I am not standing here on my own behalf.
I am standing here on behalf of someone who did live to tell, but has been through too much to relate her story here in public. I will call her Juliette.
She lives in the Democratic Republic of Congo, so she lives in one of world’s largest disaster areas: three million dead in the past six years.
We from Amnesty spoke with her. She talked very slowly, very softly, and often did not finish her sentences. “How old are you?” we asked her. “I am 27 now,” she answered. “Will you tell us what happened to you?
”“Well,” she said, “I don’t mind telling you, so that you can tell others. It isn’t something you can tell over and over again. Because the things that happened to me make me… ” and she fell silent.Then she said: “Thinking back on it makes me feel sick. It happened three years ago, in June. On 2 June.
So I was 24 then. I was on my way to my sister-in-law’s funeral. I was walking quickly through the woods. Then I ran into a Rwandese soldier. He demanded sex.”“He raped you?” we asked.“Yes. Well, he forced me. And then he tortured me. I do not know how many bullets he fired at me. But it was a lot. Very many. In my belly.”We asked her where in her belly. She said: “In my lower belly.
In my… genitals.” She was clearly ashamed to speak that word. And she said: “It took hours before I received help.
They don’t even have bandages in that hospital, they have nothing at all. But in any case they helped me and the bleeding… And then they took me to a different hospital. I was operated on four times in all.
It didn’t work.”“Was that because of the bullets,” we asked?“Yes.”Had her organs been damaged?“Yes,” she said, “All my organs.”What more can you ask a women who has gone through this? Juliette didn’t really want to talk about it. Not because she wanted to deny it, but because she didn’t want to see herself as a victim. She still had a whole life ahead of her, she said.
“How do you see your life?” we asked her, and her answer came as a real surprise. She said: “I am going to graduate from high school. And then I want to learn to be a doctor.” “You want to study medicine?
” “Yes,” she said, smiling very bashfully.After that, we tried to help her. We took her to a hospital in Ethiopia, where she was given an operation that did “work”. Now she is back in the Congo. She sells donuts, in the street. She needs the money to pay for her education, for she still wants to be a doctor.Not long ago we received another message from her. She had graduated from high school, at the age of 27. And no matter how long it may take, she is still certain that one day she will be a doctor.