Weapons of War (2009)

Directed by: Femke van Velzen, Ilse van Velzen | 59 minutes | documentary

“If you wanted to have sex with a woman, you lost all control and immediately sought one.” The documentary ‘Weapon of War’ by the sisters Femke and Ilse van Velzen has a very heavy theme as its starting point: women who are victims of rape by soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Since 1996, various wars have ravaged Congo. Some 30,000 soldiers in the National Army and 50,000 rebels were active in which a total of 150,000 women and girls were raped. Sexual violence is seen as a weapon of war, a way to demoralize your enemy and that is why many use this ‘tactic’.

Captain Basima, a minister in the army, provides information to soldiers about sexual violence. He himself raped six women when he was younger, has left that life behind and now wants to point out the irreversible consequences of such acts. It becomes clear that it is a great idea, but does not work everywhere. When Basima tells his story to a group of rebels, they don’t want to hear from him because they are not on the same political line, in times of peace they will come back with him. With more than sixty armed groups in Congo, each with their own political and ideological views, it is difficult to achieve a majority, but the initiative can only be applauded.

The documentary is made up of interviews with Congolese soldiers, in which the open attitude of a number of soldiers is particularly striking. They are willing to tell the stories of their actions in the hope that they will no longer be tormented by the nightmares that continue to haunt them. Soldiers visit doctors to ask for medicine against this disease, they are slowly going crazy. It is almost as if they are victims, and in fact they admit it. They are victims of the war, in the heat of battle they lost their thought and could no longer tell the difference between good and evil. A soldier’s mother points a finger at the war. “I think the sound of the bullets drove my son crazy.” Of course she abhors his actions, but it is and remains her son.

Not only the soldiers are discussed, raped women also tell their story. They talk to some extent about the event that changed their lives forever, otherwise they keep silent because she doesn’t want to relive it again. The pain written on the face chills the heart. The documentary ends with the encounter between a soldier and the woman he raped, an extremely emotional encounter in which the woman says that she has actually lost her entire life because of it, has been stigmatized. Her parents blame her for what happened and her fiancé ran away because she was no longer a virgin. The soldier can’t look at her, stares at the table, asks for forgiveness and gives her a pig as some kind of reparation. Though she eventually forgives him, he still has a long and difficult road ahead of him to let go of himself. ‘Weapon of War’ brings to light a very difficult subject that is not shunned by the stories about the horrors. Nevertheless, everyone should have seen this documentary. Horrible, but a story that needs to be told.