War Against Woman

[cynical lady]

What function does rape play in war/development? What ist about war/poverty that turns men into savages with no emotion?

 

Gang rape spirals in violent Kenya

By Stephanie Holmes

BBC News

 

 

Rape is on the rise in Kenya, troubled by violence which followed December's disputed elections.

 

 

 

Women and children are most at risk of sexual attack

 

Every day women turn up at the doors of Nairobi's hospitals and clinics telling the same story.

 

"I could not run away. They gagged my mouth and pinned me down," one woman remembers.

 

"After raping me they blindfolded me and led me to a nearby forest. That's where they left me."

 

Her experience - doctors, officials and the UN say - is echoed by hundreds of other women who have survived a spiralling number of sexual attacks.

 

Many are gang rapes, carried out by groups of armed men.

 

Staff in the Nairobi Women's Hospital - one of Kenya's leading centres for the treatment of rape and sexual violence - say they have seen double the number of cases affecting women, teenagers and girls since January.

 

"Since the beginning of the month, we have had 140 cases of rape and defilement," said Rahab Ngugi, patient services manager at the hospital.

 

"We were used to seeing an average of about four cases a day, now there is an average of between eight and 10."

 

Almost half of the cases at the hospital's specialised clinic are girls under the age of 18, Ms Ngugi said. One case was a two-year-old baby girl.

 

She knows that such a dramatic rise in numbers presenting at the clinic indicates that the reality beyond is far worse.

 

Tip of iceberg

 

Only a small percentage of women actually come to receive medical treatment and counselling in the immediate aftermath of a sexual attack, she said. It means they do not get access to the drugs which might prevent the onset of HIV.

 

 

Battles are fought on women's bodies as much as on battlefields

 

Kathleen Cravero, UNDP

 

 

In pictures: No safe haven

"It is the tip of the iceberg," Ms Ngugi said. "At any time of unrest, of violence, or rioting, women and children are targeted. It is revenge, it is war. People are fighting and the weakest ones get abused."

 

Clashes broke out across Kenya in late December after President Mwai Kibaki declared himself the winner of an election disputed by the opposition and labelled as flawed by the international community.

 

An estimated quarter of a million people have fled their homes to escape the unrest and some 85% of these are women and children.

 

Women's position of relative weakness in society is emphasised in times of conflict, Kathleen Cravero, Director of the UNDP's Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery said.

 

"Battles are fought on women's bodies as much as on battlefields. It is not so much that women are targeted in some deliberate way but their vulnerability makes them easy targets for anger, for frustration, and for people wanting to cripple or paralyse other segments of the community in which they live."

 

She says there is no evidence as yet that Kenya's high levels of sexual violence are ethnically motivated rather than opportunistic and criminal.

 

But the doubling of rape cases, she says, is "a very, very strong indicator of a serious problem" adding that the actual numbers are without doubt far higher.

 

Impunity

 

Women often have other concerns that prevent them seeking help after an attack, said Hadley Muchela, a Nairobi-based rape counsellor with NGO Liverpool VCT.

 

 

The first priority for many women is food and shelter, not reporting rape

 

"If there is a woman who probably saw her relatives killed, she might push her own issues of violence to the periphery.

 

"There will be worries about property and the death of children. Their immediate needs are temporary shelter, safety and food."

 

He worries that although the gangs are not yet targeting makeshift, unregulated camps and shelters - in schools, churches and community centres - the women and their children sheltering there are increasingly vulnerable.

 

The UN says that in the capital alone some 12,000 people are living in public buildings after being driven from their homes.

 

Ms Cravero agrees that these shelters should be the focus of concern.

 

"Many of the internally displaced are not living in formal camps. They are just gathered around a school or church. Then you have the worst-case scenario - where you don't have that level of law and order and you have people living on top of each other."

 

The only way to prevent the almost inevitable spike in violence towards women in times of crisis, she said, is for governments to tackle the sense of impunity.

 

"Before violence breaks out, and during, and after, [governments must] really push the question of impunity, make sure that people know that rape visited upon innocent women and children will be treated for what it is - a crime."

[cynical lady]

By the BBC's Carolyn Dempster

Johannesburg

 

 

 

Rape is endemic in South Africa.

 

On this the police, politicians, sociologists and rape survivors all agree. There is a silent war going on, a war against women and children.

 

It is a fact that a woman born in South Africa has a greater chance of being raped, than learning how to read.

 

One in four girls faces the prospect of being raped before the age of 16 according to the child support group, Childline.

 

 

 

 

Charlene Smith, rape survivor and campaigner

Believes solution to combating sexual violence lies in:

 

the way mothers bring up sons

greater community responsibility for members' actions

better policing

harsher sentences

reform of criminal justice system

 

 

Sexual violence pervades society, with one of the highest reported rates of rape in the world, and an alarmingly high incidence of domestic violence and child abuse.

 

The official crime statistics tell only part of the story.

 

In 1994, the year South Africa became a democracy, 18,801 cases of rape were reported. By 2001 that figure had risen to 24,892.

 

 

The South African Police Service readily admits that even though there is now a greater awareness of the problem, more stringent penalties, and better policing, the vast majority of rapes and attempted rapes still go unreported and unpunished.

 

During a recent parliamentary debate on child abuse in South Africa, it was reported that there has been a 400% increase in the sexual violence against children over the past decade.

 

Baby rape

 

The majority of the victims are 12 years old or younger. Many of the perpetrators are themselves children.

 

 

 

"Baby Tshepang" was just 9 months old when she was brutally raped in the Northern Cape town of Louisvale in the early hours of 27 October, 2001.

 

Baby rape is not a new phenomenon in South African society, but it is becoming more common.

 

One possible reason, say Aids activists, is the myth, widespread in southern Africa, that sex with a child or baby will rid a man of HIV or Aids.

 

 

Rapists don't think they are doing anything wrong.

 

Dr Rachel Jewkes

 

South Africa already has more than 4.5 million people living with HIV, more than any other country in the world.

 

As the HIV pandemic becomes an Aids pandemic, rape can also be a death sentence.

 

So why is it so bad?

 

At the root of the problem, says Dr Rachel Jewkes, a senior scientist with the South African Medical Research Council, is men's attitude towards women.

 

"In South Africa you have a culture where men believe that they are sexually entitled to women. You don't get rape in a situation where you don't have massive gender inequalities.

 

One of the key problems in this country is that people who commit rape don't think they are doing anything wrong."

 

 

'Can't say no'

 

Her findings are borne out by the experience of Rose Tamae, a survivor of gang rape, who is HIV positive, and counsels abused women and children in the sprawling township of Orange Farm which lies across the highway from Soweto, west of Johannesburg.

 

 

With the Aids pandemic, rape can be a death sentence

 

 

"In our culture, as a woman, you don't say no to a man. Sex is not open for discussion," she says.

 

"So they think they can do as they like.

 

"In a place like Orange Farm, where most people are unemployed, and the women have to go looking for work far away, often the children are left at home in the care of men, or strangers.

 

"They are vulnerable. In one case a little girl was being given food in return for sex, and she didn't want to go home empty-handed to her mother, who had Aids and was sick. "

 

Apartheid legacy

 

A "culture of violence" has also been a dominant feature of South African society for decades, say sociologists, and it has spawned attitudes which are tolerant of sexual violence.

 

South Africa's Deputy President Jacob Zuma blames apartheid for "sowing the seeds for the breakdown of the institution of the family."

 

He believes that the molestation of children and infants today is a symptom of this degeneration.

 

 

Zuma blames apartheid for family breakdown

 

 

Apartheid HAS left a damaged society in its wake, but the criminal justice system is also failing women and children in South Africa.

 

Out of the 24,892 rapes reported last year, only 1,797 resulted in successful convictions.

 

To its credit the government, and South African society, is responding to the scourge.

 

The justice system has prioritised sexual offences with a review of the law and stiffer sentences.

 

Police officers are being trained to care for rape survivors.

 

Many private hospitals now offer specialized rape care and counselling, and insurance companies have introduced policies for rape survivors to enable them to afford expensive anti-retroviral drug treatment to reduce the risk of contracting HIV and Aids.

[-Lily-]

This is really sad. Where is the police that shoots demostrators for fun?

[cynical lady]

War Rape Trauma Lingers In Congo

As A Weapon Of War, Sexual Violence Leaves Lasting Pains

PANZI, Congo, June 22, 2005

 

 

Cecile Mulolo, a psychologist, stands outside the Panzi General Hospital for rape victims in Eastern Congo close to the town of Bukavu, Tuesday, June 11, 2005. (AP)

 

 

(AP) The teenager with flowers in her hair crossed her hands to keep them from trembling and described how she was raped by 10 militiamen.

 

Abducted two years ago when she was 16, Ombeni was kept as a concubine in the forests of eastern Congo. She became pregnant and at nearly nine months gestation, her captors cut her vagina with a machete, leaving the baby dead and abandoning the teenager in the forest.

 

"I laid there for one week," Ombeni said. "Until insects came out of my body." Ombeni was eventually rescued by a woman who was foraging for food and made her way to a clinic for rape victims.

 

She is one of thousands of women who are raped each year in Congo, another layer of degradation in a war that never seems to end.

 

In a briefing before the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday, U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland said rape as a weapon of war was at its worst in eastern Congo and the Darfur region of Sudan.

 

Egeland said the scale, prevalence and profound impact of sexual violence made it one of the most serious challenges facing those trying to protect civilians caught up in war. Ensuring rapists were punished and restoring local justice systems were key to addressing the problem, he said.

 

In Congo, for those who manage to survive kidnappings and gang rapes, there is the clinic at Panzi General Hospital. Located on the outskirts of the provincial capital Bukavu, it treats more than 300 rape victims each month.

 

Ombeni has spent months at the clinic, undergoing three operations to repair her bladder and awaiting a fourth. She says her captors were not trying to "deliver my baby, but to kill me and the baby."

 

With funding from the European Commission, the clinic provides medical and psychiatric care, as well as counseling to help women re-enter society. Rape victims are often ostracized in Africa, where husbands and families routinely kick out their wives and mothers if they have been raped.

 

The United States government also provides funding to over a dozen organizations in the region offering counseling, family mediation, medical care and legal representation to victims and their families. Since 2003, the combined programs have helped over 16,000 women.

 

Most rapes in the area are committed by Rwandan Hutu rebels, who fled into eastern Congo after Rwanda's 1994 genocide, said Panzi's medical director Denis Mukwege.

 

Generally, militiamen will circle a village and rape all the women, he said. Then they'll choose the young ones and take them as slaves into the forest-covered mountains.

 

"I had a 60-year-old woman who was raped with bamboo. Can you imagine?" Mukwege asked. "Yesterday she died."

[cynical lady]

Lily- the value of woman in Africa or conflict areas is close to nothing at times it’s the police/military that inflect such pain let alone be concern about it…. woman have always been paying the price of war/conflict but what I don’t understand is what turns a man into cold blooded savage when confronted with war/poverty?

[cynical lady]

NS, KINAMA

 

 

NS is a 70-year-old woman from Kinama, Bujumbura. She told Amnesty International and ACAT delegates that she was raped by a soldier in May 2001. She recounted that three soldiers turned up at her house in the evening and one of them marched her off and took her far away. He threatened to shoot her if she did not have sex with him. The soldier raped her and fled when a passer-by intervened. Her neighbours told the local authorities who did not investigate the rape. Her story was reported on the radio, but nothing was done to arrest and prosecute the perpetrators. She contracted HIV and spoke of the pain she had all over her body. She has no support and the state has done nothing for her.

 

 

NS did not report the incident to the police. Instead, it was her neighbours who notified the Chef de Quartier33. After NS spoke to him he went to the police. The local radio was also notified and broadcast the story. NS thought that this would be enough to start legal proceedings and did not realize that she was still expected by the authorities to lodge a formal complaint.

 

 

When NS was asked by Amnesty International and ACAT delegates about why she had not pressed charges, she stated: "Press charges? I told the Chef de Quartier and the local radio – what else could I have done? Besides, what could I have done against a soldier?"

[cynical lady]

Displaced in Somalia: Faduma

Somalis describe their lives in and around the capital, Mogadishu, amidst violence between insurgents and government troops backed by Ethiopian forces.

Mother-of-two Faduma, 22, has lived in a camp for displaced people in central Mogadishu since she fled south from Baidoa seven years ago.

 

 

Women and children in Mogadishu are especially vulnerable

I actually returned to Baidoa in April this year when there was heavy fighting here in Mogadishu but I came back recently because my husband was hit in his face by a stray bullet and so I had to look after him.

 

We have a lot problems - no food, no medicine and we can't just walk to go and find these things.

 

We don't feel safe.

 

There are children sick in our houses.

 

When the children get sick we have no medical facility to go to so we just recite the Koran - or we use a traditional burning method where you give a small burn on a different part of the body depending on what sort of sickness the baby has. Or we try herbal medicine.

 

There are a few hospitals near our camp but they don't accept us because we don't have money.

 

Rape

 

They only take the most serious cases, like the wounded or gunshots.

 

A DISPLACED LIFE

 

Displaced mother: Khatija

Fleeing father: Yusuf

Rape in camps: Faduma

 

 

My own child died of diarrhoea. In the last year though it has been a little better and fewer children have died from diarrhoea but it will get worse when the rains start.

 

There is a lot of rape. One woman in our camp was gang raped. Some men came in from outside, took her baby from her and gave the baby to the father, and then three men raped her.

 

I even heard of a 70-year-old woman who was bound and raped by a man with a knife when she was walking to the tailor.

 

It is terrible. We don't know of any treatment; we can't go anywhere for help.

 

After midnight

 

During the fighting, six months ago, there was an increase in the number of rapes.

 

But since the transitional federal government said no-one could walk around at night the number of cases has decreased.

 

 

 

This is because it is not so easy anymore to enter our camp after dark.

 

We don't go out because of security.

 

We don't even go to the toilet at night. We now take bedpans into our shelters because if you walk to the latrines at night you will surely be raped after midnight.

 

The main problem with the camp though is that it doesn't have gates and so anyone can just come in and out.

 

Just be kind

 

In our camp none of the husbands have divorced their wives after being raped because everyone knows it is not the woman's fault.

 

AFRICA HAVE YOUR SAY

Ethiopia should pull out its troops before it is too late, they are part of the problem not part of the solution

 

Mustafa, Leicester

 

 

Should Ethiopia pull out?

 

She will be ok, people don't look badly on her.

 

There are not those sorts of problems here because sometimes women are even raped in front of her father, husband, family and baby and they cannot stop it.

 

The biggest problem is that she doesn't wake up the next day. She just lies down and doesn't wake up.

 

We live in a small area - roughly a space of four metres by four metres and in this space there are three to four families.

 

When a woman is raped everyone is aware because you can hear the woman screaming.

 

So we go to her afterwards but there is little we can do. We don't have guns, you can just be kind.

[-Lily-]

Originally posted by cynical lady:

Lily- the value of woman in Africa or conflict areas is close to nothing at times it’s the police/military that inflect such pain let alone be concern about it…. woman have always been paying the price of war/conflict but what I don’t understand is what turns a man into cold blooded savage when confronted with war/poverty?

Well, this is where the weakness of man made laws come in. If the only thing that is stopping you from being a savage is the possibility of jail sentence, there is not much hope for you.

[Malika]

CL,

If you ask your self, how is a woman perceived and viewed in most societies? Your answer would be mostly as property. Women are the core of societies in regard to their vitality and resourcefulness in production of food and children. Thus it is a perceived right of the conquering male to include sexual subjugation [rape, warfare equals male dominance]. Aren’t war all about male dominance over other males let it be about land, resources etc

 

Lily, when war erupts, the rules we lived by before the fight, no longer apply. The purpose of war is to end lives and devastate properties. The possession of women become an act of conquer; killing and destruction become common place. The dark side of humanity I tell ya!

[-Lily-]

Dahia, even in war there are rules and one must find humanity in inhuman situations.

[cynical lady]

Lily in war there are no rules… war is an occupation favoured by men in pursue of wealth/domination Consequence of such pursue is always felt by woman/children…. Yes Lily humanity might exist in such conditions but there very rear… people commit the most despicable acts that renders them no different than an animal.. take for eg General Butt Naked in Liberia soldier for the government and he killed more than 20,000 people and eat human hearts as ceremonial token, there is something about wars that brings out the barbaric gene in people, that’s something I cant understand how can human being commit gruesome acts against each other and why ist on top of there food chain its always woman/children…. The general above has now taken refuge in Jesus and says he has repented but can such a person be allowed to walk among us/breath the same air hell are they humans?

 

Ps qst- how many somali virsions of general butt naked/rapist etc live among us in the UK, USA etc??? what happend to the Somali prisoners?