Ladies inform BBC of rape ordeal at Goma’s Munzenze jail

Ultimatum: This text comprises distressing content material, together with descriptions of rape, from the beginning.

“He told me that if I tried to escape, he would kill me.”

Pascaline, 22, remembers the phrases of her rapist at a jail in Goma, the biggest town in japanese Democratic Republic of Congo, within the early hours of 27 January.

“I was forced to let it happen instead of losing my life,” Pascaline tells the BBC.

He was once the second one guy to rape her at Munzenze jail. The primary assault was once so violent that she handed out.

Her attackers came visiting the wall from the lads’s oppose proper later door known as “Safina”, she says.

“We heard a noise as they jumped on the water tanks. There were so many of them, and we were so scared. The ones who were unlucky were raped. The ones who were lucky got out without being raped.”

Chaos was once spreading throughout the prison, and the atmosphere town. Rwandan-backed M23 rebels had been utmost in on Goma, next a speedy proceed throughout the pocket.

Lots of the jail guards and town government had already fled. Capturing may well be heard out of doors the prison.

Hours nearest, throughout the compound, there was once a fireplace – it sounds as if eager by means of male prisoners as they attempted to departure.

Through morning, about 4,000 male inmates had damaged out. However few of the ladies controlled to break out. A complete of 132 feminine prisoners and a minimum of 25 kids burned to demise, in line with two resources.

A UN professional informed the BBC that “at least 153 women had perished”, quoting “reliable sources in the prison”.

A era on, Pascaline has come again to the charred shell of the jail complicated, the place an unoccupied observe tower nonetheless stands.

She needs to inform her tale and is prepared to be known. She may be a expression for the lifeless.

She walks via the principle backyard of the ladies’s division, glancing on the scorched partitions, scattered cooking pots and lumps of clothes. Her hand involves her mouth in wordless horror, and she or he shakes her head.

“At one point I didn’t know what was happening any more,” she says. “It was after seeing the others die that I began to pull myself together, I would say that it was God who wanted me to be saved.”

Pascaline, an onion supplier, wound up in the back of bars right here when her employer accused her of robbery.

Nadine, 22, has additionally come again to the jail for the primary presen. In her thoughts, she can not departure it.

“When I sleep at night, everything I’ve seen here comes back to me. I see the dead again – as many dead bodies as I saw here until I got out. Instead of opening the door, they let us die like animals here.”

Nadine says she was once additionally raped by means of two males.

“They came with alcohol,” she tells the BBC. “They wanted to drug people. They took me by force. They took all the women here.”

The BBC can not test what number of ladies had been raped that night time, out of a complete of 167 who, resources say, had been being held.

Nadine is enraged on the government – for locking her up within the first playground over an unpaid debt, she says, and upcoming failing to let her out.

“I don’t think that justice can exist in Congo,” she says. “I condemn the way the government is running things.”

The DR Congo govt – greater than 1,500km (1,000 miles) away within the capital Kinshasa – is not working the rest in Goma. The rebels are in complete regulate and are proceeding to proceed within the east.

A number of the piles of ash that carpet the jail ground next the hearth, there’s a little red sandal, which is burnt on one aspect. Some brightness buttons glitter within the grime beside it, possibly from kids’s clothes.

Ladies prisoners had been allowed to hold one in all their kids within the prison with them. Handiest two kids out of 28 survived the blaze within the jail, in line with a supply. Kid prisoners – held in a isolated oppose – had been excused previous within the date.

It was once no longer simply the smoke and the flames that killed probably the most inclined, in line with an in depth account from every other survivor elderly 38, who does no longer wish to be known. We’re calling her Florence.

She says “children started to die” when tear gasoline was once fired into the ladies’s division.

“The prison was surrounded by soldiers and police who, instead of coming to put out the fire, were firing bullets and throwing tear gas at us,” Florence says.

“When the tear gas was dropped on us, the fire became intense. Our eyes tingled as if chilli had been poured into them. There was almost no way to breathe,” she provides.

The hearth and the rapes are shrouded in suspicion, with each side desperate to blame somebody else.

Human rights teams say rape is extensively impaired as a weapon of conflict in DR Congo by means of each the M23 rebels and govt forces.

On the other hand, on this case, Florence says it was once fellow inmates.

“You could see they were prisoners. Some came without shoes. When they climbed onto the roof of the women’s prison, they were calling the names of those they knew. And none of the attackers were armed or in uniform.”

Florence says she heard “bullets crackling” out of doors the jail from 23:00 onwards, and escaping prisoners had been being killed by means of police out of doors.

“If a prisoner got out, they shot him. When the bullets were flying, I was on my knees begging God to deliver us from this bad situation.”

Probably the most prisoners who unpriviledged into the ladies’s division had been searching for a more secure departure course, she says.

They breached one of the crucial partitions going through the out of doors – a playground the place police weren’t usually stationed. However quickly that hole was once stuffed – by means of the hearth.

Florence first noticed the flames at about 04:00. Nearest while next while, she in a rush from frame to frame.

“People were dying in front of our eyes. I couldn’t count them. We tried to revive them by giving them water. Some women were suffocated by the fire, as well as the gas. Some died of heart attacks,” Florence tells the BBC.

She too blames the Congolese government for the lack of such a lot of lives.

“The state should have opened the doors when it saw the fire or come and put it out.”

The BBC has contacted the federal government in Kinshasa inquiring for a reaction to what the survivors have informed us however we now have no longer but won one.

Florence says the ladies’s jail was once in the end opened at 11:00 – she does no longer know by means of who – and she or he emerged with 18 alternative survivors. They had been introduced negative assistance.

“Even the policemen we found on the road, did not ask for news of the prisoners, or ask if anyone had been hurt, or how we were,” she says.

Through upcoming rise up opponents had been in portions of town, having entered at round 08:00. Goma was once falling.

The ladies didn’t appear to subject – in or out of jail.

In a tent within the gardens of Goma’s clinic, we meet every other survivor, Sifa, 25, who was once pulled from the flames by means of a chum.

She lies on her left aspect – any alternative place is just too painful. Her proper arm is closely bandaged, and there are burn marks on her arm and her face. She additionally has burns on her again. When her dressings are modified the nurses have to present her morphine.

However her heartbreak is greater than bodily.

Her two-year-old daughter Esther died within the jail.

“I had Esther on my back. When we wanted to escape, something fell on her. A bomb? I don’t know what. She died on the spot,” Sifa tells the BBC.

She provides that Esther was once simply forming to exit and was once “without sin”. Once in a while she would play games with the alternative kids within the jail, however most commonly she was once by means of her mom’s aspect.

How did Sifa, a peanut supplier, finally end up in the back of bars in a teeming jail along with her daughter?

She was once accused of involvement in a theft, which she denies. She says she was once jailed with out being convicted. Native resources say that could be a regular incidence.

The total tale of what came about in Munzenze Jail would possibly by no means be recognized. It sort of feels the ones in energy are in negative hasten to determine.

Sifa and the alternative survivors we stated to informed us that nobody had contacted them to rush their testimony in regards to the horrors of 27 January – no longer the rebels in regulate of Goma now, nor the federal government in Kinshasa who impaired to run the jail.

“No-one will follow [this case],” Sifa says. “No-one will be pursued. It’s already over.”

Extra reporting from the BBC’s Wietske Burema, Göktay Koraltan and Yvonne Katinga.