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Nobel laureate Mukwege gets hero’s welcome in DRCongo
BUKAVU, DR Congo, Dec 28, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Thousands of people in DR Congo
turned out to welcome Nobel Peace Prize laureate Denis Mukwege, the surgeon
who helps women recover from the trauma of rape.
“We won! We won!” sang Mamy Magasine as she improvised a celebratory rumba
in a rain-soaked courtyard in Bukavu, in the eastern province of South Kivu
on the border with Rwanda.
“He is the pride of Congolese women, and even women of the whole world,”
said Magasine, the local head of the country’s ministry for families.
A little earlier, Mukwege arrived on a UN flight and was driven into the
city with an escort of UN peacekeepers.
Mukwege’s Panzi hospital has treated tens of thousands of victims of sexual
violence in his war-weary native province of South Kivu.
But since an attempt on his life in October 2012, he lives inside the
hospital compound under the protection of UN peacekeepers.
Wearing a scarf bearing the national colours, he arrived to a rapturous
reception from the crowd, composed mainly of women, in front of a local
college.
“We will build a a more beautiful country than before, with peace,” he
said.
Mukwege showed the crowd his Nobel prize and said the $400,000 prize money
that came with it would be ploughed back into treating the women under his
care.
“This is a beautiful day for me, this prize is your prize, protect it!
Let’s build a lasting peace,” he added, to applause.
Speaking mainly in Swahili but passing sometimes into French, Mukwege also
called for the creation of a compensation fund for victims of sexual violence
and urged UN member states to contribute.
– ‘It’s him, our president’ –
“Why not a special tribunal for the Congo?” he added, referring to past
examples of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
(ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).
He drew more applause after calling for a state of law, adding: “A country
without violence, it’s a bit difficult, but it’s not impossible.”
Muwkege arrived a day after the country’s election panel announced yet
another delay to presidential, legislative and municipal elections in
troubled parts of the country, provoking violent protests.
He noted that no local politicians had turned out for this event, said the
electoral process appeared to have stalled, and called for the Constitution
to be respected.
In a recent opinion piece for the New York Times, Muwkege urged Kabila to
give up power, but he did not go that far in Thursday’s speech.
He did urge all those in power to “measure the gravity of the situation to
avoid chaos”.
“We’re sick of it,” he added, to the delight of the crowd.
President Joseph Kabila has been in power in 2001, since the assassination
of his father, Laurent-Desire Kabila.
He was to step down at the end of 2016 after two terms in office. But
instead he stayed on, invoking a clause in the constitution that enables a
president to stay in office until a successor is elected.
“It’s him, our president, because he speaks of peace,” said one young
member of the audience after Muwege’s speech.
Mukwege shared this year’s Nobel Prize with Nadia Murad, the Iraqi Yazidi
woman campaigning for people after herself surviving as a hostage of Islamic
State jihadists.
BSS/AFP/GMR/0851 hrs