There is just one thing that B.E. thinks about: how she can be reunited with her children. There are four of them, and the youngest is a baby just over a year old. She saw them last a little over three months ago, when she fled from the Congo. She has no idea where they are now, nor even if they are alive.
B.E. is 39, and a trader in malachite. In the late 1990s, she ran a social club in Lubumbashi, which became a gathering point for Tutsis in exile from Rwanda following the genocide and political turmoil there in 1994. One of these was a young woman who asked B.E. to look after some of her possessions when she returned to Rwanda with her fellow Tutsis.
In 1998, this led to a first difficulty with local police who, hearing of this arrangement, called her in for questioning and warned her to have no further contact with Rwandan exiles.
Guilt by association
In the year 2000, says B.E., I made friends with another Rwandan, a Hutu who had been an officer with the Interahamwe (the armed Hutu militia who had reorganised across the border in Congo after being ejected from Rwanda). I was not married, but I already had three children with a man called Alphonse. I then had another baby with him. In May 2002 there was a move to pressure the Hutus to return to Rwanda, but Alphonse was afraid that if he went back, he would be killed. One day, he was arrested and sent to a camp, together with a number of other Hutu former soldiers.
While in detention, Alphonse joined forces with a group of other prisoners and made plans to escape. They broke into a weapons store and fought with their Congolese guards, several of whom were killed. Alphonse was one of the Hutus who managed to get away. He fled into the bush, and hid there for several weeks.
At the beginning of November, Alphonse arrived one night in my house and asked me to hide him. He told me that the soldiers were looking for him and would certainly kill him if they found him. I didnt know what to do. I was frightened for my children. But I took him in and hid him, then telephoned my business partner, who sold the malachite with me, and asked him what I should do. He reminded me of my troubles with the police in 1998, and told me that I should not keep Alphonse in my house.
B.E. felt she had no choice. She took Alphonse in. Three days later, the police arrived at her house, in two white vans. They searched the house, found Alphonse and arrested them both, taking each away in a separate van.
The journey lasted a long time. I didnt know where I was being taken. At last they pulled me out of the van and took me into some kind of prison. They kept saying that I had done wrong, and that they would punish me. Soon, the door opened and other soldiers arrived, dragging Alphonse behind them. Two men held me down, and five soldiers raped me in front of him, one after the other. Then they forced me to watch while they beat him to death.
From nightmare to nowhere
B.E. lost consciousness. When she came round, she found herself in a cell in the womans wing of the security prison. She spent the weekend there. On Monday, she was taken to be interrogated by some officers. They accused her of being part of a conspiracy of Hutus against the Congolese government. When she had nothing to say, when she protested that she knew nothing of any conspiracy, they threatened to kill her.
First they beat me, with the butts of their rifles. Then they showed me electrodes and said that they would use them on me. Then they burnt my stomach with cigarettes. That was on Monday. On Tuesday, they took me again to the same room and hit me across the back of the neck with their guns. At last, I agreed to sign a statement saying that I had conspired against the government, and had committed treason. On Wednesday, they came back for me and beat me again.
B.E. had now been in detention for six days. She was in pain from the rape and the beatings, and the scars from the cigarette burns were still very raw. On the seventh day, she was taken before a senior officer, who appeared to take pity on her. He told her that there were plans for her to be executed, and that she would be taken that night to a different prison, where executions were carried out.
But the officer also said that it might be possible to arrange for her escape, if enough money could be produced. B.E. gave him her business partners telephone number. That night, she was moved by van from the prison, transferred to a car, then handed over to her partner, who had raised money for the bribe.
The understanding was that I would not go home. It would have been too dangerous for me or for my children. I was hidden with friends for a few days, then put on to a plane. I didnt know until we took off that I was coming to Britain.
B.E., a tall, robust woman, is cowed with grief and shock. She sits hunched and finds it difficult to speak. Though her wounds have largely healed, the infections that came with the rape are proving slow to cure. I was all right, she says, again and again; we had enough money and my children were happy and well fed. My life has been ruined.
Her acute sense of misery is sharpened by the fact that she does not know who is looking after the children. She hopes that they are with her younger sister but has no idea how she can find out. Any communication with her family can only spell danger for them all and the only safety she can offer them is the understanding that she is in fact dead. All she knows now is that there is no immediate way of dealing with the disaster that has consumed her life.
