Melania Trump Honors Africa's Colonial Past While Ignoring Devastating Cuts To African Women's Health
/ Anne Enke
Two people were in the global news in Africa yesterday -- Melania Trump in her colonial hat rolling around Kenya -- and Dr. Denis Mukwege, with his Nobel Peace Prize, co-shared with Nadia Murad.
I spent my time writing Friday about the revered Dr. Mukewege, who I’ve followed for over a decade. One wonders just how much funding Trump has cut to the women in the Congo and across Africa. It's billions.
Regarding Melania Trump, to roll into Africa looking like she just stepped out of the colonial masters period is just too much. I'm tired of her making statements with clothes and then professing that we are attacking her and not listening to her voice.
Michelle Obama in Kenya
Can you see Michelle Obama rolling around Kenya in a hat that is deeply rooted in Africa's colonial past? I am totally sick of the Trump masquerade. That outfit was total BS and she knows it. Just as I gave Susan Collins the benefit of the doubt, I've given Melania Trump the same long line. No more.
Melania Trump should have cruised up to Dr. Mukwege's hospital as Hillary Clinton did. The experience grabbed Hillary to her very soul and in a rare moment of her always self-composed self, she visibly wept listening to the women's stories.
And then we would have been prepared with the list of cuts that Melania Trump's husband -- backed by the Catholic Church and so-called Christian conservatives -- have delivered to the women of Africa. Instead of saying that Africans should be on their knees thanking America for our foreign aid, she should have had the balls to stand at the mic and list the CUTS the US has delivered to African women.
Melania Trump reminds me why I'm getting close to fully identifying myself as a global citizen. I want NO PART of her fashion antics. She's a white nationalist just like her husband, and her fashion look is DISGUSTING!!!
Give me Dr. Denis Mukwege any day. His commitment to humanity and improving the lives of women is fearless and breathtaking!
1. Angelina Jolie opens Afghanistan girls school. Angelina Jolie inspired me to start writing AOC and she is a muse in many ways to the development of our content and philosophy. Jolie’s latest project is a school for girls she opened in Afghanistan, funding it with profits from her new Style by Jolie jewelry collaboration with Robert Procop.
The girls-only primary school is located just outside of Kabul, in an area known for resistance to educating girls.
“The beauty of these creations is matched by the beauty of spirit behind Angelina’s most heartfelt mission — to empower children in crisis…For me it’s an honor to have the opportunity to be a part of creating this line with Angie, as we both believe every child has a right to an education.”
2. Angelina Jolie lends voice to DR Congo rape victims. On March 26, Angelina Jolie joined British Foreign Secretary William Hague in his efforts to raise commitments of G8 countries to tackle rape and sexual assault in war zones. Jolie and Hague are calling on the G8 to agree that rape and sexual violence constitute breaches of the Geneva Conventions governing warfare, as well as a new international protocol on the documentation and investigation of the issue.
“More often than not the international community looks away, the perpetrators of these brutal crimes walk free and the cycle of injustice and conflict is repeated. We have to shatter this culture of impunity,” Hague said.
Read our extensive writing about women in the Congo.
3. Hamas seeks to educate girls separately from boys. Palestinian boys and girls in Gaza should be educated at separate schools if a new Hamas-proposed law takes effect. The new policy is more symbolic than functional, since most older children are already educated in single-sex schools. Of greater concern is that the law is another example of Hamas flexing its muscle on its insistence on a strict, traditional interpretation of Islam.
Book | ‘Dancing in the Glory of Monsters’ Examines War in Congo AOC Shop
Jason Stearns, author of Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa, says that Congo should be ranked with Germany, Russia and China as one of the great vortexes of recent human violence.
In 2009 CNN estimated that 200,000 women in Congo have been raped. Jason Stearns, who is widely praised for thoroughly covering this story from every angle and after endless interviews in the region where he worked for the UN, writes 500,000 women have been raped.
In February Vagina Monologue, feminist playwright lady Eve Ensler opened City of Joy Academy, saying:
Beyond the Veil| We are incredulous to learn that an open-air military tribunal in eastern Congo has actually convicted Colonel Kibibi of ordering the rape, pillage and plunder of the New Year’s Day rampage in Fizi.
ABC News Australia reports that Kibibi is the most senior Congolese military officer ever to be charged with mass rape — a huge problem for women of the Congo — and sentenced to 20 years in jail. Eight of Kibibi’s subordinates were also found guilty, receiving sentences between 10 and 20 years.
Feminist playwright Eve Ensler has a new strategy to help Congolese women who suffer limitless sexual violence, being raped in ritualistic and sadistic ways by the armed groups of the eastern Congo.
Tired of a focus on the UN, reforming the Congolese military, giving yet more aid dollars and pushing harder to regulate so-called conflict minerals to cut off the revenue supply to rebels, Eve Ensler is taking a new approach.
“You build an army of women,” she said. “And when you have enough women in power, they take over the government and they make different decisions. You’ll see. They’ll say ‘Uh-uh, we’re not taking this any longer,’ and they’ll put an end to this rape problem fast.” via NYTimes
This weekend Eve Ensler opened her new home base in Congo City of Joy, as a campus where most of the women are rape victims. Her learning academy where only 180 women will learn skills, self-defense, trades and farming coupled with trauma therapy sessions and dance hopes that these women will return to their villages with skills and confidence.
The NYT reports that when City of Joy opened on Friday, hundreds of women, most rape victims, wore black T-shirts that read, “Stop the rape of our most precious resource.” Some danced with shovels and trowels used to build City of Joy.
Most important, the government that has done nothing to stop the rape of women in Congo sent a large delegation. On Saturday, the women crowded around Eve Ensler before she left, honoring her with a wooden carving of mother and child.
“Why did you accept to carry us? We will never leave you to the end.”
The stories of women in the Congo are absolutely heartbreaking, as they endure a life of extraordinary cruelty. We have many stories and video of these beautiful women of the world in more of Anne’s writings below.
Beyond the Veil | We have good news and bad news about the rape of women in the Congo. The devastating news is that over 150 women were gang-raped in the village of Ruvungi, in North Kivu by members of the FDLR, known as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda. The women were raped in front of children and family by two to six men, in what represents an alarming escalation in using the rape of women as weapons of war.
At least 179 Congolese women were gang-raped by a mob of Hutu rebels during a weekend raid on a community of villages in eastern Congo. The events represent a new escalation of rape in the Congo, already considered the rape capital of the world.
Stefania Trassari, a spokeswoman for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said Sunday that the attacks represent a new escalation of violence in the area because of the large number of victims and the fact that they were simultaneously gang-raped. (via NYTimes)
On the evening of July 30 armed men entered the village of Ruvungi, in North Kivu province, telling the population not to worry about their presence. After dark another group of 200 to 400 men arrived and began to systematically rape the population.
Most women were raped by two to six men at a time in front of children and othr family members. This further humiliation often accompanies rape in the Congo. According to Trassari, the numbers of rape victims are escalating, climbing to the latest total of 156. There is no reason to believe that more victims won’t come forward.
The FDLR, known as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, which began as a gathering of fugitives of the Rwandan genocide in 1994, has grown into a resilient and savage killing machine and an economic engine in the region.
In investigating the role of ‘conflict minerals’ being used to finance gang rape in Africa and specifically in the Congo, The Guardian reports that the Obama administration and Congress included Section 1502 in the recent financial reform package.
Much of the sexual violence in the Congo is directly related to control of conflict minerals, where rape has become a war tactic.
US Government Enacts Reforms Around Congo’s Conflict Minerals
Nicholas Kirstof is reporting from The Congo, writing critical words for thinking people: Sometimes I wish eastern Congo could suffer an earthquake or a tsunami, so that it might finally get the attention it needs. The barbaric civil war being waged here is the most lethal conflict since World War II and has claimed at least 30 times as many lives as the Haiti earthquake. via NYTimes
The Congo is also high on our radar.
I left this comment on Kristof’s blog:
Your work and reporting are so valuable Kristof. The lack of comments confirms your key point of how this tragedy among women in the Congo just can’t penetrate our radar.
I wrote another Congo post this week, inspired by the London Times piece on Dr. Denis Mukwege, Director of Panzi Hospital. Following up on Eve Ensler’s UK website, she’s advancing the idea that we make the Congo problem a ‘blood diamonds’ campaign.
Emma Thompson’s name will be removed from Roman Polanski’s petition this week, says Jezebel.
This is a correct move on Ms. Thompson’s part.
With a long and illustrious history of work on women’s issues, significant numbers of Emma Thompson’s fans were dispayed when she signed a petition, calling for Polanski’s release.
Especially for people supporting the criminalization of sex trafficking and numerous other women’s rights issues in nearly every country in the world, a suggestion that Roman Polanski get a pass on a crime to which he pled guilty is confusing, unsettling and indefensible.
Our readers expressed equal discomfort over Penelope Cruz’s signature on a Polanski-related petition. The first petition is housed on French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy’s website. The second petition, claiming to reject the manner of Polanski’s arrest in Switzerland, is an industry SCAD petition.
Last night wasn’t a shining spotlight for three male journalists on “Washington Week in Review”. Gwen Ifill was off.
Nor was the week a glowing one for male journalists generally — at least not in their coverage of Hillary Clinton and women’s rights abuses.
Atrocities against women in the Congo carried little interest with the guys, who make up the majority of onscreen journalists. (Note, most women bloggers weren’t interested either.) I’ve tried to help you with the story.
I’m a regular “Washington Week in Review” watcher, and all I can say is thank goodness for the journalistic integrity of Bloomberg News Janine Zacharia, who walked the extra mile for Hillary, in the old boy’s network, last night.
America’s Secy of State Hillary Clinton is in DR Congo today, pleading for Congolese women, trapped in hellish lives beyond anything we Western women can imagine.
Women in the Congo: Imagine This Is Your Life
The sexual atrocities committed against women in South Kivu extend beyond rape, into sexual slavery, forced incest and cannibalism. These atrocities come at the hands of rebel groups, often those who fled to Congo after taking part in the Twandan genocide of the 1990s.
After being raped, women are sometimes shot or stabbed in their genital organs and forced to eat excrement or the human flesh of murdered relatives.
As reported in our first post on women in Congo, rape is now institutionalized as a tactic of war. In the report released on March 7, 2009 by Human Rights Watch, combatants on both sides of the civil war are committing atrocities.
Having been raped these women are frequently and “justifiably” abandoned by their husbands. Bearing the stench of incontinence, they are often ostracized by their villages. Unable to bear children, they lose their primary value as mother or wife. Keep in mind that a woman who admits to being raped bears the stigma of it for the rest of her life. She exposes herself and her children to abandonment by her husband. If she is unmarried, admitting lost virginity makes it nearly impossible to find a husband, which is essentially the only way to make a place for herself in Congolese society.
The Congolese Family Code requires women to obey their husbands who are recognized as the head of the household, even when the women are a major, if not sole source of support, for the family. Women and girls are also subordinate by custom and practice. A woman’s status depends on being married and girls tend to marry at a young age.
Women are humiliated with rape in the Congo, typically shunned socially after the incident.I will never browbeat the readers of Anne of Carversville on caring about these international crises in women’s rights. Although I’ve followed these issues my entire life, I honestly had no idea that the situation is this bad, in places like DR Congo. There is nothing more for me to say. The atrocities against women speak for themselves.
American Secy of State Hillary Clinton is in DR Congo today, meeting with women who have been raped.
Congo women featured at The Wamba Family FoundationBy all accounts, DR Congo is one of the worst places in the world to be a woman or girl,” says Anneke Van Woudenberg, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch who has spent the last 10 years focusing on Congo. “These are often soldiers and combatants deliberately targeting women and raping them as a strategy of war, either to punish a community, to terrorize a community or to humiliate them.”
CNN reports on Eugene, Oregon based Sherrlyn Borkgren, leaving her day job as a wedding photographer and freelance journalist, to travel to eastern Congo after receiving a ShootQ Grant, awarding her $10,000 to pursue a project that raises awareness on important global issues.
Reviewing Borkgren’s website, she has a history of activist photography.
Borkgren met a young woman in Congo, a girl initially reporting that she was 15, when “they got me”. In truth she was 9 years old.
More rape in Congo facts, reported in the CNN story:
* Most times the women are raped by at least 2 perpetrators.
Raping Women Worldwide
What does one say about a question in South Africa’s national school-leavers’ drama exam in which students are asked to direct a rape scene? South Africa’s Education Department defended their action in which they were asked to maximize the raping of a baby, using a broomstick and loaf of bread as props.
“Nowhere is it expected of the candidate to have to literally describe the actual act of raping a nine-month-old baby,” responded the department in a statement, arguing that the exercise was aimed “at assessing the pupils’ concept of using metaphor as a theatrical technique.”
“By the time pupils are in [the final year of high school], they have begun to be faced with the realities of adulthood, often beyond the security of their homes and the school system. They will, through media and cinema, have been exposed to many horrific images and reports,” spokesman Elijah Mhlanga said. He pointed out that high school seniors are well informed about child rape in South Africa.
South Africa is a world leader in the raping of women and children. Just a day or two after newspaper headlines blazed with the test question, a six-week-old baby girl from Galeshwe township, west of the diamond-mining town of Kimberley, was raped by her 24-year-old uncle.
South African playwright Lara Foot wrote a play ‘Tshepang’ about the 2011 rape of a 9-month-old girl. Pressured for a response to the drama school test question, Foot released a statement saying it was “totally inappropriate and frankly appalling. Given the history and statistics of rape in this country, it is imperative that the matter is dealt with, but dealt with sensitively and responsibly.”
Tracking the rape of women worldwide is a key focus of Anne of Carversville. Charlize Theron joins a list of other prominent women and men, including Angelia Jolie and Eve Ensler, who for years have dedicated themselves to stopping the brutal rapes of women, children and men.
Charlize Theron for Dior