Rape as a Weapon of War and a Tool of Political Repression

[donsu]

http://www.peacewomen.org/resources/Human_Rights/HRWrape.html


Widely committed and seldom denounced, rape and sexual assault of women in situations of conflict have been viewed more as the spoils of war than as illegitimate acts that violate humanitarian law. As a consequence, women, whether combatants or civilians, have been targeted for rape while their attackers go without punishment. Not until the international outcry rose in response to reports of mass rape in the former Yugoslavia did the international community confront rape as a war crime and begin to take steps to punish those responsible for such abuse. Rape, nonetheless, has long been mischaracterized and dismissed by military and political leaders—those in a position to stop it—as a private crime, a sexual act, the ignoble act of the occasional soldier; worse still, it has been accepted precisely because it is so commonplace.

Human Rights Watch investigations in the former Yugoslavia, Peru, Kashmir, and Somalia reveal that rape and sexual assault of women are an integral part of conflicts, whether international or internal in scope. 1We found that rape of women civilians has been deployed as a tactical weapon to terrorize civilian communities or to achieve "ethnic cleansing," a tool in enforcing hostile occupations, a means of conquering or seeking revenge against the enemy, and a means of payment for mercenary soldiers. Despite rape's prevalence in war, according to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, " remains the least condemned war crime; throughout history, the rape of hundreds of thousands of women and children in all regions of the world has been a bitter reality." 2

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In the former Yugoslavia, non-Serbian women report being taunted by their rapists that they will be forced to carry and give birth to Serbian babies.

Combatants and other state agents rape to subjugate and inflict shame upon their victims, and, by extension, their victims' families and communities. Rape, wherever it occurs, is considered a profound offense against individual and community honor. Soldiers or police can succeed in translating the attack upon individual women into an assault upon their communities because of the emphasis placed in every culture in the world on women's sexual purity. It is the premium placed upon protection and control of women's purity that renders them perfect targets for abuse. In other words, women are raped precisely because the violation of their "protected" status has the effect of shaming them and their communities.

The choice of particular women as targets of rape is almost inevitably determined by their identities, for example, as citizens of a particular country, adherents to a certain faith, or members of an ethnic group, a race or a class. Thus, in Somalia, rapists target women from rival clans, and in the former Yugoslavia, Bosnian Muslim women are raped by Serbian men.
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the race of women, used and abused by men

but, but, they say they love us

[NMDemDist2]

1. since the beginning of time n/t

[Solly Mack]

2. The name of the below painting - "Rape as a Tactic of War"

"Rape as a Tactic of War"

[donsu]

3. thank you

nt

[Solly Mack]

4. No - Thank you, donsu

People need to be aware - to their very core - that this happens