March 22, 2006

Weapons of War: Rape and HIV Haunt Rwanda

Hundreds of thousands of Rwandan women were raped and purposefully infected with HIV during the 1994 war in that East African country, but 12 years later the effects are not measurable in numbers. “HIV in Rwanda is deeply intertwined with the trauma of rape,” says Anne-christine d’Adesky, one of the organizers behind an exhibit called "Speaking the Unspeakable” that opened this week in San Francisco.

Justice has lagged for these casualties of war: The U.N.’s International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has reviewed only four rape cases. And just beyond the tiny nation’s borders, the toxic HIV/rape combo also threatens wartorn Darfur, Sudan; Uganda; and Congo.

Meanwhile, groups like the privately funded Women's Equity in Access to Care and Treatment (WE-ACTx), which d’Adesky helped found, are addressing the rape trauma and the HIV infections themselves—3,700 women, men and children are now receiving anti-HIV meds through WE-ACTx clinics. This week’s California show, a mix of photography, dance and oral histories put together by WE-ACTx and several other groups, features long-distance messages from 30 Rwandans, including a woman referred to only as Chantal M. who was raped and infected by a militiamen and has a 12-year-old HIV positive child to show for it.

“The arrival of HIV treatment has motivated these women to speak out, because now they feel they have a future,” says d’Adesky—and stopping the cycle of sexual violence and disease is what they have chosen as their topic. “They feel they have survived for a reason: to mobilize other women to get treatment and to represent the history from their perspective.”

WE-ACTx organizers and clients alike are watching with particular concern at the duration and scale of the Congolese war next door. HIV is used just as freely there as a weapon alongside rape as it was during Rwanda’s war. Already, Amnesty International reports that more than 40,000 women and girls have been raped by Congolese fighters, and PlusNews.org reports that about 12 % of these women have HIV.

"Speaking the Unspeakable,” which runs through Sunday at San Francisco’s Project Artaud Theatre, is expected to appear later this year in Chicago and possibly at the Toronto World AIDS Conference in August.