War rape

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Rape in the course of war dates back to antiquity, ancient enough to have been mentioned in the Bible. In the modern era, rape is considered to be a war crime when committed by soldiers in combat. This type of rape is known as 'war rape.' During war, rape is often used as means of psychological warfare in order to humiliate the enemy and undermine their morale. Rapes in war are often systematic and thorough, and military leaders may actually encourage their soldiers to rape civilians.

1 Rwanda war crime precedents
2 Eastern Congo
3 Darfur, Sudan
4 Abu Ghraib, Iraq
5 History of war rape
6 References
7 See also
8 Further reading

[edit] Rwanda war crime precedents

Rwanda

Further information: Rwandan Genocide and International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda

In 1998, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda established by the United Nations made landmark decisions that rape is a crime of genocide under international law. The trial of Jean-Paul Akayesu, the mayor of Taba Commune in Rwanda, established precedents that rape is a crime of genocide. The Trial Chamber held that "sexual assault formed an integral part of the process of destroying the Tutsi ethnic group and that the rape was systematic and had been perpetrated against Tutsi women only, manifesting the specific intent required for those acts to constitute genocide."^[1]

Judge Navanethem Pillay said in a statement after the verdict: “From time immemorial, rape has been regarded as spoils of war. Now it will be considered a war crime. We want to send out a strong message that rape is no longer a trophy of war.”^[2] An estimated 500,000 women were raped during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide.^[3]

Professor Paul Walters in his April 2005 statement of support of her honorary doctorate of law at Rhodes University wrote:^[2]

Under her presidency of the Rwanda Tribunal, that body rendered a judgment against the mayor of Taba Commune which found him guilty of genocide for the use of rape in “the destruction of the spirit, of the will to live, and of life itself.”

Here is the relevant section of the September, 1999 United Nations report:^[1]

"Report of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Genocide and Other Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of Rwanda and Rwandan Citizens Responsible for Genocide and Other Such Violations Committed in the Territory of Neighbouring States between 1 January and 31 December 1994":

The Prosecutor v. Jean Paul Akayesu (ICTR-96-4-T)

14. On 2 September 1998, Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, composed of Judges Laïty Kama, Presiding, Lennart Aspegren and Navanethem Pillay, found Jean Paul Akayesu guilty of 9 of the 15 counts proffered against him, including genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide and crimes against humanity (extermination, murder, torture, rape and other inhumane acts). Jean Paul Akayesu was found not guilty of the six remaining counts, including the count of complicity in genocide and the counts relating to violations of article 3 common to the Geneva Conventions and of Additional Protocol II thereto.

15. The Akayesu judgement includes the first interpretation and application by an international court of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

16. The Trial Chamber held that rape, which it defined as "a physical invasion of a sexual nature committed on a person under circumstances which are coercive", and sexual assault constitute acts of genocide insofar as they were committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a targeted group, as such. It found that sexual assault formed an integral part of the process of destroying the Tutsi ethnic group and that the rape was systematic and had been perpetrated against Tutsi women only, manifesting the specific intent required for those acts to constitute genocide.

17. On 2 October 1998, Jean Paul Akayesu was sentenced to life imprisonment for each of the nine counts, the sentences to run concurrently.

18. Both Jean Paul Akayesu and the Prosecutor have appealed against the judgement rendered by the Trial Chamber.

[edit] Eastern Congo

An October 2007 New York Times article^[4] reported on the large numbers of rapes occurring in the Eastern Congo near Rwanda. It reported:

Eastern Congo is going through another one of its convulsions of violence, and this time it seems that women are being systematically attacked on a scale never before seen here. According to the United Nations, 27,000 sexual assaults were reported in 2006 in South Kivu Province alone, and that may be just a fraction of the total number across the country.

The article also reported on the conclusions of Wilhelmine Ntakebuka, who coordinates a sexual violence program in Bukavu in South Kivu Province adjacent to Rwanda:

Instead, she said, the epidemic of rapes seems to have started in the mid-1990s. That coincides with the waves of Hutu militiamen who escaped into Congo’s forests after exterminating 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus during Rwanda’s genocide 13 years ago. Mr. Holmes said that while government troops might have raped thousands of women, the most vicious attacks had been carried out by Hutu militias.

Coordinates: 2°30′S 28°52′E / -2.5, 28.867
Bukavu
Bukavu Location in the Congo
Province	South Kivu

South Kivu Province:

[edit] Darfur, Sudan

Darfur region is shaded.

Darfur villages destroyed as of August 2, 2004

See also: War in Darfur

An October 19, 2004 UN News Centre article^[5] titled "UNICEF adviser says rape in Darfur, Sudan continues with impunity" reported:

Armed militias in Sudan’s strife-torn Darfur region are continuing to rape women and girls with impunity, an expert from the United Nations children’s agency said today on her return from a mission to the region. Pamela Shifman, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) adviser on violence and sexual exploitation, said she heard dozens of harrowing accounts of sexual assaults – including numerous reports of gang-rapes – when she visited internally displaced persons (IDPs) at one camp and another settlement in North Darfur last week. “Rape is used as a weapon to terrorize individual women and girls, and also to terrorize their families and to terrorize entire communities,” she said in an interview with the UN News Service. “No woman or girl is safe.”

In that article Pamela Shifman also reported:

Ms. Shifman said every woman or girl she spoke to had either endured sexual assault herself, or knew of someone who had been attacked, particularly when they left the relative safety of their IDP camp or settlement to find firewood.

[edit] Abu Ghraib, Iraq

See also: Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse

Besides all the other sexual abuse and humiliation that occurred at the Abu Ghraib prison while under U.S. control, the Taguba Report found a sodomy claim ("Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick") to be credible.^[6]

[edit] History of war rape

As many as 80,000 women were raped by the Japanese soldiers during the six weeks of the Nanking Massacre.^[7] The term "Comfort women" is a euphemism for the estimated 200,000 Korean and Chinese women who were forced into prostitution in Japanese military brothels during World War II.^[8] At the end of World War II, Red Army soldiers are estimated to have raped around 2,000,000 German women and girls.^[9]^[10] French Moroccan troops known as Goumiers, committed rapes and other war crimes after the Battle of Monte Cassino. (See Marocchinate.)^[11]

It has been alleged that an estimated 200,000 women were raped during the Bangladesh Liberation War by the Pakistani army^[12], though this has been disputed by many including the Indian academic Sarmila Bose. ^[13] At least 20,000 Bosnian Muslim women were raped by Serb forces during the Bosnian War.^[14] Wartime propaganda often alleges mistreatment of the civilian population by enemy forces and allegations of rape figure prominently in this, as a result it is often very difficult both practically and politically to an accurate view of what really happened.

Systematic rapes are often employed as a form of ethnic cleansing. During the Yugoslavian Civil War, it was reported that Serbian soldiers herded enemy women into camps, who were then raped on a daily basis until pregnancy occurred.^[15]^[16] There are numerous^[17] cases of rapes conducted on Jewish women and girls by German soldiers during Invasion of Poland^[17]. Rapes were also committed against Polish women and girls during mass executions made primarily by Selbstschutz, which were accompanied by Wehrmacht soldiers and on territory under administration of German military, the rapes were made before shooting female captives[3]. Thousands of Soviet female nurses, doctors and field medicians fell victim to brutal German rapes when captured during the war, and often they were murdered afterwards^[18]. Wehrmacht also ran brothels where some of the women were forced to work[4]. Ruth Seifert in War and Rape: Analytical Approaches writes, "In the Eastern territories the Wehrmacht used to brand the bodies of captured partisan women - and other women as well - with the words 'Whore for Hitler's troops' and to use them accordingly."

Norman Naimark writes in "The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949." that although the exact number of women and prepubescent girls who were raped by members of the Red Army in the months preceding and years following the capitulation will never be known, their numbers are likely in the hundreds of thousands, quite possibly as high as the 2,000,000 victims estimate made by Barbara Johr, in "Befreier und Befreite". Many of these victims were raped repeatedly. Naimark states that not only did each victim have to carry the trauma with her for the rest of her days, it inflicted a massive collective trauma on the East German nation. Naimark concludes "The social psychology of women and men in the soviet zone of occupation was marked by the crime of rape from the first days of occupation, through the founding of the GDR in the fall of 1949, until - one could argue - the present."^[19]

German women who became pregnant after being raped by Soviet soldiers in World War II were invariably denied abortion to further humiliate them as to carry an unwanted child. As a result, according to the book Berlin: The Downfall, 1945 by Antony Beevor, some 90% of Berlin women in 1945 had venereal diseases as results of consequential rapes and 3.7% of all children born in Germany 1945-1946 had Russian fathers. The history behind this particular rape of the German women by the Soviet troops was considered a taboo topic until 1992. (see also Red Army atrocities)

Additionally, in China during World War II, the Nanking Massacre occurred, where rape was used as a tool to humiliate the civilians under Japanese oppression. As many as 80,000 women were raped by the Japanese soldiers during the six weeks of the Nanking Massacre.^[20] Comfort women is a euphemism for up to 200,000 women, who were forced into prostitution in Japanese military brothels.^[21]

According to a review of "The GI War against Japan: American Soldiers in Asia and the Pacific during World War II",^[22] rape is seen as a method for soldiers to bond with each other, and also to enhance their aggressiveness, and it also "reflects a burning need to establish total dominance of the other"[the enemy]. As a consequence U.S. soldiers rape of Japanese women was "general practice". "The estimate of one Okinawan historian for the entire three-month period of the campaign exceeds 10,000. A figure that does not seem unlikely when one realizes that during the first 10 days of the occupation of Japan there were 1,336 reported cases of rape of Japanese women by American soldiers in Kanagawa prefecture alone".^[23] (see also Allied war crimes during World War II)

French Moroccan troops known as Goumiers, committed rapes and other war crimes after the Battle of Monte Cassino. (See Marocchinate.)^[24]