The Economist (June, 2005)
Jun. 20th, 2005 11:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
From
dc_gay_man, verbatim. His original post is here.
Even with a vagina with magical properties, you can not escape the atrocities of war. I think this is the most shocking paragraph I have ever read:
Even by the standards of war, some of the atrocities in eastern Congo are shocking. Zainabo Alfani, for example, was stopped by men in uniform on a road in Ituri last year. She and 13 other women were ordered to strip, to see if they had long vaginal lips, which the gunmen believed would have magical properties. The 13 others did not, and were killed on the spot. Zainabo did. The gunmen cut them off and then gang-raped her. Then they cooked and ate her two daughters in front of her. They also ate chunks of Zainabo's flesh. She escaped, but had contracted HIV. She told her story to the UN in February, and died in March."
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Even with a vagina with magical properties, you can not escape the atrocities of war. I think this is the most shocking paragraph I have ever read:
Even by the standards of war, some of the atrocities in eastern Congo are shocking. Zainabo Alfani, for example, was stopped by men in uniform on a road in Ituri last year. She and 13 other women were ordered to strip, to see if they had long vaginal lips, which the gunmen believed would have magical properties. The 13 others did not, and were killed on the spot. Zainabo did. The gunmen cut them off and then gang-raped her. Then they cooked and ate her two daughters in front of her. They also ate chunks of Zainabo's flesh. She escaped, but had contracted HIV. She told her story to the UN in February, and died in March."
no subject
Date: 2005-06-20 08:31 am (UTC)You may want to put the main text of this behind an lj-cut with a warning.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-20 08:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-20 09:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-22 01:19 am (UTC)I was hoping this was an exaggerated story, but found even more gruesome confirmation:
http://www.monuc.org/Story.aspx?storyID=432
also quoted on
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/0/9d67ab5121b8582c49256fcc002563af?OpenDocument
no subject
Date: 2005-06-24 11:38 am (UTC)Paradoxically I feel like I should post these links but I don't know how to write about them such that more sensitive friends can get through their day without screaming.
Of course, as Seain says, it's important that these things are known...
no subject
Date: 2005-06-25 09:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-24 01:21 pm (UTC)I know it isn't all really like that, but dang, these incidents keep cropping up. Then there's China. James! My smelling salts please! What a good and clever doggie!
Nope, I can't quite handle this easily either. But I agree that it is important that we recognise it even if there's little we can make our "representative government" do to help with underlying causes.