Unspeakable horrors

South Kivu, Congo

Sexual atrocities in Congo’s South Kivu province are “of an unimaginable brutality that goes far beyond rape,” a U.N. human-rights expert said this week. “Women are brutally gang raped, often in front of their families and communities,” Yakin Erturk said. “In numerous cases, male relatives are forced at gunpoint to rape their own daughters, mothers, or sisters.” Some of the victims said they had been forced to eat the flesh of their murdered relatives. Erturk said that because the army, police, and militias in the war-torn province were all guilty of such crimes, only international intervention could stop the abuse. A war in Congo involving seven other African countries ended in 2003, but foreign militias still roam the country. In 2005, the U.N. estimated that 45,000 women had been raped that year alone.

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