I recently watched a documentary film, The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo. And something inside me snapped, as they say.
The film describes in horrifying detail the brutal crimes against women that have become commonplace in the long drawn out civil wars in that forgotten and benighted corner of Africa, that benighted continent. Civil war is something of a misnomer for the ongoing violence. When we talk of war, what is usually understood is a violent confrontation between clearly defined groups with clearly defined ideological, political or economic goals. The Congo conflict is more like a gang war, the senseless mayhem engulfing the poor ghettoes of American cities, or a giant bar brawl spread over thousands of square miles. Some six million have died in the last ten years. But most tragic, most criminal, are the hundreds of thousands of rapes of women, from children of two to grandmothers in their eighties. No that is neither a mistake nor an exaggeration, children as young as two years old. These crimes do not represent “collateral damage”, they are a deliberate tactic, systematically employed throughout the conflict zone. These are not simple rapes - as if there could be such a thing as a “simple” rape, as if rape itself were not sufficiently brutal - no, rape is followed by vicious sexual mutilations performed with machetes, knives or, most commonly, rifle-barrels. Think for a moment of what I have just said: sexual mutilation of women using gun barrels is commonplace!
Whatever tribal, ethnic or national enmities may motivate individual fighters, there is of course a root cause. Unsurprisingly, that cause is economic. Equally unsurprising, the combatants themselves will never reap any economic benefit from a conflict that devastes land and people. No, the main beneficiaries are you and I, the people of the so-called civilized, advanced nations of the world. At stake is the wealth of mineral resources in the war zone, most significantly coltan.
But others have described the war and its victims more accurately, and far more eloquently than I could hope to. I want to explain how and why, of all the horrors and injustices in the world, it is this one in particular that has become such a focus of my anger.
My first awareness came at the age of twenty. I stood by, powerless, a knife at my throat, forced to watch the rape of a friend. I saw the damage done. I live with the shame of not having intervened, not having prevented the violation. And worse, I live with the guilt of abandoning her in the aftermath. Since then I have too many friends with tragic stories of their own.
This is the unkindest crime of all. To take the most beautiful of all the beautiful gifts that nature has given us and make something vile of it, to take an act of joy and make of it an instrument of pain, to turn love into hatred, this is the ultimate crime against humanity. In each single act of rape, all humanity is the victim, for the crime denies all that makes us human.
At last I am beginning to understand the complex mixture of rage and shame I feel when told to “stop complaining” about my own pain because so many suffer so much more terribly than I: it is that perhaps the worst aspect of these crimes is that they MUST be allowed to continue so we can each justify our own crimes as not so terrible, to trivialize the pain of our own victims. Every one of us who inflicts pain, no matter how “trivial”, is guilty of these crimes. We cannot claim that this is not our problem, for it is our direct responsibility. Each of us who has been willfully unkind and has dared to imagine our unkindness justified is not only responsible, but guilty. To dismiss any suffering on the grounds that there is some other, greater, pain is to negate all suffering. Who is able to identify the final victim, the end of this chain, the man, woman or child who at last is the one whose suffering is greatest of all? No we must learn to accept that the pain of “every hung-up person in the whole wide universe” is equally real. We must begin to do everything in our individual power to relieve suffering wherever we may find it. And most of all we must stop inflicting those daily minor cruelties that cause our friends, our lovers, our families to suffer. So long as any man suffers, we are all torturers. So long as any man is a slave, no man is free.
But what can I do to stop it? After all it’s half-way around the world, and the war zones are all but inaccessible. And aren’t those people backward, underdeveloped?
The first thing anyone can do is simply to speak up, tell as many people as I can what is happening. And try to stir their sense of justice enough that they will also speak out. If enough people speak up loudly enough, we can get something done. And what can be done? Can we send in UN troops to disarm the militias? Not likely, given that UN troops are already contributing to the problem. And anyway it is not Justice but Power that issues from the barrel of a gun - when the gun barrel isn’t being employed as an instrument of sexual mutilation. What then? Is the problem intractable? And even if a solution does present itself and is actually put into action - and I admit given the selfishness and apathy abroad in the world that’s unlikely - won’t something just as ghastly be happening somewhere else in the world? What’s the point? You can’t change human nature, can you?
First of all, if you, personally, will not take up the responsibility to speak against this injustice, then make no mistake, you are GUILTY. Secondly, regardless as to whether there is a solution available now, if these crimes are not widely recognized as crimes, if these crimes are not loudly condemned, then no, you’re right, there will never be an end to it. Change human nature? Call me naive, but I believe the perpetrators of these crimes are not behaving according to human nature, but a hideous perversion of it resulting from years of savage abuse, oppression and exploitation at the hands of the so-called “civilized world”. So if human nature can be changed for the worse, why the hell should it not change for the better? Ask yourself. Does greed or generosity come more easily to you? Kindness or cruelty? Love or hatred? All of these are aspects of human nature. As is the ability to make the choice for yourself.
What I am about to suggest is neither radical nor original. Two thousand years ago a man wandered the middle east, offering a message of love to those who would listen. Never mind that his message has been perverted, co-opted by those very forces of oppression and hate that he opposed. And no matter if you are a formal follower. The message is still true. Love and kindness are enough to transform human nature, and to change the world. So if you feel there are just too many causes, too many problems. If you feel overwhelmed and powerless. Let me make it easier for you. There is just one cause: injustice. All you have to do is speak up against injustice wherever you find it. Intervene where you can. Try never to be a perpetrator. Charity dinners, marching for dimes, a dollar in the collection plate are not good enough. Injustice is all around. Do something about it! Today!
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