The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo

I just finished watching this documentary. I heard about it in January when it played at Sundance. I listened to an interview with the director on X96, and she said it would be playing on HBO later in the year. It was so sad. These women have no rights. One woman was married, but her husband didn't have enough money to pay the rapists to leave. After they raped her, he left her. He even told their children it was because she must have wanted to be raped. The director, Lisa Jackson, even talked to some men who admitted to being rapists. This would be hard for any woman, but it must have been extremely hard for her because she was gang-raped in New York herself. Many of the men were married, or at least had their mothers or sisters in their lives. One man said that if he felt the need and his wife was not around, he would just take any healthy looking woman by force. A group of men said that they believed raping women prior to going into battle would protect them. However terrible being raped is, these women went through even more. Afterwards, they are mutilated with weapons. Many of the women are left at least somewhat incontinent for the rest of their lives. Sometimes, if a woman is pregnant, the soldiers force children to stand on their stomachs so that they will abort. I cannot believe the injustice that is happening all around the world every single second. I know Africa has a million problems on top of war and rape- AIDS, poverty, etc. If Arica is to overcome these things, something needs to be done.