More Perspective

Via Pandagon and Feministe. . .while everyone else has been obsesseing over the Foley scandal, Anderson Cooper and the crew at 360 have been in the Congo (sadly, you still have to plow through about half to transcript to get past the stuff on Foley and into the more substantive coverage):

COOPER: Welcome back. We are live in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The level of everyday violence here in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been simply unfathomable over the last several years. Guns and machetes, of course, are common. But the most ruthless weapon that has been used here is rape, tens of thousands of women, children have been attacked, mostly by gangs of soldiers and bands of outlaws.

According to Doctors Without Borders, an estimated 40 percent of the rape victims are under the age of 18. Often, there are multiple assailants. It is something that's hard to report on, but is something that is fact. And this story may be certainly hard to watch, but we can't avoid it. It is part of life here. And the world should know what the women here are facing.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER (voice-over): At a busy hospital in Goma, a silent little girl sits on a stoop. She is 5 years old now, but still cannot speak of the terrible thing happened to her. Two years ago, when she was just 3, she was gang-raped by soldiers.

COOPER (on camera): Children as young as 3 years are getting raped?

DR. LUC MALEMO, HEAL AFRICA: Yes, 3 years old, yes.

COOPER: That's -- it's -- it's crazy.

MALEMO: Very crazy. And we -- it's difficult to understand the -- the social causes of these events.

But we think that people are so disappointed, and they have been in a dictatorship for 40 years, that now the war came. So, they lost all the hope. And they start behaving like animals.

COOPER (voice-over): Dr. Luc Malemo has a hospital ward full of girls and women who have been raped and developed fistulas, holes in their vaginas or rectums that make it impossible to control bodily functions.

(on camera): Why do so many rape victims here develop fistulas?

MALEMO: We -- we think that -- that the -- the first reason, that the rape is too violent. Some of them, they will use, after -- after raping the lady, they will use maybe -- they may use a weapon, a knife, or even a piece of wood. And some of them have been shot on after being raped.

COOPER: So, women aren't just getting raped, and they're not just getting gang-raped; they're -- they're often being shot internally afterward, or -- or -- or people putting objects inside them, knives, clubs?

MALEMO: Yes. Yes.

All -- they're being raped. But some of them, mainly those who develop fistula, tell that, after being raped, they will be shot on, or just be traumatized by a weapon.

There's more at the link provided above. Go read the whole thing, and if you have a chance, read the transcripts from the rest of the week's shows. 360 has been doing some good work here, and this is the sort of information that we generally just do not get via the MSM.

Perspective

While we are busy leering at the spectacle of an unfolding sex scandal (leering I've been guilty of as well), the Mahdi Army in Iraq has begun using hospitals as "command and control centers" where they take Sunni patients hostage so they can torture and execute them. Ambulances are also being drafted into the civil war as a means to transport hostages and illegal arms.

Kind of puts the whole Foley-gate thing into perspective, doesn't it?