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by brekin » Fri May 20, 2011 11:27 pm
by Canadian_watcher » Sat May 21, 2011 5:48 am
This is the new face of war: Militias going on house-to-house rape campaigns; girls as young as five and women as old as 80 shot in the genitals, or mutilated with razor blades; soldiers targeting whole villages for violation.
And as the scale of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo reaches surreal proportions — more than 1,150 rapes a day, by one account — many warn that sexual terrorism is spiralling out of control as the nature of warfare changes from the clash of national armies to savage internal conflicts in which women and children have become prime targets. Now sex attacks — pouring melted rubber into women's vaginas, raping children in front of their parents — have become a core military strategy, not only in the Congo, but in conflicts around the world, from Sudan to Burma to Colombia.
That is the message three Nobel Peace Prize winners will be bringing when they touch down in Ottawa this weekend — the first time such a delegation has come to Canada. Members of a group called the Nobel Women's Initiative, they are in Canada to launch an international conference on the issue, followed by a meeting to which they have invited all three party leaders, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
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"We hope that this conference brings us one step closer to a global campaign" against sexual violence in conflict zones, she says, adding that she hopes Canada will step up as a leader, as it did in the landmine campaign.
"Every day, women around the world are being raped in war zones," says Liz Bernstein, director of the Nobel Women's Initiative, which was founded by all the women who now hold the peace prize to lend support to women's groups around the world. Rape is used to terrorize communities and to "tear the fabric of society apart," says Bernstein.
The laureates want to end the culture of impunity around sexual violence, they want better protection in place for women and children, more medical and legal services for survivors and improved systems to track incidents.
They define the issue broadly, to include regions still in turmoil even after the fighting is over, or where the rule of law has broken down, leaving women vulnerable — in Haiti after the earthquake, for example, or in refugee camps. The group also defines sexual violence broadly, to include any forced sexual activity, including trafficking, and notes that men and boys are also sometimes targeted.
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The three-day event, which brings together more than 120 policymakers, academics and activists. Although its headquarters are in Ottawa, this the first time the Nobel women's group has held a conference in Canada.
Despite worldwide condemnation of mass rapes in both Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the trend toward targeting women has continued, prompting Maj.-Gen. Patrick Cammaert, former UN division chief for the Eastern Congo, to remark that now "it is perhaps more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in an armed conflict."
It is a trend Aung San Suu Kyi has seen in her own country: In her video, she addresses for the first time, the use of rape as a weapon of terror.
"Rape is used in my country as a weapon against those who only want to live in peace, who only want to assert their basic human rights," says a sombre but steady-voiced Suu Kyi. "It is used as a weapon by armed forces to intimidate the ethnic nationalities and to divide our country."
It's a scourge many other nations face, she adds: "We want all wounds to be healed, not just in my country but in all other places where wounds have been deep."
Kenyan laureate Wangari Maathai has also seen the devastating effects of sexual violence: When Kenya was thrown into turmoil following the 2007-2008 elections, "sexual violence became the preferred weapon of choice against those who were perceived as enemies," she recalls.
Social taboos mean that sexual violence remains a silent, unspeakable act: "It is a crime that is not discussed. It is almost taken as something that has to happen," she says. To make matters worse, communities often shun the survivors, leaving them alone to face HIV, pregnancy, injuries and other consequences of sex attacks.
Despite a spate of UN resolutions, many nations ignore the problem. "There is a tendency to trivialize women's concerns," and perpetrators are often not punished, she says.
As many as 3,000 women were raped in postelection attacks, according to the Kenyan Federation of Women Lawyers.
"It was horrific, especially in a country where you also have HIV-AIDS," Maathai recalls. To this day, she adds, many of the survivors, thousands of them still in relief camps, remain in a state of shock: "Sometimes you meet people you know, and it's like they have never seen you before. . . . They are still in another world. You can see their pain."
Sexual violence in times of war or turmoil is not new: "Rape has been a part of war for as long as wars have been recorded," notes Valerie Oosterveld, a law professor at the University of Western Ontario and an expert on war crimes.
What has changed, she says, is the nature of war itself: "It used to be two armies fighting each other, facing off on a field," away from the civilian population. But since the 1970s, "most wars are now internal armed conflicts, not one country against another country's army."
In other words, the targets are now civilians, and "this has made rape a very useful form of war, unfortunately," says Oosterveld, a former Canadian government lawyer specializing in the International Criminal Court, as well as the postwar tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia.
"It has very powerful psychological impacts," such as humiliating the men in a community when they can't defend their women and children, she observes. As bearers of the next generation, women are powerful symbols not only of a family's honour, but also of the future of society as a whole: In defiling them, attackers tear the soul out of the community, researchers such as German sociologist Ruth Seifert have argued.
The Nobel group also points to other strategic uses of sexual violence: The military may use it to punish communities suspected of supporting rebels, as in Colombia and Burma. Rape is used as a form of torture, to extract information. Gang rapes are used to instil a bond among fighters.
Sexual terrorism can be used to drive villagers off resource-rich land, as in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Congo.
And of course, rape can be used as a form of genocide, to change the ethnic makeup of an area, as in Bosnia and Kosovo.
While there were instances of mass sex attacks before this transformation, such as the 1937 Rape of Nanking, the first incident to be internationally recognized as having a strategic military goal was a campaign targeting Muslim Bengali women during Bangladesh's 1971 war of independence, according the Oslo-based International Peace Research Institute (PRIO).
The practice quickly gained momentum, reaching an unprecedented scale of depravity in the 1990s as a tool for genocide, from the "rape camps" of the former Yugoslavia to the surreal savagery of Rwanda.
The numbers are staggering: As many as 50,000 women raped in Bosnia. From 250,000 to 500,000 in Rwanda. More than 60,000 in Sierra Leone.
In the Darfur conflict, 40 per cent of women interviewed by Physicians for Human Rights said they had been raped; the rate is estimated to be close to 100 per cent for women in relief camps.
Last week, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court announced an investigation into charges that Libyan forces were using sex-enhancement drugs to gang-rape female rebels, CNN reported.
But nowhere is the picture more shocking than in the DRC. Some hospitals have reported more than 350 cases a year of fistula, an injury from rape with sharp objects that tears the wall between the vagina and the rectum and leaves the victims incontinent, adding devastating health and social consequences to the trauma of rape.
The UN has estimated at least 200,000 women have been raped in eastern Congo since 1996, but under-reporting means this number may be 10 to 20 times higher — as high as 260,000 incidents in 2009 alone, a 2011 UNESCO report says.
Chillingly, prolonged exposure to sex attacks by armed groups may have created a "normalization of rape" in civilian society, warns a study published last year by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, a think-tank specializing in relief strategies. It notes a 1,733 per cent jump in civilian rapes from 2004 to 2008 in the DRC's South Kivu province.
Last week, a study was released that put the countrywide incidence of rape, including domestic violence, at more than 400,000 — in one year. Published in the American Journal of Public Health, the study found more than 1,150 women were raped every day — a rate of 48 per hour.
Michael VanRooyen, director of the Harvard agency, commented that "rape in the DRC has metastasized amid a climate of impunity, and has emerged as one of the great human crises of our time."
The world has not sat by, entirely indifferent: The UN has responded, at least on paper, strongly and with increasing urgency to the growing use of sexual violence.
In 2000, it passed the first Security Council resolution to address the impact of war on women.
As tragedies continued to unfold, the declarations came thick and fast — statements by the secretary general in 2004 and again in 2005; more Security Council resolutions in 2008, 2009 and 2010. Last year, the UN appointed a Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, and 24 countries, including Canada, have answered the UN's call for national action plans on the issue.
Peacekeeping forces have learned that even simple steps, such as patrolling when women are fetching water or firewood, are highly effective; some national police and peacekeepers undergo special training to learn how to address sexual violence.
Meanwhile, some perpetrators are being brought to justice: One acclaimed program sends "mobile justice courts" to remote areas of the DRC to try sexual-violence cases. The International Criminal Court (ICC) is pursuing cases that include sex-crimes allegations, and as of 2009, more than 50 charges had been laid under national laws in 13 European countries, according to Jayne Stoyles of the Canadian Centre for International Justice, an Ottawa-based charity that helps survivors of human-rights abuses seek justice.
Canada itself had a breakthrough in 2009, when Rwandan Desire Munyaneza was convicted of war crimes, including rape, for his part in the 1994 genocide; he was the first person to be charged under Canada's Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes Act.
But such progress seems pallid against the horrors playing out in places such as the DRC. The ICC has charged only 12 people with sexual-violence crimes so far, Oosterveld says. And the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has charged only 58 people with sex crimes; the tribunal for Rwanda, only 35, as of 2010, according to PRIO.
"The use of rape as a political tool is becoming all too common. . . . There need(s) to be voices on this issue that are compelling and that are listened to," says Lloyd Axworthy, who helped spearhead the creation of the ICC, and entrench the UN's policy on the protection of civilians, as Canada's foreign affairs minister in the 1990s.
More importantly, he adds, those voices "need to be backed up by some action so that the psychotic tyrants and crazies who are doing this kind of stuff don't think they can get away with it any more."
As the revolution in warfare unfolds, sexual violence can no longer be seen only as a human rights violation, the Nobel laureates say.
It is, they write, no less than "a threat to international peace and security," warning that efforts at reconciliation will fail unless the issue is tackled head-on, not just by rights groups, but by governments and the military as well.
"There needs to be more co-ordination around the world to ensure that we can build political will and momentum," says Jody Williams.
Beyond practical measures, such as better peacekeeping measures, the Nobel group wants more fundamental changes: measures to empower survivors; to change social attitudes and eliminate the stigma attached to sexual violence.
Ultimately, Aung San Suu Kyi says in her video message, "we have to start by changing the minds of men and women all over the world — men that they may not think of women as ready victims, and women also that they may not think of themselves as helpless victims. . . . We must make sure our women are empowered and that our men are educated."
http://www.globalnews.ca/world/Rape+terrorizes+communities+tears+fabric+society+apart/4819859/story.html
It's a sea-change that doesn't just mean more courtrooms and more peacekeepers, Suu Kyi suggests. You can take away the guns; you can sign treaties and make solemn declarations. But you won't have peace on the ground until it lives inside all those involved: "Violence" she says, "starts in the mind."
Read it on Global News: Rape in war terrorizes communities and tears 'the fabric of society apart'
by Canadian_watcher » Sat May 21, 2011 11:45 am
by compared2what? » Sat May 21, 2011 4:07 pm
brekin wrote:compared2what thanks for your apology, or uh, quasi-apology, marbled with creamy chocolaty unsolicited advice.
Anyways, I'll take whatever goodwill I can. I don't see us having a meeting of minds any time soon, but I think they can at least
nod to each other in the hallway as they pass.
by Joe Hillshoist » Sat May 21, 2011 7:53 pm
Canadian_watcher wrote:The Tyrrany of Mother's Milk
This article describes pressure put on women to be 'total mothers'
This is another way that science and culture try to control women's bodies.
by Canadian_watcher » Sun May 22, 2011 3:21 am
Joe Hillshoist wrote:Canadian_watcher wrote:The Tyrrany of Mother's Milk
This article describes pressure put on women to be 'total mothers'
This is another way that science and culture try to control women's bodies.
But it also does the opposite wrt to breat feeding, or used to. I remember hearing of a conference in Australia on motherhood, it was attended by all sorts of blokes from various scientific fields and even put out a discussion paper - "motherhood - too important to leave to women."
Ore words to that effect.
by Joe Hillshoist » Sun May 22, 2011 4:06 am
Canadian_watcher wrote:.. and particularly (I think) wrt to women's health. One minute you're demonized for using formula, the next for breastfeeding. Lose/lose.
by Canadian_watcher » Sun May 22, 2011 4:19 am
Joe Hillshoist wrote:Canadian_watcher wrote:.. and particularly (I think) wrt to women's health. One minute you're demonized for using formula, the next for breastfeeding. Lose/lose.
Yeah.
Science per se isn't like that. Its about how its used. That is the kind of institutional misogyny people think doesn't exist. Our culture is chock full of institutionalised bigotries.
by blanc » Sun May 22, 2011 4:35 am
by Canadian_watcher » Sun May 22, 2011 4:38 am
blanc wrote:an aside from the main topic - some pathogens can be passed through mother's milk. So, unbridled enthusiasm for one or the other method of feeding your babe is not merited.
by Canadian_watcher » Sun May 22, 2011 4:39 am
Meanwhile, if, unlike blamer redpeachmoon, you serenely abide in your cloister under a self-imposed news blackout, you may not have heard of the IMF rapist. No great loss. If you’ve heard of one IMF rapist, you’ve heard of’em all.
This particular IMF rapist is Dominique Strauss-Kahn, 62, pink-faced captain of industry and managing director of the International Monetary Fund. Dominique Strauss-Kahn went on a little spree in Manhattan last weekend and assaulted a hotel employee. According to the first link I clicked on Google, this is how it went down: Strauss-Kahn “emerged from the bathroom naked and dragged [the hotel employee] through the suite from room to room in a violent sex attack.” He then high-tailed it to JFK, licketty-split, but was yanked off his flight to Paris just before takeoff, brought back to “a police cell in Harlem,” and denied bail as a flight risk. [cite]
The woman Strauss-Kahn attacked is being referred to as a “maid” or “chambermaid.”
Maid is a creepy-ass word. No matter what, a maid is not a good thing to be. In days of yore the term was used to denote a mythical female who had so far escaped — but would soon be forced into — getting pronged by some entitled prick. Denoting females thusly was of vital importance back in yore; owing to a lot of macho-religious nonsense that equated women with sex, as-yet-unpronged ladies were worth more than pronged ones. Intact virtue could make or break your career.
Nowadays maid still refers most commonly to a member of the sex class, but with less emphasis on purity, and more emphasis on the flipside of the misogyny nickel — suitability for interaction with other people’s filth. It means “low-status servant who cleans up after high-status assholes.”
Some high-status assholes make themselves feel like magnanimous benefactors by calling their maids “housekeepers,” paying them “more” than the maids would make back in the Dominican Republic, and treating them “like” family. Oh please. The job is fucking cruddy. It’s so cruddy that dudes are never, ever maids. If maids were actually paid what the work is actually worth, dudes would get all the maid jobs.
Also, your maid already has a family, Your Highness.
Anyway, in the narrative of IMF rapist Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the victim’s status as a sub-human hotel cleaner is an important detail. Apparently this Strauss-Kahn shitsack is a celebrated rapscallion, rake, and ladies’ man. Boys will be boys! His nickname in the classy world of international finance is reportedly “the great seducer.” So it makes titillating how-the-mighty-have-fallen news copy to depict him, not as a suave Casanova jetsetting around with supermodel heiresses, but as a privileged fiend predating a powerless, lower-caste menial. In a world where it’s generally considered OK to use women according to their universally-acknowledged purpose (sex), it is sometimes permissible to use them, as long as patriarchal prurience is served, for other stuff, such as, in this case, leverage in toppling a poobah. As for the actual woman herself, nobody gives a rat’s ass about her. She is merely a symbol of a towering potentate’s descent into ignominy, frothily recounted by patriarchal media. Like the virginal maids of yore, hotel maids are also receptacles for male disdain.
Anyone who goes around calling himself “the great seducer” is undoubtedly a serial rapist, so naturally other women are beginning to turn up with accounts of Strauss-Kahn’s abuses. One of them, a young journalist who had previously publicly recounted her assault (with Strauss-Kahn’s name redacted), now describes his behavior during her attempted rape as that of a “rutting chimp.” Not surprisingly, the woman didn’t press charges at the time. She didn’t want her career to be permanently stained with “she’s the girl who accused Strauss-Kahn of rape.” Which is exactly how rapists get away with it: fear, humiliation, and shame are superb silencers.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn will undoubtedly get away with it, too. He has retained Michael Jackson’s lawyer.
Speaking of entitled white patriarchs who use domestic employees as toilets, California ex-governator Arnold Schwarzenegger has apparently fathered a child with “a longtime member of their household staff.” Wife Maria Shriver, an original member of the long-suffering-stand-by-your-political-man wives’ club back in aught-three while candidate Arnie was at the center of a groping scandal, has finally left the schmuck.
Internationally powerful, white, rich, successful, married to heiresses they famously cheat on at every opportunity — these dudes are patriarchy’s poster-boys. You don’t become a global financier or a steroid-poppin’ muscleman California grope-ulator by being an enlightened sweetheart of a guy who doesn’t rape the maid.
by blanc » Sun May 22, 2011 9:56 am
by Canadian_watcher » Sun May 22, 2011 12:13 pm
blanc wrote:The tone of the article didn't respect the innocent until proved guilty norm but
"The job is fucking cruddy. It’s so cruddy that dudes are never, ever maids. If maids were actually paid what the work is actually worth, dudes would get all the maid jobs."
In a world where it’s generally considered OK to use women according to their universally-acknowledged purpose (sex), it is sometimes permissible to use them, as long as patriarchal prurience is served, for other stuff, such as, in this case, leverage in toppling a poobah.
by Canadian_watcher » Mon May 23, 2011 3:20 am
Feminists' anger at chauvinism of Strauss-Kahn affair
By John Lichfield in Paris
Monday, 23 May 2011SHARE PRINTEMAILTEXT SIZE NORMALLARGEEXTRA LARGE
French feminist groups demonstrated yesterday against what they said is a "flood" of male chauvinist comments generated in France by the Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK) affair.
Three women's pressure groups held a protest vigil in Paris and published a 6,000 signature petition condemning the "unabashed sexism" of some politicians and commentators – especially on the Left – who sprang to the defence of the former IMF chief and Socialist presidential contender.
"We do not know what happened in New York on Saturday May 14, but we know what has been happening in France in the past week," the petition said. "We have been disgusted by a daily outpouring of misogynist comments by public figures."
The petition said that friends and allies of DSK had portrayed him as the victim of a judicial lynching or possible conspiracy, ignoring the alleged suffering of the 32-year-old chamber maid whom he is accused of attempting to rape in his Manhattan hotel suite. Their comments, the feminist groups said, reflected the "impunity" with which "uninhibited sexism" was often expressed in French public life.
The petition was drawn up by the groups "Osez le feminisme!" (dare to be feminist!), "La Barbe" (the beard) and Paroles de Femmes (women's words). It was signed by female celebrities including the TV presenters Christine Ockrent and Audrey Pulvar, the actress and comedian, Florence Foresti and the writer, Florence Montreynaud.
The pro-DSK comments which have infuriated women's groups have mostly been made by left-wing politicians and commentators who would normally position themselves as supporters of women's rights. Socialist former culture and education minister, Jack Lang, said that DSK should have been given immediate bail since "no one was dead".
The commentator and leftist-nationalist activist, Jean-François Kahn – a close friend of DSK – said the allegations amounted to no more than a "troussage de domestique" (literally, stripping or having casual, forced sex with a servant). Both men have since apologised for their remarks.
Another friend of DSK, the Socialist Euro MP Gilles Savary, suggested that the ex-IMF chief might have been the victim of a "cultural" gulf between France and the US. Mr Strauss-Kahn, he said, was a "libertine" who enjoyed the "pleasures of the flesh" but this was not tolerated in a "puritan America, impregnated with rigorous Protestantism".
Mr Savary has not yet apologised for calling an alleged attempted rape "pleasures of the flesh".
"This kind of language generates an intolerable confusion between sexual freedom and violence towards women," the feminist petition said. "They tend to minimise the gravity of rape and to create a kind of grey area where it becomes more or less acceptable, just some sort of error of judgement.
"A simple message is being sent to victims: 'Don't complain'."
Politicians in President Nicolas Sarkozy's centre-right UMP party have been delighted by the attack on left-wing politicians by feminist groups. They suggest that the Parti Socialiste will now find it hard to pose as a pro-women's rights party in the presidential election next year.
Environment minister, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, broke ranks yesterday and suggested that sexism was a problem not just in the Socialist party but a social problem in France as a whole. "A woman (alleging a sexual attack) always has to fight to be believed," she said. "Unthinking macho attitudes exist in all levels of society. Men are often not aware of it themselves."
Meanwhile, interior minister, Claude Guéant, said that France would be pressing the US to let DSK serve any jail time in France, if convicted
by seemslikeadream » Mon May 23, 2011 9:18 am
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