Another war, waged on women’s bodies…
Source: in-cyprus.com
In this photograph from Human Rights Watch—the international NGO that investigates and documents human rights abuses worldwide—we see 18-year-old Hania (not her real name), a Sudanese girl snatched from her home in Fayu, central Sudan, by paramilitaries from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). She was held at a military base as a sex slave, raped countless times over three consecutive months, before managing to escape.
She is one of thousands of women and girls, victims of systematic sexual abuse by RSF fighters who, for the past two years, have been battling to seize power from Sudan’s government army—a relentless civil war the United Nations has called one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world today.
As Amnesty International denounces in a recent report, Sudan’s paramilitary forces have recently escalated their crimes against women and children, deploying gang rape, murder and the mass displacement of millions as deliberate instruments of war. This surge in violence and atrocities follows the recent defection of RSF military commander Abu Kayka to Sudan’s national army.
As Hala al-Karib, a Sudanese activist against sexual violence in war, put it, “The RSF launched a revenge campaign in areas under Abu Kayka’s control, looting, killing civilians, and raping women and young girls”.
As Equality Commissioner Josie Christodoulou observed two years ago at an academic conference in Nicosia: “Historically, wars are waged by men, against men, in pursuit of power and dominance.” These wars, of course, include Turkey’s 1974 invasion of Cyprus and the rapes of Greek Cypriot women—a crime organised and orchestrated by the Turkish military.
Let me remind you of just one case: the occupied village of Voni, which in the first months after the invasion was turned into a detention camp for Greek Cypriot prisoners from surrounding villages—a site of appalling crimes by the Turkish army, including the mass rape of women and girls.
Natassa Frederickou, president of Frederick University and vice-president of the ZOE Against War Violence foundation, speaking at the same conference, said that “rape is a crime that thrives on silence and denial of its existence—a weapon wielded in battles and wars fought on women’s bodies”.
The original article: belongs to in-cyprus.com .
