Luca De Mata

Foto luca de mata®

During a trip to Africa the head of an association of women’s rights who welcomes girls victims of forced marriages, said to me:
“I am responsible of the program against this abuse! Abuse against women and against all the commandments, and mainly against the commandment Honor thy father and mother. Under the guise of local traditions marriages are arranged without the consent of the women. In exchange of a basket of cola, a drug that is chewed or a goat. Or just because a tribal chief wants to have a good relationship with another leader he gives a girl as a bride… and so a girl of 12 years is given to a man of 60. Do you understand?! How can this little girl honor her father and mother who sell her, exchange her for a goat, and who give her to an old man. They even go against the commandment you shall not steal… because forcing them into marriage they steal their sexuality. The girls are tied! They tie them because these girls want to escape from the horror into which they are forced … Honor your father and mother who want to enslave you to a stranger … they escape and come here looking for the affection and parental love they were denied. It is very probable that their mothers were also victims of such horrors. Our laws punish these practices … but in reality it’s difficult to enforce them. It is a slavery against which we must all fight, for the emancipation not only of women but also of our nation and of Africa. ”

foto luca de mata®

When I was there at that prison in Rwanda, surrounded by forced labor camps and finally, with the authorization to take pictures, I stayed a long while. Without moving. My thoughts were stronger than the work of documentation that I was supposed to do. Each one of those people I was looking at had probably ruthlessly killed one, ten, or a hundred like themselves. Ethnic hatred? I looked at them and they looked at me. That’s all fine. In their eyes there was no trace of the blood they had sent gushing from the skulls they had smashed, from the heads they had cut off, from the bodies they had torn open. In their ears, there was no trace of the word “Mercy” shouted by those whom they had killed. That’s all fine. All that was in them was the will to survive. That’s all fine. I wonder if you can kill, and then let life just continue on as if nothing had happened, and indeed, believe that you can be understood, justified? That’s all fine. No! This is not fine! Even if the person who kills out of hatred, bigotry, or ideology, would like to see us give them a pat on the back saying: “Don’t worry, that’s fine.”