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News :: Civil & Human Rights : Crime & Police : Gender and Sexuality : Government Secrecy : International Relations : Protest Activity |
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Rape a Deliberate War Strategy; Violence 'Must Stop' Amnesty Report Says |
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by Lynda Hurst
(No verified email address) |
08 Dec 2004
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Urges Nations to Prohibit Such Acts by Their Militaries |
Sexual brutality against women and girls must no longer be seen as a tragic but inevitable outcome of war, says a harrowing report released today by Amnesty International.
Arguing that rapes, torture and killings don't occur "naturally," but are a deliberate strategy of combat, the report demands an end to impunity for the perpetrators — whether they are conventional soldiers, members of armed groups, or peacekeepers.
"This has to stop; we've had enough," said Hilary Fisher, director of Amnesty's worldwide Stop Violence Against Women campaign. "In recent years, the assumption that justice is an unrealistic goal in conflict situations has been challenged. Prosecutions are the key."
Ad-hoc international tribunals have successfully prosecuted armed groups in Yugoslavia and Rwanda on the basis that rape is a war crime.
The International Criminal Court, which hears its first case (against the Democratic Republic of Congo) next year, will be crucial in spreading that message globally, says Fisher.
The court will recognize a broad spectrum of sexual-violence crimes — including rape, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy and enforced sterilization — as crimes against humanity or as war crimes. But the court will step in only when national governments are unable or unwilling to prosecute.
Amnesty is therefore asking individual nations to publicly denounce gender-based violence, to instruct their militaries and security forces on the prohibition, and then enforce it.
Governments are called on to end impunity against prosecution for soldiers, in combat or in peacekeeping, who commit crimes of sexual violence. And it recommends they be subject to civilian, not military, jurisdiction.
The report, Lives Blown Away is not "intended as a catalogue of horrors," says the London-based human-rights organization, "but as a call to action."
It is both.
Amnesty says that during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, 250,000 to 500,000 women were raped, one-third of them gang-raped. After the conflict ended, the victims were often ostracized by family and friends; 80 per cent of survivors were found to be "severely traumatized." The world was horrified, but a decade later, it says, nothing has changed.
Women and girls are still the unacknowledged casualties of the world's conflicts, currently raging in 35 countries from Iraq and Chechnya to Colombia and Sudan. This, despite various United Nations declarations, treaties and promises that underscore the gravity of violence against women caught in these conflicts.
Amnesty field workers report that in the year-long crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan, thousands of women have been systematically raped or mutilated by pro-government militiamen known as "Janjaweed," or "men on horseback."
Women, girls still the unacknowledged casualties of the world's conflicts In many cases, women have been publicly assaulted, in front of their husbands or wider community. Pregnant women have not been spared; those who resist have been beaten, stabbed or killed.
"Girls as young as eight have been abducted and forced to stay with the Janjaweed in military camps," says the report.
"Several testimonies collected contain clear cases of sexual slavery. Some record women's and girls' legs and arms being deliberately broken to prevent them from escaping."
Those who succeed in gaining access to U.N. camps are often met with the risk of further abuse, sometimes by fellow refugees, sometimes by camp workers or peacekeepers.
Patterns of sexual violence don't "just happen" in the rage and fog of war, the report says: "They are ordered, condoned or tolerated as a result of political calculations. Furthermore, they are committed by individuals who know they will not be punished."
Armed groups should not be beyond the law's reach, any more than conventional militaries, Fisher says.
They always get help from other countries, therefore the international community must start to put pressure on those that supply it.
"Somewhere along the line, we have to say `No. This can be stopped, it doesn't have to happen.'"
The report documents how, earlier this year, a group of women put an end to the military atrocities being committed in the Imphal region of India.
After a woman was arrested, mutilated and killed by security forces on suspicion of belonging to an armed group, the group stripped naked and publicly dared the soldiers to rape them. Word spread and mass protests erupted all over the region.
The action led the central Indian government to end the categorization of the region as a "disturbed area," and to stop the use of military "special powers" there.
Ordinary people, including Canadians, can make a difference, says Fisher.
They can work to ensure their own government prohibits discrimination against women and actively encourage it to demand the same internationally.
"Amnesty has been here 40 years and we've seen change happen. You can't just say, `This is terrible,' and then turn the page."
2004 © Copyright Toronto Star
http://www.thestar.com/ |
See also:
http://www.amnestyusa.org/news/document.do?id=80256DD400782B8480256F5D004674D4
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