generalspeaking

Rape As War Tool

"Over the course of this 10-year period and to this day, many women were raped several times, by different groups, ironically in retaliation for having supported any 'enemy' that they had in fact suffered at the hands of. If they survive these rapes, instead of being supported by their communities, the women are generally rejected by their husbands and families. With neither moral nor financial support, they have to face the consequence of rape - sometimes including the birth of a child - in the wake of being mutilated, impoverished, traumatized and ostracized. Women are therefore victims several times over." UN report into atrocities committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo

There is nothing too startlingly new in a report that points out the primary victims of conflict are women. Throughout history it has always been so. During times of war, it is unarmed citizens who suffer. And among those citizens it is women who become targets for the rage expressed by those for whom they represent the other faction. And when women become victims of violent rage and savage rapes, it is their children, by extension who also suffer enormously.

It is the most vulnerable, the most defenceless for whom the trauma of armed conflict carries the most tragic weight. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire, the suffering of women represents the most dire and unconscionable attack on the truly vulnerable. This is what occurred in Darfur, in Sudan, and what occurs throughout Africa and the world. Culture and traditions, allied with religious dictates that hold women to be inferior creatures to men aid in the victimization of women and female children.

"The acts of sexual violence committed against children associated with armed forces and armed groups (CAAFAGs) were particularly appalling as they were in addition to the multitude of other violations to which these children were subjected. During their 'enlistment' as child soldiers, many of them witnessed their mothers and sisters being raped. It was reported that elements of the ANC/APR/RDF raped young girls for the whole night and whipped them if they tried to run away."

"In North Kivu, the Ugandan rebels of the ADF/NALU (Allied Democratic Forces/National Arm for the Liberation of Uganda attacked and looted several villages in Beni territory, abducting women, young girls and women whom they used as slaves, including sex slaves."

During the days of the Crusades, when Knights went off to battle with religious fervor in an effort to retake the holy city of Jerusalem for Christianity from the forces of Islam, women were preyed upon, no longer in the protective custody of their husbands. Even Homer's story of the Iliad and the Odyssey, pointed out how vulnerable women - left without the protection of their husbands - were to the predations of those who acted in the absence of their war- faring protectors.

Civilization and the protection of the vulnerable and the frail in society has not advanced particularly in countries of the world like the African Continent and the Middle East. Standards of behaviour remain locked in the traditions that reflect substandard living conditions and female exploitation and male domination over women. Rape has always been used as a weapon, to violate a woman's body, invade her sense of self-regard and dignity, leaving a shuddering shell of traumatized humanity.

"Male CAAFAGs known as Kadogo ("little ones" in Swahili) were forced to commit acts of brutality, including rapes, to 'toughen them up'. During attacks, girls would be taken to them so that they could rape them in the presence of villagers and adult soldiers. If they refused, the Kadogo would be executed".

After the end of the Second World War, when the United States and Great Britain stood aside, permitting their ally Russia, to invade east Berlin, German women were viciously and repeatedly raped, war booty for brutal Russian soldiers. During that same war, Japanese soldiers used Korean women as 'comfort women', destroying their dignity in their humanity. In the Nazi death camps, Jewish women were similarly abused by their German guards.

The rape of women as an instrument of war, as a demonstration of raw, brutal power over other human beings has an ancient tradition, one that war frees men to commit, all civil restraints loosened in the general savagery of conflict. Men avenge themselves against helpless women, venting their rage and their contempt on women incapable of physically defending themselves against the obvious overpowering physical capability of men.

In any city, town or village, there are predators who seek the advantage anonymity of night affords them to silently hunt down unaware women, debasing their own humanity and brutalizing the girl or woman in a tortuous physical invasion and an utterly debilitating, soul-destroying attack on the sovereign self of a human being.

Labels: Conflict, Sexism, Social-Cultural Deviations, World Crises

posted by Pieface @ Monday, September 06, 2010