TW extreme violence - this attack on female prisoners in Congo is the worst thing I have read for a very long time

[Haemagoblin]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/05/democratic-republic-congo-goma-women-raped-burned-death-prison-m23-rebels-rwanda?fbclid=IwY2xjawIQX7xleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHemsguOI8cv8UT4voiT9x3bl2dufyDDI-StI5eki8NoAHcesvL8SybTXJw_aem_SyJDMX6gA4mwgI1VW50GpA

Just utterly horrific. Those poor defenceless women.

What astonishes me is that this happened LAST WEEK and is only today in the UK press. And this isn't even headlines, because of that excrescence Trump and his dangerous rambling.

Women (especially black women, especially women from the developing world, especially poor and marginalised women) mean absolutely nothing on the global stage. Their lives and hideous deaths mean nothing. It makes me so angry I could scream.

Women (especially black women, especially women from the developing world, especially poor and marginalised women) mean absolutely nothing on the global stage. Their lives and hideous deaths mean nothing. It makes me so angry I could scream.

The violence these women endured before their hideous deaths. The tolerance of VAWG and its persistence.

It is an atrocity of multiple, equally appalling dimensions that leave me despairing and bereft of even vaguely knowing how to respond to something on this scale.

I absolutely agree... just saw it miles down the headlines from that idiot Trump. It really is one of the worst things I've ever seen - and I agree, it's as though their lives were worthless. So awful

The world has gone to hell. I can’t believe this happens in some areas, while those who had made progress are going backwards. It’s tragic.

Horrific. I don't want to know the details the headline is enough. Those poor women, their children 😢

It is absolutely horrific.

Absolutely, there should be an international outcry. But there won't be, because they are poor, black, female and all the international community cares about is the geopolitics of Congo's rare earth metals

Whom do you expect to do what, exactly?

There's a force of several thousand UN peacekeepers on the ground there already who have been denied access to Goma by M23. Fairly ineffective as usual.

At the moment it's not even clear who the perpetrators are - other convicts? M23? Other irregular forces? A combination of these? The Congolese Army have a terrible record re VAWG. Does anybody remember the Interahamwe who were responsible for the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda, and who M23 are now hunting down?

Suffice to say human life appears to be held in very low regard in much of Africa.

This is appalling. Heartbreaking. Enraging. Big angry powerful men fighting about the world's resources dominate the news. Women are just another resource or possession (left vs right wing misogyny) in their eyes.

It is really hard to hold onto hope.

Bloody hell. Bloody barbaric. Those poor women.

Bloody horrendous. I just can't. UN completely useless as usual.

This is heartbreaking.

There have been terrible things happening in this part of the world for a long time and it mostly seems to get ignored in the western media.

I work in the UK prison system and reading this made me feel utterly sick.

The first thing these scum did was to break into a women and children's compound. Then they raped them all then just leisurely murdered them all afterwards.

I've read and seen some horrific things in my time, but I'm not sure quite how to get this out of my brain, and I'm not even in the same country.

Dont understand the title.

What have trans women go to do with this.

TW stands for Trigger Warning

It looks like it was first reported by the UN on 31 January as having happened on 27 January.

I wonder if it is one of those "story unverified" situations by the BBC started reporting it earlier to day and then the papers followed suit.

But still strange because BBC World Service and France 24 (very good on global news) have had reporters there.

I wonder if it sadly the fact that what happens to women during conflict is not thought important enough to report.

Nothing.

It means trigger warning.

Meant trigger warning way before it meant man Trans Woman.

As soon as the UN is in a country you know how bad it is. There was the scandal of UN workers sex trafficking women in Bosnia in the 1990’s. There is a film starring Rachel Weiss called The Whistleblower based on it.

Okay - I think it is more normal to spell out Trigger Warning as other threads. Maybe you could get MNHQ to change it?

United Nations are fuckin toothless, no point to them, whatsoever heartbreaking 😥

Much of the problem is down to the fact that media organisations no longer employ foreign correspondents to the same extent they used to. The journalist reporting on DRC for Sky appears to be the correspondent for the whole of Africa.

So for a story like this, they’re often relying on second-hand reports.

Fucking hell. So sick of this shit. Women don't do this shit to men. Maybe we should. Maybe we just stop giving a shit about law and due process and collateral damage and start hiring mercenaries to hurt the men who hurt women.

I'm at a loss for words. The depravity of some men knows no bounds.

So sorry for these women and their children. Struggling with how unfair the world is. I don’t know, just so sorry

Those poor, poor women. I cannot begin to imagine the absolute terror they felt.
There are so many, many women and girls around the world who are treated worse than animals.
And while we afforded freedoms here in the UK, and incidents like this are not what we know or live with, as women we still feel under threat in other ways.
Rape is there as a constant weapon to dehumanise and intimidate. To me it is an ultimate sign of hatred.
An absolute hatred of women by the people who are supposed to care for them.
Do these men not have daughters, mothers and sisters?

Press briefing by UN Women on the situation of women and girls in the Democratic Republic of Congo
https://www.unwomen.org/en/news-stories/press-briefing/2025/02/press-briefing-by-un-women-on-the-situation-of-women-and-girls-in-the-democratic-republic-of-congo