The public testimony of the nun is proof
that even today rape is used as a weapon of war, around the world.
Tremendous
courage...
On Friday, October 24, a nun from Orissa did something incredibly
brave. In full view of television cameras, she went public. For months,
no one knew her name or what she looked like. Yet, everyone knew that
in the ghastly sectarian violence that has gripped Orissa, one of the
foulest acts was the gang rape of this nun. We also knew that the local
police failed to follow up the case, despite her having filed an FIR in
her traumatised state. We now know that the police tried to dissuade
her from filing the FIR. Also, despite the medical report having
confirmed the rape, nothing was done.
Now there is some movement, but only as a consequence of concerted
pressure from media and civil society. The nun has said she does not
trust that there will be justice if the same police that includes men
who did not hesitate to warmly greet the men who had attacked and raped
her, are entrusted the task of investigating the crime.
We have to salute the courage of this woman. Few if any women are
prepared to speak out after they are raped. Hundreds never report rape.
Yet, Bilkis Bano from Gujarat did. And as a result, the men who raped
her were convicted. But then Bhanwari Devi in Rajasthan did. But the
men who raped her got away. So going public comes with risk of never
getting justice, and living forever with the shame.
Not a random incident
Yet, it is important to realise that this is not just the story of one
woman, a nun, who was raped. It is a reminder that rape continues to be
used as a weapon of war. This woman was raped because the men waging
war against the Christians in Orissa wanted to teach them a lesson they
would not forget. So apart from burning homes, beating up people,
including a priest, and burning churches, they decided that the rape of
a woman who had committed herself to serve the church was the most
effective way to make their point. They believed that this would
silence their “enemy” forever.
This weapon of war has been wielded for centuries. And women,
regardless of race, class or creed, have been its principal victims.
For the majority, there has been no justice, no closure to the wound on
their bodies and their souls that can sometimes never heal.
Ten days before this press conference in Delhi, another public event
took place thousands of miles away — in the Democratic Republic of
Congo on Africa’s west coast. Here is a country that has been at war
with itself for years. Government forces are fighting many different
rebel groups. Every day you hear stories of thousands being displaced
as they flee the fighting. Peace seems nowhere in sight despite 17,000
UN peacekeeping forces being stationed there.
The U.N. acknowledges that women in the Congo are experiencing more
sexual violence than in any other country in the world. According to a
recent survey, one out of every four adults in eastern Congo had
witnessed sexual violence and one in six had actually experienced it.
Twelve per cent of those surveyed said they had been sexually violated
more than once.
Even in such a horrific theatre of war, women are finding the courage
to go public, to speak about being raped in the hope that this will put
pressure on the government to act against the rapists. Like the nun,
these women have little faith that they will get justice. Yet they are
willing to try, as there is no other option.
Here are the words of one of these women who spoke at the meeting (as
reported in The New York Times, October 18, 2008): “There was no
dinner. It was me for dinner because they kicked me roughly to the
ground, and they ripped of all my clothes, and between the two of them,
they held my feet. One took my left foot, one took my right, and the
same with my arms, and between the two of them they proceeded to rape
me. Then all five of them raped me.”
Worse than murder
You feel sick when you read this, just as many of us did when we read
the full statement of the nun from Orissa. What kind of men are these?
How do they get away with such crimes? Why is sexual violence of this
kind less important than dozens of other crimes that our law-enforcers
seem to have the energy and time to pursue?
The war in erstwhile Yugoslavia at the end of the 1990s was another
that exemplified the use of rape as a weapon of war. Hundreds of
Croatian women were brutalized by Serbian soldiers. Some of these women
found the courage to speak out, once the war ended.
Dubravka Ugresic, an author from the region who has lived in exile in
Amsterdam, writes in her 1998 book The Culture of Lies: “The war in
Yugoslavia is a masculine war. In the war, women are post-boxes used to
send messages to those other men, the enemy. And enemies who were their
brothers until a short time, at that.”
And then she quotes one of her colleagues, a writer, telling her: “Rape
in war is quite a normal thing, it’s part of the male psychology, it’s
irrational. I hope you won’t get me wrong, but it’s a kind of a
negative compliment to a woman, an ugly sexual blunder…”
“An ugly sexual blunder?” I don’t think the nun from Orissa, or the
women from the Congo, would see the violent assault on their very being
as “a blunder”. These acts are not random. They are not driven by the
emotion of the moment. They are part of an entrenched mindset that
considers the “enemy” as less than human, particularly women who belong
to that “enemy”. Killing or raping them is not a “blunder”. It is
considered an act of “valour” in what they believe is a righteous war.
http://www.hindu.com/mag/2008/11/02/stories/2008110250060300.htm
Copyright
© 2008, The Hindu.
