BBC News, Goma
Warning: This article contains disturbing content, including rape descriptions, from the very beginning.
“He told me that if I tried to escape, he would kill me.”
Pascaline, 22, recalls the words of his rapist in a prison in Gomi, the largest city in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, in the early hours of January 27.
“I was forced to let that happen instead of losing my life,” says Pascaline BBC.
He was another man who raped her in Munzenze prison. The first attack was so violent that it disappeared.
Her attackers came across the wall from a male block right next to the door called “Safin,” she says.
“We heard the noise as they jumped on the water tanks. There were so many of them, and we were so scared. Those who were happy were raped. Those who were lucky came out without rape.”
Chaos spread through prison and the surrounding city. The M23 rebels supported in Rwanda closed to Goma, after rapid progression through the region.
Most prison guards and city authorities have already escaped. Shooting could be heard beyond prison.
A few hours later, within the junction, there was a fire – it was obviously appointed by male prisoners as they tried to escape.
About 4,000 male prisoners broke out by morning. But few women managed to escape. A total of 132 prisoners and at least 25 children burn to death, according to two sources.
The UN -A official said the BBC that “at least 153 women failed”, quoting “reliable sources in prison.”
For a month, Pascaline returned to the carbon shell of the prison complex, where there is still an empty tower.
She wants to tell her story and is ready to be identified. She is also a voice for the dead.
It passes through the main yard of the female part, looking at burned walls, scattered pots for cooking and piles of clothing. Her hand comes to her mouth in horror without a word, and she shook her head.
“At one point I no longer knew what was going on,” she says. “After seeing the others dying, I started merging, I would say that God wanted me to save myself.”
Pascaline, a Luka saleswoman, ended up behind bars here when the employer accused her of theft.
Nadine, 22, also returned to prison for the first time. He can’t escape in his mind.
“When I sleep at night, everything I saw here returns to me. I see the dead again – as much as the dead bodies see here until I went out. Instead of opening the door, they let us die like animals here.”
Nadine says two men also raped her.
“They came with alcohol,” says the BBC. “They wanted to drug people. They took me by force. They took all the women here.”
The BBC cannot confirm how much a woman was raped that night, out of a total of 167, which, sources say, were retained.
Nadine is angry in power – because she first concluded for an unpaid debt, she says, and then failed to let her go.
“I don’t think justice can exist in Congo,” she says. “I condemn the way the government leads things.”
Government of Dr. Kongga – more than 1,500 KM (1,000 miles) in the capital of Kinshas – no longer runs nothing in the crowd. The rebels are completely and continue to progress in the east.
Among the piles of ash that carpets of the prison bottom after the fire is a tiny pink sandal that burned on one side. Some great buttons shine in dirt beside her, maybe from children’s clothing.
The prisoners were allowed to hold one of their children in prison with them. Only two children out of 28 survived the flames in prison, the source states. Children’s prisoners – held in a separate block – were released earlier during the day.
Not only the smoke and the flames that have killed the most vulnerable, according to the detailed account of the second survivor of the 38 -year -old, who does not want to be identified. We call her Florence.
He says “the children started to die” when tearful fired at the female part.
“The prison was surrounded by soldiers and police who, instead of coming to extinguish the fire, fired bullets and threw away tear fuel on us,” Florence says.
“When the tear gas fell, the fire became intense. Our eyes got stuck as if they had poured into them. There was almost no way to breathe,” he adds.
The fire and rape are trimmed in confusion, and all sides are eager to blame someone else.
Human rights groups say rape is widely used as war weapons in Dr. Congo and rebels M23 and government forces.
However, in this case, Florence says these were fellow prisoners.
“You could see that the captives were. Some came without shoes. When they climbed the roof of a women’s prison, they called the names of those they knew. And none of the attackers was armed or uniform.”
Florence says she heard the “bullets shoot” in front of a prison from 11:00 pm, and the escape of the prisoner was killed by police outside.
“If the prisoner came out, they shot him. When the bullets flew, I was on my knees, asking God to deliver us from this bad situation.”
Some of the prisoners who broke into the female part were looking for a safer path of escape, she says.
They violated one of the walls facing out – a place where the police were usually not stationed. But soon that gap was filled with fire.
Florence saw the flames for the first time around 04:00. Then the hour in an hour rushed from the body to the body.
“People were dying before our eyes. I couldn’t count them. We tried to revive them by giving them water. Some women were suffocated by fire, like gas. Some died of heart attacks,” says Florence BBC.
And she blames the Congolese authorities for the loss of so much life.
“The state was supposed to open the door when she saw the fire or came and turned it off.”
The BBC contacted the Government in Kinshasi seeking the answer to what the survivors told us, but we have not received it yet.
Florence says that the women’s prison is finally open at 11:00 – she does not know who she is – and appeared with 18 other survivors. They were not offered help.
“Even the police officers we found on the road did not ask for news about prisoners or asked if anyone was hurt or how we were,” she says.
Until then, the rebels fighters were in parts of the city, who entered about 08:00. Goma was falling.
Women don’t seem to be important – in or out of prison.
In a tent, based on a gom hospital, we meet with another survivor, Sifa, 25, who has pulled a friend from the flames.
It lies on the left – any other position is too painful. Her right hand was tied strongly, and there are traces of burns on her arm and face. It also has burn on the back. When her dressings change, nurses must give her a morphine.
But her agony is more than physical.
Her two -year -old daughter Esther was killed in prison.
“I had an ester on my back. When we wanted to escape, something fell on her. The bomb? I don’t know what. She died on the spot,” Sifa tells the BBC.
She adds that Esther had just begun to walk and was “without sin.” Sometimes she would play with other children in prison, but mostly she was near the mother’s side.
How did Sifa, a peanut saleswoman end up behind bars in a crowded prison with her daughter?
She is accused of involvement in robbery, which negates. She says she was in prison without being convicted. Local sources say this is a common occurrence.
The whole story of what happened in a Munzenze prison may never be known. It seems that they in power are not in a hurry to find out.
Sifa and other survivors we spoke with told us that no one contacted them to take a testimony of the horrors on January 27 – not the rebels who controlled Gom now, nor the Government in Kinshasi, who was prison.
“No one will follow [this case]”Sifa says.” No one will haunt. It’s over. “
Additional reporting from the BBC Wietry Burem, Götath Koraltan and Yvonne Kating.
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