Rape: A Way of Life

Rape is tool of power used by men over a woman. During wartime, rape is used as a tool by militia, by state governments, to control groups of people. For years, feminists and civil-rights activists have been talking about the women of Darfur, Iraq, Afghanistan, Burma, etc., being continually raped and nothing happens. So, when I read CNN’s headline, I couldn’t help but ask myslef if this was a slow news day for them. The attention to rape victims of war just does not get the ink/attention it deserves from news outlets.

Sudan’s Darfur crisis has exploded on many fronts — violence, hunger, displacement and looting — but United Nations peacekeepers say the biggest issue now affecting the region is the systematic rape of women and children.

[...]

Relief workers say they are powerless to stop the attacks and they say if they do speak out they fear the Sudanese government will tell them to leave the country.

Humanitarian group Refugees International in a report last year said rape was “an integral part of the pattern of violence that the government of Sudan is inflicting upon the targeted ethnic groups in Darfur.”

Some relief workers say almost 100 percent of women living in aid camps have been raped or become victims of gender-based violence, with many teenagers forced by militiamen to have sex multiple times while running regular errands such as collecting firewood.

Here’s the response from an aid commissioner (and I use the word “aid” only because the article does).

“There is no rape in Darfur,” says Mohammad Hassan Awad, a Humanitarian Aid Commissioner for West Darfur, who accuses foreign aid workers of persuading people in refugee camps to make false claims.

Wow, such final, and ignorant words. There is no rape in Darfur? I guess if one doesn’t want to address the issue, one should ignore the cries of hundreds of thousands of women in Darfur who will never get justice for the abuses and violations committed against them.

The UN Security Council has done nothing, partially because the US continues to drag it’s feet on the issue of rape during wartime. As I noted last year, the US wanted to classify rape for state and political purposes from other rapes. It doesn’t work that way — the reason for rape remains the same — power and control.

But, rape as a way of life is a very disturbing thought. Going out to get firewood, and expect to be raped one, two, or more times, is unbelievably intolerable, and needs to stop now.