Mass rape victims now endangered by DRC army: UN official

The hundreds of women who were victim of rapes by rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) nearly three months ago are now confronted by similar abuse from government troops, a UN official said on Thursday.

The UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the DRC (MONUSCO) reported that "rapes, killings and looting's have been perpetrated by FARDC (the government army) soldiers," UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict Margot Wallstrom told the UN Security Council.

Last month, a UN human rights team confirmed that more than 300 civilians were raped from July 30 to Aug. 2 in the Walikale region in eastern DRC by members of armed groups including the Mai Mai Cheka and the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) .

"My hope is that the Security Council will announce that they' re ready to use all the tools in their toolbox including taking this issue to the sanction committee in the DRC," Wallstrom told reporters here after she briefed the Security Council.

Wallstrom visited the DRC from Sept. 27 through Oct. 6, during which a distraught young women told her that "a dead rat is worth more than the body of a women."

"A string of small villages along the road were still deserted as a testament to the lasting terror of this attack. Families prefer to sleep in the forest since they don't feel safe in their own homes," she said, adding that "human rights violations against women are still the lowest on a false hierarchy of wartime horrors."

Last week, UN peacekeepers arrested Lieutenant Colonel Sadoke Kokunda Mayele, who was identified by victims as the commander presumed to be among those responsible for the mass rapes in the Walikale region.

"This shows us that it is possible to bring pressure to bear on commanders," Wallstrom said. "To do so, we must deepen our information on armed groups, and on this basis engage them more systematically and put them under pressure."

Wallstrom said she is "gravely concerned" about the on-going military operations by FARDC in the Walikale territory and the implications for the protection of civilians.

The special representative also quoted colleagues who said earlier that "MONUSCO cannot be present behind every tree and every stone" in order to stress that the UN role in the DRC is to support the national authorities who bear the primary responsibility to protect civilians.

"Rapes will continue so long as consequences are negligible," Wallstrom said, calling for perpetrators to be excluded from any amnesty provisions or post-conflict advancement and warning of the long-term consequences of abuses on a nation's ethos.

"The atrocities that are committed daily against women and children will leave a devastating imprint on the Congo for years to come," she said. "We have seen this elsewhere. In places where sexual violence has been used as a tactic of war, the consequences spill over into peace. Where sexual violence has been a way of war, it can destroy a way of life."