Genocidal Rape
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Genocidal rape, a form of wartime sexual violence, is the action of a group which has carried out acts of mass rape and gang rapes, against its enemy during wartime as part of a genocidal campaign. During the
Armenian genocide The Armenian genocide was the systematic destruction of the Armenians, Armenian people and identity in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Spearheaded by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), it was implemented primarily t ...
, the Greek genocide, the Assyrian genocide, the
second Sino-Japanese war The Second Sino-Japanese War was fought between the Republic of China (1912–1949), Republic of China and the Empire of Japan between 1937 and 1945, following a period of war localized to Manchuria that started in 1931. It is considered part ...
, the Holocaust, the
Bangladesh genocide The Bangladesh genocide was the ethnic cleansing of Bengalis residing in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) during the Bangladesh Liberation War, perpetrated by the Pakistan Army and the Razakar (Pakistan), Razakars. It began on 25 March 1971, as ...
, the
Bosnian War The Bosnian War ( / Рат у Босни и Херцеговини) was an international armed conflict that took place in Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995. Following several earlier violent incid ...
, the
Rwandan genocide The Rwandan genocide, also known as the genocide against the Tutsi, occurred from 7 April to 19 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War. Over a span of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Gre ...
, the Tamil genocide, the Circassian genocide, the Congolese conflicts, the South Sudanese Civil War, the Yazidi Genocide, and
Rohingya genocide The Rohingya genocide is a series of ongoing persecutions and killings of the Islam in Myanmar, Muslim Rohingya people by the Tatmadaw (armed forces of Myanmar). The genocide has consisted of two phases to date: the first was a military crackd ...
, mass rapes that had been an integral part of those conflicts brought the concept of genocidal rape to international prominence. Although war rape has been a recurrent feature in conflicts throughout
human history Human history or world history is the record of humankind from prehistory to the present. Early modern human, Modern humans evolved in Africa around 300,000 years ago and initially lived as hunter-gatherers. They Early expansions of hominin ...
, it has usually been looked upon as a by-product of conflict and not an integral part of military policy.


Genocide debate

Some scholars argue that the
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG), or the Genocide Convention, is an International Agreement, international treaty that criminalizes genocide and obligates state parties to pursue the enforcement of ...
should state that mass rape is a genocidal crime. Other scholars argue that genocidal rape is already included in the definition under article two"...any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: :(a) Killing members of the group; :(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; :(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; :(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; :(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article 2" of the convention. Catharine MacKinnon argues that the victims of genocidal rape are used as a substitute for the entire ethnic group, that rape is used as a tool, with the target being the destruction of the entire ethnic group. Siobhan Fisher has argued that forced impregnation and not the rape itself constitutes genocide. She says, "Repeated rape alone is still 'just' rape, but rape with the intent to impregnate is something more." Lisa Sharlach argues that this definition is too narrow because these mass rapes should not be defined as genocide based solely on those raped having been forcibly impregnated.


Rape as genocide

Per the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1820 (declared on 2008) rape and other forms of sexual violence can constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity or a constitutive act with respect to genocide. According to
Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says that it has more than ten million members a ...
, the use of rape during times of war is not a by-product of conflicts but rather a pre-planned and deliberate military strategy. In the last quarter of a century, the majority of conflicts have shifted from wars between nation states to communal and intrastate civil wars. During these conflicts the use of rape as a weapon against the civilian population by state and non-state actors has become more frequent. Journalists and human rights organizations have documented campaigns of genocidal rape during conflicts in former Yugoslavia,
Sierra Leone Sierra Leone, officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered to the southeast by Liberia and by Guinea to the north. Sierra Leone's land area is . It has a tropical climate and envi ...
, Rwanda, Liberia, Sudan, Uganda, and during the civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The strategic aims of these mass rapes are twofold. The first is to instill terror in the civilian population, with the intent to forcibly dislocate them from their land."In the context of genocide ..violence against women may be aimed at the destruction of the integrity of the group through its women, who embody its genetic and cultural continuity." Targeted rape has also been used to force those who might resist genocide into submission. The second is to degrade the chance of possible return and reconstitution by having inflicted humiliation and shame on the targeted population and to decrease social cohesion of a targeted group. These effects are strategically important for non-state actors, as it is necessary for them to remove the targeted population from the land. Rape as genocide is often used for campaigns which involve
ethnic cleansing Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, or religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making the society ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal such as deportation or population transfer, it ...
and
genocide Genocide is violence that targets individuals because of their membership of a group and aims at the destruction of a people. Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the term, defined genocide as "the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" by ...
, as the objective is to destroy, or forcefully remove the target population, and ensure they do not return. One objective of genocidal rape is forced pregnancy, so that the aggressing actor not only invades the targeted population's land, but their bloodlines and families as well. However, those unable to bear children are also subject to sexual assault. Victims' ages can range from children to women in their eighties.


Documented instances

Rape was widespread during the
Armenian Genocide The Armenian genocide was the systematic destruction of the Armenians, Armenian people and identity in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Spearheaded by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), it was implemented primarily t ...
, which was committed by the Ottoman Turks. During the death marches of Armenian civilians through Anatolia in 1915, Turkish soldiers frequently raped and killed Armenian women and children. In many cases, Turkish and Kurdish civilians also participated in these crimes. Turks took Armenian women and girls into sexual slavery or forced them into marriage. Those women forced into marriage also had to convert to Islam. Some perpetrators believed that women and girls could be successfully assimilated into Muslim Turkish culture, unlike men and boys. After the genocide ended, women and girls who had been forced into marriage often could not return to their former lives. They had no family left, no source of income, or otherwise feared the stigma of having married a Turk. Additionally, Turks publicly raped the wives, daughters, and other female relatives of important Armenian men. In addition to dehumanizing the victims, these targeted rapes intimidated the Armenian leadership into submission and dissuaded them from resisting. Some Armenian women and girls were sold as sex slaves. The Turkish soldiers stripped them naked and displayed them at auction. Their nudity in a conservative society served to further dehumanize them and strip them of agency. Many were forced into marriage or prostitution. During the Greek genocide, another of the late Ottoman genocides, Turkish troops and civilians abducted Greek village women and raped them for hours or days. Turkish villagers raped one woman for eight days in a row; she died soon after. One man, who protested the violation of his wife, was sodomized. In the Pontos region, bands of brigands led by Topal Osman went from village to village, plundering, raping women, and killing at will. As in the Armenian genocide, it was common for Turkish troops to kill the men and rape the women; the women often died later during the long marches to Syria. Massacres were especially prevalent along the Black Sea coast while the Russians invaded and the Turkish troops fell back. In one Pontic village, dozens of women and girls leapt into a river to avoid rape. Turkish troops rounded up women at Vazelon Monastery, a Greek Orthodox monastery, and raped them before killing them.. Many women and girls were also raped during the death marches to Syria. During
Sayfo The Sayfo (, ), also known as the Seyfo or the Assyrian genocide, was the mass murder and deportation of Assyrian people, Assyrian/Syriac Christians in southeastern Anatolia and Persia's Azerbaijan (Iran), Azerbaijan province by Ottoman Army ...
, or the Assyrian genocide, Turkish soldiers followed the same pattern: they massacred the young men and deported the women, children, and elderly. Many women were raped during deportation or sold to Muslim civilians as sex slaves. Women were abducted and forced to convert to Islam. In Urmia, which had a large Assyrian population before the genocide, both Turkish and Kurdish civilians raped or abducted Assyrian girls. In one village, perpetrators subjected girls as young as eight to rape; in another, girls as young as six or seven who had been hiding on a rooftop were raped. Many rape victims later died. Turkish irregulars raped some women as they were dying. In the
Democratic Republic of the Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), also known as the DR Congo, Congo-Kinshasa, or simply the Congo (the last ambiguously also referring to the neighbouring Republic of the Congo), is a country in Central Africa. By land area, it is t ...
(DRC), it is estimated that in 2011 alone there were 400,000 rapes. In the DRC, genocidal rape is focused on the destruction of family and communities. An interview with a survivor gave an account of gang rape, forced cannibalism of a fetus taken from an eviscerated woman, and child murder. During the
Bangladesh Liberation War The Bangladesh Liberation War (, ), also known as the Bangladesh War of Independence, was an War, armed conflict sparked by the rise of the Bengali nationalism, Bengali nationalist and self-determination movement in East Pakistan, which res ...
in 1971, members of the Pakistani military and supporting Bihari and Razakar militias raped between 200,000 and 400,000 Bangladeshi women in a systematic campaign of genocidal rape. Some women may have been raped as many as eighty times in a night. In the ongoing Darfur genocide, the
Janjaweed The Janjaweed () are an Sudanese Arabs, Arab nomad militia group operating in the Sahel, Sahel region, specifically in Sudan, particularly in Darfur and eastern Chad. They have also been speculated to be active in Yemen. According to the United ...
militias have carried out actions described as genocidal rape, with not just women, but children also being raped, as well as babies being bludgeoned to death and the sexual mutilation of victims being commonplace. During the
Second Sino-Japanese War The Second Sino-Japanese War was fought between the Republic of China (1912–1949), Republic of China and the Empire of Japan between 1937 and 1945, following a period of war localized to Manchuria that started in 1931. It is considered part ...
, the
Imperial Japanese Army The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA; , ''Dai-Nippon Teikoku Rikugun'', "Army of the Greater Japanese Empire") was the principal ground force of the Empire of Japan from 1871 to 1945. It played a central role in Japan’s rapid modernization during th ...
during the Battle of Nanjing carried out what has come to be known as the Rape of Nanjing, which has been described by political scientist, Adam Jones, as "one of the most savage instances of genocidal rape". The violence saw tens of thousands of women gang raped and killed. The
International Military Tribunal for the Far East The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), also known as the Tokyo Trial and the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, was a military trial convened on 29 April 1946 to Criminal procedure, try leaders of the Empire of Japan for their cri ...
estimated that 20,000 women were raped, including infants and the elderly. A large portion of these rapes were systematized in a process where soldiers would search door-to-door for young girls, with many women taken captive and gang raped. The women were often killed immediately after being raped, often through explicit mutilation or by stabbing a bayonet, long stick of bamboo, or other objects into the vagina. Young children were not exempt from these atrocities, and were cut open to allow Japanese soldiers to rape them. On 19 December 1937, the Reverend James M. McCallum wrote in his diary:Hua-ling Hu, '' American Goddess at the Rape of Nanking: The Courage of Minnie Vautrin'', 2000, p.97
I know not where to end. Never I have heard or read such brutality. Rape! Rape! Rape! We estimate at least 1,000 cases a night, and many by day. In case of resistance or anything that seems like disapproval, there is a bayonet stab or a bullet ... People are hysterical ... Women are being carried off every morning, afternoon and evening. The whole Japanese army seems to be free to go and come as it pleases, and to do whatever it pleases.
During the Rwandan genocide, the violence took a gender specific form, with women and girls being targeted in a systematic campaign of sexual assault. It is estimated that between 250,000 and 500,000 were victims of rape. Those who survived the genocidal rape found themselves stigmatised, and many also discovered that they were infected with HIV. This has resulted in these women being denied their rights to property and inheritance as well as their employment chances being restricted. The first woman charged and convicted for genocidal rape was Pauline Nyiramasuhuko. In 1996, Beverly Allen wrote ''Rape Warfare: The Hidden Genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia'' in which the term genocidal rape was first introduced, she used the term to describe the actions of the Serbian armed forces who had a policy of rape with the intention of genocide. In her book she compares genocidal rape to biological warfare. During the conflict in Bosnia Allen gave a definition of genocidal rape as "a military policy of rape for the purpose of genocide currently practiced in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia by the Yugoslav army the Bosnian Serb forces and the irregular Serb forces known as Chetniks". Coverage of the mass rapes during the
ethnic cleansing Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, or religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making the society ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal such as deportation or population transfer, it ...
carried out by the Serbian forces in the 1990s began the analysis over the use of rape as a part of genocide. Catharine MacKinnon argues that the mass rapes during the conflict "were a simultaneous expression of misogyny and genocide", and argues that rape can be used as a form of extermination."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" The acts of violence which were committed against women during the
Partition of India The partition of India in 1947 was the division of British India into two independent dominion states, the Dominion of India, Union of India and Dominion of Pakistan. The Union of India is today the Republic of India, and the Dominion of Paki ...
have also been cited as examples of genocidal rape. Dyan Mazurana et al argued that the " patterns of rape and sexual violence carried out n the Tigray War">Tigray_War.html" ;"title="n the n the Tigray Warby the Ethiopian National Defense Force">ENDF, the Eritrean Defence Forces">EDF and Amhara Region">Amhara regional militia and special forces against Tigrayan civilians are consistent with acts of genocide, potentially conducted with the intent of destroying the Tigrayan people."


See also

* Outline of genocide studies


Footnotes


References


Bibliography

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