A presentation on violence against women in the Democratic Republic of Congo drew 34 people at the third Soup and Substance gathering on Tuesday. Students stopped in during UU Hour to eat a bowl of soup and pasta and listen to the brutality women and young girls are facing in Africa.
Psychology senior Clare Teagle led the presentation, reading facts and narrative accounts about the women who have been raped by soldiers, who use sexual violence as a war tactic to terrorize and destroy communities. She said that 3,500 cases of rape were reported in the regions of North and South Kivu in the first six months of 2008 alone.
Kaitlin McCormick brought up a YouTube video that featured young women who had been so brutally raped that they had serious problems with their reproductive and digestive systems.
The PowerPoint presentation used during the hour was borrowed from last year’s Change the Status Quo event.
A photo in the PowerPoint slideshow showed a picture of a room that had just been exited by rape victims after a meeting. Pools of urine covered the floors of the room because the rape victims were unable to control their damaged digestive systems. Women wait days to be checked or to have vaginal reconstructive surgery after their traumatizing rape experiences.
In the YouTube video, a 22-year-old rape victim said that women’s lives are destroyed after they are raped because not only are they physically assaulted, they are humiliated and unable to find husbands.
Other problems occurring in the Congo were also presented during this presentation. Teagle mentioned that there is an extreme amount of conflict over minerals used to make electronic devices sold worldwide. More than one million people have been displaced, breaking up families and causing more exploitation and violence against women.
Near the end of the presentation, Teagle presented a few courses of action that could potentially help the women in the Congo fight rape. She encouraged the group to write letters to the president of the Congo, Joseph Kahila, urging him to protect the thousands of women and young girls being raped by soldiers. Other ideas included buying gifts from organizations that aid women in the fight against brutality and donating cell phones to minimize the mineral exploitation occurring in mines.
Biology senior David Hansen, who regularly attends the gatherings, was unsure of how effective the plans of action would be in these cases of extreme brutality.
“I really don’t think that writing a letter to their president would make much of a difference,” he said.
Environmental management junior Nelson Lau thought that the solutions were a step in the right direction.
Lau said that this meeting was lacking a discussion, which usually happens during the gatherings.
When the Soup and Substance committee met to brainstorm discussion topics, they knew they wanted to bring awareness to violence in the Congo, said philosophy junior and director coordinator of Student Community Services, Michelle Fox.
“A lot of people don’t know about it,” Fox said. She noted that attendance was higher than normal for their Soup and Substance gatherings.