Quote of the Day

[Trigger warning.]

"The Mugunga Internally Displaced Persons Camp sits in a land of volcanoes and great lakes on the edge of Goma, a provincial capital in the eastern Congo. The camp is now home to 18,000 people seeking refuge from a cycle of violent conflict that has left 5.4 million dead since 1998. … Women and girls in particular have been victimized on an unimaginable scale, as sexual and gender-based violence has become a tactic of war and has reached epidemic proportions. Some 1,100 rapes are reported each month, with an average of 36 women and girls raped every day. … I came to Goma to send a clear message: The United States condemns these attacks and all those who commit them and abet them. They are crimes against humanity. These acts don't just harm a single individual, or a single family, or village, or group. They shred the fabric that weaves us together as human beings. Such atrocities have no place in any society."—Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in a piece for People magazine (!) called "What I Saw in Goma."

Crimes of sexual violence against women and girls are crimes against humanity.

I don't believe I've ever heard any US official ever say that.*

I can't stop blubbing.

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* And do you know why that simple thing is never spoken? Because there are people who whine that it leaves room to infer that the perpetrators of sexual violence aren't human, and it's more important to indulge the delicate sensibilities of rapists and their apologists than it is to acknowledge the humanity of women.