Jenny Hoang shifted in her chair, staring at the movie screen filled with faces of rape victims telling their stories. She didn’t know how to react to the woman who had been raped by 20 different men, nor did she comprehend why a rapist mutilated a woman’s sexual organs after he raped her.
Against the backdrop of the Congo’s jungle, the pain of the Congolese women has remained hidden. Hoang, a sophomore industrial design major, was one of many students who filled the Multicultural Center to watch “The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo” Thursday night. The film, directed by Lisa F. Jackson, is a documentary of rape as a weapon of war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The event was organized by the Feminist Organization Reclaiming Consciousness and Equality (F.O.R.C.E.) in hopes of raising awareness about the situation in the Congo.
“It makes me angry and I hope it makes others angry too,” said F.O.R.C.E. co-chair Justine Schneeweis, a senior political science and creative writing major.
Schneeweis said the situation is complicated and “fueled by the international demand for conflict minerals, which help perpetuate the violence in the Congo and other African nations.”
The Congo is the size of Western Europe and is rich with gold, silver, oil and other valuable resources in great demand.
One woman featured in the documentary had been kidnapped and used as a sex slave, along with about 20 other women.
“We were raped by 20 men at the same time. They have taken their guns and put them inside us,” she said. “They killed our children and then they tell you to eat your children.”
She was traumatized by her experience.
“I stayed there while they did what they wanted with me,” she said. “They broke the bed, the table and then made me lie on the floor.”
She witnessed abuse toward pregnant women.
“If you are pregnant, they will tell your other children to stand on your stomach so you will abort,” she said. “Then they tell you to drink the blood that spills from your abortion.”
She started to cry, saying that the surviving pregnant women ended up having to give birth in the jungle “like animals, without medicine or food” and without anyone to help them.
Marie Jeanne, another victim, was raped when she was five months pregnant and rejected by her family afterward because sexual violence is considered taboo.
“[My husband] tells the children I wanted to be raped,” she said in the film. “I know that wherever I go, people will say, ‘That woman was raped.’ I hated and blamed myself.”
Rapists were also interviewed in the documentary.
One soldier said, “I have no time to negotiate. I have no time for love. When she says no, I take her by force. I use my gun and most of the time, they end up accepting.”
Thinking it will protect them in battle, soldiers are sometimes ordered to rape.
“We had to rape the women in order to win the enemy,” one said.
Schneeweis said it might be a method of ethnic cleansing.
Odette Madrigal, a senior psychology major, said she “doesn’t understand” these horrors.
“We need to be aware and educate ourselves in order to do something and help these women,” she said, shaking her head.
Many of the eyes in the room were red and glistening with tears when the video ended.
“Women for Women International operates programs and projects in many countries, including the Congo, so we hope that people who came tonight will be motivated to support their efforts,” Schneeweis said after the screening.