It has been months since a turbulent period of unrest has been ushered into the history of middle-east politics. The Jasmine revolution which started in December, 2010 in Tunisia and led to the downfall of the President Zine El Abedine Ben Ali's corrupt regime spread like wildfire in the countries of Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Syria, Bahrain and so on. People united by their common goal of attaining freedom from oppression and other democratic liberties, continue to protest despite the violent crackdowns initiated by the army.
Protesters have been subjected to such brutal forms of torture by pro-government forces that many of those instances have landed up in the pages of international dailies, shocking the world beyond measure. Thousands have been shot dead.
In such troubled times, when the future of a regime or a dictator looks bleak and uncertain, women and even minors are being raped and sexually assaulted, to terrify the rebels into submission. If recent news items are to believed, Gaddafi, the Libyan head of state, has been ordering large quantities of Viagra for his soldiers, so that they can carry out his orders of mass rape without any glitches. Despite the fact that the Libyan regime has vehemently denied the charges(well duh!), and that during a war situation more lies emerge from the battlefield than not, the statements by Iman al-Obeidi, the victim of a gang-rape herself, and similar such reports, have atleast established the fact that rapes and acts of violence against women are quite a common method of intimidation used in such situations. A woman's chastity once sullied, the "honour" of the entire family is lost. Nothing is scarier to a man than the burden of a raped wife, daughter or sister.
In countries like Syria, sometimes such victims of sexual crimes, are abandoned by family so as to preserve the honor and dignity of her kin.
Closer home in my state, the Tata Motors-Singur unrest had claimed the life of a 16 year-old Tapashi Malik. She was gang-raped and then later burnt alive in 2006. The perpetrators, as it turned out, were CPIM goons and policemen aided the assault. The incident drew nationwide attention to the crisis brewing in Singur and the Trinamool Congress and other parties wasted no time in politicizing the atrocity and launching a vendetta against the Communists. This was no doubt the quickest way of instigating public outrage and win popular support against the misrule of CPIM.
Presently the 12 rapes within 3 days in Mayavati ruled Uttar Pradesh, seem to have offered the Congress with another glorious opportunity to criticize her rule and brighten their chances for the 2012 Assembly elections. But they seem to have conveniently forgotten about the burgeoning rate of crimes against women in Delhi, where incidents of 'eve-teasing' are as natural as the rising and setting of the Sun.
I could offer similar such examples of war crimes against women in every other nation.
But the point of my post is not to state the obvious. Rather to shed light on the fact that rape is not merely an act of individual violence during a war situation but a tactical tool used for political repression. Women are raped in order to shame an entire community and instill fear in the hearts of civilians.
The actual wrong-doers are seldom caught and persecuted in such cases while sympathizers turn out to be people looking to reap political benefits from such crimes or journalists scouting for sensational stories.
To the more fortunate members of society, such sordid tales are only considered news and statistics, worth being debated on twitter, facebook or elsewhere at work.
But every woman who is falling a victim to this kind of savagery must be just another woman like me, with her own set of colorful dreams and goals in life irrespective of whichever stratum of society she belongs to.
I'm scared to ask the following questions because I'm afraid I won't receive a decisive answer to any of them but....
Hasn't mankind progressed from the days of The Holocaust or the rule of the Soviet Union, characterized by outright denial of human rights?
How long will women continue to be trampled upon just because they're not physically strong enough to protect themselves?
Barbaric habits die hard it seems.
Protesters have been subjected to such brutal forms of torture by pro-government forces that many of those instances have landed up in the pages of international dailies, shocking the world beyond measure. Thousands have been shot dead.
In such troubled times, when the future of a regime or a dictator looks bleak and uncertain, women and even minors are being raped and sexually assaulted, to terrify the rebels into submission. If recent news items are to believed, Gaddafi, the Libyan head of state, has been ordering large quantities of Viagra for his soldiers, so that they can carry out his orders of mass rape without any glitches. Despite the fact that the Libyan regime has vehemently denied the charges(well duh!), and that during a war situation more lies emerge from the battlefield than not, the statements by Iman al-Obeidi, the victim of a gang-rape herself, and similar such reports, have atleast established the fact that rapes and acts of violence against women are quite a common method of intimidation used in such situations. A woman's chastity once sullied, the "honour" of the entire family is lost. Nothing is scarier to a man than the burden of a raped wife, daughter or sister.
In countries like Syria, sometimes such victims of sexual crimes, are abandoned by family so as to preserve the honor and dignity of her kin.
Closer home in my state, the Tata Motors-Singur unrest had claimed the life of a 16 year-old Tapashi Malik. She was gang-raped and then later burnt alive in 2006. The perpetrators, as it turned out, were CPIM goons and policemen aided the assault. The incident drew nationwide attention to the crisis brewing in Singur and the Trinamool Congress and other parties wasted no time in politicizing the atrocity and launching a vendetta against the Communists. This was no doubt the quickest way of instigating public outrage and win popular support against the misrule of CPIM.
Presently the 12 rapes within 3 days in Mayavati ruled Uttar Pradesh, seem to have offered the Congress with another glorious opportunity to criticize her rule and brighten their chances for the 2012 Assembly elections. But they seem to have conveniently forgotten about the burgeoning rate of crimes against women in Delhi, where incidents of 'eve-teasing' are as natural as the rising and setting of the Sun.
I could offer similar such examples of war crimes against women in every other nation.
But the point of my post is not to state the obvious. Rather to shed light on the fact that rape is not merely an act of individual violence during a war situation but a tactical tool used for political repression. Women are raped in order to shame an entire community and instill fear in the hearts of civilians.
The actual wrong-doers are seldom caught and persecuted in such cases while sympathizers turn out to be people looking to reap political benefits from such crimes or journalists scouting for sensational stories.
To the more fortunate members of society, such sordid tales are only considered news and statistics, worth being debated on twitter, facebook or elsewhere at work.
But every woman who is falling a victim to this kind of savagery must be just another woman like me, with her own set of colorful dreams and goals in life irrespective of whichever stratum of society she belongs to.
I'm scared to ask the following questions because I'm afraid I won't receive a decisive answer to any of them but....
Hasn't mankind progressed from the days of The Holocaust or the rule of the Soviet Union, characterized by outright denial of human rights?
How long will women continue to be trampled upon just because they're not physically strong enough to protect themselves?
Barbaric habits die hard it seems.