Doctor who gives rape victims hope again

Deep in the eastern Congo, in the thick of a conflict that plumbs the depths of human cruelty, one doctor in a single-storey hospital is keeping hope alive.

Gynaecologist Denis Mukwege draws his strength, he says, from the indomitable spirit of the most weakened of victims - women raped in a calculated act of war who arrive, "broken, waiting for death, hiding their faces", at his hospital.

"Often they cannot talk, walk or eat," he says.

A 14-year war that is, in effect, a continuation of the genocide that took place in neighbouring Rwanda has become a "gynocide", in which rape is used to tear the bonds of a community apart and facilitate access to mineral wealth.

In this volatile environment, 55-year-old Mukwege and his team have surgically repaired more than 20,000 women out of the thousands who have been war-raped in the Congo's Great Lakes region.

"Rape," he says, "destroys women beyond the bounds of the describable."

Yet his patients keep inspiring him to strengthen his commitment.

"A few years ago, a woman came to us who had been raped and had caught HIV. She arrived with her five children, and we treated her. When she left, she was given US$20 ($26) to help her on her way.

"The other day she invited me over. She has bought a piece of land, built a house, paid a dowry for her son's wedding and has US$1000 she wants to spend on a business trip abroad. When you see the determination that can exist within someone whom one has tried to destroy, you want to fight alongside them."

Panzi Hospital sits in a tree-lined dirt road in a suburb of Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu province, built by the Belgians to resemble an Ardennes town. Mukwege built it up from scratch in 1999 after his previous hospital at Lemera, 300km away, was destroyed.

Mukwege is tall, his height exaggerated by his black clogs - a reminder of time he spent in Sweden, where all medical staff wear them. He has a deep voice, a ready ear and a childlike glint in his eye whenever things get tense.

Pipped to the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize by President Barack Obama, he is adored here and faces a barrage of greetings on his daily rounds.

A pastor's son who trained in Burundi and France, Mukwege drew on his contacts in the Pentecostal church to set up Panzi.

The third of nine children, he opted for gynaecology early in his career after seeing the pain endured in childbirth by rural Congolese women.

He says his faith in God helps him to confront the depraved notion of rape as a weapon of war in a conflict where forces on all sides often share one rifle between three soldiers.

He believes the war in eastern Congo - which began in reprisal against perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan genocide and has evolved into a frenzied scramble for mineral wealth, especially for the prized colombo-tantalite (coltan), crucial for the production of microchips - has been allowed to continue because of discrimination by the international community.

"The indescribable events here amount to the worst form of terrorism. In any other part of the world, the international community would have put a stop to it. International justice is not doing its work here.

"There are people in some parts of the world who believe that other human beings - Africans - somehow have a higher threshold of pain, that they love their children less, that savagery for them is normal, or rape culturally acceptable."

A few hundred metres from the hospital, Mukwege has set up a safe house where patients, after counselling, are taught sewing, weaving and soap-making skills. Raped women need to become self-sufficient because they are often rejected by their husbands and families.

The rape survivors who pass through Dorcas House are aged between 2 and 80. Mukwege believes sexual assault is comparable to biological warfare as a tactic of silent extermination.

"History is repeating itself," he says.

"A century ago, the world needed rubber for tyres and 10 million people died in King Leopold's plantations. Now it wants coltan ore for the microchips of phones and gadgets, and Congo is home to 70 per cent of reserves."

A victim's story

One 15-year-old teenager recounted how she conceived after she was taken from her village by armed men and forced to be a "wife" for several months.

She gave birth to a boy, who is now 18 months old.

"I cannot go back to my village. I am afraid they will take me again. I heard recently that they took my cousins. I also do not know whether my aunt, who is my only living relative, would take me in, or accept Baraka," says the girl, who, despite having borne a son conceived in hate, gave him a name that means "blessing".

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