It is quite horrible, but true...
The pain of war often is thought to scar only males yet, the underlying truth is that women are constantly victims of the violence of war. Around the world, women are being used as tools by militaries to torture and terrorize different peoples. By organizing and planning attacks against women, rape has taken on the role of a lethal and brutal weapon in the chaos of war.
Rape has been used by military forces in many different cases and is a global problem. In Indonesia, rape was used to oppose East Timor’s bid for independence in 1999. In Vietnam, women were subject to violence from US soldiers and in Kosovo women were viciously attacked by Serbian troops who beat and raped them severely. The Sudanese government supports the militia group Janjawid, who have been exterminating women in Darfur, and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, there are multiple groups of militia men and renegade soldiers who have been using rape to a devastating degree. These situations, which are only a few among many, show the degree of devastation rape brings to women and the communities they attempt to live in.
The women in these countries are targeted and forced to endure unspeakable violence. Women are often abducted at gunpoint and then taken to a location where they are tortured and raped, usually multiple times. Th r se Mwandeko is one survivor among the tens of thousands of women in the Congo who was brutally raped and tortured. Th r se was gang-raped by Rwandan soldiers, leaving her vagina mutilated and oozing blood for two years. She luckily was able to receive help from a hospital to reconstruct her vagina, but for many this option does not exist.
The attacks against women may vary in how they are committed, but the end result is always the same. In some cases militia men use sticks and bayonets to rape women. Other times, a woman will be gang-raped by five or six men, or perhaps right in front of their families. Often, after being raped, women will be beaten and tortured, sometimes having a bullet shot into their vaginas. For women who are sold into sexual slavery, rape is often just the beginning. The ages of the victims range from seventy-five to as young as three years old. If they happen to survive the ordeal, they are left with mutilated bodies and crushed spirits. Though each woman has a different story to tell, there are definite parallels between the tragic incidents.
Rape as a weapon of war, no matter how it is executed, has the same drastic effects on the women and their communities. The victims of this weapon often are shunned from their families. In cultures where virginity is treasured, a woman who is raped is a disgrace to her family. A report from NPR news said, “One health worker in Bunia estimates that three out of every four women who reveal that they’ve been sexually assaulted are thrown out of their homes”. Husbands often turn their wives away once they return battered.With nowhere to turn, survivors sometimes retreat into the jungles and do the best they can to survive.
It is hard to imagine the mental and emotional turmoil these women feel. They are taken from the safety of their homes, beaten to a bloody pulp and treated as disposable objects. No amount of screaming, no amount of praying, no amount of resistance, can save these women from the militiamen’s intent. And they may or may not live through the ordeal. If they do live and return home, instead of being comforted and assured it was not their fault, they are pushed into shame and abandonment. Shami Alubu is one such woman who was turned away by her husband after returning home raped and beaten. She said “It was like he thought I wanted to go with the Mai Mai,” she was abducted by Mai Mai militants. Being destroyed physically and mentally by militiamen, only to face more mental abuse from their family, causes some women turn to suicide as relief from their constant pain.
The rape of one woman can tear a family, even a whole community apart. A daughter, a wife, a mother, a sister - her relationship does not matter, she has become an embarrassment to their family and are not welcome back. In some cases however, a woman is allowed to return home. It is no easy existence for her though. There are emotional and physical pains that are often not dealt with. This constant strain on families eventually breaks community bonds.
These communities often crumble under these vicious conditions forced upon them due to war. In addition to relationships being broken on multiple levels, the communities suffer economically. Many women are reluctant to work in the fields because it is there that most abductions occur. On this social problem, Ms. Sara Dupoyte with Doctors Without Borders, remarked that in the Congo, “They [women] are raped by going to work, and so you have a lot of women who are scared to go to work. They remain in their house without making any food, so that’s a big problem.” The women who do return after a rape are too physically and mentally damaged to help in the fields. Communities are held in constant terror, never sure when the next abduction will occur.
Rape against women has proven to be a successful weapon to terrorize communities. This weapon gives militiamen the ability to “demoralize their prey, further asserting their power over the foreign ‘other’”. Being a weapon of war, the rapes that occur are systematic and administered. The men, who once prided themselves on being the protectors of the women in the communities, are shoved aside and silenced. The frustration and helplessness felt by the men at times results in their lashing out violently, causing more chaos in the community. Women in a community are made into disposable objects, or “sacrificial victims” who are used to send a message to the men. As a result of these organized abductions, communities live in constant fear. In weakening a community, militiamen are able to establish power, by means of rape.
The rape of women breaks bonds among communities who oppose the militiamen, while quite the opposite is happening among the attackers. Rape, though a weapon, is being used to bring the militiamen closer together. At times, the men will be ordered to rape former neighbors and friends, which shatters personal past ties, and commits the soldiers to their comrades. A solidarity is built between the militiamen which teaches them whom the ‘enemy’ is and where their loyalty should lie. To glorify the action, the rapists are rewarded for participating in the act or punished for not complying with the rape. With these bonds formed, rape as a weapon of war achieves a sense of “ethnic cleansing”.
The brutal weapon, above all, is being used to commit genocide among peoples. In the Congo, as well as in Sudan, tens of thousands of women have been victims to this horrible crime. More often than not, rape ends in death. Sometimes the militiamen will rape a woman until she dies, but if she happens to live, the wounds she acquires will eventually lead to death. A social worker, Louise Nzigire, who presently works in the Congo with victims, believes the savage violence was created to “exterminate the population”.
Militiamen do not necessarily need to kill all their victims right after they rape them to obtain their goal of “ethnic cleansing”. Intentionally impregnating their victims leads to the elimination of those that oppose the militiamen. In patriarchal societies, the child’s social identity is determined by the biological father. Although many women do seek abortions, or practice infancy exposure [abandoning children in wilderness to die], the damage is still felt by the community and can ultimately destroy it. In regards to the effect of mass rape of a people, reporter Claudia Card wrote, “Rape can undermine national, political, and cultural solidarity, changing the next generation’s identity, confusing the loyalties of all victimized survivor”. Ultimately, rape can be used to destroy a people’s identity, another form of genocide. To further the process of stamping out people for the militiamen’s goal of “ethnic cleansing,” they have also been ensuring the wide spread of AIDS.
In areas where AIDS is rampant, a woman will be gang raped to ensure the passage of the HIV virus. In the Congo, an estimated thirty percent of the women raped have become infected with the HIV virus. It is believed that around sixty percent of the militiamen are infected, thus often, to ensure the spread, they will perform large gang rapes. In March of 2005, there were 198 cases reported in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Of those cases, 47 percent were of women who were raped by five or more men. With there being no cure for AIDS, and little medical support to slow down the HIV virus, the militiamen are ensuring a widespread epidemic to hit the people they are obliterating.
How did rape become such a deadly weapon, with women being the primary target? To answer this question one must look at the meaning of rape on a global level. Rape sends a cross cultural message of dominance in patriarchal societies. A man taking away a woman’s control over her own body is an effort to prove his dominance, not only over her, but of the men around her. In patriarchal societies, males are thought to be the strong protectors of their female kin. Violence and aggression are accepted from males, while the opposite is true for females. As a result, women are helpless when they are attacked, and become the militiamen’s disposable object to establish dominance over the opposing males.
Females in patriarchal societies are set up to be the target of hostile males. Women are portrayed to be “symbols of virtue and ethnic identity...” in patriarchal societies. Women are thought of as the “breeders...men’s property...symbol of men’s honor". The militiamen want to destroy the very thing women symbolize, thus women the target of their violence and aggression. Since violence is not acceptable from women, they are not trained or outfitted with proper equipment to protect themselves from the militiamen when they are attacked. With the combination of women’s symbolism and the utterly helplessness to protect themselves, women become an even more likely target.
In response to the mass violence aimed at women, there is little being done to stop this horrendous crime. In many cases, the rapes of women go unreported. If a rape actually is reported, nothing is done about it due to the law being inadequate. Forty-nine women from Bosnia openly admit to being raped in August of 1992, yet no action was taken by the United Nations High Commission of Refugees (Enloe, 135). In Sudan, the government has denied all reports and refuses to take action to prosecute the rapists or protect the women, and in the eastern area of the Congo, fewer than a dozen prosecutions have been made. Often, women admit they do not even try to prosecute their rapist because they are afraid they will be attacked again. In explaining this further, Emiliane Tuma Sibazuri, who is the leader at a women’s group to help rape survivors, said “They think, ‘if I give them my name to try to get justice, when they come back, I will be attacked, or my family’”. Among national armies, as well as local militia, no senior officer has ever been held accountable for the violence forced upon women by his staff. In addition to this lack of legal assistance, foreign aid is comparably inadequate.
Foreign has proved to be useless in the efforts to help the women who are victims to rape being used as a weapon. The United Nations has made little effort in response to extreme cases in Sudan and the Congo. Author Lisa Alvy, speculates this could be due to China’s veto power in the UN and having oil interests in Sudan. In the Congo, the UN has stationed 12,000 troops to maintain order, but this is clearly an insufficient number in an area that is the size of Western Europe. In fact, foreign aid has done more harm to the situation. There have been a number of reports of women being raped by those who are sent to protect them. U.N. investigators found that if not rape, the ‘peacekeepers’ were paying an average of two dollars for sexual favors (Nolen, 3). It has been reported that peacekeepers in Bunia coax young girls into having sex with them with sweets and pocket change.
The lack of medical help for these woman is an absolute outrage. In the eastern area of the Congo, the hospitals still standing are completely bare. Dr. Jean-Yves Mukamba works at a hospital located in the city of Kibombo. There he lacks the supplies to properly treat the women who seek help. At the Panzi Hospital, Dr. Denis Mukwege is one of two doctors in the eastern Congo who can perform vaginal reconstruction. The doctors in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have not received any money from the government, who insists they can not afford it. Doctors have insufficient medical supplies and are in desperate need of financial help so they may treat the victims. Many women die because of the lack of medical support. If they do not die, they try to live with the agonizing pain caused by their torn and mutilated vaginas.
So what can be done in light of this? Claudia Card suggests a final solution which would theoretically solve the problem of rape being used as a weapon of war. Card suggests what society needs to do is change the message of rape, “communicate that rape is unnatural and that its reward is not power..” (Card, 6) by performing what she calls her “fantasy” penalty. Card’s idea is to not only castrate the convicted rapists, but to construct a vagina in its place (assuming the rapist is male). By penalizing with what Card has labeled, “compulsory transsexual surgery,” she hopes to rid the idea of rape symbolizing dominance. Removing the male’s penis would destroy the primary tool and symbol of male dominance. Changing a rapist’s gender, Card believes, would reduce the idea of rape symbolizing power over women. Yet idea could not come into effect with the structure of the world’s political system today, which is why Card calls it her “fantasy” solution. Card notes that until there are more women in charge of political systems as well as military systems, her idea is far from plausible.
For there to be an end to rape being used as a weapon, society does need to change the cross cultural idea of raping symbolizing dominance. This is a complicated matter however and can not be easily achieved. Until world leaders take the problem more seriously, nothing will change. The U.N. and the U.S. both need to send more financial aid to help those women who fell victim to this horrendous violence. Sending soldiers could be problematic [as was shown with the peacekeepers] and could increase the violence aimed at women. Therefore, financial help would be most beneficial tactic at the moment.
By increasing financial aid, women could receive desperately needed medical help, as well as learn how to protect themselves. By supporting those who fund the medical centers, like the Swedish Pentecostal Mission, who funds the Panzi Hospital, more women would be able to receive medications and surgery to end their physical suffering. Also with financial aid, more women centers could be created to help women deal with the mental stress felt. At these centers it would be beneficial to offer self-defense courses, and teach women how to deal with the militiamen who threaten them. Offering women the resources to defend themselves is one small step towards the ultimate goal of changing the patriarchal structure and protecting women world wide.