The Blackbird Whistling, Or Just After

Self-Immolation A Growing Trend in Afghan Women

In Afghanistan, a growing number of women, primarily aged 10-40, attempt to flee lives of hopelessness and despair by setting themselves on fire.

It is difficult to accurately estimate the number of Afghan women and girls who attempt to kill themselves with petrol and a match. Anywhere from one hundred to several hundred cases of self-immolation have been reported each year since 2002. A New York Times article reports that in 2004 the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission recorded 40 cases in six months in the city of Herat alone. These reported numbers are exceptionally low, however, because families often hide the incident or try to lie about the method of death.

Reported cases are almost entirely of those who survive, even briefly, and find themselves being treated in a local burn unit. Yet even these women often attempt to lie about their wounds, insisting the incident was accidental. The staff at the burn unit in Herat's Regional Medical Center have learned to discern the truth. Fuel-soaked clothing and little evidence of an attempt to stifle flames strongly point to self-infliction. Dr. Ghafar Bawar, a plastic surgeon who consults at the unit, explains

"When an accident happens, they try to stop it. In self-inflicted burns, a high percentage of the body surface area is affected. When it is more than 40 per cent of body surface area burnt . . . it's usually self-inflicted."

For many western readers, it's hard to understand what would drive these women, many of them teens, to commit such a desperate and agonizing act. It's important to recognize Afghanistan's deep-seated culture of female oppression and the utter lack of options perceived by most women.

Many Afghan women, especially in rural villages, live in a state of near slavery. They are kept uneducated and have little or no control over the most basic aspects of their lives.

Forced into marriage as a young teen, (the youngest reported case of self-immolation was a nine year old child), to a man possibly decades older, an Afghan girl must obey not only her new husband but any of his male or female relatives. She endures daily beatings and other, often sexual, abuses. She cannot read or write and has been prohibited from learning a valuable skill or trade. All she knows of the world is what she has been told, and what she is told cultivates hopelessness, humiliation, and the constant threat of violence. Even her own voice is useless to her. If she speaks out she earns only ridicule or further punishment.

Where can she turn? A few girls are lucky enough to learn of a shelter for abused women and child brides, though even fewer are able to escape. Illiterate and isolated, most women have no idea that any escape is possible. In their minds, they have nothing.

No courts, no police, no divorce, no justice, no escape.

When the Taliban were toppled and Hamid Karzai took power at the end of 2001, it seemed Afghan women would enjoy a life of more freedom and stability. Unfortunately, many women live under nearly the same oppression, humiliation, and violence that they suffered under the Taliban.

Let's take a closer look at the reality of life for most Afghan women, shaped drastically by recent Taliban rule and related gender beliefs which, for too many, still linger.

Life Under the Taliban

The Taliban ruled Afghanistan, through continued insurgency and civil war, from 1996 until nearly 2002.

Under Taliban rule, Afghan women were oppressed in literally every aspect of their lives. In what has been referred to as gender apartheid, women were placed under house arrest, denied the ability to work or gain an education, and required to shield themselves from all males except very close relatives. The windows of her home were painted black, lest an innocently passing male catch a forbidden glimpse, and she could not leave her home at all unless escorted by a close male relative and sheathed in full burqa. When outside the home, she was careful to both speak and step softly, lest her presence be seductively audible to strange males.

Any woman who had lost all male relatives in the years of ongoing conflict was literally trapped in her home.

Unable to seek medical treatment from doctors who, under Taliban rule, were necessarily all male, women frequently died of treatable ailments.

Anyone caught defying the new laws risked public beating and execution. Speaking too loudly or or inadvertently flashing an ankle or wrist earned a woman a public lashing. Women caught unattended outside their homes, assumed to be attempting to flee, were often stoned to death. Women in the presence of a non-related male were charged with adultery and hanged.

Today...

In 2002, when the Taliban lost control of Afghanistan's central government, the lives of many Afghan women brightened. For the most part, educated, urban women returned to work or school and as their country worked to rebuild itself, they strove to reclaim their lives.

Unfortunately, Afghan women in poor, rural areas, continue to live under the same oppression and abuse as before. While Taliban law is no longer in effect, many rural areas are governed by tribal law, which remains uninfluenced by the Afghan government. In many territories, warlords rule with impunity and throughout the nation societal norms give males full dominance over women, who are treated with violence and contempt on a daily basis.

Three women initially held positions in President Kazai's cabinet, however all have since been replaced by males, including the Minister of Women's Affairs. A 2006 article in the Christian Science Monitor explains

Women's inclusion in Afghanistan's government, which the international community has been using as an indicator of democratic progress, is actually regressing. The interim Supreme Court has consistently sided with conservatives [...] It has issued bans on women singing on television... and upheld the marriage of a 9-year-old girl, even though Afghan law sets marriageable age at 16.

Afghan women are repeatedly denied equal access to legal representation and due process. Nearly 80 percent of the women in prison have been convicted of zina, engaging in sexual activity outside marriage. But the majority of those convicted were simply trying to escape domestic abuse and seek refuge outside their oppressive households.

The reality of life for many rural Afghan women is one of utter helplessness. Once forced into marriage, an Afghan female loses the ability to determine what she does, or where she goes, in some cases ever. Daily beatings are common, as are psychological humiliation and degradation. Rape perpetrated by a husband is not considered abnormal, let alone a crime.

Afghanistan's groundbreaking 2004 presidential election was a passing irrelevance for most Afghan women.  According to a 2007 UNIFEM fact sheet,

• 87% of Afghans believed that a woman needed  a male relatives authorization to vote.
• 35% of women believed they would not have permission to vote.
• 18% of men admitted they would not allow they wives to vote.

 

Additionally,

• 70-80% of Afghan women  face forced marriages
• 57% of Afghan girls are married before the legal marriage age of sixteen.

Why Fire?

Although self-immolation seems to be one of the most abhorrent choices for suicide, it is, for many, the only choice. Although some find access to poisons, most have no way of going outside the home for any needed materials. Other available options, such as wrist cutting or hanging, are not fool-proof enough for their intentions. Fire, they believe, is absolute.

Medica Modiale, an organization dedicated to aiding women in war zones and areas of crisis, conducted the first report on self-immolation in Afghan women. They found:

Self-immolation as a method of committing suicide is so frequent because women feel they have no alternative. They can never leave the house and have no access to medicaments. However, there is flammable material in contrast in every kitchen.

Medica Modiale's  Nabila Wafiq told the Washington Post

"When we asked most people why they committed self-immolation, they said that when they take pills, they don't die, but when they commit self-immolation they believe they will die, 100 percent."

Additionally, women are drawn to fire by the opportunity for retribution it presents. An overwhelming atmosphere of shame and dishonor surround the families of those who choose to who self-immolate. This actually contributes to the death-rate of these suicide attempts, as most women die because they are not immediately taken to the hospital, or not taken at all.

The fact that it is difficult to lie about the method of death, often leaves abusive families with an intended stigma. Unfortunately, this motive backfires on a woman who survives. The shame of her act often means total isolation and neglect.

Wafiq also asserts that the trend is growing, in part, because of news reports of suicide by self-immolation, which fail to mention the tortured survivors of the act, or those who take agonizing days to finally die.

Journalist Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy, speaking to RAWA (The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan) about "Lifting the Veil", her documentary on  the experiences of Afghan women, explains

There are many ways to die – you can take poison or jump in a river. But I think that if those women had died in that way, it would have been easy for the men of the family to cover it up, saying she had a heart attack, or she fell down or something.

But if you pour kerosene on yourself and you light a match, you're making a statement. You're saying look at me, I am in pain, I am in misery, I am not going to die quietly, I am making a point.

In Their Words...

17-year old Fazela:

"My name is Fazela. On that particular day when I burned myself, my husband -- who is also my cousin -- had a fight with me," she recalls. "He beat me. And after I was beaten, I poured kerosene over myself. Then I lit myself on fire. Before this, I really wanted to leave this house. But he took my burqa and did not let me go outside of the house. Now I really regret that I burned myself."

-- Radio Free Europe RadioLiberty

16-year old survivor describes the moments leading up to her self-immolation

"When he did not have access to heroin and narcotics, he tortured me. After midnight he would hit me. That night he hit me and hit my head. Blood was coming from my nose. I asked him why he was doing it and he hit me even more."

-- BBC News 11/15/06

How You Can Help

Donate to the Afghan Women's Mission and you can specify how you want your dollars spent - general fund, education, awareness, etc... They also have pledge program, volunteer info, and more...

The Feminist Majority Foundation runs a campaign entitled Help Afghan Women. They make it quick and easy to petition the US government, spread the word to friends and colleagues, join an action team, and of course, donate.

RAWA has a range of specific donation needs - used digital cameras, school supplies, medical supplies. They also have all sorts of other ideas of how you can help - from translating articles to arranging photo exhibits. Of course you can always write awareness letters or just send some cash! Check it out.

Changing Hearts: New Op-Ed Urges Pro-Life Pro-Choice "Partnership"

RH Reality Check has an interesting article by Anna Clark  called "Changing Hearts, From Pro-Life to Pro-Choice."

She chronicles her tale from fervid anti-choice to passionate pro-choice. And no, her change of heart does not involve an abortion in her life.

What I love about this piece is that it humanizes the struggle itself. Clark dislikes the idea of two warring sides and laments that her ideas on reproductive rights would have changed much sooner had pro-choicers bother to talk to her about their beliefs rather than eying her up as the enemy.

It's difficult to not become enraged about the issue itself, but do we need to be constantly enraged at each other? Pro-choicers watch religious, political, and largely misogynistic rhetoric take away the right to our own bodies and futures (let alone our own personal and/or religious or spiritual beliefs.) Pro-lifers believe that sex-hungry women defile their bodies and wipe away their sin by conveniently aborting their innocent babies.

It's emotional. It's volatile. But is it, essentially, for the everyday women who find themselves on one side of the issue or the other, the truth? Are the assumptions made by each side about the other really what's going on in the hearts and minds of women?

I would argue that it isn't. That those at the polar extremes of the abortion issue speak the loudest and get the most news coverage. And then I wonder if, when someone tells me she's pro-life, it's only my own smallness that causes my knee-jerk dislike, even disrespect for her.

Clark writes:

Enemy caricatures mask the greatest strength of pro-choice philosophy: inclusiveness.

Pro-choice society, like democratic society, is predicated on space for those who disagree. When we play sides, we forget there are no enemies in the vision we pursue. Our inclusiveness of those who choose not to have abortions, and even those who judge abortion to be morally wrong, is our movement's power. When we approach anti-choicers as friends, not only do we act on the heart of our beliefs, but we create space for anti-choicers to become our allies.

I'm not sure how I feel about my ability to embrace the total inclusiveness thing, but women speaking openly and non-judgmentally to other women (and men) about this critical issue, can only be a good idea.

Students Active For Ending Rape - Donate Today

Students Active For Ending Rape (SAFER) is a national non-profit based in NY, and in the next 24 hours you have a unique opportunity to help them raise a good chunk of change. If they receive the most unique donors between now and tomorrow (Saturday 12/22) at 3pm, they'll win an extra $1,000 in Facebook's Causes Giving Challenge.

Are you reading this too late? Donate anyway and if SAFER amasses the most unique donors in 50 days, they could win $50,000!

The contest is being run by a Facebook charity group called Causes, which was  started by a couple of guys from Berkeley who founded Project Agape: "deploying a platform for large-scale political and social activism on the Internet."

You do have to register with Facebook if you don't already have an account, and the minimum donation is $10. The contest isn't about dollar amounts, just the number of donors. Still reluctant? Here's what SAFER is all about. keep in mind it's run almost entirely by college students.

SAFER is a national nonprofit organization devoted to training grassroots student activists to win improvements in the sexual assault policies at their colleges and universities. Colleges often fail to provide students with basic services to deal with epidemic levels of sexual violence on campus. Survivors of sexual assault are retraumatized with unresponsive and unfair policies that often recreate the oppressions that lead to sexual violence. SAFER seeks to provide student activists with the tools they need to challenge university complacence regarding sexual assault.

SAFER was founded not simply to combat the problem of sexual assault, but to help reorganize the fragmented progressive movement by training a new generation of grassroots organizers. While right-wing organizations have spent millions training and developing their young leaders, progressive organizers lack the skills to combat a growing wave of rightist social control. Young progressives are often overwhelmed by the number of social problems they face, and find themselves unable to commit to one winnable campaign to improve the conditions of their lives.

SAFER believes that by focusing on one deeply felt issue and allowing young organizers to "practice" their skills within the political microcosms of their university communities, we can not only create a less racist, violent and misogynistic environment on college campuses, but also develop effective and experienced direct action organizers who will take their skills into the larger political sphere when they leave college.

In addition to educational resources individually targeting students, faculty, and parents, SAFER has two main projects. The Stories Project encourages survivors to tell their stories, not only to break their devastating silences, but also to demonstrate the depth and pervasiveness of sexual violence on college campuses. The Policies Database Project documents sexual assault policies of campuses all over the country for eventual analysis and publication. They're looking to hire law students to speed the database along (if you know any), and for that and so much more, they need $$$!

"Anti-gay amendments are the Happy Meal toy of Republican politics." - A Meandering Post on Gay & Women's Rights

"Anti-gay amendments are the Happy Meal toy of Republican politics." So says Chris Kelly, who has a good piece in Huffington today about Florida introducing a new Marriage Protection Amendment on the 2008 ballot. Forgive the dripping sarcasm, he makes a good point.

So come on down! And while you're in there, marking the magic X that proves you're not a homo -- and that your life wasn't a squalid waste of everyone's time, because at least you got yerself hitched -- why not also vote for a Republican president?

Something for you.  Something for the GOP. It's a get-out-the-vote win/win.

The amendment is being pushed by John Stemberger head of Florida4Marriage, which according to Kelly is

a Republican front group, run by a personal injury lawyer, to lure gay-hating boobs into the voting booths next November.

Although the the Federal "Defense" of Marriage Act applies to Florida, this push for a change to the state constitution is a "just in case" measure to firm up wording that clever homosexuals may, at some point in the future, use to challenge the definition of marriage and ultimately subject children to the "vast, untested social experiment" that is same sex marriage.

They get much of their support material from "Focus on the Family" who, when not embroiled against the ignoble war on Christmas, is  propagating the gay-is-evil Christian world view with gems like these -

• No society needs homosexual coupling. In fact, too much of it would be harmful to society and that is why natural marriage and same-sex coupling cannot be considered socially equal.

• It is an affront to African-Americans to say having past generations being prevented from taking a drink from a public water fountain or being sprayed down by fire hoses in a public park was on par to laws preventing a man from marrying another man. The comparison is shameful.

• Supporters of the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) did not just dream up the need for such an amendment. We have been forced into this battle because a very small few want to constitutionally redefine marriage for all of us. Same-sex activists brought this fight to all of us. (Er..."very small few?")

A little more digging at family.org, and I discovered the predictably misogynistic take on heterosexual marriage. The best bits are "What I Didn't Know About Men - Seven Revelations". These include - men need respect, men are providers, men want more sex, and...

Men care about appearance.
What that means in practice: You don't need to be a size 3, but your man does need to see you making the effort to take care of yourself — and he will take on significant cost or inconvenience in order to support you.

There's plenty more, of course, including a the follow-up section "You Are Her Prince Charming", but you can check it out yourself, if you're so inclined.

Rape as a Weapon of War in the Congo [Part 3 - The Healing & What You Can Do to Help]

If you want an intimate glimpse into the lives of victimized women fighting to reclaim their lives in the Democratic Republic of Congo, start with Lumo - One Woman's Struggle to Heal in a Country Beset by War.

This documentary details the story of then 20 year-old Lumo Sinai who, like tens or hundreds of thousands of others, was violently gang-raped and left for dead by militants in the DRC.

The Goma Film Project gives the following synopsis:

Lumo is a feature-length documentary about a young Congolese woman on an uncertain path to recovery at a unique hospital for rape survivors.

The agonies of war torn Africa are deeply etched in the bodies of women. In eastern Congo, vying militias, armies and bandits use rape as a weapon of terror.

Recently engaged to a young man from her village, 20 year-old Lumo Sinai couldn’t wait to have children and start a family. But when she crossed paths with marauding soldiers who brutally attacked her, she was left with a fistula — a condition that has rendered her incontinent and threatens her ability to give birth in the future. Rejected by her fiancé and cast aside by her family, Lumo found her way to the one place that may save her: a hospital for rape survivors set on the border with Rwanda.

Buoyed by the love of the hospital staff, and a formidable team of wise women known to all as “the Mamas,” Lumo and her friends keep the hope of one day resuming their former lives, thanks to an operation that can restore them fully to health. A feisty young woman with a red comb perpetually jutting from her hair, Lumo faces the challenge of recovery with remarkable courage and sass. As she and her friends recover from surgery, they pass the days by gossiping and sharing their dreams of one day finding love.

But when it looks like her operation may have failed, Lumo’s faith is thrown entirely into question.

On this uncertain road to recovery, Lumo shows that the solidarity of women can bind the most irreparable of wounds.

American filmmakers Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt and Nelson Walker III take a unique approach that grants them the unlikely trust and acceptance of these brutalized women. They encourage the women to pick up a camera and participate in the filming (not unlike Ann Jones providing women with a means of self-expression and independence through photography in Cote d'Ivoire).

The filmmakers held nightly screening sessions, which both amazed and inspired the community of healing women. They also gave the women freedom to film whenever they chose and ensured that whenever a woman preferred not to be filmed, anyone with a camera desisted immediately and without question.

The film is shot in an observational style with no additional narration; the women themselves tell the story.

The culmination of these choices produces a striking result. The women pay little attention to the camera and the viewer is left with the astonishing "fly on the wall" privilege of looking into these women's lives: their horrific tales, their broken bodies, their fight to reclaim a piece of happiness, of purpose, their laughter, their jokes, their support, their jealousies, their triumphs, and their despair.

The film follows the women through their process of healing, both physically and psychologically, but it is careful not to paint a fairytale of recovery. When women heal from successful fistula surgeries, they leave the safety of the hospital and re-enter a climate rife with sexual violence and instability. Many times a woman's rapists will still have control of her village when she returns. It is not uncommon for a woman to heal and return  months later with further injuries.

Few hospitals exist to help these women, and those that do are underfunded, under supplied, and understaffed.

At the  Panzi hospital in Bukavu, Dr. Denis Mukwege is the only physician in a facility of 300 beds, most of which are filled with women waiting surgery to repair traumatic fistulas. Ironically, the hospital was founded as an operating room and maternity ward to serve the many women in southern Bukavu who have no assess to obstetric care. It was soon apparent, however, that the greater need was care for the growing number of victims of sexual violence.

Eve Ensler, founder of v-day.org,  wrote an extensive piece about her visit to DRC and Panzi, published in (of all places) Glamour Magazine. She begins the article with

I have just returned from hell. I am trying for the life of me to figure out how to communicate what I have seen and heard in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

According to Erika Beckman, project manager for PMU Interlife, in an email to Susannah at The Reverse Cowgirl

...we receive approx. 200 rape victims a month at the hospital. We have both in-patients (women with more severe wounds) who reside at the hospital, and out-patients (less severe wounds) that stay in our "transit homes" where they are taken care of in-between treatments at the hospital. All women that come here receive the treatment, operations and training for free. Their children they might have with them are also cared for, as well as accompanying relatives or neighbours.

Women stay here on average 30 days for treatment, many women need multiple operations to be rehabilitated, and many need to heal in between the operations too. During their stay here, the women are taught how to read and write, they are taught different handicrafts and how to be self-sustainable. They are also given legal counselling and guided by lawyers if they wish to press charges against their perpetrators. (Currently we have 14 cases pending, but sadly because of the weak judicial system in DR Congo, perpetrators are always let off the hook).

The best evidence of the importance we have on the raped women that we treat is that many have told me that they would not have survived if they did not come to Panzi. Many women are, as you can understand, suicidal after the rape, but here at Panzi, except for medical treatment, they are also given their value back by our excellent staff and fellow victims who support each other, sing together to relieve the pain, work together on handicrafts and laugh together. They are truly amazing at finding small things to be happy about in life and really encourage each other in this way. [Em.mine]

The Panzi hospital, in partnership with V-Day and Unicef, is raising funds for a City of Joy.

City of Joy will be a refuge for healed women, survivors of rape and torture who have been left without family and community.  City of Joy will offer a safe haven, providing educational and income-generating opportunities, and support women in becoming the next leaders of the DRC.

Donate through v-day here.

Lumo was filmed in the HEAL Africa Hospital in Goma. HEAL Africa (Health, Education, Community Action, and Leadership Development) started as a part of Doctors on Call to Service (DOCS) and is now run by Dr Jo Lusi and his wife Lyn. They work to train Congolese medical staff, counselors and activists on dealing with issues like gender-based violence, and HIV/AIDS.

As seen in the film, they send one of the "Mamas" into the countryside with a truck, rounding up women with traumatic fistulas and transporting them to the hospital. Although women often have had no idea that help was available, they remain terrified and many need to be persuaded to make the journey to the hospital.

To help the women re-integrate into communities that had ostracized them, HEAL Africa sends the women home bearing valuable gifts such as seeds and a gardening hoe, or a pair of ducks or a goat. The women also return with new self-sustainment skills that increase their value to the village. Many become literate during their stay at the hospital.

Donate to HEAL Africa here, and they'll tell you what each dollar amount will buy. For example, $20 buys a sewing kit for a woman who has learned tailoring skills, $50 pays for tuition and supplies to send one child to primary school for a year, $300 pays for a woman's fistula surgery.

Donate. Write a letter to Congolese officials (v-day has a template). Link to a blog or article. TALK to people. Tell them what's going on and what they can do.

Act now. It's so easy for most of us. Just act.

Gang Rape Isn't A Crime When...

Two disturbing items in the news today.

Contractors in Iraq Answer to No One (again)

ABC News is reporting on Jamie Leigh Jones, then 20, who was drugged and gang-raped by male Halliburton/KBR co-workers after working only four days in the Green Zone in Iraq. She had earlier requested to be moved from an almost all-barracks, and was told to "go to a spa." (To what? Relax?)

After the rape she was locked in a shipping container and warned that if she sought medical help, or revealed to anyone what had happened, she would lose her job.

Eventually, Jones was able to contact her father via cell phone and tell what happened, which

led to the State Department's involvement to dispatch members of the US Embassy in Baghdad to rescue her from the container.

The rape kit with evidence of the attack had "disappeared" since being shipped from Iraq to Washington through KBR security. Although later recovered, it was missing vital photos and doctors notes.
Two years later, not a single charge has been filed.

Read her story in her own words here.

ABC reports

The Justice Department has brought no criminal charges in the matter. In fact, ABC News could not confirm any federal agency was investigating the case.

Legal experts say Jones' alleged assailants will likely never face a judge and jury, due to an enormous loophole that has effectively left contractors in Iraq beyond the reach of United States law.

She has recently filed a civil suit against both Halliburton (who says it's improperly named) and KBR (who says no external investigation is necessary because they're handling it all themselves...) Her lawyer, Todd Kelley, feels that

KBR and Halliburton created a "boys will be boys" atmosphere at the company barracks which put her and other female employees at great risk.

"I think that men who are there believe that they live without laws," said Kelly. "The last thing she should have expected was for her own people to turn on her."

Three other female KBR employees have also come forward.

And...

The 10-Year Old Was Asking For It...

The Guardian reported today on the rape of a ten-year old aboriginal Australian girl

by nine males aged 14-26. Queensland District Court judge Sarah Bradley gave

suspended sentences and probation for the rapists, one of whom was a repeat sex offender, because - in her own words

"...probably agreed to have sex with all of you."

Probably? Agreed? A ten year old child. Nine men.

Wrap deep-seated racism in deep-seated sexism and I suppose you come up with thinking like this.

Australia has been attempting to address the "toxic levels" of sexual abuse against Aboriginal children following the Northern Territories' June 2007 report "Little Children Are Sacred", which details the "endemic proportions" of sexual abuse.

Widespread disgust and outrage has ensued since the late October sentencing, and Queensland's attorney-general, Kerry Shine, plans to appeal Bradley's decision.

Although the Prime-Minister is "appalled and disgusted", the town's Mayor oddly refused to comment on the case, saying only "I think this is all a lot of crap," and asserting that Aboriginals are really the ones with power. The men are said to have come from affluent families and Mayor Pootchamunka seemed afraid that further comment would imply his involvement in the light sentencing.

Rape as a Weapon of War in the Congo [Part 2 - The Savagery]

It is difficult to write this section because what I am about to describe is nearly unimaginable. But it is true and it is happening. Not to one woman. Not to ten, or one hundred, or one thousand. Not to ten thousand. It's happening to hundreds of thousands of women throughout the DRC. It is happening right now, this second, as you read this.

Women, children, babies. Raped, tortured, mutilated. Many times in front of their families. Many times for days on end. They are gang raped. They are raped with objects. Sticks. Rocks. Bayonets. Guns. They are raped with the sheer intent to destroy - body and soul. Women have had firearms discharged into their vaginas, blowing out their female anatomy, yet surviving. Girls under the age of three, women over eighty.

Women are left with wounds, infections, STDs, and traumatic fistulas. A traumatic fistula is a tear in the wall between the vagina and the bladder and/or the rectum, leaving the woman entirely incontinent.

Having been raped these women are frequently and "justifiably" abandoned by their husbands. Bearing the stench of incontinence, they are often ostracized by their villages. Unable to bear children, they lose their primary value as mother or wife.

Individual stories are nearly unbearable to hear. Congolese human rights activist Christine Schuler Deshchyver describes:

Babies. The last baby who was raped, it was in April. She was ten months old, so a very small baby. She was raped. The same gang raped the mother during two weeks. Then they came to Bukavu into my office. I wanted to bring the baby to the hospital, but she was so injured she died in my arms. Ten months—can you imagine that? And these people, these women in Congo, are just begging for life, not begging for money, just the right to live in their country safely.

The New York Times recently reported:

“I still have pain and feel chills,” said Kasindi Wabulasa, who was raped in February by five men. The men held an AK-47 rifle to her husband’s chest and made him watch, telling him that if he closed his eyes, they would shoot him. When they were finished, Ms. Wabulasa said, they shot him anyway.

***

Honorata Barinjibanwa, 18, [...] said she was kidnapped from a village [...] raided in April and kept as a sex slave until August. Most of that time she was tied to a tree, and she still has rope marks ringing her delicate neck. The men would untie her for a few hours each day to gang-rape her, she said. [...] She is also pregnant.

The HRW  report cites a Congolese doctor in eastern DRC specialising in the treatment of rape victims:

"In peacetime, the demands on Congolese women are limitless; but in this war, the most insane fantasies have found their expression. When seven soldiers rape a women or little girl, and thrust a knife or fire shots into her vagina, for them the woman is no longer a human being, she is an object. And since there are no longer any laws or rules, combatants pour out their anger and their madness on to women and little girls."

Particularly horrifying is the indiscriminate targeting of victims. Even in times of war, certain standards of decency usually remain - at least in a percentage of the terrorizing population. But no code of ethics seems to stand in the DRC. According to an Amnesty International report:

All levels of the population in eastern DRC are affected by sexual violence. Survivors hail from all ethnic groups, all social strata and all age groups,(24), from rural and urban districts. Those raped may be seriously ill, physically or mentally disabled or pregnant. In some areas, rapes of men and boys are common. In the words of one rapist[...], "It makes no difference".

John Holmes, head of the U.N. Emergency Relief Operations described DRC's intensity and frequency of rape as "the worst in the world," explaining

It's the scale and brutality of it. It's the use of it as a weapon of terror. It's the way it's done publicly, for maximum humiliation.

Prevalence of Rape

In the first six months of 2007 the UN reported reported 4,500 instances of rape in the Southern Kivu province alone. However, only the most extreme cases are reported. Keep in mind that a woman who admits to being raped bears the stigma of it for the rest of her life. She exposes herself and her children to abandonment by her husband. If she is unmarried, admitting lost virginity makes it nearly impossible to find a husband, which is essentially the only way to make a place for herself in Congolese society.

Rapes are reported when a woman requires life-saving medical care and must admit what has happened in order to get it. That is, if she has manages to discover that medical help is available and to safely traverse many miles to arrive at one of the few hospitals able to treat her condition.

Therefore, the actual number of rape cases is much higher than 4,500 in six months. Holmes estimates that "many -- perhaps most -- attacks go unreported." Most? So the actual figure may be ten times higher, though probably more. And remember, we're only talking about South Kivu - a province with a population of 245,000. If we add in the population of surrounding rural communities, it's still less populated than, say, the city of Boston or Tuscon. Using the reported number of cases only, that would lead to 9,000 (90,000) women brutally mutilated, beaten, and raped in a single year. That's 750 (7,500) women every month. 173 (1,730) every week. 25 (250) per day. In an area with the population of Boston.

Information from the Stephen Lewis Foundation gives even higher figures:

In October, 2006, UN Under Secretary-General for Peacekeeping, Jean-Marie Guehenno, reported that "In the eastern Congo, over 12,000 rapes of women and girls have been reported in the last six months."

But Jean-Marie Guenhenno knows that the number of rapes that go unreported as usually ten or twenty times higher than those that come to official attention, and vastly higher still during a war. [Em. mine]

Who is raping the women? Who isn't.

Although much focus is placed on the Interahamwe (Rwandan Hutus who perpetrated the 1994 genocide), virtually every militant group is a danger to women. Perpetrators also include the Congolese army and any of dozens of armed civilian factions. Even UN peace keepers have been cited as some of the worst offenders.  Activist Christine Schuler Deschryver explains:

All of them are raping women. It is a country sport. Any person in uniform is an enemy to women.

Next: Rape as a Weapon of War in the Congo [Part 3 -- The Healing]

"Like Rwanda, but Worse" - Rape as a Weapon of War in the Congo [PART ONE: History of the Conflict]

Women in the People's Democratic of Congo have been enduring barbaric sexual atrocities during the country's violent civil unrest for more than a decade. Yet the western world seems to hardly have noticed. This is the first in an ongoing series documenting the situation in a country where women and children are inhumanly brutalized, where even the most unimaginable forms of rape have become common weapons of war.

Many are questioning how this level of sexual violence grew to such dramatic proportions. Although atrocities and rape in wartime are common, U.N. leaders consider the intensity and prevalence of horrors in the Congo to be "the worst in the world."

It's interesting to note that, according to a recent NY Times article

Many Congolese aid workers denied that the problem was cultural and insisted that the widespread rapes were not the product of something ingrained in the way men treated women in Congolese society. “If that were the case, this would have showed up long ago,” said Wilhelmine Ntakebuka, who coordinates a sexual violence program in Bukavu.

Contrarily, an Amnesty International  report asserts that it is precisely women's lower societal status that allows for this type of targeting in wartime.

"When you lift the stone of sexual violence, you will find another stone of the treatment of women more generally, which is effectively slavery. Women do everything: they walk miles for food or water, they care for the children, they cook, they clean, they cultivate the land and they earn the family income… That is the female condition in the Congo. "

 -- Expatriate woman psychologist working in DRC, interviewed by AI

In the very least, Congolese law leaves nowhere for these women to turn as crimes of rape, torture, mutilation, kidnapping, and sexual slavery are committed with nearly 100% impunity.

A 2002 HRW report summarizes women's status in Congolese society.

Even before the war in Congo, women and girls were second class citizens. The law as well as social norms defined the role of women and girls as subordinate to men. Although women are often a major-if not the major-source of support for the family, the Congolese Family Code requires them to obey their husbands who are recognized as the head of the household.

Women and girls are also subordinate by custom and practice. A woman's status depends on being married and girls tend to marry at a young age. It is generally considered more important to educate boys than girls[...] Literacy statistics for Congo (also) show gender-specific discrimination.

Male household heads often settle violent crimes against women and girls outside the courts. Some have "resolved" rape cases by accepting a money payment from the perpetrator or his family or by arranging to have the perpetrator marry the victim. [...]

Women and girls who are raped suffer significant loss of social status[...] In cases of the death of women and girls by murder or negligence, the family of the victim sometimes agrees to accept the equivalent of a woman's bride price as compensation and does not pursue the case further.

Congolese views about women and the issue of sexual violence were clearly demonstrated in 2005 when UNICEF spearheaded the first march against sexual violence in the boarder city of Goma. Hundreds of brutalized women donned black head scarves and nervously took to the streets. In a PBS interview, American filmmaker Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt describes the event:

...the march ended up being more chaotic than we imagined because every one of the bystanders, male or female, heckled the women marching. Their position was, "Why are you doing this? This is stupid. What is sexual violence?" On an official level, there aren't any adequate laws against rape, and no one has been convicted of rape in 40 years, other than three or four people who were not soldiers.

Let's take a quick look at how the climate in the Congo escalated to create an atmosphere conducive to these horrors.

Rwandan Atrocities Bleed Across Boarders

The Democratic Republic of Congo has been torn by conflict almost since its origins. Although women have long suffered pervasive injustice in this climate, sexual violence crescendoed to horrific levels and epidemic proportions in the wake of civil violence that was instigated by the atrocities in neighboring Rwanda.

(If you need a refresher on the Rwandan genocide, go here, here, or here. Read this. Watch this.)

For three months in the spring and summer of 1994, a rush of Rwandan Tutsi refugees fled to Zaire to escape mass genocide at the hands of the Rwandan Hutus. Under government directive the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) slaughtered over 800,000 Tutsi men, women, and children before being overthrown by the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPP). By 1996, a large number of RPF members, (known also as Interahamwe)  fled the new government and  crossed the boarder as well. Human Rights Watch  summarizes:

The government responsible for the genocide then led more than a million Hutu into exile in Congo, then Zaire, where civilian refugees and the military together established themselves in camps along the border. Under the direction of the defeated political and military leaders, soldiers and militia reorganized and rearmed within the refugee population, preparing for new attacks on Rwanda.

In late 1996 the Rwandan government sent its troops into the Congo, asserting the need to impede preparations for attacks on Rwanda as well as any obligation to protect the Banyamulenge, Congolese of the Tutsi ethnic group, who were being threatened by local and national Congolese political authorities.

The Rwandan soldiers together with combatants of the Allied Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo...a hastily organized coalition of Congolese forces, attacked the camps and killed tens of thousands of Rwandans, many of them unarmed civilian refugees. Hundreds of thousands of refugees then returned to Rwanda, some of them voluntarily, some of them forced to do so by Rwandan government troops. Some two hundred thousand Rwandans fled westward through the forests.

Many of the civilians were massacred in the following months by RPA or AFDL troops but several thousand ex-FAR and militia members regrouped to resume fighting the Rwandan government forces in Congo and later in Rwanda.

During this time, the Zairian government was toppled by a rebellion and a man named Kabila came to power and reinstated the country's former name - the Democratic Republic of Congo. In the instability following the coup, Kabila began to lose favor and troops from neighboring Zimbabwe, Angola, Chad, and the Sudan quickly became involved in an effort to encourage stability.

As of 2004 nearly four million people perished in the conflict and a 2006 Economist article considers this period to be "the bloodiest since World War II."

In 2001 Kabila was assassinated and replaced in power by his son. Since then there have been two rounds of general elections, but little has been done to stabilize the country's rampant and savage violence. Varying factions fight each other and the government, and ethnic contentions conflate the violence.

Congolese citizens are left trying to survive amid a state of near constant destruction and uncertainty. Rebels take control of villages, or simply destroy them by killing the men, raping or kidnapping the women, and burning the village to the ground.

Over one million Congolese are displaced, especially in the eastern part of the country where the Interahamwe militant faction "Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda" is particularly active. Starvation and disease are rampant.

In this environment of political and economic struggle, racial hatred, and lawlessness, one across-the-board "enemy" stands above them all - women.

Next: Rape as a Weapon of War in the Congo [Part 2 - The Savagery]

 

Women in War Zones - Ann Jones Blogs "16 Days" from Cote d'Ivoire

Check out the fabulous writer/photographer/activist Ann Jones as she blogs for 16-Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence (Nov 25 - Dec 10). She's in the Cote d'Ivoire  with the International Rescue Committee in an effort to "give women in war zones the opportunity to speak, loudly and clearly."

The IRC hopes to encourage national reconciliation by working in three different areas, serving three different populations with different needs. But what all three sites have in common is strong programs in “Violences Basees sur le Genre”—Gender-Based Violence.

Why? The answer is painfully simple. In any war, women and children are the principal victims. Offer any humanitarian program to assist people violated, deprived, damaged, or displaced by war and you find yourself serving women and their children, all of whom, in one way or another, have been victims of the violence of war and of additional violence done to them as women.

She will blog once a day through December 10th. Check it out. And don't miss the post where she teaches the women how to use digital cameras.

Then I send the teams out to take photos. They huddle to consult with each other about the cameras. Is it this button, or that? How hard must I push?

The first team finds a subject. One woman holds the camera firmly, as I’ve taught them, and points it. All heads converge at the viewing screen. What next? A teammate reaches over the camera-holder’s shoulder to depress the shutter button. An icon appears on the screen to indicate whether the subject is in focus. “It’s green! It’s green!” say the team mates. “Push! Push!” The button-pusher’s finger comes down. “Click!” The women scream. They jump up and down. They throw their arms around each other while the camerawoman holds the tiny camera aloft for safekeeping.

Priceless.

*** Further Reading ***
CÔTE D'IVOIRE - Targeting women: The forgotten victims of the conflict

The IRC - How You Can Help

Ann Jones Bio

What's Wrong With This Picture? - AI's New FGM Campaign

Came across info on this on Feministing and Salon. A Swedish ad firm came up with a new campaign for Amnesty International against female genital mutilation.  I'm surprised by how many people consider this a great ad campaign. Yes, the images are beautiful and striking, but they are also completely ineffective.

I responded on a couple boards with the following:

Neither the images nor the text come close...

I'm really disappointed in this campaign. Neither the images not the text come close to conveying, or even suggesting, what really happens to these girls.

First of all, they deceptively convey only one part of one type of FGM. (The other part would have been cutting off a good chunk of "petals" before sewing.)

Consequently, the rose isn't DAMAGED at all! It's not MUTILATED. It's a lovely image of a rose that has been sewn in the middle. In fact, the rose is so unblemished it appears that the stitches could be removed and it would bounce back into its former perfection. The text doesn't describe what female genital mutilation really is and it doesn't suggest the physical, emotional, and psychological consequences of the act.

Given that the actuality of this horror is beyond what anyone unacquainted with it could or would imagine without being explicitly told, this is just too vague to be of any consequence. FGM is so unpleasant to contemplate and so removed from most of our everyday lives that the only way to get someone to fully experience the stomach-turning, chill-inducing discomfort of recognizing what it really is, is to be BLATANT.

And, I'm sorry but in the pink image the "clitoris" is healthy and thriving and absolutely untouched.

Too artistic. Too (thriving, unblemished) beautiful. Too vague.

What do you think?

...Coming up next "Female Genital Mutilation and Male Circumcision - Why They Don't Equate"