the world’s eyes are on haiti and we hear stories of death, destruction, trouble with aid getting in, confusion, stories of families reuniting, miraculous survival, views for adoptions, views against, and the long road ahead for healing. The world should care. The world should help. The world should not forget haiti as we are so good at doing.
the stories of children being used as prostitutes in asia, the men and women with money paying to rape young children who will never know the life we do. And then there is the congo…the natural beauty remains stunning, the fish from Lake Kivu remain succulent, and the rape goes on and on and on and we stand by, fingers in our ears and do nothing and do nothing and do nothing.
In today’s Op-Ed piece in the New York times, the story of Chance is told..
For Chance, the war arrived one evening last May when armed soldiers from an extremist Hutu militia — remnants of those who committed the Rwandan genocide — burst into her home. They killed her parents in front of her. Chance ran away, but the soldiers seized her two sisters, ages 6 and 12, and carried them away into the forest, presumably to be turned into “wives” of soldiers. No one has seen Chance’s sisters since.
Chance moved in with her aunt and uncle and their two teenage daughters. Two months later, the same militia invaded the aunt’s house and held everyone at gunpoint. Chance says she recognized some of the soldiers as the same ones who had killed her parents.
This time, no one could escape. The soldiers first shot her uncle, and then, as the terrified family members sobbed, they pulled out a large knife.
“They sliced his belly so that the intestines fell out,” said his widow, Jeanne Birengenyi, 34, Chance’s aunt. “Then they cut his heart out and showed it to me.” The soldiers continued to mutilate the body, while others began to rape Jeanne.
“One takes a leg, one takes the other leg,” Jeanne said dully. “Others grab the arms while one just starts raping. They don’t care if children are watching.”
Chance added softly: “There were six who raped her. One raped me, too.”
The soldiers left Jeanne and Chance, tightly tied up, and marched off into the forest with Jeanne’s two daughters as prisoners. One daughter is 14, the other 16, and they have not been heard from since.
Let us remember Haiti, let us allow Haiti to remind us to celebrate what we can do when we come together, let us allow Haiti to remind ourselves there is more to be done in world, let us not forget the children – the children being sold in a slavery of prostitution and the children being destroyed in the congo. Let us come together and see what greatness can be created.
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