Congo
SOURCES NOTES: All material (stills and moving picture) copyright Susan Schulman (details below) unless marked as MSF (free to air)
SOURCE: Susan Shulman; +44207 278 5055 / +44 7773 800 775;
Child, Cheverie
For 15 years now every child born's been a war child.
Smoke & malnutrition pic
They live with desolation and terror. They die of disease and starvation.
Boy with gun:
And they grow up too fast.
Their mothers and sisters are raped and their fathers are probably dead.
Their villages: abandoned so they hide in the forest.
North Kivu, littered with desolate camps for the 800,000 displaced.
SOURCE: MSF -- free to use
SYNC (first section underlaid)
Leonard Bakumbul
Displaced teenager
"We live like apes, like monkeys for ourselves. We make them with leaves. They become our homes. The future is to die. It's dying because of all the 'problems.' I was born during the 'problems.' Today I'm 18 years old. As you can see, it's awful."
SOURCE: Susan Shulman; +44207 278 5055 / +44 7773 800 775;
The ripple effects of the genocide in Rwanda, still reverberate in the green hills of Kivu. A four-way civil war raging on here even though they signed a ceasefire two months ago. It's killing 45,000 people every month -- fifteen hundred a day -- and half are children.
This camp is called Cheverie. This man, a displaced person himself, has been keeping detailed records -- and says there are now 5,500 families here.
SOURCE: MSF -- free to use
There is one tap and no proper toilet.
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Francois Senekama
Former teacher
"We've been displaced several times and to several locations. The women, the mothers: they are suffering. And that's before you even start talking about the dead. The survivors live in a disastrous situation. It's precarious. Some live in the forest. Some haven't made it here and continue to suffer in the countryside. That is why we would like to inform the world, to push them to come here to help us."
SOURCE: MSF -- free to use
Bakulu came here with her mother and six children after her husband disappeared four months ago.
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Bakulu
"Our life here is pitiful. We have difficulties eating. We have difficulty sleeping. Finding wood to cook with is also a problem."
SOURCE: Susan Shulman; +44207 278 5055 / +44 7773 800 775;
Nyra came here with her two-year-old son and a fortnight ago gave birth in this little grass hut to Amani -- whose name means peace in Swahili. She explained how she'd sliced the umbilical cord with a shard of bamboo she'd snapped off the shack's roof.
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Nyra Hukimura
0844 "They burned my house with all of my things in it. We watched it burn. We took nothing with us when we fled. Everything we owned was burned in the house."
SOURCE: MSF -- free to use
The "they" she refers to belong to one the wandering bands of militia who stalk the Kivu countryside and specialise in killing civilians. This lot belongs to a new group of rogue combatants called Pareco, a notoriously brutal Congolese gang allied to another bloodthirsty militia --
SOURCE: Susan Shulman; +44207 278 5055 / +44 7773 800 775;
this lot, the FDLR -- who are linked to the Hutu paramilitaries behind the genocide in next-door Rwanda 14 years ago.
Complicated -- but there's one common denominator. It's always civilians caught in the crossfire.
SOURCE: Susan Shulman; +44207 278 5055 / +44 7773 800 775;
These women have sneaked back into their abandoned village to visit the standpipe. With their gerrycans full, they head back into the forest. They have taken a huge risk doing this. Gang rape is now the most common weapon of war.
SOURCE: MSF -- free to use
The village of Kalembe, which those women had sneaked back into, is deserted other than some FDLR soldiers. The charity Medecins Sans Frontiers has finally negotiated access and set up a mobile clinic here.
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Gilduin Blanchard
Medecins Sans Frontieres
0617 "The people can't return home. If they do go back, their food will be stolen, their women will be raped. They will be attacked and what you see is the result."
SOURCE: Susan Shulman; +44207 278 5055 / +44 7773 800 775;
This is the result. A scared 18-year-old girl called Sifi, kidnapped by rebel soldiers and for two years raped so violently and so often she was left paralysed and incontinent. Sifi became pregnant but her rape baby was still born. She's just undergone surgery. Sifi says she lost her mind.
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Sifi
33 04 The same rebels came into our village and started killing. 34 39 There was shooting and guns and knives and then suddenly I saw my father killed with a knife and my mother by a gun. I couldn’t even contemplate what had happened so I ran away , just ran away as fast as I could . I lived in the bush around my village. That's where I was when the rebels raped and took me. I stayed with them for nine months.
SOURCE: Susan Shulman; +44207 278 5055 / +44 7773 800 775;
The documented age range of kivu's rape victims is beyond belief -- from toddlers to septugenarians. This little girl is two. She was raped.
SOURCE: Susan Shulman; +44207 278 5055 / +44 7773 800 775;
Many who survive these horrors contract HIV. Others find themselves ostracised.
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Odette
There were two of them . They were heavily armed. When they were finished , they left . At first , I just couldnt move. I was paralysed with pain and shock. Then I forced myself to get up and walk home.
IN VIZ
0700 But when I arrived at my house, when my husband saw me and realised Id been raped, he wouldnt let me in the house. he wouldnt even talk to me , he didnt even look at me . He just pushed me aside and left. He rejected me . He abandoned me because Id been raped. He abandoned our 2 children as well.
SOURCE: Susan Shulman; +44207 278 5055 / +44 7773 800 775;
Today, the civilians of Kivu shelter where they can. Those not in makeshift camps congregate around abandoned schoolrooms and in churches. There is visible fear and exhaustion on these faces. In some places, cholera outbreaks are being regularly reported due to dire sanitation and filthy water.
Acute malnutrition is widespread in small children. Food supplies rarely make it through rebel lines. This month alone, more than 20,000 children will have died here from hunger and easily preventable diseases.
The war in eastern Congo has reached an Orwellian permanance; it's gone on so long few can remember anything else. The brutal reality is that because no one outside eastern Congo feels threatened by conflict in this corner of hell, no one much cares what goes on here. Every attempt to bring peace has failed.
Photographer: Susan Schulman
Producer: Joe Mather
Reporter: Jonathan Miller
Executive Producer: Tim Lambon
No music