CHILDREN OF RAPE: PART IV  

Deepa Majumdar

Muliri Jeanne Kabekatyo: “We want to make out of these children artisans of peace.”

This article is aloving tribute to all children born of rape in Nagaland

Perhaps the pain of rape is recompensed by the Creator through gifts of exceptional wisdom and moral courage, through the priceless gift of effortless chastity. Since fighting engulfed Eastern Congo in the late 1990s, more than five million people died and hundreds of thousands of women were raped. The exact number of children born from these rapes is not known, but it is thought to be in the thousands. These raped mothers, who should be canonized as saints of a sort are morally powerful enough, brave enough to recognize and accept the injustice inherent in abortion, which is an entirely different take than the insufferably sanctimonious preaching of pro-lifers and religious clerics.
In fact, it is these mothers who teach us, with their infinite wisdom, the ideal approach to the most quizzical problem of abortion. Their incredible stories teach us to see abortion as a tragic evil, an evil that is understandable-but-never-just, even in the case of rape. They teach us to never ever judge the raped woman who aborts her unwanted fetus. Yet, they teach us also to hail wholeheartedly, the brave mother who chooses not to abort her unwanted child. “We didn’t like to become pregnant by rape,” explains Emérance Nzigire. “But committing abortion is another crime. So there would be two criminals: the rapist and us,” she adds with infinite wisdom. What a stark difference between her attitude to abortion and the same outward position adopted by the smug status quo in Congo, where abortion is illegal and the country’s many Christians oppose abortion.
Emérance’s mother, Nsimire Emelide encourages women rape survivors to love their children, stressing their innocence. Mapendo Furaha rejects the defamation endured by rape survivors and their children. “We don’t know why we should be ashamed of what happened to us ... those who should be ashamed are the rapists,” she says with a moral lucidity often rare in the establishment, world wide ... whether government, church, academia, or more generally, the status quo. But some women are unable to overcome their pain. Maua Songolo could not accept her daughter born from the grisly experience of being raped and beaten repeatedly by the Interahamwe. She was merely fourteen.
Counselors at Heal Africa urge women to ignore those who warn that children born of rape will inherit the menacing behavior of their fathers. “The counselors continually tell that woman that if you surround your child with love, the child will be useful in society,” says Muliri Jeanne Kabekatyo, adding, “The child will understand, ‘I was raised with love, I have a moral debt to share that with others, with society.’” Her powerful ideal thrills my heart forever: “We want to make out of these children artisans of peace.”
This burning problem of children born of rape, is worsened a thousandfold, when it comes to inter-ethnic rapes that stamp upon the infant’s body, most obvious marks of the physical lineage of the ethnically different rapist father. For, the child born in violence cannot help but have the tell-tale appearance that screeches aloud its sad, hated origin. In Bosnia, children born of rape, who have long been an embarrassment, are rarely mentioned in public. In fact, as they come of age and seek their place in society, they are beginning to claim a spotlight in Bosnia’s debate on identity and  nationhood. “Bosnia has a problem with identity, you cannot be a citizen in Bosnia unless you have a fixed ethnic identity, and these children pose a huge problem,” says Mujesira Hasanovic. “How are they ever going to tell these children who their fathers are? How are they going to settle their ethnic identity? It’s a huge problem.”
This problem of the detectability of the child’s troubling lineage was particularly galling in the conflict in Darfur, western Sudan, where rape against women and girls was a weapon in a brutal battle over land and ethnicity that killed tens of thousands and drove two million people from their homes. Children gave away, by their innocent appearance, the facts of the diabolical double burden of their lineage ... first, that they were born of rape, and second, that their fathers were the dreaded janjaweed – the terrifying Arab militiamen who terrorized the region. Each child thus bore a double stigma ... of being born of rape and of inheriting the physical lineage of the feared and vilified ethnic enemy. That these children are at all called “janjaweed,” a local insult that means “devil on horseback,” stigmatizes them totally, from birth to death. What a burden to impose on the frail shoulders of a little child.
Sixteen year old Fatouma looks at the newborn infant in her arms. “When people see her light skin and her soft hair, they will know she is a janjaweed,” she says, stating the obvious, and not with the special acumen of a new mother ... for the frail visible body of the infant screams aloud its horrific origin. Fatouma’s child is one among many babies born of rape in Darfur ... children who will become the long term living legacy of this agonizing conflict. But thorny is the road ahead for these children and uncertain is their fate, for they are born in a society where, on the one hand, identity is passed, according to Muslim tradition, from father to child, and on the other hand, there are deep taboos surrounding rape. “She will stay with us for now,” says Adoum Muhammad Abdulla, the sheik of Fatouma’s village, speaking of the newborn infant. “We will treat her like our own. But we will watch carefully when she grows up, to see if she becomes like a janjaweed. If she behaves like a janjaweed, she cannot stay among us.”
But a mother’s love is a powerful miracle, a god-like protective tide, an unguent with a healing power that can devour any social stigma. “I am very happy to be a mother,” said Fatouma, “I will love her with all my heart.” If it is the fierce love of parents that protects disabled children from the decadent eyes of prejudice, then it is perhaps this most miraculous of all miracles ... a rape survivor mother’s love for her child born in violence that serves as the magic liniment that changes forever ...  in the most non-violent way possible ... the ugly face of the society that ostracizes them. For, this special mother’s special love reveals the divine Madonna in us. It expresses, in its fullest glory, the eternal mother principle on earth, unleashing forever this tremendous hidden mother force.

* The writer is Associate Professor, Philosophy, Social Sciences Department, Purdue University North Central. She can be contacted at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Comments (1)

great stuff

1 Friday, 30 July 2010 19:10

go-goo

mother force......the greatest force on earth

Reply

Add your comment

Your name:
Subject:
Comment:
Word verification:
	Post Preview

yvComment v.1.23.0