- MONROVIA (Sapa-AP) -- Clutching
her daughter's photograph to her breast, Rebecca throws back her head and
wails. Fighters burst into her home and raped the 10-year-old girl before
the helpless mother, leaving the child lying in a pool of blood and vomit
- dead.
-
- Women are raped every time fighting surges in this war-battered
country, but aid workers say that this time it's on a scale impossible
to calculate, or fathom.
-
- Wild-eyed gunmen on both sides are going door to door,
ransacking homes, beating and killing residents, and raping any women -
or girls - they find.
-
- "Those people are not human beings," sobs Rebecca,
who has found shelter in a friend's yard. July 20, the day Rebecca's daughter
turned 10, began with the mother waking the sleeping child with a chorus
of "Happy Birthday".
-
- Rebecca gathered her son and a friend's 14-year-old girl
with them for Sunday prayers. Without warning, government fighters started
pounding at the gate.
-
- When Rebecca (42) refused them entry, they forced their
way inside and started carting away the family's belongings.
-
- One man - barely in his 20s - smashed Rebecca's head
with a hammer and ripped off her clothes. When he realised she was menstruating,
he kicked her.
-
- Through it all, the 10-year-old held on tightly crying
"Mommy! Mommy!" Rebecca says - clutching the spot on her blouse
as if she can still feel the child's tug. Another fighter - going by the
name Black Dog - ripped the child from her mother and threw her to the
floor.
-
- "When he got through with her, I saw blood, I saw
vomit, I saw toilet," she says, moaning rhythmically. "He raped
her to death."
-
- As her daughter lay on the floor, another man grabbed
the 14-year-old, but she fought and kicked. Frustrated, he forced himself
into her mouth.
-
- The fighters took everything from the house, even the
family album. Rebecca has only one picture left of her daughter, taken
when she was 11 months old - a solemn child with bright bows in her hair,
standing unsteadily with the help of a piece of furniture.
-
- Falling to her knees, Rebecca sobs: "Just kill me.
I want to die."
-
- Figures for the latest sexual attacks are impossible
to track - most victims are either cut off by fighting or too afraid of
the stigma associated with rape to seek help.
-
- But the few counsellors left after international aid
groups pulled out foreign staff said they've never seen so many cases.
Rape has always gone hand in hand with war in Liberia, where warlord President
Charles Taylor's first grab for power in 1989 ushered in nearly 14 years
of bloody strife.
-
- "Every time there is an incursion going on, it is
the same thing," says Miatta Roberts (46) a counselor with Concerned
Christian Community - the only group remaining here that works with rape
survivors.
-
- "When there is war going on, no woman is safe."
-
- In earlier battles most attacks took place as women fled
through the bush, but the aid workers say that women are now being raped
in their own homes.
-
- The attacks are usually linked to looting sprees by drunk,
drugged and disaffected fighters. Many feel abandoned since Taylor bowed
to mounting international pressure and pledged to hand over power, so they
have launched what they call "Operation Pay Yourself".
-
- With no functioning court system at the moment to hold
gunmen accountable, Roberts sees no end to their excesses. Of the 1 500
women who participated in the group's trauma programmes at an athletics
stadium turned teeming refugee camp, 626 have been raped.
-
- In better times, the group provided the women with food,
clothing, medical treatment, training and other relief. Now they can do
little more than provide a safe haven and keep them busy.
-
- The women play games together in a bamboo and tarpaulin
enclosure and sing traditional songs to remind them of home. Joining a
circle of clapping, singing women, 20-year-old Alice breaks into a rare
smile. Three years ago, she was gang-raped in front of her whole family
as they fled through the bush ahead of a rebel advance.
-
- Last month, pro-Taylor militia fighters caught up with
her again on the outskirts of Monrovia, pulling her from a group of refugees
huddled in an abandoned home to violate her again.
-
- The repeated rapes have shattered her dreams of marriage
and children. "I feel shame before men," she says. "No one
approaches me now."
-
- Violence against women is as widespread in rebel-held
areas, aid workers say. While fleeing the insurgents' latest advance, Kula's
family stumbled into a rebel ambush. Her husband, mother, aunt and brother
were killed on the spot.
-
- When she finally reached a refugee camp on the outskirts
of Monrovia, she thought she was safe. But soon the rebels were back, moving
from hut to hut in search of women.
-
- "They shared us among themselves," says Kula,
who looks far older than her 47 years. "Everyone was crying."
-
- Four days later, the same thing happened again. Rebels
with stockings over their faces burst into the house where she was staying
and grabbed all the women. Two fighters raped Kula this time - one of them
so young he could barely hold up his machine gun, she says. She guesses
his age at 10.
-
- "I think the women who can say they haven't been
raped are very few," she says sorrowfully. "It pains my heart."
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- All material copyright Mail & Guardian.
-
- http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=18586
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