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Film captures rapists and their victims in Congo



Saturday, April 5, 2008

Filmmaker Lisa F. Jackson traveled to a conflict zone in ... Marie Jeanne is one of many women who "lined up" to tell ... Marie Jeanne was raped by soldiers when she was pregnant,...


When Lisa F. Jackson was 25 and living in Washington, D.C., she was gang-raped after leaving work in the upscale Georgetown district. Her story was front-page news, but the three perpetrators were never caught.

Jackson, a documentary filmmaker, kept recalling that trauma last year, when she visited Congo to interview victims of sexual violence. Tens of thousands of women and girls are raped each year by armed militiamen who often mutilate the genitals of their victim with guns and sticks.

Why, Jackson wanted to know, if her rape was considered news, does the huge wave of Congolese atrocities go unreported and unacknowledged? In her devastating 75-minute film, "The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo," Jackson searches for the answer by speaking to the victims; to physicians and aid workers; to U.N. peacekeepers whose numbers are inadequate to the problem; and, finally, to the rapists themselves.

Jackson, 57, calls the crisis "a holocaust in slow motion." Her film premieres 10 p.m. Tuesday on HBO, with several repeat broadcasts throughout the month. Go to HBO: Documentaries or The Greatest Silence Official Site for more information.

Speaking by phone from her home in Manhattan, Jackson said she tried for two years without success to raise funds for "The Greatest Silence." The subject made people uncomfortable, she found; it was easier for them to look the other way. Finally, she went last May to Kinshasa, the capital of Congo, and then to the eastern city of Bukavu.

Jackson went alone, equipped with a camera and no crew - something she'd never done in 30 years of filmmaking - and found Bernard Kalume, a Congolese translator who helped her make contact with victims, rapists and aid workers.

In the past decade, an estimated 250,000 women and girls, some as young as 4 or 5, have been raped by soldiers. In some cases, their genitals are mutilated and they become incontinent. The shame of rape is so pervasive that their husbands, and often their families, reject them. The children of rape are also shunned.

The rape epidemic isn't entirely senseless, Jackson found. "This is a resource war, pure and simple." Congo is rich in diamonds, gold and coltan, or columbite-tantalite, a metal used in cell phones, DVD players and computers. The 10-year civil war, which has claimed 4 million lives, is a fight for access to those minerals, and the sexual violence is part of that fight. By raping and terrorizing women, the military maintains a heightened climate of instability and fear.

"It's an incredible tragedy," Jackson says. "There is almost literally the blood of Congolese women on our cell phones."

Being a rape victim, Jackson said, she had a built-in connection with the women she met and interviewed. She brought them photos of herself with family members, told them about the night she was assaulted.

In most cases, the women had never spoken publicly. Given the chance, Jackson said, "they would literally line up to talk to me until there was no light. Just to have someone listen to them without judgment."

Jackson spent four months in the Congo altogether, spread over three visits. She went to villages where virtually all the women had been raped. She saw Panzi Hospital, which treats victims whose vaginas were brutalized and who suffer from permanent loss of bladder and bowel control.

"I wanted to find rapists who would talk to me," she says in the film. Despite "huge apprehensions," she and her translator drove six hours into a jungle conflict zone where men in hooded jackets held rifles and arrogantly justified their deeds.

"I rape because of a need," one says. "After that I feel like a man." Another speaks of rape in terms of expedience: "I have no time to negotiate. I have no time to love her."

Jackson remembers that day: "The single most chilling moment was when I had just finished interviewing the rapists. They just melted back into the trees, and I couldn't help thinking, 'Who is their next victim going to be?' There was no one there to arrest them; they were off to claim their next victim."

Today, Jackson is making various plans to distribute her film and expose the situation in Congo. She testified Tuesday before the U.S. Senate's Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law, and will show "The Greatest Silence" at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, and the European Commission in Brussels.

She wants the people of Congo to see it, and is having the film translated into Lingala, the language of western Congo, and Swahili, the language of eastern Congo. "I want to do local screenings, probably with generators and hanging sheets on the sides of buildings, in the villages where I filmed.

"I feel a real responsibility to these women. So many of them said, 'Please, take our story to the world.' "

E-mail Edward Guthmann at eguthmann@sfchronicle.com.


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