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David Adams
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Posted: Nov. 13 2013,06:40 |
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Here is an excerpt from my book, The History of the Culture of War, concerning this question. Note that in addition to the forms of violence listed in the UN report, we must also consider the structural violence against women which ensures that work by women is either underpaid or not paid at all.
Violence against women is pervasive in all societies, and much, although not all, can be attributed to the culture of war. The UN Secretary General's Report on Violence against Women (2006) distinguishes the following kinds of violence against women:
1. Violence against women within the family
(a) Intimate partner violence
(b) Harmful traditional practices
2. Violence against women in the community
(a) Femicide: the gender-based murder of a woman
(b) Sexual violence by non-partners
© Sexual harassment and violence in the workplace, educational institutions and in sport
(d) Trafficking in women
3. Violence against women perpetrated or condoned by the State
(a) Custodial violence against women
(b) Forced sterilization
4. Violence against women in armed conflict
Although violence against women in armed conflict is the last point on the list, an argument can be made that rape and other violence against women has been fundamental to the culture of war over the course of history. This is still true today, although, as the UN report states, it is difficult to document :
"Although rape in war has been widespread for centuries, it has only recently been recognized as a significant human rights issue. Providing reliable data on the extent of sexual violence in war and humanitarian crises is particularly challenging precisely because of the chaotic circumstances and constantly shifting populations as well as safety considerations. Moreover, many women are reluctant to disclose rape, even in order to access support or obtain justice, either for fear of additional reprisals or because of the stigma associated with sexual violence."
When the facts are told about rape in war, they are overwhelming. Here is an excerpt Rape: Weapon of Terror by Sharon Frederick and the AWARE Committee on Rape (2001):
"World War II documents, the best recorded evidence of wartime rape, reveal assaults numbering at least several hundred thousand, perhaps as many as two million. Thousands in the villages of Russia and Poland, as the Germans invaded early in the war; thousands more when the Soviets got the upper hand and took revenge on the bodies of German women.
In the final two weeks of the war, an estimated 100,000 German women were raped in Berlin, by victorious Russian and other Allied troops. In Asia, figures are more exact: at least 20,000 in the Chinese wartime capital of Nanking when the Japanese invaded China; at least 80,000 - perhaps over 100,000 - Korean, Indonesian, Filipino and Chinese women repeatedly raped during their months as sex slaves of the Japanese soldiers."
"In the decades that followed World War II, the international community paid little attention to, and therefore did little to document, rape during armed conflict though we know a significant number of assaults occurred in areas such as the Congo, Peru, El Salvador, Cambodia and Vietnam … When Bengal (officially East Pakistan) declared itself the independent state of Bangladesh, West Pakistani troops quickly moved in to quell the rebellion, and to terrorize the population of 75 million by carrying out widespread rape and murder…"
"During the last decade, rape as a weapon of terror has been documented by news media and international aid organizations in countries including Afghanistan, Kuwait, Algeria, Indonesia, Somalia, Haiti, Kashmir, and Sierra Leone. In the most notorious incidents, more than 20,000 women and girls were raped between 1992 and 1994 as part of the so-called "ethnic cleansing" in the Balkans. An estimated 200,000 to 400,000 women were raped in Rwanda during the genocidal 1994 war that killed between 500,000 and one million people."
In her ground-breaking book about rape, Against Our Will, Susan Brownmiller (1975) argued that rape is an inevitable result of the violence and male domination of the culture of war:
"It has been argued that when killing is viewed as not only permissible but heroic behavior sanctioned by one's government or cause, the distinction between taking a human life and other forms of impermissible violence gets lost, and rape becomes an unfortunate but inevitable by-product of the necessary game called war…"
"War provides men with the perfect psychologic backdrop to give vent to their contempt for women. The very maleness of the military - the brute power of weaponry exclusive to their hands, the spiritual bonding of men at arms, the manly discipline of orders given and orders obeyed, the simple logic of the hierarchical command - confirms what they long suspect, the women are peripheral, irrelevant to the world that counts, passive spectators to the action in the center ring."
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