Mapping Report > Section II. Specific Acts of Violence > CHAPTER I. Acts of violence committed against women and sexual violence > F. Multiple aspects of sexual violence

Between 1993 and 2003, sexual violence was a daily reality from which Congolese women gained no respite. Whether schoolgirls or mothers, engaged, married or widowed; simple farmers or wives of political leaders, former army members or civil servants; opposition party activists, humanitarian workers or members of non-governmental organisations, they were all subjected, regardless of social class or age, and for a variety of reasons, to the most diverse forms of sexual violence. Whilst not claiming to categorise these forms of sexual violence, it is nonetheless possible to list some of their characteristic features. The majority of the acts described in the previous sections can be placed into a number of arbitrarily created categories in order to highlight the different facets of sexual violence in the DRC. This list of different forms of sexual violence does not claim to be either exhaustive or exclusive.

1. Sexual violence as an instrument of terror

Sexual violence was frequently used to terrorise and subjugate the population. The different armed groups committed acts of sexual violence that could be likened to veritable campaigns of terror.

Public rapes, gang rapes, systematic rapes, forced incest, sexual mutilation, disembowelling (in some cases of pregnant women), genital mutilation and cannibalism were all techniques of war used against the civilian population in the conflicts between 1993 and 2003.¹¹⁶⁴

Torture and humiliation

From 1993 to 2003, acts of sexual violence were committed in order to torture women and men because of their links to an opposition party, their supposed or proven links to the enemy, their links to the former regime of Mobutu, their active involvement in the union movement, in politics or in civil society, or their ethnic origin. Public rapes were thus committed to reinforce the humiliating nature of the torture, and gang rapes to inflict more humiliation, suffering and destruction.

In many cases, the soldiers attempted to outdo each other in terms of the cruelty of the sexual violence to which they subjected their victims, by introducing objects into the genitals. Sticks, bottles, green bananas, wooden batons coated in pepper or chilli and the barrels of guns were all inserted into the genital organs of victims. In South Kivu, 12.4% of the 492 victims questioned by two women’s networks had suffered this kind of torture.¹¹⁶⁵

It can be affirmed that, over the course of the different conflicts in this period, all warring parties used sexual violence as a form of torture and engaged in cruel, inhuman or degrading acts. Nevertheless, rapes while in detention were primarily perpetrated by employees of the Congolese state¹¹⁶⁶ and by the RCD-G. The detention conditions and acts of torture reported in the RCD-G’s jails were particularly cruel.¹¹⁶⁷

Forced rape between victims

Assailants often forced members of the same family to have incestuous sex, between mother and son, father and daughter, brother and sister, aunt and nephew, etc. While this kind of rape was committed all over the country, the most numerous evidence of cases came from North¹¹⁶⁸ and South Kivu, particularly Shabunda territory¹¹⁶⁹ and Maniema.¹¹⁷⁰ Families were also forced to witness gang rapes of one of their members, most often their mother or sister(s). The victim’s family members were sometimes forced to dance naked, to clap to or sing obscene songs during the rape. In South Kivu, at Bitale in Kalehe territory, the FDLR regularly raped women and girls. Arriving at a village by night, they would forcibly enter a house, order the husband to light a torch and then rape his wife in front of him and his children. They would then force the children to rape their mother or their sisters in front of the family. Some women were also raped by several soldiers in turn.¹¹⁷¹

Deliberate policy of spreading HIV/AIDS

According to some victims in South Kivu, there was a deliberate policy among the warring factions of spreading HIV/AIDS to as many women as possible so that they would, in turn, infect the rest of their community.¹¹⁷² The same strategy of deliberate infection was denounced in Maniema¹¹⁷³ and in other provinces.

Acts of sexual violence during victories or defeats

Retreating armies often committed rapes and abductions of the civilian population during their withdrawal, particularly in retaliation for their defeat. The most striking example is that of the FAZ retreat in the face of the AFDL/APR in 1996 and 1997, which allegedly involved numerous cases of gang rapes. The FAC apparently did the same when retreating from Équateur and Orientale Province in 1999.

The conquering soldiers themselves committed rapes during the capture of a town or territory.¹¹⁷⁴ Commanding officers sometimes “offered” rape as a reward to their troops: in Ituri, after the battles for Lipri and Barrière in 2003, the UPC’s commanding officers thus reportedly authorised their troops to loot and to rape women and girls among the civilian population.¹¹⁷⁵ Acts of sexual violence were also used as a way of subjugating the defeated population, as was the case, for example, following the capture of Kinshasa in 1997 and after the suppression of the Kisangani mutiny in 2002.

Uvira, in South Kivu, is a representative example of the sexual violence to which women were subjected at the hands of the different groups during the successive captures and recaptures of a town. Women were reported subjected to rapes at the hands of the ANC/APR/FAB in 1998,¹¹⁷⁶ the Mayi-Mayi and rebel Banyamulenge soldiers in October 2002 and then the ANC/RDF again in retaliation for their supposed support of the Mayi-Mayi.¹¹⁷⁷

2. Sexual slavery

Women were frequently abducted, viewed as the spoils of war, and forced into sexual slavery. The Mayi-Mayi, the Interahamwe/ex-FAR/ALiR/FDLR, the ADF/NALU and Burundian (FDD) rebels apparently all engaged in large-scale abductions, generally of young girls.¹¹⁷⁸ As sex slaves they were mistreated, imprisoned, tied up, ill-fed and humiliated. Some of them witnessed fellow prisoners being disembowelled, and acts of cannibalism.¹¹⁷⁹ Women abducted from Bogoro following the attack of the Lendu and Ngitis militia of the FNI and FRPI reported that some of them were thrown into water-filled holes from which they were regularly removed to be raped by soldiers and their commanding officers. The female prisoners were sometimes also raped by other prisoners.¹¹⁸⁰

Elements of the FAZ, the AFDL, the APR/RDF, the FAC, the ANC and the UPC also reportedly abducted young girls in order to use them as sex slaves. They were held, and regularly raped by several men in turn.¹¹⁸¹

Particular case of child soldiers

The acts of sexual violence committed against children associated with armed forces and armed groups (CAAFAGs) were particularly appalling as they were in addition to the multitude of other violations to which these children were subjected. During their “enlistment”, many of them witnessed their mothers and sisters being raped. It was reported that elements of the ANC/APR/RDF raped young girls for the whole night and whipped them if they tried to run away.¹¹⁸²

The few witness statements heard since the start of the hearings in the Lubanga trial highlight the cases of sexual violence committed against female CAAFAGs. It was common practice that female CAAFAGs would act as sex slaves for the commanding officers. Witnesses have reported that it was only girls that were raped in the military training camps. Some girls also had to fulfil domestic tasks for the commanding officers and soldiers. In the UPC camps, the officers would force young pregnant girls to abort their babies.¹¹⁸³

Male CAAFAGs, known as Kadogo (“little ones” in Swahili), were forced to commit acts of brutality, including rapes, to “toughen them up”. During attacks, girls would be taken to them so that they could rape them in the presence of villagers and adult soldiers. If they refused, the Kadogo would be executed.¹¹⁸⁴

3. Sexual violence committed on the basis of ethnicity

From 1993 onwards, acts of sexual violence began to appear as a facet of inter-ethnic conflict. Such was the case of the conflict between the Banyarwanda and the Ngilima in North Kivu. Tutsi and Banyamulenge women were twice victims of anti-Tutsi.

propaganda on the part of the government authorities, in 1996 and again in 1998. Several of them were allegedly raped in Kinshasa by government soldiers and in South Kivu by Bembe militia. During the hunt for Rwandan Hutu refugees, AFDL/APR troops sometimes reportedly raped women before killing them, as occurred during the refugee massacres at Hombo (North Kivu) in 1996, for example, and at Kilungutwe, Kalama and Kasika (South Kivu) in August 1998. In Ituri, Hema or Lendu women were successively targeted by the different armed groups because of their ethnic grouping. Nande, Pygmies and women from other ethnic groups such as the Nyala subsequently received the same treatment.

4. Sexual violence committed in the name of ritual practices

Some abject superstitions and beliefs claim that sexual relations with virgins, children, pregnant or breast-feeding women or even Pygmies can cure illnesses or make the perpetrator invincible.

The Mayi-Mayi, known for their ritual practices aimed at protecting them from misfortune, reportedly raped some women in order to become invincible and obtain so-called “magical powers”. Rape was also thought to neutralise the magical powers of elderly women, the “guardians of charms”. Moreover, the Mayi-Mayi often demonstrated great cruelty, torturing to death women accused of having put a curse on them.¹¹⁸⁵

It was also common for the Mayi-Mayi to use parts of their victims’ bodies to make into charms and amulets. Some fetishists, in Katanga for example, apparently cut off and dried the genitalia of both women (vulva and breasts) and men to make into fetishes; others used foetuses. Militia in South Kivu also reportedly collected vaginal fluids in order to make charms and amulets. For their part, elements of the MLC and the RCD-N also reportedly made amulets out of smoked/cured sex organs.¹¹⁸⁶

In some cases, women from the Batwa and Bambuti (Pygmy) communities were targeted because of particular beliefs; in fact, raping a Pygmy woman was seen as a cure for certain ailments or way to make the perpetrator invincible.¹¹⁸⁷