The Congolese people have been humiliated, abused and massacred for more than two decades in plain sight of the international community
Congolese surgeon Dr. Denis Mukwege vowed to continue seeking justice for the victims of sex slavery, rape and sexual violence during his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech on Monday. Mukwege is a 63-year-old gynecological surgeon who has fought to protect women living in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for two decades.
His hands have mended tens of thousands of women and girls who survived sexual assault. Since the military conflict erupted in East DRC in 1995, women were used to deter male resistance. Soldiers took women from villages and brutally raped them because they could.
One woman, he recalled, was brought into his office with gunshot wounds to her genitalia.
“She hadn’t just been raped,” he told CNN in October when he was announced a Nobel winner. “They had also shot at her genitals. I had never seen anything like it. I thought it must be an exceptional case, the act of a madman. I couldn’t imagine that it would become the work I do for probably the rest of my life.”
He has called for the prosecution of wartime rapists who prey on women. Women in small villages have no protection leaving them vulnerable to harm from foreign armies, militias and more.
“The Congolese people have been humiliated, abused and massacred for more than two decades in plain sight of the international community,” Dr. Mukwege said. “I call upon you not only to award this Nobel Peace Prize to my country’s people, but to stand up and together say loudly: ‘The violence in the D.R.C., it’s enough! Enough is enough! Peace, now!’ ”
This #NobelPrize is a recognition of the suffering of women victims of rape and sexual violence, the need for a just reparation in their favor and the hope to draw a red line against the use of rape in armed conflict.
— Denis Mukwege (@DenisMukwege) October 7, 2018
