Women tell BBC of rape ordeal at Goma’s Munzenze prison

Warning: This text comprises distressing content material, together with descriptions of rape, from the beginning.

“He instructed me that if I attempted to flee, he would kill me.”

Pascaline, 22, remembers the phrases of her rapist at a jail in Goma, the most important metropolis in jap Democratic Republic of Congo, within the early hours of 27 January.

“I used to be compelled to let it occur as a substitute of shedding my life,” Pascaline tells the BBC.

He was the second man to rape her at Munzenze jail. The primary assault was so violent that she handed out.

Her attackers came visiting the wall from the boys’s block proper subsequent door referred to as “Safina”, she says.

“We heard a noise as they jumped on the water tanks. There have been so a lot of them, and we had been so scared. Those who had been unfortunate had been raped. Those who had been fortunate received out with out being raped.”

Chaos was spreading by way of the jail, and the encompassing metropolis. Rwandan-backed M23 rebels had been closing in on Goma, after a speedy advance by way of the area.

Many of the jail guards and the town authorities had already fled. Capturing might be heard exterior the jail.

Hours later, contained in the compound, there was a fireplace – apparently set by male prisoners as they tried to flee.

By morning, about 4,000 male inmates had damaged out. However few of the ladies managed to get away. A complete of 132 feminine prisoners and no less than 25 kids burned to demise, in keeping with two sources.

A UN official instructed the BBC that “no less than 153 girls had perished”, quoting “dependable sources within the jail”.

A month on, Pascaline has come again to the charred shell of the jail complicated, the place an empty watch tower nonetheless stands.

She desires to inform her story and is keen to be recognized. She can also be a voice for the useless.

She walks by way of the primary yard of the ladies’s part, glancing on the scorched partitions, scattered cooking pots and piles of clothes. Her hand involves her mouth in wordless horror, and he or she shakes her head.

“At one level I did not know what was occurring any extra,” she says. “It was after seeing the others die that I started to drag myself collectively, I might say that it was God who needed me to be saved.”

Pascaline, an onion vendor, wound up behind bars right here when her employer accused her of theft.

Nadine, 22, has additionally come again to the jail for the primary time. In her thoughts, she can’t escape it.

“After I sleep at night time, every thing I’ve seen right here comes again to me. I see the useless once more – as many useless our bodies as I noticed right here till I received out. As an alternative of opening the door, they allow us to die like animals right here.”

Nadine says she was additionally raped by two males.

“They got here with alcohol,” she tells the BBC. “They needed to drug folks. They took me by pressure. They took all the ladies right here.”

The BBC can’t confirm what number of girls had been raped that night time, out of a complete of 167 who, sources say, had been being held.

Nadine is livid on the authorities – for locking her up within the first place over an unpaid debt, she says, after which failing to let her out.

“I do not suppose that justice can exist in Congo,” she says. “I condemn the best way the federal government is operating issues.”

The DR Congo authorities – greater than 1,500km (1,000 miles) away within the capital Kinshasa – is now not operating something in Goma. The rebels are in full management and are persevering with to advance within the east.

Among the many piles of ash that carpet the jail flooring after the fireplace, there’s a tiny pink sandal, which is burnt on one facet. Some shiny buttons glitter within the filth beside it, maybe from kids’s clothes.

Ladies prisoners had been allowed to maintain one in every of their kids within the jail with them. Solely two kids out of 28 survived the blaze within the jail, in keeping with a supply. Youngster prisoners – held in a separate block – had been launched earlier within the day.

It was not simply the smoke and the flames that killed essentially the most weak, in keeping with an in depth account from one other survivor aged 38, who doesn’t wish to be recognized. We’re calling her Florence.

She says “kids began to die” when tear gasoline was fired into the ladies’s part.

“The jail was surrounded by troopers and police who, as a substitute of coming to place out the fireplace, had been firing bullets and throwing tear gasoline at us,” Florence says.

“When the tear gasoline was dropped on us, the fireplace grew to become intense. Our eyes tingled as if chilli had been poured into them. There was nearly no approach to breathe,” she provides.

The hearth and the rapes are shrouded in confusion, with all sides desperate to blame another person.

Human rights teams say rape is broadly used as a weapon of conflict in DR Congo by each the M23 rebels and authorities forces.

Nevertheless, on this case, Florence says it was fellow inmates.

“You possibly can see they had been prisoners. Some got here with out footwear. After they climbed onto the roof of the ladies’s jail, they had been calling the names of these they knew. And not one of the attackers had been armed or in uniform.”

Florence says she heard “bullets crackling” exterior the jail from 23:00 onwards, and escaping prisoners had been being killed by police exterior.

“If a prisoner received out, they shot him. When the bullets had been flying, I used to be on my knees begging God to ship us from this dangerous state of affairs.”

Among the prisoners who broke into the ladies’s part had been in search of a safer escape route, she says.

They breached one of many partitions dealing with the skin – a spot the place police weren’t usually stationed. However quickly that hole was stuffed – by the fireplace.

Florence first noticed the flames at about 04:00. Then hour after hour, she rushed from physique to physique.

“Folks had been dying in entrance of our eyes. I could not rely them. We tried to revive them by giving them water. Some girls had been suffocated by the fireplace, in addition to the gasoline. Some died of coronary heart assaults,” Florence tells the BBC.

She too blames the Congolese authorities for the lack of so many lives.

“The state ought to have opened the doorways when it noticed the fireplace or come and put it out.”

The BBC has contacted the federal government in Kinshasa asking for a response to what the survivors have instructed us however we now have not but obtained one.

Florence says the ladies’s jail was lastly opened at 11:00 – she doesn’t know by who – and he or she emerged with 18 different survivors. They had been provided no assist.

“Even the policemen we discovered on the highway, didn’t ask for information of the prisoners, or ask if anybody had been damage, or how we had been,” she says.

By then insurgent fighters had been in elements of the town, having entered at round 08:00. Goma was falling.

The ladies didn’t appear to matter – in or out of jail.

In a tent within the grounds of Goma’s hospital, we meet one other survivor, Sifa, 25, who was pulled from the flames by a pal.

She lies on her left facet – another place is just too painful. Her proper arm is closely bandaged, and there are burn marks on her arm and her face. She additionally has burns on her again. When her dressings are modified the nurses have to offer her morphine.

However her agony is greater than bodily.

Her two-year-old daughter Esther died within the jail.

“I had Esther on my again. After we needed to flee, one thing fell on her. A bomb? I do not know what. She died on the spot,” Sifa tells the BBC.

She provides that Esther was simply beginning to stroll and was “with out sin”. Typically she would play with the opposite kids within the jail, however largely she was by her mom’s facet.

How did Sifa, a peanut vendor, wind up behind bars in a teeming jail together with her daughter?

She was accused of involvement in a theft, which she denies. She says she was jailed with out being convicted. Native sources say that may be a frequent prevalence.

The total story of what occurred in Munzenze Jail might by no means be identified. It appears these in energy are in no rush to seek out out.

Sifa and the opposite survivors we spoke to instructed us that no-one had contacted them to take their testimony concerning the horrors of 27 January – not the rebels in charge of Goma now, nor the federal government in Kinshasa who used to run the jail.

“No-one will comply with [this case],” Sifa says. “No-one will probably be pursued. It is already over.”

Further reporting from the BBC’s Wietske Burema, Göktay Koraltan and Yvonne Katinga.