05 March 2020

Gang Rape in War




War is a package deal, of which atrocity and gang rape are part of the package. To try to outlaw atrocity and rape from war is naïve and disingenuous.

Against Our Will by Susan Brownmiller, 1975, Excerpts

Rape in warfare is not bound by definitions of which wars are “just” or “unjust.” Rape was a weapon of terror as the German Hun marched through Belgium in World War I. Rape was a weapon of revenge as the Russian Army marched to Berlin in World War II. Rape got out of hand when the Pakistani Army battled Bangladesh. Raped reared its head as American GI’s searched and destroyed in the highland of Vietnam. Rape flourishes in warfare irrespective of nationality or geographic location. Rape was outlawed as a criminal act under the international rules of war. Yet rape persists as a common act of war.

Men who rape in war are ordinary Joes, made unordinary by the entry into the most exclusive male-only club in the world. Victory in arms brings group power undreamed of in civilian life. The unreal situation of a world without women becomes the prime reality. To take a life looms more significant than to make life, and the gun in the hand is power. The sickness of warfare feeds on itself. A certain number of soldiers must prove their newly won superiority – prove it to a woman, to themselves, to other men. In the name of victory and the power of the gun, war provides men with a tacit license to rape. In the act and in the excuse, rape in war reveals the male psyche in its boldest form, without the veneer of ”chivalry” or civilization.

On Killing by LtCol Dave Grossman, 2009, Excerpts

The ultimate fear and horror in most modern lives is to be raped or beaten, to be physically degraded in front of our loved ones, to have our family harmed and the sanctity of our homes invaded by aggressive and hateful intruders. In rape the psychological harm usually far exceeds the physical injury. The trauma of rape involves minimal fear of death or injury; far more damaging is the impotence, shock, and horror in being so hated and despised as to be debased and abused by a fellow human being.

Throughout history women have been the greatest single group of victims of this environment process. Women have been defiled, debased, and dehumanized for the aggrandizement of others. Rape is a very important part of the process of dominating and dehumanizing an enemy; and this process of mutual empowering and bonding at the expense of others is exactly what occurs during gang rapes. In war, empowerment and bonding through such gang rapes often occur on a national level.

Gang rapes and gang or cult killings in times or peace and war are not “senseless violence.” They are instead powerful acts of group bonding and criminal enabling that, quite often, have a hidden purpose of promoting the wealth, power, or vanity of a specific leader or cause at the expense of the innocent.




Films:
Redacted
Brian De Palma docudrama about an incident in which a 15-year old Iraqi girl was raped and killed by U.S. soldiers.
Casualty of War
Similar movie starring Michael J. Fox where U.S. soldiers rape a Vietnamese girl.



Rape of Sabine. Jacques-Louis David, Intervention of the Sabine Women, 1799


Senior ICC judges authorize Afghanistan war crimes inquiry
05 Mar 2020

Senior judges at the international criminal court have authorized an investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan. The ICC investigation will look at actions by US, Afghan and Taliban troops. There is information that members of the US military and intelligence agencies committed acts of torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, rape and sexual violence in Afghanistan and other locations, principally in the early years of the conflict.

'We lay like corpses': Bangladesh's 1970s rape camp survivors speak out
05 Nov 2019
In 1971, during the nine-month war that gave Bangladesh its independence from then West Pakistan, four sisters – Amina, Maleka, Mukhlesa and Budhi Begum – were abducted by Pakistani soldiers and local collaborators. They were among the more than 200,000 women held in rape camps and were detained for two and a half months. The sisters’ stories are part of Gazi’s award-winning documentary, Rising Silence, screened on Tuesday in London, which preserves the testimony of some of the few women who are still alive, several of whom have died since filming.

Sudanese doctors say dozens of people raped during sit-in attack
11 Jun 2019
Doctors believe paramilitaries carried out more than 70 rapes during an attack on a protest camp in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, a week ago. More than 100 people were killed and as many as 700 injured in the attack last Monday on a sit-in and clashes afterwards, as paramilitaries from the Rapid Support Forces spread through the city. Harrowing details of rapes by the RSF have emerged in recent days despite restrictions on communications in Sudan, but the extent of the sexual violence has remained unknown.

El Salvador massacre: forensics teams dig for remains as US envoy faces grilling
15 Feb 2019
Nearly 1,000 civilians – including 533 children – were slaughtered by US-trained troops in and around the village of El Mozote in December 1981. Eighteen former army officers now face trial for crimes against humanity and other charges related to the massacre. This week, the memory of El Mozote – and the legacy of US cold war-era intervention in Central America – was evoked in Washington DC as the Democratic representative Ilhan Omar grilled Donald Trump’s special envoy to Venezuela, Elliott Abrams, about US policies in Latin America. The massacre came in the early stages of a civil war between leftwing rebels and the US-backed government that eventually claimed 75,000 lives – most at the hands of state forces, according to a United Nations truth commission. At El Mozote, soldiers from the Atlacatl Battalion – an elite counterinsurgency unit trained, armed, and funded by the US – lined up, interrogated, tortured, and executed villagers. They started with the men before turning to the women and children, gang-raping women and girls. After El Mozote, Abrams dismissed reports of a massacre as a propaganda ploy by leftist rebels and their allies in human rights groups. In a 1982 Senate foreign relations committee hearing, Abrams claimed reports of the death toll were “not credible”. On Wednesday, Omar noted that Abrams had once described US policy in El Salvador as a “fabulous achievement”.

Children 'forced to watch rape' in South Sudan
23 Feb 2018
Children in South Sudan have been forced to watch their mothers being raped and killed, the UN says. The UN says the testimony gathered from survivors is "devastating", including some people being forced to rape family members "in cases reminiscent of Bosnia". One woman said her 12-year-old son was forced to have sex with his grandmother, in order to stay alive. The same woman also saw her husband being castrated. Another man saw his companion, a man, gang raped and left for dead in the bushes.

When Victims of Wartime Rape Are Scorned
18 Dec 2017
Last month, Human Rights Watch published a report confirming that Myanmar’s army is engaged in the mass rape of Rohingya Muslim women and girls as a tool of ethnic cleansing. The Associated Press that established the same set of facts: the use of “sweeping and methodical” rape as a weapon of war. The reports, in all their horror — the dehumanizing gang rapes in front of family, the forced public nudity, the torture and sexual enslavement — all called to mind similar stories from Bosnia and Herzegovina. During the 1992-95 war in Bosnia, an estimated 20,000 to 50,000 women experienced brutal sexual violence, both inside and outside numerous “rape camps.” The largest number of these women, by far, were Bosnian Muslims. The forced impregnation of Bosnian Muslim women by Serbian men was among the distinctive and repugnant genocidal strategies used by the Serbian military, policemen and members of paramilitary groups.

Male rape used systematically in Libya as instrument of war
03 Nov 2017
Male rape is being used systematically in Libya as an instrument of war and political domination by rival factions, according to multiple testimonies gathered by investigators. Harrowing reports from victims and video footage showing men being sodomized by various objects, including rockets and broom handles. In several instances, witnesses say a victim was thrown into a room with other prisoners, who were ordered to rape him or be killed. The atrocity is being perpetrated to humiliate and neutralize opponents in the lawless, militia-dominated country. Male rape is such a taboo in Arab societies that the abused generally feel too damaged to rejoin political, military or civic life.

Rape is an instrument of war in Central African Republic conflict
05 Oct 2017
Rape and sexual slavery have been used as weapons of war across Central Africa Republic, with armed groups carrying out brutal attacks with impunity. Research by Human Rights Watch found “Armed groups are using rape in a brutal, calculated way to punish and terrorize women and girls.” The study detailed cases of women and girls who were held as sexual slaves for up to 18 months. Many of the women endured multiple sexual attacks, in addition to other forms of torture. The Central African Republic has been wracked by sectarian violence for the past five years. Both factions, Muslims and Christians, have used sexual violence as revenge against women perceived to be supporters of the rival party.

Sudan soldiers face trial for rape and murder
30 May 2017
Thirteen South Sudanese soldiers accused of raping five foreign aid workers appeared before a military court on Tuesday, a case seen as a test of the government's ability to put people on trial for war crimes. The attack took place on July 11, 2016, as President Salva Kiir's troops won a three-day battle in Juba over opposition forces loyal to former Vice President Riek Machar. Between 50 to 100 soldiers arrived in the hotel in the afternoon of July 11 and began looting. Five women working with humanitarian organizations were then raped. UN investigators and rights group have frequently accused both the army and rebels of murder, torture and rape since the civil war began in 2013, and say the crimes almost always go unpunished.

Philippines' Duterte under fire for second rape joke
27 May 2017
The president of the Philippines has come under fire for joking about rape in a speech to soldiers. While speaking at a military camp after imposing martial law across the south of the country, he said they were allowed to rape up to three women. Mr. Duterte's words were: "I will be imprisoned for you. If you rape three (women), I will say that I did it.” Chelsea Clinton wrote on Twitter that Mr. Duterte was "a murderous thug with no regard for human rights" and that "rape is never a joke". And a women's political party in the country, Gabriela, said in a statement: "Rape is not a joke. Martial law and the heightened vulnerability to military abuse that it brings to women and children are not a joke either." Last year, Mr. Duterte joked about a 1989 rape and murder of an Australian missionary. He said that as mayor of the town where it happened, he should have been "first in line".

UN condemns 'devastating' Rohingya abuse in Myanmar
03 Feb 2017
The UN has accused security forces in Myanmar of committing serious human rights abuses, including gang-rape, savage beatings and child killing. One mother recounted how her five-year-old daughter was murdered while trying to protect her from rape. In another case, an eight-month-old baby was reportedly killed while five security officers gang-raped his mother. Of 101 women interviewed, 52 said they had been raped or experienced sexual violence from the security forces.

UN Accuses South Sudan Forces Of Deliberately Raping, Killing Civilians
11 Mar 2016
GENEVA (Reuters) - South Sudan's government operated a "scorched earth policy" of deliberate rape, pillage and killing of civilians during the civil war in 2015, a report published on Friday by the U.N. human rights office said. "The report contains harrowing accounts of civilians suspected of supporting the opposition, including children and the disabled, killed by being burned alive, suffocated in containers, shot, hanged from trees or cut to pieces." The prevalence of rape suggests its use in the conflict has become an acceptable practice by (government) SPLA soldiers and affiliated armed militias. The scale and types of sexual violence are described in searing, devastating detail, as is the almost casual, yet calculated, attitude of those slaughtering civilians and destroying property and livelihood. Although all sides have committed atrocities that may amount to crimes against humanity, government forces were most responsible in 2015, the report said. South Sudan's war began in December 2013, throwing the world's newest country into chaos, killing tens of thousands, displacing more than 2 million, and plunging at least 40,000 into a famine.

'Comfort women': Japan and South Korea hail agreement
28 Dec 2015
The leaders of Japan and South Korea have welcomed the agreement between their two countries to settle the issue of "comfort women" forced to work in Japanese brothels during World War Two. Japan has apologized and will pay 1bn yen ($8.3m; £5.6m) - the amount South Korea asked for - to fund victims. Estimates suggest up to 200,000 women were sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during WW2, many of them Korean. Other women came from China, the Philippines, Indonesia and Taiwan. The issue has been the key cause of strained relations between Japan and South Korea.

Hague and Jolie unveil plan to end war rape
11 Jun 2014

William Hague and UN special envoy Angelina Jolie are seeking global support for a new plan to end impunity for sex crimes committed in war zones. The pair have been hosting a London summit on the issue. Hollywood actress Ms Jolie said the goal was to make it possible to obtain justice even in fragile countries.

Burma military 'using rape as weapon'
15 Jan 2014

Burma's military has continued to use rape as a weapon of war even after a nominally civilian government was elected in 2010, a women's group says. The Women's League of Burma said it had documented more than 100 cases, some involving children as young as eight. Most of the cases were linked to conflict in the border areas of Kachin and Northern Shan State. "Their widespread and systematic nature indicates a structural pattern: rape is still used as an instrument of war and oppression," the report said.  "Sexual violence is used as a tool by the Burmese military to demoralize and destroy ethnic communities," it added. The last three years have seen far-reaching political change in Burma, but the army has so far shown little appetite for change.

UN classifies rape a 'war tactic'
20 Jun 2008
The UN Security Council has voted unanimously in favor of a resolution classifying rape as a weapon of war. The document describes the deliberate use of rape as a tactic in war and a threat to international security. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the world now recognized that sexual violence profoundly affected not only the health and safety of women, but the economic and social stability of their nations. 

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