“The women’s body there became a battle ground and rape is used as an instrument of war. As a result, the family unit is fragmented, social fabric is destroyed, populations are reduced to slavery or exile, the economy is run by warlords and there is no rule of law,” said Mukwege in his acceptance speech for the Sakharov Prize.
Personal Safety
Mukwege, who has a wife and five children, continues to speak out about the sexual abuse of women despite the constant threat to his life and family.
In 2012, four or five armed men stormed his residence while he was not home, took his daughters hostage, and waited for Mukwege to return to assassinate him. Upon his return, his guard intervened and was shot dead by the assassins, but Mukwege was able to escape.
He went to Belgium where he stayed as a refugee with his brother Emmanuel for a few months before returning to the DRC.
“We lived together in comfort and then he told me, ‘I cannot stay in Belgium. This would be betrayal toward those thousands of women.’ He said, ‘If I die, I will die together with those women,’” Emmanuel recalled.
He only does operations a few times a week now; most of his time is spent managing the hospital and traveling for his advocacy work.
“How can I fall silent when for 15 years we see what even the eyes of a surgeon can’t get used to?” he said.
Unstable Government
Mukwege believes rape is a consequence of the fragile political structure that cannot restrain the warlords ravaging the country.
The government has little control over the marauding rebel forces that leave a trail of traumatized citizens in their wake, and even the government forces are not clean. The U.N. believes that almost a third of the rapes are by the government’s own poorly controlled military.
Rich in natural resources and the second largest country on the Africa continent, the wealth combined with the vast space and government corruption has made it a magnate for rebel groups from neighboring countries.
“Armed groups were responsible for just over half the rapes, mostly committed during attacks aimed at gaining control of territories rich in natural resources,” the U.N. said in a statement in April.
For Mukwege the Sakharov Prize was one steppingstone toward bringing international awareness and assistance to his country, steppingstones that have come too few and far between.
He has asked the international community to help arrest and bring to justice those who have committed egregious crimes in the DRC.
Just last week, the International Criminal Court in The Hague rejected the appeal of Congolese militia leader Thomas Lubanga charged with conscripting child soldiers to fight in his army. He will face 14 years in prison. While human rights groups hailed the court’s decision, they said it was it was only a drop in the bucket—many more perpetrators of heinous crimes still walk free.
When asked if he would become a politician and take his advocacy to the next level, he said simply, “I have worked in the operating room for over 10 years, I speak out because I cannot keep silent, I don’t need to be a politician to do that.”
