdraw the decision to appeal. I lost hope.
© Gwenn Dubourthoumieu/IRIN

Cries and suffers in silence. No one should know.
It hurts, but can not complain.
It's unfair, but it is useless to denounce.
Cries out but no way. Nobody listens.
Why? They ask.
Feels anger.
Feels guilty.
It is useless, feels helpless.
Be scared.
Feel shame.
What can they do? Nobody helps them.
Feel they die.
Why are they doing this?

THE HERITAGE: After the Berlin conference of 1884, the European powers divided the African continent. The Congo Free State became the private property of King Leopold II of Belgium, which gave trade concessions for the exploitation of rubber and ivory to companies like Anglo-Belgian India Rubber and Exploration Company (A.B.I.R.) or Societe du Commerce Anversoise au Congo from which Leopold himself was a shareholder. The binomial formed by the State and the concessionary companies of rubber farms became the Congo Free State in something like a huge concentration camp dedicated to the exhaustive exploitation of natural resources.

Each village had to meet weekly or biweekly provision of rubber and food to different stations of the state concessionary companies in return for ridiculous compensation compared to the benefits that these companies obtained from the rubber industry. In turn, the natives had to work for the State to build roads or maintenance of telegraph installation. Slave labor that forced many natives to leave their villages and seek refuge in neighboring villages in the French Congo.

Subject to conditions of forced labor, forced to abandon farming from which they had been living prior to colonization, living in miserable conditions that favored the emergence of fatal diseases, the story of the horrors suffered is enough to understand that during the Belgian rule, million of indigenous inhabitants died. Not only were victims of work in conditions of slavery or of diseases. When a man or a village could not collect the amount of rubber or foods that were imposed, they suffered all kinds of corporal punishment by the soldiers of the concessionary companies, or were kept in prisons far from their homes until their village paid a totally arbitrary fine for release them. The murder with impunity of offenders was also common practice, and to demonstrate to administrators of the concessionary companies that the bullet had been used to kill a man, soldiers should give the mutilated hand, foot or the genitals of the victim. As was often the bullets were used for hunting, soldiers used to mutilate men and children alive as punishment for not having collected the quota of rubber. Another way to ensure the collection was taken hostage the village women that would not be released until the men of the village managed to collect the allocated quota. In filthy prisons, women and their children starved, since they didn't receive food from their captors. The story of the horrors after more than a quarter century of Belgian colonization can not leave unmoved today's society, although there was a premeditated attempt to hide them from public opinion.

The militias that control the natural resources of the current DR Congo, State corruption, impunity of crimes, mass rapes, forced recruitment of child soldiers, abduction of girls as sex slaves, the uprooting, corrupt Justice, commercial interests are, 137 years later, the legacy of colonialism. A greedy colonialism that imposed an oppressive system based on a wild soldiery, under the control of commercial companies, which controlled a vast territory in the absence or in connivance with corrupt State administration.

I also feel ashamed, like the Congolese women.
I am ashamed of the curse the white man meant for the African continent.
I am ashamed of their infinite greed.
I am ashamed of the lack of historical memory of European people.

And I cry with Congolese women that has seen the death of their sons and daughters. Who has been raped savagely. That suffers in silence so as not to be repudiated. That is taking care of their own. That will not be able to conceive more children. Living in solitude, the solitude of shame and injustice.
And I shout for her, and for children mutilated. For those killed, for the enslaved, for those who have been orphaned.
And I also feel anger. For millions of murders and rapes with impunity.
And I feel guilty. For so many years of looking the other way, for so many years of not hearing his desperate cries.

I do not feel helpless, but rather hopeful. Fearless and committed to the cause of Congolese women, strong and resilient, like most African women.

A young girl raped in Bamenda, in the Katanga province, says: "before getting raped, I was betrothed. But the marriage was of course canceled. Now my father has to repay the dowry. The family of the rapist has promised to pay for it, but since then, they did nothing. As I got pregnant, the most urgent thing to do was to free the rapist so that he could support me during the pregnancy. It was inconceivable that he goes to jail. It is better that he remains free to meet my needs and those of the baby. But it is also important for him to marry me now because nobody wants me anymore.
© Gwenn Dubourthoumieu/IRIN

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