War: Rape As A Weapon Of War
Rape as a Weapon of War
Military conflicts are envisioned to be a conflict between two armies of soldiers, yet, in reality, most casualties of war are civilians, most of whom are women and children. These women and children are left vulnerable during times of war and are frequently victims of rape and other forms of sexual assault. Throughout history rape has been used as a tool to dehumanize and terrorize the enemy population. When carried out in systematic fashion during periods of conflict, rape becomes much more complicated than an individual act to satisfy sexual urges and exert power over another person. Rape as a weapon of war can be more destructive to communities and family structures than the conflict itself. The effects of rape …show more content…
The civil war that occurred in the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s saw the rape of tens of thousands of women, an accurate estimate has not been established. Serbian men attempted to impregnate Bosnian Muslim women in order to force them to have Serbian children while attempting to annihilate the entire Bosnian male population. The Rwandan genocide also used rape as a weapon of war. From April to July in 1994, 250,000 to 500,000 Rwandan women were raped (Brouwer, 1998). The conflict in Rwanda was between two ethnic groups, the Hutu and the Tutsi, who had historically been pitted against each other by their European colonizers. In 1994, the Hutu president was assassinated and the Tutsis were promptly blamed, beginning 100 days of slaughter and rape. Hutu propaganda and orders from army commanders encouraged the rape of Tutsi women and sympathetic or moderate Hutu women. No one was spared based on age, gender and ethnicity were the only determining factors. Women were gang raped, forced into sexual slavery, made to commit incest, forced into marriage, and had their breasts, vaginas, buttocks, or features that were considered Tutsi, such as a small nose or long fingers, mutilated or amputated (). These rapes were usually committed publicly and many times the women were killed afterwards and left spread-eagle in plain view as a reminder of the brutality of the genocide’s perpetrators. The Hutu militia committed the majority of the rapes in Rwanda but a culture of rape was created and Rwandan police and civilians, as well as international soldiers, namely the French, also raped Rwandan women and girls (Brouwer,
Military conflicts are envisioned to be a conflict between two armies of soldiers, yet, in reality, most casualties of war are civilians, most of whom are women and children. These women and children are left vulnerable during times of war and are frequently victims of rape and other forms of sexual assault. Throughout history rape has been used as a tool to dehumanize and terrorize the enemy population. When carried out in systematic fashion during periods of conflict, rape becomes much more complicated than an individual act to satisfy sexual urges and exert power over another person. Rape as a weapon of war can be more destructive to communities and family structures than the conflict itself. The effects of rape …show more content…
The civil war that occurred in the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s saw the rape of tens of thousands of women, an accurate estimate has not been established. Serbian men attempted to impregnate Bosnian Muslim women in order to force them to have Serbian children while attempting to annihilate the entire Bosnian male population. The Rwandan genocide also used rape as a weapon of war. From April to July in 1994, 250,000 to 500,000 Rwandan women were raped (Brouwer, 1998). The conflict in Rwanda was between two ethnic groups, the Hutu and the Tutsi, who had historically been pitted against each other by their European colonizers. In 1994, the Hutu president was assassinated and the Tutsis were promptly blamed, beginning 100 days of slaughter and rape. Hutu propaganda and orders from army commanders encouraged the rape of Tutsi women and sympathetic or moderate Hutu women. No one was spared based on age, gender and ethnicity were the only determining factors. Women were gang raped, forced into sexual slavery, made to commit incest, forced into marriage, and had their breasts, vaginas, buttocks, or features that were considered Tutsi, such as a small nose or long fingers, mutilated or amputated (). These rapes were usually committed publicly and many times the women were killed afterwards and left spread-eagle in plain view as a reminder of the brutality of the genocide’s perpetrators. The Hutu militia committed the majority of the rapes in Rwanda but a culture of rape was created and Rwandan police and civilians, as well as international soldiers, namely the French, also raped Rwandan women and girls (Brouwer,