BBC World News:

How did rape become a weapon of war?
By Laura Smith-Spark
BBC News

The UN has accused the Janjaweed militia in Sudan of using mass rape
Women's bodies have become part of the terrain of conflict, according to a new report by Amnesty International.

Rape and sexual abuse are not just a by-product of war but are used as a deliberate military strategy, it says.

The opportunistic rape and pillage of previous centuries has been replaced in modern conflict by rape used as an orchestrated combat tool.

And while Amnesty cites ongoing conflicts in Colombia, Iraq, Sudan, Chechnya, Nepal and Afghanistan, the use of rape as a weapon of war goes back much further.

Spoils of war?

From the systematic rape of women in Bosnia, to an estimated 200,000 women raped during the battle for Bangladeshi independence in 1971, to Japanese rapes during the 1937 occupation of Nanking - the past century offers too many examples.

So what motivates armed forces, whether state-backed troops or irregular militia, to attack civilian women and children?

Gita Sahgal, of Amnesty International, told the BBC News website it was a mistake to think such assaults were primarily about the age-old "spoils of war", or sexual gratification.

Rape is often used in ethnic conflicts as a way for attackers to perpetuate their social control and redraw ethnic boundaries, she said.

"Women are seen as the reproducers and carers of the community," she said.


Women were raped so they could give birth to a Serbian baby
Medecins Sans Frontieres report

"Therefore if one group wants to control another they often do it by impregnating women of the other community because they see it as a way of destroying the opposing community."

A report by Medecins Sans Frontieres says it first came across rape as a weapon in the 1990s.

"In Bosnia systematic rape was used as part of the strategy of ethnic cleansing," it said.

"Women were raped so they could give birth to a Serbian baby."

The same tactic was used in a "very strategic attack" by state-backed Pakistani troops during the fight for Bangladesh's independence in 1971, Ms Sahgal said.

Ex-"comfort women" in Korea hold a weekly rally demanding reparations

"They were saying 'we will make you breed Punjabi children'," she said, with the aim of weakening the integrity of the opposing ethnic group.

Amnesty this year accused the pro-government Janjaweed militias in Sudan's Darfur region of using mass rape in order to punish, humiliate and control the non-Arab groups to which they belong.

Such attacks cause women and children to flee their homes, lead to fragmentation of communities and bring the risk of infection with HIV/Aids.

Sexual violence is also used to destabilise communities and sow terror, Amnesty says in its Lives Blown Apart report.

In Colombia, rival groups rape, mutilate and kill women and girls in order to impose "punitive codes of conduct on entire towns and villages", so strengthening their control.

Act with impunity

The strategic use of rape in war is not a new phenomenon but only recently has it begun to be documented, chiefly in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Colombia and Sudan, said Ms Sahgal.

And even after conflicts are resolved, few countries seem willing to tackle what is often seen as a crime against individual women rather than a strategy of war.

In many nations the collapse of the rule of law leaves them unable to deal with allegations of rape, while in others women feel too exposed to stigma to accuse their attackers.

International courts have tackled some cases in Bosnia, where Muslim women were forced into sexual slavery in the town of Foca in the 1990s, and in Rwanda, but the vast majority of perpetrators act with impunity.


Women's lives and their bodies have been the unacknowledged casualties of war for too long
Amnesty's Lives Blown Apart report

Representatives of the 200,000 "comfort women" forcibly drafted into military sexual slavery by Japan from 1928 until the end of World War II are still fighting for restitution.

Far from colluding, women from Korea, China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia and East Timor were "severely coerced" into prostitution, says Ms Sahgal.

And whether a woman is raped at gunpoint or trafficked into sexual slavery by an occupying force, the sexual abuse will shape not just her own but her community's future for years to come.

"Survivors face emotional torment, psychological damage, physical injuries, disease, social ostracism and many other consequences that can devastate their lives," says Amnesty.

"Women's lives and their bodies have been the unacknowledged casualties of war for too long."
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Often overlooked casualty of war.

All rapists should be killed.

I'll see your statement, and raise it with an Ed statement:

"Kill your local rapist, but torture him first, then serve him to your enemy for dinner." --Indio 11/5/1993

I can't think of anything that disturbs me more than rape. I'm a very peaceful guy, but if I ever came across a man trying to rape a woman, I honestly don't think anyone could convince me not to beat the shit out of the guy. It just bothers me so much that someone would do something like that.

With all due respect, rape as a weapon of war is nothing new. It is only the general moral outrage that is new.

--PunkDavid

yeah, this comes as no surprise... during war people kill... so why would rape be any worse?

fuck, im trying to think where i read/seen this, but it was about prisoners/prison, and while criminals arent exactly fine upstanding moral citizens, the two worst things you can do to be in jail are rape and then being a peadophile (or harming child).

strange as it seems, prisoners view killing someone as something that happens, but if you rape a woman/child, then you are basically scum to them, hence why most pedophiles are in solitary confinement. not because they are headcases and deserve to be there, but they do things to get them there, so they dont have to worry about being killed as they sleep/shower.

this is why scott peterson cant sleep at night, he knows if he goes to jail, he's dead within 6 months

Since when is Scott Peterson a rapist or pedophile? Maybe I'm just not up to date with the case.

no... youre up to date... i dont get it either... the man has a way of raising irrelavant points.... welcome to RM... i think he likes to see his words in type, you know, kinda like those people that like to hear themselves talk all the time when they have absolutely nothing to say

sorry, youre a sox fan, you have to pointed directly to the obsevation

Sorry I'm not sure what that is supposed to mean, but anyways I think that inmate can distinguish between someone who molested a little child and someone who killed an UNBORN baby. Then again, if you've got some inside info on how inmates act because you've been to jail and know what is up, then I'm all ears.

watch any show about prison, theres a pecking order, you could kill curt schilling, mother teresa and the pope, and thats fine to them. kill curt shilling, mother teresa and the pope and their ages are like 5-9, and youre a dead man walking.

its weird that they can place morals on things like this, yet have no problem breaking what are the norm as far as morals go

edit*

unborn or born, i guess prisoners (rapists and murders) believe life begins at conception

did you just arrive at RM?... dont you know that peeps knows everything?!!!

somehow this is a thread on war and rape, and you find a way to tie in scott peterfucker... dont we get enough of him already on Extra, Insider, ET, and all those other stupidass show?

Interesting... I'd like to see a poll on how they feel about abortion. Maybe it would contradict their strict religious background.

Can we please knock off the personal stuff?

its really weird, im sure they could give two shits about abortion, thats legal, but do something i guess to take away a childs innocence, and you may as well hope you die before you start your sentence

and pearljamindouchebaggin, glad you realise the truth

two...

--PunkDavid

Well I've been to prison, and luckily I wasn't there long enough to find out their beliefs on abortion but I do know that prisoners who harm women and children are looked down upon, not necessarily just for rape. However, it is very difficult to get outside information, so unless it is a high-profile rape/murder, it is easy to hide your crime.

rape is different. and worse. i think WAR IS AWFUL, but when a soldier kills another soldier, what the hell, they both agreed to be there, they're equal. and it's awful that women and children get killed by bombs. they're inadvertent by-products of something that's already awful. but rape is men being the lowest they can be, worse than animals (cause, if a female animal doesn't allow, there's no intercourse; and animals don't think). it's a brutal, coward demonstration of power and hatred over a weaker adversary (either a child or a woman).

and Punk David is right (again ), women and children were historically part of the war booty, to serve as slaves and as a way of damaging the enemy's heritage. when a man rapes his enemy's woman he sows his seed in her. it's a territorial thing. like pissing on a lamppost. it's a man thing that i'll never understand (i don't think i ever have, not even in my past lives as a man).

Again, it's nice to see the UN is making accusations and pointing this out to us. It was also nice that they reminded us of Bosnia, where they also accused but did absolutely nothing. Great organization.

Isn't the purpose of Amnesty International to make us aware of these situations? Isn't the UN Security Council supposed to do something about it?