"Every time we denounced cases of rape and sexual violence it increased."

-- Chouchou Namegabe Nabintu
(Credit: Sharon Farmer)

When the five-year war in the Democratic Republic of Congo officially ended in 2003, Chouchou Namegabe Nabintu's quest to end sexual violence and destigmatize rape was just getting started. The 31-year-old radio journalist founded the South Kivu Women's Media Association that year to catalogue past and present tales of rape, which persists amid the political instability and ethnic violence in the eastern part of the country.

While the U.S. may soon take a greater interest in the atrocities -- President Obama is expected to appoint former Rep. Howard Wolpe, D-Mich., to a second stint as special envoy to Africa's Great Lakes region -- the ongoing violence in DRC (more than 5 million have been killed since the war began) has largely stayed off the international media's radar. The West, Nabintu argued, cares more about the environmental impacts of war than the untold human suffering.

"When a gorilla is killed in the mountains, there is an outcry, and people mobilize great resources to protect the animals," she told two Senate Foreign Relations subcommittees in a hearing Wednesday on wartime violence against women. "Yet more than 500,000 women have been raped, and there is silence. After all of this you will make memorials and say 'never again.' But we don't need commemorations; we want you to act now."

NationalJournal.com's David Herbert spoke with Nabintu ahead of her Senate hearing to discuss what lawmakers can do to help. Edited excerpts follow. Visit the archives page for more Insider Interviews.

NJ: What can the U.S. do to help with the situation in DRC?

Nabintu: I would like to a make a call to the U.S. government to make pressure on the Rwandese government to accept the return of the FDLR [Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, Hutu rebels who fled Rwanda after the genocide and have been among the most brutal sexual abusers] because the main cases of rape and sexual violence have been made by them. I know the U.S.A. has power on the Kigali government and it can help to convince them to accept the return of the FDLR and to dialogue with them. If they accept the dialogue, it will facilitate justice, to work on what they did in Congo and what they did in Rwanda.

And we need also the U.S. government to make pressure on the Congo government to bring [National Congress for the Defense of the People leader] Laurent Nkunda, to bring him to justice. What Laurent Nkunda did in 2004 in South Kivu and in 2008 in North Kivu, it is a big, big crime. And also, we're asking [the U.S.] to get invovled to help victims at every level.

NJ: How did you get involved in this issue?

Nabintu: I became interested in that issue because I lived with these women and this population, and we saw as journalists, every time we denounced cases of rape and sexual violence it increased, and the atrocities that follow it surpass all understanding. That's why we said, "Enough is enough, we have to denounce it." And because of that we started a campaign called "Challenging Silence."...

We saw that the international community was silent, the international media was silent, so it was a call. And we asked the international media, "Why, why they are not making a big campaign, a big mobilization like what they did for the tsunami and other catastrophes?" It is a problem that touches us every day. For us, our work is to keep the flow of victims through media so they can express what happened to them. They give testimony, and for them it is a first step to heal their internal wounds. For others who are hiding, after hearing other testimony, they come to us and we orient them to medical assistance.

NJ: What are you hoping to hear from the senators?

Nabintu: What I would like to hear is the engagement to end the rape in the Congo, the engagement to get involved with Congo security. And I would like to hear them accept my invitation to come to Congo to touch the reality of rape and sexual violence. I would like them to say, "Yes, we will come."

Recently Featured