Saturday, August 22, 2009

Hillary Vows to 'Banish Sexual Violence'

In an effort to compensate for the woefully inadequate and embarrassing frat boy media coverage of Hillary Rodham Clinton's trip to Africa, the Secretary of State has written an Op-ed over at People.com.

She describes her visit to the rape capital of the world and the efforts she is making to rescue the women and girls of Goma from the unspeakable brutality. I am proud to say that our feminist Secretary of State vows to "banish sexual violence into the dark past, where it belongs."

I visited a hospital run by the organization Heal Africa and met a woman who told me that she was eight months' pregnant when she was attacked. She was at home when a group of men broke in. They took her husband and two of their children and shot them in the front yard, before returning into the house to shoot her other two children. Then they beat and gang-raped her and left her for dead. But she wasn't dead. She fought for life and her neighbors managed to get her to the hospital – 85 kilometers away. . .

There is an old Congolese proverb that says, "No matter how long the night, the day is sure to come." The day must come when the women of the eastern Congo can walk freely again, to tend their fields, play with their children and collect firewood and water without fear.