Where Yo Daddy?

While I agree that Black fathers need to play more of a role in their children's lives, some of this (see below) rhetoric is problematic. For one there are a lot of men who father children who are simply not fit to raise them, typically because they are suffering from arrested development. In these cases it is best for a child to have a strong male role model in their lives as it is equally important to have a strong female role model. An unhealthy father is just as detrimental as not having one at all.

Martin needs not to undercut the importance of non-familial mentoring of young Black men. It seriously does take a village. The whole idea of the nuclear family (mom, dad and child) is really a European construct and one that has never been natural for us. Most Black folks throughout the Diaspora rear children through communal networks. The embrace of this Eurocentric model of family is in part to blame for our current condition because it shames us into thinking that our communal model is dysfunctional. The emphasis on absentee Black father issue really took hold with the Moynihan report in the 1960s, when some crusty old white man popularized the idea that unmarried hoards of castrating Black women and irresponsible Black men were to blame for the poverty and crime in the ghetto—not the institutional racism.

While Martin briefly mentions institutional racism, he relies on the ever-so popular Bill Cosby method of laying the brunt of the burden on Black folks. Plus his classist way of framing this issue is disappointing (ie. strung out mama?). There are plenty of single mothers in the middle and upper classes.

Further, last time I checked no one gives praise to any teen mothers...that argument is too closely aligned to the late 90s Republican myth of the Welfare Queen.

In the end, this is an important topic but not to be discussed through this tired rhetoric that seems like a black-face version of conservative white ideology.

Commentary: Black men must reclaim our children

• Story Highlights
• Martin: Nearly 70 percent of black kids are born to unmarried parents
  
• Martin: Black fathers need to stay on the scene, build relationships with kids
  
• Martin: We also should be telling black women not to lie down with any fool
  
• 
  

By Roland S. Martin
CNN contributor

(CNN) -- As the mug shots of the alleged killers of NFL star Sean Taylor were shown on television, I kept wondering when we were going to see their parents step forward. I saw a couple of mothers, but their dads were missing in action.

Roland Martin credits two strong parents with raising him to do right by them.

Dads matter, and it's ridiculous for us to act as if all it takes is a loving mom.

Now, I don't know what it means not to have a father in your life. I'm not familiar with a mom being strung out on a crack binge. And when my parents were called to the school when there was a discipline problem, Mom and Dad didn't go off on the teacher or principal. In fact, I can still feel the pain of my elementary school principal's paddle being applied to my butt when I acted a fool. The principal could only pop me three times. Dad? He had no limit.

Bottom line: I can sit here today and celebrate them and enjoy a wonderful life because my parents were hell-bent on raising their children to do right by them, especially my dad.

We can spend all day talking about the ills afflicting urban America -- and there are plenty that are institutional -- but the decaying value of life in inner cities clearly can be traced to the exodus of fathers from the lives of so many young men. Excuses often are tossed about as to why black men leave their children (and their children's moms) to fend for themselves. But a lot of them are just sorry and refuse to accept the responsibility that comes with raising a child.

A lot of my colleagues will suggest it's too simplistic to assign such a high value to a dad being in the life of a child. But just take a visit to your local jail, juvenile hall or state prison. You likely will be confronted with a sea of black men -- strong, able-bodied, creative and restless -- who have spent or will spend years and years with a prison number identifying who they are.

According to the U.S. Justice Department, of all the black men in the U.S. between the ages of 25 and 29 in 2002, 10.4 percent were incarcerated. Hispanic and white men? Just 2.4 percent and 1.2 percent respectively. If a poll were done on how many grew up without fathers, I can guarantee you the numbers would be staggering.

The rampant poverty that exists has led many young blacks to a life of crime, choosing to sell drugs and involve themselves in gangs as opposed to focusing on education as a way out of the cellar of life.

But you see, when nearly 70 percent of black kids are born to unmarried parents, likely to a too-young mom, that puts tremendous pressure on grandmothers (and some grandfathers), sisters and brothers to take up the slack. But if the person who impregnated that woman were on the scene, not only helping to pay for the raising of the child but also serving as a strong influence, I just don't believe we would see such a chronic condition.

And the black men who have done their job are scared to death about what the tendency for black men to leave relationships means for their daughters.

The day before leaving for vacation, I got word that a good friend, Chicago attorney Reynaldo Glover, had died of pancreatic cancer.

He was 64.

In our last extensive conversation before he was diagnosed in July, Reynaldo pleaded with me to use my national media stage to be a voice to sound the alarm about what's happening to black men in America, because he wanted to know that his daughter would have a respectable man to marry one day. (I'm sure if she chose to marry someone who's not black, Reynaldo wouldn't mind, but he realized that as a nation, we mostly marry within our race.)

I promised Reynaldo that I would do all I can, because this has been an issue for me for many years. In fact, my mom gets angry because I'm always talking about my dad on television, radio and in my books. That's because when you see black men who have "made it," the accolades are plenty for their moms, and their dads are hardly mentioned. I just think it's critical to show daddy some love, too.

This is not an issue that black America can continue to sweep under the rug. I've heard countless folks talk about it, such as Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, who noted that his dad left his family when he was a toddler and didn't see much of him growing up. Even in the Republican CNN-YouTube debate, GOP candidate Mitt Romney said fathers are part of the answer to addressing crime in inner cities.

We shouldn't shame our young girls who get pregnant, but surely it shouldn't be seen as a blue-ribbon day. Teenage black girls and black boys should be focused on picking colleges, not the names of babies. When a young girl wants a baby christened, her pastor should be asking to meet with the father as well, even if the two don't get along. We also should be telling black women not to lie down with any fool. A moment of pleasure could lead you to a lifetime of raising that child. Alone.

A friend of mine suggested more black men need to mentor young black men. I agree. But that's a bandage. If we get black men to handle their business in the first place, no one else would have to stand in the gap.

Unless black America owns up to this problem -- and fast -- we are going to see another generation of young black men who are angry with their lot in life. And the result will be more discipline problems in school, which will lead to folks dropping out, and that is nothing but a one-way ticket to jail.

Black men, it's time to man up. Enough with the sperm donors. We need real men to stand up and accept their responsibility. The state of our boys is on us. And no one else.

Sentencing 13- and 14-Year-Old Children to Die in Prison

Cruel and Unusual: Sentencing 13- and 14-Year-Old Children to Die in Prison

N-115, 2007-08
Bryan Stevenson 334.269.1803 bstevenson@eji.org

New Research Uncovers Dozens of 13- And 14-Year-Old Children Sentenced To Life Imprisonment Without the Possibility Of Parole
First-Ever Study of Youngest Children Condemned to Die in Prison Finds Mandatory Sentencing Forced Judges in Majority of Cases to Impose Harshest Sentence Without Considering Child’s Age or Background

Seventy-three children in the United States have been sentenced to life imprisonment without any chance for parole despite being only 13 or 14 at the time of the crime, according to a newly published study by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI). EJI is a nonprofit legal research and advocacy group based in Montgomery, Ala. and New York City.

These 73 children were tried as adults and condemned to die in adult prisons. EJI’s study found that the majority were accomplices to adults or older teens who were more culpable for the crime. In seven (about 10 percent) of these cases, the offense did not result in anyone’s death; in one case, no one was even injured. Nearly two-thirds of these 73 children are kids of color and many were victims of severe abuse and neglect.

Yet mandatory sentencing schemes forced judges in most of these cases to impose the harshest available sentence without consideration for the child’s age or background or the circumstances of the offense. “This is an unintended and disastrous consequence of prosecuting children as adults: children too young to drive, or even see a scary movie by themselves, are being sentenced to die in adult prisons,” said Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of EJI and clinical professor at New York University’s School of Law.

The United States is the only country in the world where a 13- or 14-year-old is known to be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In fact, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by every country in the world except the U.S. and Somalia, forbids life without parole sentences for children. EJI contends that these sentences for the youngest children violate the United States Constitution and has filed legal challenges on behalf of condemned children in states across the country. “Condemning 13- and 14-year-olds to die in prison ignores new research on early adolescence which reveals that kids this age tend to be impulsive and less able to gauge consequences and resist peer pressure,” says Stevenson. “It also ignores a child’s capacity for change.”

In the 1990s, tough-on-crime politicians led states to lower the age at which children could be prosecuted and sentenced as adults, which dramatically increased the number of younger kids sentenced to adult prisons. 2,225 teens who were 17 or younger have been sentenced to die in prison in the U.S. Cruel and Unusual is the first national study focusing on the youngest of these children. A team of EJI attorneys spent 18 months collecting data from corrections departments in every state, pouring over thousands of court documents, studies, and articles, and interviewing dozens of juvenile justice scholars and practitioners throughout the country.

EJI uncovered 73 cases in 19 states where children 13 or 14 at the time of the offense were sentenced to die in prison. In six states — Florida, Illinois, Nebraska, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Washington — children were sentenced to death in prison for offenses that occurred when they were 13, making them the youngest offenders in the world to be sentenced to imprisonment until death. All 73 are now adults; the youngest is 18. Pennsylvania leads the nation in sentencing young children to die in prison, with 18 condemned for crimes when they were 13 or 14, followed by Florida, with 15.

Nearly all had woefully inadequate legal counsel. “The majority of these kids could have avoided these sentences with better legal representation at trial,” says Stevenson, noting that EJI researchers discovered that many of the court-appointed lawyers had never filed post-conviction appeals or challenged the legality of death-in-prison sentences for 13- and 14-year-old children.

Ian Manuel, for instance, was told by his attorney that he would receive a 15-year sentence if he plead guilty to committing an aggravated robbery that occurred in Florida when he was just 13. Ian pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life imprisonment with no chance of parole. His attorney did not appeal or withdraw the plea. Now 30, Ian remains condemned to die in a Florida prison.

EJI’s ultimate goal is for the courts to abolish death-in-prison sentences for 13-and 14-year-old children. While EJI opposes life imprisonment without parole sentences for older teens as well, the legal advocacy group is focusing its efforts on the youngest adolescents because imposing the harshest sentence on the youngest kids most dramatically reveals cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution and international law.

Video Interview: Bryan Stevenson talks about his NYU Law School students involved in EJI. Please follow this link.

The Equal Justice Initiative is a nonprofit organization committed to providing quality legal representation to indigent defendants and prisoners who have been denied fair and just treatment in the legal system. Its offices are in Montgomery, Ala. and New York City.
To download a copy of the report, visit www.eji.org.

SUMMARY OF THE MAJOR FINDINGS
73 children in the U.S. have been sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for crimes committed when they were 13 or 14 years old.
The U.S. is only country in the world known to have condemned 13- and 14-year-old children to imprisonment until death.

Most of these young children were accomplices to adults or older teens who were more culpable for the crime.

Seven, or roughly 10 percent, of the 73 children were convicted of crimes in which no one was killed. In one case, no one was even injured. All seven are children of color.

Six states have condemned 13-year-old children to imprisonment until death. All but one of these children are racial minorities.

Most of the 73 suffered years of severe abuse and neglect. Some tried to commit suicide as young as age eight.

Judges in the vast majority of these cases were forced to impose mandatory death-in-prison sentences without considering the child’s age or background or the circumstances of the crime.

Children of color are disproportionately sentenced to die in prison. Of the 73 children identified, roughly two-thirds are people of color; nearly half are African American.

Most of these kids are from poor families and received grossly inadequate legal representation. Court-appointed attorneys failed to file post-conviction appeals and never challenged the death-in-prison sentence in most of these cases.

All of the 73 have been sent to adult prisons, where many are the target of horrendous physical and sexual assault by adult inmates. One EJI client attempted suicide three times after being repeatedly raped by adult inmates.

SNAPSHOTS OF CHILDREN CONDEMNED TO DIE IN PRISON
ANTONIO NUNEZ — Only Child in the Country Known to Be Condemned to Die in Prison For a Single Incident in which No One was Injured. Antonio Nunez was 14 when, in April 2001, he left a party in California with two men nearly twice his age. One of the men later claimed to be a kidnapping victim. When police chased their car and shots were fired, Antonio — along with the 27-year-old driver — was arrested. No one was injured, but Antonio was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment with no chance of parole. Just a year before, Antonio was shot multiple times while riding his bicycle near his house in South Central Los Angeles. His brother, 14, was fatally shot in the head when he ran to help Antonio.

IAN MANUEL - Too Poor to Afford Adequate Counsel, He is Sentenced to Imprisonment Until Death for a Crime with No Fatalities, Even Though the Victim Has Forgiven Him and Petitioned for His Release. In 1990, when Ian Manuel was 13, gang members instructed him to commit a robbery. During the botched robbery attempt in downtown Tampa, Florida, Ian shot and wounded a woman. He turned himself in to the police. Ian’s attorney told him to plead guilty in exchange for a 15-year prison sentence. Ian accepted responsibility and pleaded guilty but was sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole. His lawyer never appealed or withdrew the plea. Ian was sent to prison, where he was so small no prison uniform fit him. He has spent years in solitary confinement and repeatedly attempted suicide. The victim has forgiven Ian and petitioned for his release but he remains condemned to die in a Florida prison.

ASHLEY JONES — Victim of Horrendous Abuse, She is One of Four 13 or 14-year-Old Girls in the Country Condemned to Death in Prison. Ashley Jones was assaulted by her father, sexually abused by her stepfather, and repeatedly threatened at gunpoint by her crack-addicted mother. At 14, Ashley, depressed and suicidal, became involved with an older boy. He shot and killed Ashley’s grandfather and aunt and injured her grandmother and sister. Due to Alabama’s harsh mandatory sentencing laws, the court did not consider Ashley’s age or background and sentenced her to the most severe possible punishment. Her grandmother and sister, victims of the crime, both have forgiven her and campaigned for her release.

JOE SULLIVAN — Mentally Disabled and Only 13, He was Alone and Without Legal Counsel When Police Interrogated Him. Joe Sullivan was only 13 and severely mentally disabled when he was blamed by an older boy for a sexual battery allegedly committed when they broke into a home together. Despite his age and disabilities, Joe’s father dropped him off at the police station to face questioning alone. The attorney appointed to represent Joe at trial has since been suspended from practicing law. Joe, now 31, continues to assert his innocence and is confined to a wheelchair. He is one of only two people in the country known to have been sentenced to die in prison for a non-homicide offense that occurred at age 13.

For more information, contact Bryan Stevenson at 334.269.1803 or bstevenson@eji.org.

US Policy Pushes Sly Anti-Choice Agenda

If it weren't bad enough that this fascist administration has declared all-out war on abortion rights in this country, it is doing its best to further the cause throughout the world. With the Mexico City Policy—aka the Global Gag Rule—foreign NGOs that receive funding from the US for family planning are denied the right to use their own non-US funds to perform or advise on legal abortions or lobby for the legalization of the act in their country.

The brainchild of Regan, the law was repealed by Clinton, but re-instituted by Bush in 2001. Needless to say the countries that are bearing the brunt of this action primarily reside in Africa. Nigeria, for instance, has the second highest maternal mortality rate in the world, largely due to unsafe abortions and lack of accessible healthcare. Though the country mostly outlaws abortions, exceptions are made for women who have been raped and those whose lives are in danger. Still, the numerous heathcare organizations that rely on US funding, through USAID, cannot so much as mention abortion without the threat of losing their funding.

Last week the House Committee on Foreign Affairs held a hearing to discuss the impact this punitive law has had on family planning and the rate of unsafe abortions around the world. Chairwoman of the House Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee, Nita Lowey (D-NY), is leading the charge to get the policy repealed....

From the House Committee on Foreign Affairs (Please also read the links to more information):

Opening statement by Chairman Lantos at hearing, The Mexico City Policy/Global Gag Rule: Its Impact on Family Planning and Reproductive Health

Around the globe, millions of women are fighting for their reproductive rights. They are fighting for the right to control how many children they bring into the world. They are fighting for the right to have ready access to contraceptives. And they are fighting for the right to obtain a safe and legal abortion.

In this battle, women are supported by the world’s leading non-governmental organizations specializing in reproductive health care. But the United States refuses to work with these world health leaders, thanks to the mindless Global Gag Rule first instituted by President Reagan, and re-imposed after the Clinton years by our current president. This policy places restrictions on health care workers overseas that they would never have to face if they were based in the United States.

If these overseas groups spend even a dime of their own money advocating for changes in their own nations’ abortion laws, they are ineligible to receive family planning funds from our country. They can’t spend their own money to do what they think is right for women without losing U.S. support.

These same hard-working NGO’s are not just sidelined in the policy debate, they cannot even counsel women about abortion. If a pregnant woman shows up at a family planning clinic in South Africa, the doctor cannot even tell her that abortion is an option without jeopardizing the clinic’s financial support.

Without that support, many of these facilities would have to close their doors forever, depriving women of essential health care services, including screenings for HIV and cervical cancer, and especially the provision of contraceptives for the prevention of unwanted pregnancies and abortion.

By gagging the world’s most effective reproductive health care organizations, the President is hoping to reduce the rate of abortion. But that is not happening. The Global Gag Rule is just making abortion more unsafe.

Earlier this month, The Lancet, a highly-respected British medical journal, published a major study of worldwide abortion rates, conducted jointly by the U.N.’s World Health Organization and New York’s Guttmacher Institute.

The results of the study are as eye-opening as a jolt of caffeine in the morning. The study found that in countries in which abortion is legal and countries in which it is illegal, abortion rates are pretty much the same. But there is a shocking difference: where abortion is legal, it is provided in a safe manner. Where it is illegal, abortion is often performed under unsafe conditions by poorly-trained providers.

In fact, an estimated 20 million unsafe abortions are performed every year, almost all of them in countries where abortion is illegal under most circumstances. An estimated 67,000 women die each year as the result of complications from those unsafe procedures – let me repeat that: 67,000 women dead from unsafe abortions each year, often leaving many children behind.

Given these staggering statistics, the United States should be actively supporting NGO’s which are fighting to get rid of unjust laws banning or severely limiting abortion, not shunning them. We should be working organizations like the Family Planning Association of Kenya, the Family Guidance Association of Ethiopia, the Planned Parenthood Association of Ghana and the International Planned Parenthood Federation – all of these organizations have been barred from getting U.S. family planning funds.

If banning abortion doesn’t lower the abortion rate, what does? The answer is clear: ready access to contraception.

In Eastern Europe – a place I know a little bit about – where the availability of effective contraception has greatly expanded since the fall of the Communist regimes, the abortion rate has dropped by more than 50 per cent.

But because of the punitive provisions of the Global Gag Rule, since 2001 the United States has stopped shipping contraceptives to 20 developing countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East – and many leading NGO family planning providers in other countries have stopped receiving contraceptives. While the Global Gag Rule is being promoted as anti-abortion, it remains at its core anti-family planning.

These are important issues, and they demand from us a constructive response. My good friend from New York, the distinguished Chairwoman of the House Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee, Nita Lowey, has done just that. I strongly endorse the contraceptives language in her bill that begins to unravel the Global Gag Rule, and I hope that by the end of the legislative process, it will be completely repealed.

The Global Gag Rule is bad policy and it is doing enormous harm to women around the globe. The sooner we change it, the better for everyone concerned.

Important Links: http://www.msmagazine.com/news/uswirestory.asp?ID=10639
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/02/1336254

More on the Congo

The whole thing is so heartbreaking and I know we each have to choose our battles but this is just too much for me.


http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2007/lumo/special_ensler.html



http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2007/lumo/index.html

Speechless...

I'm never at a loss for words, but I don't even know how to begin to dissect this heartbreaking information (see below). I know that rape has been used as a weapon in countless wars in the last century, but this level of disconnected, sadistic violence against women is beyond me. I know a fair amount of the history of the Congo and its neighbors, but none of that offers an explanation as to why these men are violating women for sport. I can't pin this on white supremacy (though if any of you can please feel free)...this isn't some social or cultural norm in this part of the world...all of these men can't be sociopaths or on drugs (though maybe the latter) so what the hell is going on?

I've never truly believed in the concept of good and evil, but how could any human being commit these kinds of acts?


**************************************************

October 7, 2007
Rape Epidemic Raises Trauma of Congo War
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/world/africa/07congo.html
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
BUKAVU, Congo - Denis Mukwege, a Congolese gynecologist, cannot bear to listen to the stories his patients tell him anymore.

Every day, 10 new women and girls who have been raped show up at his hospital. Many have been so sadistically attacked from the inside out, butchered by bayonets and assaulted with chunks of wood, that their reproductive and digestive systems are beyond repair.

“We don’t know why these rapes are happening, but one thing is clear,” said Dr. Mukwege, who works in South Kivu Province, the epicenter of Congo’s rape epidemic. “They are done to destroy women.”

Eastern Congo is going through another one of its convulsions of violence, and this time it seems that women are being systematically attacked on a scale never before seen here. According to the United Nations 27,000 sexual assaults were reported in 2006 in South Kivu Province alone, and that may be just a fraction of the total number across the country.

“The sexual violence in Congo is the worst in the world,” said John Holmes, the United Nations under secretary general for humanitarian affairs. “The sheer numbers, the wholesale brutality, the culture of impunity - it’s appalling.”

The days of chaos in Congo were supposed to be over. Last year, this country of 66 million people held a historic election that cost $500 million and was intended to end Congo’s various wars and rebellions and its tradition of epically bad government.

But the elections have not unified the country or significantly strengthened the Congolese government’s hand to deal with renegade forces, many of them from outside the country. The justice system and the military still barely function, and United Nations officials say Congolese government troops are among the worst offenders when it comes to rape. Large swaths of the country, especially in the east, remain authority-free zones where civilians are at the mercy of heavily armed groups who have made warfare a livelihood and survive by raiding villages and abducting women for ransom.

According to victims, one of the newest groups to emerge is called the Rastas, a mysterious gang of dreadlocked fugitives who live deep in the forest, wear shiny tracksuits and Los Angeles Lakers jerseys and are notorious for burning babies, kidnapping women and literally chopping up anybody who gets in their way.

United Nations officials said the so-called Rastas were once part of the Hutu militias who fled Rwanda after committing genocide there in 1994, but now it seems they have split off on their own and specialize in freelance cruelty.

Honorata Barinjibanwa, an 18-year-old woman with high cheekbones and downcast eyes, said she was kidnapped from a village that the Rastas raided in April and kept as a sex slave until August. Most of that time she was tied to a tree, and she still has rope marks ringing her delicate neck. The men would untie her for a few hours each day to gang-rape her, she said.

“I’m weak, I’m angry, and I don’t know how to restart my life,” she said from Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, where she was taken after her captors freed her.

She is also pregnant.
While rape has always been a weapon of war, researchers say they fear that Congo’s problem has metastasized into a wider social phenomenon.

“It’s gone beyond the conflict,” said Alexandra Bilak, who has studied various armed groups around Bukavu, on the shores of Lake Kivu. She said that the number of women abused and even killed by their husbands seemed to be going up and that brutality toward women had become “almost normal.”

Malteser International, a European aid organization that runs health clinics in eastern Congo, estimates that it will treat 8,000 sexual violence cases this year, compared with 6,338 last year. The organization said that in one town, Shabunda, 70 percent of the women reported being sexually brutalized.

At Panzi Hospital, where Dr. Mukwege performs as many as six rape-related surgeries a day, bed after bed is filled with women lying on their backs, staring at the ceiling, with colostomy bags hanging next to them because of all the internal damage.

“I still have pain and feel chills,” said Kasindi Wabulasa, a patient who was raped in February by five men. The men held an AK-47 rifle to her husband’s chest and made him watch, telling him that if he closed his eyes, they would shoot him. When they were finished, Ms. Wabulasa said, they shot him anyway.

In almost all the reported cases, the culprits are described as young men with guns, and in the deceptively beautiful hills here, there is no shortage of them: poorly paid and often mutinous government soldiers; homegrown militias called the Mai-Mai who slick themselves with oil before marching into battle; members of paramilitary groups originally from Uganda and Rwanda who have destabilized this area over the past 10 years in a quest for gold and all the other riches that can be extracted from Congo’s exploited soil.

The attacks go on despite the presence of the largest United Nations peacekeeping force in the world, with more than 17,000 troops.

Few seem to be spared. Dr. Mukwege said his oldest patient was 75, his youngest 3.
“Some of these girls whose insides have been destroyed are so young that they don’t understand what happened to them,” Dr. Mukwege said. “They ask me if they will ever be able to have children, and it’s hard to look into their eyes.”

No one - doctors, aid workers, Congolese and Western researchers - can explain exactly why this is happening.
“That is the question,” said André Bourque, a Canadian consultant who works with aid groups in eastern Congo. “Sexual violence in Congo reaches a level never reached anywhere else. It is even worse than in Rwanda during the genocide.”

Impunity may be a contributing factor, Mr. Bourque added, saying that very few of the culprits are punished.
Many Congolese aid workers denied that the problem was cultural and insisted that the widespread rapes were not the product of something ingrained in the way men treated women in Congolese society. “If that were the case, this would have showed up long ago,” said Wilhelmine Ntakebuka, who coordinates a sexual violence program in Bukavu.

Instead, she said, the epidemic of rapes seems to have started in the mid-1990s. That coincides with the waves of Hutu militiamen who escaped into Congo’s forests after exterminating 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus during Rwanda’s genocide 13 years ago.

Mr. Holmes said that while government troops might have raped thousands of women, the most vicious attacks had been carried out by Hutu militias.

“These are people who were involved with the genocide and have been psychologically destroyed by it,” he said.
Mr. Bourque called this phenomenon “reversed values” and said it could develop in heavily traumatized areas that had been steeped in conflict for many years, like eastern Congo.

This place, one of the greenest, hilliest and most scenic slices of central Africa, continues to reverberate from the aftershocks of the genocide next door. Take the recent fighting near Bukavu between the Congolese Army and Laurent Nkunda, a dissident general who commands a formidable rebel force. Mr. Nkunda is a Congolese Tutsi who has accused the Congolese Army of supporting Hutu militias, which the army denies. Mr. Nkunda says his rebel force is simply protecting Tutsi civilians from being victimized again.

But his men may be no better.
Willermine Mulihano said she was raped twice - first by Hutu militiamen two years ago and then by Nkunda soldiers in July. Two soldiers held her legs apart, while three others took turns violating her.

“When I think about what happened,” she said, “I feel anxious and brokenhearted.”
She is also lonely. Her husband divorced her after the first rape, saying she was diseased.
In some cases, the attacks are on civilians already caught in the cross-fire between warring groups. In one village near Bukavu where 27 women were raped and 18 civilians killed in May, the attackers left behind a note in broken Swahili telling the villagers that the violence would go on as long as government troops were in the area.

The United Nations peacekeepers here seem to be stepping up efforts to protect women.
Recently, they initiated what they call “night flashes,” in which three truckloads of peacekeepers drive into the bush and keep their headlights on all night as a signal to both civilians and armed groups that the peacekeepers are there. Sometimes, when morning comes, 3,000 villagers are curled up on the ground around them.

But the problem seems bigger than the resources currently devoted to it.
Panzi Hospital has 350 beds, and though a new ward is being built specifically for rape victims, the hospital sends women back to their villages before they have fully recovered because it needs space for the never-ending stream of new arrivals.

Dr. Mukwege, 52, said he remembered the days when Bukavu was known for its stunning lake views and nearby national parks, like Kahuzi-Biega.

“There used to be a lot of gorillas in there,” he said. “But now they’ve been replaced by much more savage beasts.”

Looking At the Bigger Picture...

As deplorable as I find the lyrics of some hip hop songs, the incessant need for the media to place all of the blame for rampant misogyny on the genre is myopic and racist.

Thumb through the annals of US history and you will find ample examples of misogyny and sexism that occurred long before anyone spit a verse (suggested points of interest: voting rights, property rights, domestic abuse rights, inequitable healthcare, sexual harassment circa 1970s-'80s...). Hell, look around you today and you can see how women are constantly thought of as less than rational, respectable human beings: the pull back on abortion rights (because you know the little woman needs the great big supreme court to tell us what to do with our bodies), the fact that we still only make $0.80 to every dollar a man makes, the lack of adequate, affordable day care (a ploy to shove us out of the workforce to stay home with our children)...

By no means am I excusing the behavior of brothas (and sistas in some cases) who spit trite, misogynist vile and peddle soft-core pornographic videos. We must deal with them as well, but let us not forget that these suckas are products of a culture in which the contempt for women in the media is only undercut by that of the law.

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Imus Incident Sparks House Hearing on Discrimination

Feminist Daily News Wire
September 26, 2007

The House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection held a hearing yesterday to discuss the impact of sexist, misogynistic and racist themes in the media, with an emphasis on Hip-Hop music and culture. Members were joined by corporate executives, Hip-Hop artists, and scholars specializing in the effects of discrimination in media on women.

Philippe P. Dauman, President and CEO of Viacom- the owner of MTV, BET and numerous other media outlets- said that ultimately the responsibility lies with parents and the consumer to avoid explicit content, such as music containing the "N," "B," and "H" words. Hip-Hop artist Levell Crump, aka "David Banner," said his music- including the song "Like a Pimp" -lets him express the frustrations of a difficult youth and gave him an outlet other than violence. When asked if he thought his misogynist and violent lyrics were having a negative impact on women, he replied "It’s still just a song," later adding, "I actually call my music the Bible with a 'Playboy' cover."

Vanderbilt University professor and scholar in both feminist and black theory, Dr. Tracy Sharpley-Whiting argued that explicit material only portrays the negatives of the culture and is being taken by many to represent the norm. This results in the misinterpretation of hip-hop and black culture, particularly among white listeners, who compromise perhaps as high as 70% of the industry’s consumers.

Exposure to images of females as sex objects has significant impact on girls: the 2007 APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls report cited the negative link between the exposure to these images and mental performance, eating disorders, low self-esteem, depression, physical health, and healthy sexual development.

While the hearing was an important start, explained Dr. E. Faye Williams, the National Chair of the National Congress of Black Women, who also testified, more pressure must be placed by Congress on the FTC and FCC to make clear that "Along with the right of freedom of speech goes the responsibility not to bombard those airwaves with filthy, derogatory, offensive, indecent language that crosses the line of decency."
Media Resources:Testimony of Philippe P. Dauman 9/25; Testimony of Levell Crump 9/25; Testimony of Dr. Tracy Sharpley-Whiting 9/25; 2007 Report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls; Testimony of Dr. E. Faye Williams 9/25
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