Rape as a tool of war

[KD0706]

Just listening to the radio and there was a report about Gaddaffi plying young men with 'sex drugs' to encourage mass rape.

I don't really have anything constructive to say butit just brought home to me how frequently this 'weapon' is used. I don't have anybody in real life who I can discuss this with in real life so thought I'd off load on here...

[EdithWeston]

It might be worth looking at what happened in Bosnia -start here with Wiki. The numbers are truly horrifying, and it was not only a weapon of war, but a means of ethnic cleansing by forcing muslim women to have Serbian babies and the children born as a result of the rape camps are now entering their teens.

[sunshineandbooks]

I don't have anything intelligent to add to this debate, but whenever I hear anything on these lines I just feel heartbroken for the women who have gone through this. I wish I could get more angry about it but I can't seem to get past overwhelmingly sad. I keep thinking about how I'd feel, or what if it was my daughter, or how on earth a woman feels if she gets pregnant as a result, and what that child feels growing up, etc.

[KD0706]

God, I feel sick reading some of this stuff. Far worse than I had thought.

It is horrendous enough for a woman or child (or man of course) to suffer one rape/sexual assault but some of the stories of multiple rapes are just heartbreaking.

I have a young DD and can't even allow myself to think of her in such situations.

[HaughtyChuckle]

That Sri Lanka Killing Fields will be dealing with this kind of stuff , its meant to be the most disturbing thing Channel 4 has ever aired.

A Serbian film as sick as it was was apparently meant to be metaphorical about what happened in Serbia couldn't really see it myself. It would good if more doc's were made about this sort of thing so people actually knew what was going on. I feel quite insular in this country about these issues.

[Malificence]

It makes me very angry, the way this has been reported in the media - as if giving them viagra would encourage men to rape?
A man who wants to rape will do so regardless and a man who doesn't want to rape will not do so, giving him viagra will not enable him to rape if he is unwilling to do so.
People often ( incorrectly) think that drugs like viagra give men the urge to have sex and uncontrollable erections, even on mumsnet, the ignorance surrounding vaso-dilator drugs is quite stunning, to see it going unchallenged in the media is maddening.

Does it make it easier, blaming viagra for mass rapes, instead of blaming the men who would do this?

[queenbathsheba]

I read yesterday that in modern war women and children make up 80% of victims.

[sunshineandbooks]

Excellent point Malificence

[Malificence]

Oh I know about Rwanda and other African countries where young boys are utterly brutalised and are given drugs to incite them to violence. Those boys are every bit the victims of brutal regimes as the women, girls and old men.
Dehumanising the enemy has always been a major objective in war.

[EdithWeston]

Rape as an atrocity of war is a very different phenomenon to the crime of rape in a society not at war.

For a start there are orders to do it (and I can actually see how Viagra might have a role in the instigation if mass action by men who, if not at war would be neither killers nor rapists). In some of the Bosnian examples, there were also very calculated logistic underpinnings - venues provided, women repeatedly raped until demonstrably pregnant, then incarcerated elsewhere until the child was born. A very chilling long term plan.

[EdithWeston]

Minette Walters wrote a thriller about a rapist who used the atrocities of war as "cover" for his personal crimes.

I'd be interested in links to the evidence about how much this happens in real life.

Estimates for the number of war rapes in Bosnia range from 20,000 to 50,000. I think there is an absence of information on "non-war" rapes (as there was no functioning police or judicial system at the time). Is better data available from other theatres of war?