Rape and Sexual Violence

Question 1

Long history of sexual violence as a war crime?

SHANKER

Answer 1

• 1471, Peter von Hagenbach convicted for the subduance of Breisach, Austria
• American Civil War, rape a capital crime in the Union Army from 1863

Question 2

How did the Hague convention 1909 protect against sexual violence? When was it used

SHANKER

Answer 2

Article 46 of the Hague Conventions bound subscribers to protect ‘family honour and rights’

• Invoked by the Tokyo tribunal for the pandemic rape of Nanking, China

Question 3

What did Article 47 of the Geneva Conventions, 1949, say?

SHANKER

Answer 3

• ‘women shall be protected against any attack on their honour, in particular, against rape, enforced prostitution, or any form of indecent assault’.

Question 4

Sexual violence against men?

SHANKER

Answer 4

• Dusko Tadic, convicted of making Omarska inmate bite off another inmate’s testicle
• Celebici case: prosecution pursued ‘cruel treatment’ charges, but judge said that rape charges would have been accepted.
• Ante Furundzija, a Bosnian Croat, commanded a colleage to rape a detainee, and was convicted of rape-as-torture. First case where UN refered to ‘victim’, not ‘male/female’

Question 5

Case study: the trial of Jean Paul Akayesu

SHANKER

Answer 5

• ‘the most groundbreaking decision on gender-related crimes’
• rape considered to be a crime against humanity and a tool of the Rwandan Genocice
• Also convicted of inhumane acts for forced nudity
• found rape was ‘systematic and was perpetrated against all Tutsi women and solely against them.’
• ‘rape and sexual violence constitute genocide in the same way as any other act’ if ‘done with intent to destroy the protected group in whole or part’

Question 6

How can rape be prosecuted?

SHANKER

Answer 6

• Article 147 of the 4th Geneva Convention
• Common Article III (c) of the Geneva Convention: treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria….(no) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment;
• Violation of the laws and customs of war

Question 7

The statute for the establishment of a permanent International Criminal Court, July 17th 1998

SHANKER

Answer 7

• grants jurisdiction to prosecute rape, enforced prostitution, sexual slavery, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization

Question 8

How broadly did the Rwanda and Yugoslavia tribunals define sexual violence?

SHANKER

Answer 8

‘forced marriage, forced abortion, forced nudity, sexual mutilation, sexual humiliation’ - all included, so broad definition

Question 9

Case Study: Foca, Bosnia

RODRIGUE

Answer 9

First sexual slavery prosecution in any international criminal proceeding

• June 1996, ICTY issues indictment against 8 Bosnian Serbs for enslavement and rape of Muslim women in Foca, eastern Bosnia.
• Girls tortured and raped over several months
• At least 72 held in school, sports house, make shift brother

Question 10

How far can we extrapolate general terms from case studies of sexual enslavement in Bosnia?

RODRIGUE

Answer 10

‘victims statements indicate overwhelmingly that what happened to this particular girl in Foca was anything but unique. Multiple witnesses, interviewed seperately, described “rape camps” throughout Bosnian Serb-controlled territory, as well as a far smaller number of camps run by Croatian and Bosnian government forces.

Question 11

Precursors to Bosnian ‘rape camps’ ?

RODRIGUE

Answer 11

• Japanese ‘comfort women’ in brothels

- Netherlands tribunal convicted japanese of ‘enforced prostitution’ of 35 Dutch women.

Question 12

In what circumstances does sexual slavery constitute a crime against humanity?

RODRIGUE

Answer 12

can be considered enslavement - a crime against humanity - if part of a ‘widespread and systematic attack against a civilian population’

So: comfort women held for easy sexual access by troops, but in Bosnia, a targeted campaign of sexual violence to ‘terrorise and demonise the enemy’

Question 13

on the legal basis of slavery prosecutions

RODRIGUE

Answer 13

• ‘The legal basis for prosecuting those responsible for rape, enslavement, enforced prosecution and sexual slavery has long existed, even if prosecutions have not always been robust’

Question 14

What is systematic rape?

STIGLMAYER

Answer 14

no specific crime under international law, but, in reality, the phrase ‘systematic rape’ describes crimes committed against women in Bosnia-Herzgovina

to prove rape as a crime against humanity, must prove not that the rape was widespread/systematic, but that the attack was, and that rape was a means of attack. Systematic may establish intent, which may establish GENOCIDE

Question 15

Why are women raped?

STIGLMAYER

Answer 15

• ‘Women in conflict zones are frequently raped to humiliate and degrade as part of a pogrom
• to terrorize
• to drive away the unwanted ethnic “other”
• to demoralise men associated with raped women

Question 16

How can rape constitute genocide

STIGLMAYER

Answer 16

International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda:

• rape and sexual violence constitute genocide in the same way as any other act’ if ‘done with intent to destroy the protected group in whole or part’
• Rape “was a step in the process of the destruction of the Tutsi group - destruction of the spirit, of the will to live, and of life itself.’

–> Akayesu convicted Sep 2nd 1998

Question 17

SHARLACK’s thesis

Answer 17

Rape certainly may cause serious physical and/or mental injury to the survivor, and also may destroy the morale of her family and ethnic community.

However, this Convention does not explicitly state that sexual violence is a crime of genocide.

The Convention should be expanded to include mass rape, regardless of whether the victims are raped on the basis of racial/ethnic, national, or religious identity.

Question 18

Why does SHARLACK suggest that rape should be added to the convention on genocide?

Answer 18

The Genocide Convention should be expanded to include mass rape, regardless of whether the victims are raped on the basis of racial/ethnic, national, or religious identity.

INTENT TO DESTROY SHOUD, ON MY ANALYSIS, MERIT THE SAME STATUS under international law as the intent to destroy people on the basis of ethnicity, nation, and religion.

Question 19

Sharlack on the stigma of sexual violence

Answer 19

rape as genocide appears to occur to ethnic groups that strongly stigmatize rape survivors rather than rapists. In such communities, women in their roles as mothers of the nation and as transmitters of culture symbolize the honor of the ethnic group. When a woman’s honor is tarnished through rape, the ethnic group is also dishonored.

Post-rape trauma is compounded by “the second rape” of becoming a pariah

Question 20

What are some of the traumatic consequences for rape survivors?

UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, Radhika Coomaraswamy

Answer 20

UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, Radhika Coomaraswamy

trauma; sexual apathy or promiscuity; substance abuse; depression; psychosomatic ailments; anger; loss of sense of womanhood; and confusion about one’s identity.

Question 21

Genocide against the female sex?

SHARLACK

Answer 21

encompass social groups might permit international criminal courts to deem mass rape to be genocide, intended to harm or destroy the female sex in whole or in part, regardless of whether the sexual violence had an ethnically or racially based motivation.

Question 22

How are the effects of genocide gender specific?

Answer 22

Girls and women are far more likely than are men to be the targets of sexual violence used as a component of genocide, but it is rare that analysts perceive rape to be a component of genocide.

Question 23

Catherine McKinnon on rape as a tool of Serbian Ethnic Cleansing

Answer 23

It is also rape unto death, rape as massacre, rape to kill and to make the victims wish they were dead. It is rape as an instrument of forced exile, rape to make you leave your home and never want to go back. It is rape to be seen and heard and watched and told to others: rape as spectacle. It is rape to drive a wedge through a community, to shatter a society, to destroy a people. It is rape as genocide.

Question 24

Siobhan Fisher on rape vs forced impregnation

Answer 24

Siobhan Fisher, writing of the Serbs’ rape-until-pregnant campaign against Muslim and ethnically Croatian females in Bosnia–Herzegovina, argues that forced impregnation, not rape per se, constitutes genocide.

victims cannot carry the babies of men of their own ethnic group while their wombs are so “occupied.” - preventing births

Question 25

Sharlach on gendered discrimination in the UNGC

SHARLACH

Answer 25

Genocide is the attempt to destroy a people, and at present women are not included under the rubric of people unless attempts are made to destroy men at the same time as women.

Question 26

Genocide and rape of bengalis in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh)

Answer 26

During the 1971 nine-month war between East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and West Pakistan (now Pakistan), approximately 3 million people died.

The genocide against East Pakistani Bengalis (an ethnic group comprised of both Hindus and Muslims) during the war of 1971 was fuelled by West Pakistani perceptions of Bengalis as racially inferior.

After raping the women, soldiers often murdered them by forcing a bayonet between their legs. The pre- pubescent girls who were cut and gang-raped often died thereafter from the injuries. There are many reports of women and girls who survived the assaults and later killed themselves.

Question 27

How many women were sexually assaulted in Yugoslavia?

Answer 27

Estimates of the number of women sexually assaulted during the confl􏰝ict in the early 1990s vary from 10,000 to 60,000.3

Question 28

How were women raped in yugoslavia?

Answer 28

Soldiers assaulted some women in the streets, others in their homes. Still others they took to concentration camps, a few of which were known as “rape camps.”

Question 29

Second rape in Yugoslavia

Answer 29

Muslim religious leaders in Bosnia–Herzegovina urged bachelors to marry the single women and girls who had suffered rape, but few did.

Kosovars tend to see rape as a humiliation of the entire family, and they do not perceive the raped women and girls to be innocent victims. The death of the family member de􏰜led by rape may seem the only way to restore the family’s honor.

Question 30

How was rape in Bosnia Herzegovina different to in Pakistan or Rwanda?

Answer 30

• not merely to drive away and to harm non-Serb women, but to rape them repeatedly to ensure that they became pregnant.
• In many cases the soldiers intentionally detained women until abortion was no longer possible.

Question 31

Evidence that rape in Bosnia-Herzogovina was systematic

Answer 31

(1) that rapes in non-contiguous parts of Bosnia–Herzegovina had similar characteristics, including raping edu- cated or upper-class women 􏰜rst and forcing family members con􏰜ned in the same camp to perform incest;
(2) that the rapes happened in different sections of Bosnia–Herzegovina simultaneously and accompanied the 􏰜ghting;
(3) that many rapes took place within of􏰜ficial detention centers with identical layouts

Question 32

Rape in Rwanda

Answer 32

Rape of Tutsi girls and women took place in every part of Rwanda between April 6 and July 12, 1994

The UN’s Special Rapporteur on Rwanda estimates that in this tiny country there were between 250,000 and 500,000 rapes

Rape in the Rwandan genocide usually preceded murder, or was intended to cause fatal injuries.

the deliberate transmission of HIV was a unique component of rape as genocide in Rwanda - for a Hutu man known to be HIV-positive to rape a Tutsi woman is in essence protracted genocide

Question 33

‘Second rape’ in Rwanda

Answer 33

Rwandan women are often unwilling to admit they have been raped because of the terrible social stigma that accompanies rape. President of a Rwandan widows’ association, Felicite ́ Umutanguha Layika, explains that their family and neighbors may perceive rape survivors to have been willing participants and even complicit with the Interahamwe in the genocide.

Question 34

Karekezi on genocide in Rwanda vs Genocide in Yugoslavia

Answer 34

in Yugoslavia, for example it was used as—sexual violence was used as ethnic cleansing, too. The Serbian was trying to have children from Muslim women. Here, it wasn’t used like that. Pregnancy was a consequence, but not aimed to have children through them. But the goal of the men … was to weaken, to destroy, in this case the Tutsi, in Rwanda.

Question 35

How has the Rwandan Parliament responded to the accusations of Rape in the Rwandan genocide?

Answer 35

Rwanda’s Parliament took several years to agree upon the genocide law, which divides genocide crimes into four levels.71

The 􏰜first level carries a mandatory death penalty. This category is reserved for the planners of the genocide, those implicated who held public or military of􏰜fice, and those who were especially ruthless and proli􏰜c killers.

The second level of the genocide law is for those who were not leaders, but who participated in the killings.

The third level is for assault (not murder), and the fourth is for crimes against property

Question 36

How has the Rwandan Parliament responded to the accusations of Rape in the Rwandan genocide?

Answer 36

Rwanda’s Parliament took several years to agree upon the genocide law, which divides genocide crimes into four levels.71

The 􏰜first level carries a mandatory death penalty. This category is reserved for the planners of the genocide, those implicated who held public or military of􏰜fice, and those who were especially ruthless and proli􏰜c killers.

The second level of the genocide law is for those who were not leaders, but who participated in the killings.

The third level is for assault (not murder), and the fourth is for crimes against property

BUT

With respect to Rwanda, for example, it is not possible to jail or to execute three-quarters of the adult population of Rwanda and many of its minors as well.

Question 37

Inadequacy of the Rwandan justice system? Evidence:

Sharlach

Answer 37

However, not one man has yet been found guilty within the Rwandan courts of perpetrating rape during the genocide.

(as of 2000), BUT now have been progressive prosecutions (eg Jean Paul Akayesu).

Question 38

Helene Sinnreich (2008), dehumanisation and rape

Answer 38

the notion that dehumanising Nazi propaganda would create a barrier to rape contradicts numerous theorists who argue that rather than deter rape, the rendering of a victim as sub-human enables a perpetrator.

Question 39

Catherine Derderian - rape and Turks

Helene Sinnreich (2008)

Answer 39

rape helped the Turks dehumanise the Armenians.

Conversely, the dehumanisation of the Armenians made it easier for the Turks to rape them.

Question 40

Copelon - war and violence

Helene Sinnreich (2008)

Answer 40

War tends to intensify the brutality, repetitiveness, public spectacle, and likelihood of rape. War diminishes sensitivity to human suffering and intensifies men’s sense of entitlement, superiority, avidity, and social license to rape.

Question 41

Reasons why historians have failed to explore rape of Jewish women

Helene Sinnreich (2008)

Answer 41

gender bias in Holocaust scholarship

significant work on the particulars of women’s experience during the Holocaust did not appear until the mid and late 1990s

mistaken belief in the idea that Germans implemented their genocidal policies with unwavering ideological purity has caused many to turn a blind eye to numerous sources, German and Jewish, which testify to the realities of Jewish experiences during the war.

Question 42

Helene Sinnreich (2008), Ana C’s testimony

Answer 42

the Germans took Jewish women from the Lodz Ghetto for forced prostitution

she herself was selected for this duty

Question 43

Helene Sinnreich (2008), other testimonies suggesting systematic sexual exploitation of Jewish women

Answer 43

in her memoir I was There, Frances Penney claims that such a list of women was created in the Vilna Ghetto.

Another survivor from Lithuania testified that very attractive women were rounded up and selected for ‘labour’ in the Kaunas ghetto.

Emil G. reported that while he was in Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Germans arranged a ‘show’ where they took 20 Jewish women prisoners and raped them in front of one of the labour groups. Emil reported that the male prisoners were supposed to stand and applaud.

Question 44

Helene Sinnreich (2008), necrophilia and power

Answer 44

numerous testimonies from a variety of camps which discuss women being sexually violated after death. As a way of expressing power over a corpse, this act of necrophilia further desecrated and dehumanised both the deceased and living witnesses

Question 45

Helene Sinnreich (2008), Lya C’s testimony of Haidari concentration camp, Greece

Answer 45

every morning the commandant would select the seven most attractive female prisoners - the same seven women. One day, one of the women was sick and he approached Lya. Lya was 14 - she thought the girls were cleaning the rooms; instead she was raped by a young German

Question 46

Weitsman (2008), the unique plight of babies born as a result of govt-orchestrated mass rape

Answer 46

The cloud of shame that nearly always follows these children throughout their lives undermines their human rights in critical ways.

Question 47

Weitsman (2008), rape’s functions as a tactic in genocide

Answer 47

• intimidates
• degrades
• humiliates
• tortures

Question 48

Weitsman (2008), under what circumstances is rape a ‘particularly potent form of torture’?

Answer 48

in patriarchal societies in which a woman’s standing derives from her relationship to the men in her family: her brothers, father, husband, and sons

In many cases, if a woman is unmarried, her worth derives from her status as a virgin. Once raped, society no longer deems her marriageable or socially viable

Question 49

Weitsman (2008), Nazi ideology and prohibition of rape

Answer 49

The Nazis viewed racial purity as the absence of any non-Aryan blood, whether maternally or paternally derived. Sexual intercourse between “racially impure” individuals and Aryans was prohibited because it would “taint” the offspring

Question 50

Weitsman (2008), Serbian militias and rape

Answer 50

Serbian militias, in contrast, sought to impregnate Bosnian Muslim women so that they would bear “Serbian” children. In this case, identity was viewed as exclusively paternally derived.

serves to ‘occupy the womb’ of the women in question

Question 51

Weitsman (2008), where rape does represents ethnic cleansing

Answer 51

Policies of mass rape designed to humiliate and degrade a population to such an extent that people leave en masse, thereby advancing the goal of ethnic cleans ing

Question 52

Weitsman (2008), children born of

Answer 52

purely as “the other,” despite their birth mothers’ identities …inextricably linked to their rapist fathers.

TWO CASES
Bosnia - they are called “a generation of children of hate.”

Rwanda - known as “children of bad memories,” “children of hate,” and “unwanted children.”

Question 53

Primary Source: Foca testimony

Answer 53

Oosterman, a member of the prosecution investigation team, testified against Serbian leader Radovan Karadzic and General Ratko Mladic in July 1996. “The soldiers told often that they were forced to do it. They did not say who forced them to do it, but they were ordered do it.” Her testimony continued, “They wanted to make Serb or Chetnik babies. The pattern was, yes, all over the same.”

Question 54

Weitsman (2008), Rwandan genocide and gendered policy

Answer 54

Much of the propaganda leading up to the killing was directed at Tutsi women, especially in regards to their supposed promiscuity and their feelings of superiority toward Hutu men, who were considered unattractive and lower class.

As a consequence, much of the violence was directed at women

Question 55

Weitsman (2008), One Tutsi woman, who was taken by the Interahamwe (Hutu militias) to observe the mass slaughter and be the lone survivor to tell the tale to God of the Tutsis’ demise…

Answer 55

witnessed:

• the spearing of a baby as it emerged from its mother’s body
• a multitude of rapes with foreign objects, such as machetes and spears, and the burning of women’s pubic hair afterwards
• Pregnant women were sliced open and the fetuses removed from their bodies

Question 56

Weitsman, the purpose of systematic rape in Rwanda

Answer 56

systematic rape that took place during the widespread killing in Rwanda was undertaken with the express purpose of degrading, humiliating, punishing, and torturing Tutsi women

Question 57

Weitsman: the ideological foundations of rape in Rwanda

Answer 57

• the view of Tutsi women as sexual objects requiring subjugation
• the patriarchal structure of society

Question 58

Weitsman (2008), Rwandan govt - rape as a tool. HIV

Answer 58

Nearly 70 percent of the women raped contracted HIV. Rwandan President Paul Kagame said, “We knew that the government was bringing AIDS patients out of the hospitals specifically to form battalions of rapists.”

Question 59

Sharlach (2000) on whether rape and rape cum genocide are the same thing.

Answer 59

Rape harms a woman whether or not it takes place in the midst of genocide. Copelon fears that when courts treat rape during genocide specially, they are in effect indicating that rape that does not take place during genocide is not a crime of equal magnitude.

Question 60

Bos (2006), feminist interpretations of wartime rape

Answer 60

analysis of rape as primarily motivated by power
and control (sex is merely the chosen vehicle through which to inflict
harm on a woman rather than the motive for the act)

Question 61

Brownmiller, Against Our Will

Bos (2006)

Answer 61

She suggests further that rape is
integral to legitimizing patriarchy

when given the opportunity, for instance during war or military occupation,
men should indeed be expected to rape.

and has been much more prevalent
throughout history than has been previously acknowledged

Question 62

Bos (2006) critique of Brownmiller

Answer 62

Brownmiller’s tendency to view rape and the
politics of rape as both common and universal throughout history, as in
essence ahistorical or transhistorical and transcultural, can lead to a decontextualization of specific incidences of rape and a near demonizing of
all men.

Thus:

it remains to a great extent unexamined if and how sexual
violence during wartime belongs to the same continuum of patriarchal
violence against women or whether it is indeed an altogether different
phenomenon from everyday, peacetime rape

Question 63

Bos: Two approaches to understanding gender and genocide

Answer 63

sexism approach - women as the collective target
and object of rape are emphasized

genocide approach, in which the ethnicity or race of the women is the focus and women are seen as
collectively violated as a particular ethnic or racial group rather than, or
in addition to, as women.

both of these ways of viewing the conflict—along
gender or ethnic/racial lines—played a role in the ideology that fueled
the wars and in the violence itself: it was both sexual and ethnic/racial.

Question 64

Bos (2006), significance of sexist vs genocidal approaches to rape

Answer 64

Most local Yugoslav feminists and
a number of American feminist rape advocates argued that intervention
should take place on behalf of all women who were facing rape in this conflict: Bosnian women, certainly, but Croatian and Serb women as well.

Other scholars argued instead that since the Serb attack on the Bosnian
women seemed to be planned and systemic and since Serbs were the main
aggressors in this war, attempts at intervention should focus on helping
Bosnian women and on condemning Serb men specifically.

Underlying this disagreement was a debate over whether the rapes
should be seen in essence as sexist in nature or as genocidal

Question 65

Bos (2006), feminist law scholar Rhonda Copelon

Answer 65

the women were raped not primarily because of their ethnicity but because of their sex

Question 66

Bos (2006), harm and agency

Answer 66

Because the focus of analysis is exclusively on the harm caused by rape, the victimization of women is at the center,

fail to acknowledge that forms of harm other than rape may have been as damaging or more so and should have required intervention as well.

This assumption was in fact contested by many of the rape victims themselves.

Question 67

MacKinnon

Answer 67

in the Bosnian context, rape was ‘a tool, a tactic, a policy, a plan, a strategy, as well as a practice’:

rape as genocide, rape directed toward women because they are Muslim or Croatian. But when rape is a genocidal act, as it is here, it is an act to destroy a people. What is done to women defines that destruction. … This is not rape out of control. It is rape under control.

Question 68

MacKinnon on the varying forms/uses of rape

Answer 68

It is also rape unto death, rape as massacre, rape to kill and to make the victims wish they were dead. It is rape as an instrument of forced exile, rape to make you leave your home and never want to go back. It is rape to be seen and heard and watched and told to others: rape as spectacle

Question 69

Copelon critique of MacKinnon

Answer 69

The elision of genocide and rape in the focus on ‘genocidal rape’ … [is] dangerous. Rape and genocide are separate atrocities. Genocide – the effort to destroy a people – based on its identity as a people evokes the deepest horror and warrants the severest condemnation.

Rape is sexualized violence that seeks to humiliate, terrorize, and destroy a woman based on her iden- tity as a woman

Question 70

Taylor, Sacrifice as Terror: The Rwandan Genocide of 1994 (1994)

Answer 70

the genocide ‘was about power relations between men and women perhaps as much as it was about power relations between groups of men.

Among other things, ‘to many Rwandans gender relations in the 1980s and 1990s were falling into a state of decadence as more women attained positions of prominence in economic and public life.’ Genocide was an extremist back- lash ‘to reclaim both patriarchy and the Hutu revolution’.

Question 71

African Rights, 1995, Rwanda: Not So Innocent - Women As Killers

Answer 71

Rwanda: Not So Innocent – Women As Killers, argued that an emphasis on women as victims of the geno- cide had tended to ‘obscur[e] the role of women as aggressors’. ‘When it came to mass murder’, wrote the authors, ‘there were a lot of women who needed no encouragement.’

women participated in the persecution, murder, and sexual enslavement of Tutsi women,

Question 72

Lentin’s argument

Answer 72

called for ‘the definition of genocide [to] be gendered’, since ‘catastrophes, genocidal or otherwise … target women in very specific ways due to their social, ethnic and national construction.’

Question 73

El-Bushra’s argument

Answer 73

• rejected an understanding of gendered power relations based on ‘a simplistic divide between power/men on the one hand and powerlessness/ women on the other’.

women may well be active in peace-work in many contexts, they are also often in the forefront of demands for aggression in defence of their and their group’s interests.’

Question 74

Jones, vulnerability of ‘battle-age’ civilian males

Answer 74

evacuation from Srebrenica -women, children and old evacuated. But Serbian requirement that no males with combat potential be carried out overland was respected

Srebrenica as massacre of men and boys (!!!!)

Question 75

Fein, gender arguments

two types of gendered genocide?

Answer 75

distinguished between gender- neutral and gender-specific genocide: that is, ‘genocides which seek to destroy everyone regardless of gender … and those which destroy only males (there is no record of a perpetrator of genocide destroying only females).’ She argued that ‘gender-neutral’ genocide was on the rise, in part because the decline of slavery had reduced incentives for conquerors to preserve women and children alive.

Question 76

Jones, Gendercide and Genocide

Answer 76

the most vulnerable and consistently targeted population group, throughout time and around the world today, is noncombatant men of ‘battle age’, roughly fifteen to fifty-five years old.

commentary… has tended to actively suppress the male experience [to] increase the sympathy and policy attention extended to female

One of the best indicators of the special vulnerability of men and boys is the
frequency with which relatives and friends sought to disguise them in women’s
clothing.

Question 77

Carpenter arguments about male gender

Answer 77

While able-bodied men, as adults, are among the least vulnerable group physically, they become far more vulner- able than women, children, and the elderly to certain forms of attack in certain situations because of socially constructed assumptions about male gender roles.

Question 78

Holter, Theory of Gendercide

Answer 78

a very masculinized image of the enemy becomes entrenched. Any male is
potentially dangerous

In the modern view, gender seems more relevant when women are more involved than men

if Anne Frank had taken this gendered and anti-male aspect of Nazi tactics to be
their main strategy, and emerged from hiding, she would not have survived. Whatever the gender situation, she would have been killed as a Jew, due to the
racist (or regressive-political) character of Nazi aggression, which overrode the
gender aspect. Analyzing gender and con icts therefore usually means to
understand how gender and other forces interact

Question 79

Holter, 9-step theory of gendercide

Answer 79

1. anti-democratic core political purpose
2. Early and/or background gender dynamics
3. A victimization connection and, gradually , a system.
4. Creation of an aggressive ideology (often disguising 1–
5. “Mythic core” formation:The basic mythic core consists of motherland and soldier, as an alternative to worker and democratic citizen.

(6) the rise to power of authoritarian leaders
and the breakdown of democracy;

(7) the build-up, including a reorganization of
gender;

(8) conflict; and
(9) genocide and gendercide.

Question 80

UN Special Rapporteur on Rwanda, Rene´ Degni-Se´gui

Answer 80

, noted that in
atrocities against Tutsi women, “rape was the rule and its absence the exception”;
he offered the staggering estimate of 250,000 to 500,000 rapes committed
during the 12 weeks of the genocide.

Question 81

Jones, female perpetrators

Answer 81

Rose Karushara, a councilor in Kigali, who “took an extremely active role in
the genocide, wearing military uniform throughout. A tall and physically
strong woman, she used to beat up the refugees herself before handing them
over to her interahamwe

Women (especially, it seems, prostitutes)
were also prominent as spies, denouncing Tutsis and moderate Hutus in hiding
to the interahamwe;

Question 82

Fein (1999), Genocide and gender: The uses of women and group destiny

Answer 82

In genderspecific
genocides (as in Bosnia) the genocider’s tactic appears to be to spoil the
reproduction of the victims rather than to appropriate their babies,

In gender-specific
genocides, men are more likely to be killed directly than women

Question 83

Male trauma?

Fein

Answer 83

Although women are more likely to suffer sexual abuse than men during
genocide, we must recognize from observations in Bosnia that men also suffer
direct and indirect trauma from sexual victimization and torture.

Question 84

‘Rape as a Weapon of Genocide’, Genocide Studies and Prevention, 3:3 (2008) - Alison Ruby Reid-Cunningham 2008

Answer 84

PTSD in rape survivors

Sexual violence is perpetrated against women during ethnic conflict because women
‘‘keep the civilian population functioning’’ through their roles as mothers, wives, and
caretakers.78 The suffering inflicted may cause permanent psychological symptoms
or have social consequences that affect women’s ability to relate, work, or care for their
children.

Question 85

Women and Genocide: Notes on an Unwritten History - Roger W. Smith 1994

How is genocide different for women?

Answer 85

Genocide has affected women differently from men in at least three ways:

women have seldom participated directly in genocide, though this has begun to
change in the twentieth century (e.g., in Nazi Germany and Cambodia);

women have
been victimized in ways different from men to a large extent (rape and enslavement);3

and the consequences of genocide (incorporation into the perpetrators’ society; or
ostracism of victims of rape, as in Bangladesh) have often been different as well

Question 86

Beverly Allen

Forms of genocidal rape?

Answer 86

First, prior to the arrival of the official Serbian
military (Yugoslav Army or Bosnian Serb forces), Serb militias, civilians, or
Chetniks would enter a village and terrorize the inhabitants

The second form of genocidal rape occurred in Serb concentration
camps where Bosnian-Herzegovinan and Croatian women (and sometimes
men)73 were randomly chosen to be raped. The victim was often murdered
after the sexual assault.74

The third form of genocidal rape occurred in “rape/death camps.”

Question 87

LINDSEY CRITIQUE OF JONES

From atrocity to data: historiographies of rape in Former Yugoslavia and the gendering of genocide - R. Lindsey 10/2002

Answer 87

Although Jones’s argument is tenable (and there are a number of feminists
that concur that the genocidal killing of men should be studied on its own
‘merits’), it is also extremely problematic because of his insistence in placing
his argument in opposition to the rape debate.

Question 88

Rape as Genocide: two positions

BROWN

Answer 88

One side argued in effect that rape as an act of genocide should not
receive special treatment and that it should not be specially denominated.

The
other side contended that genocidal rape is different from rape that occurs
outside of a genocide and that the international community should acknowledge
a woman’s gender identity along with her identity as a member of a particular
national, ethnic, racial or religious group