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September 3, 2009
Rape: A Terror Weapon in the Congo, Iran and Elsewhere
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently returned from a really difficult trip to Africa where she has seen things that will keep her sleepless for a while. Among garden spots, she visited the Democratic Republic of Congo, a misbegotten place with a horrific history that has morphed it into a monster among human cultures. While there, she met with women, children, and even men who have been victims of terror-rape at the hands of anybody in the country with a weapon. UN observers do not know where to begin in describing the prevailing culture.
Hospitals, inadequate at best, are filled with victims of rape so vicious that those who did not die outright can look for a lifetime of pain and damage, not to mention a culture in which a man must cast out a raped wife as though it were her fault.
How is this different from what the world has seen before? From the beginning of time, soldiers at war have been permitted to rape the defeated enemy’s women. In antiquity, the men and boys were killed and the women raped and taken into slavery. Nothing new here. But the rapes were the result of over-stimulated warriors with both lust and vengeance in mind.
Africa is not alone for such gross behavior. The Soviet Army that entered Berlin got revenge for what the Nazis had done in Russia by raping every female they could find. The Japanese did the same in Nanking, China (purely for terror). And when Bangladesh fought for its independence from Pakistan, the women were raped by the Pakistanis, and then again by the Indian army who came to rescue them. And in the wars that broke up the former Yugoslavia, the Serbian militias kept “rape camps” to totally demoralize their Bosnian enemies by impregnating these women. So, this is not a sexual issue at all; it is an ugly human practice that is now going one step further.
The Congo, which was shaped by the most hideous experience of Belgian colonialism in the 19th century, seems to be permanently damaged. Although this country is blessed (or cursed) with untold wealth in natural resources, it does nothing but fight, slaughter, steal, rape, and torture its most helpless citizens, its civilians – of all ages and both genders. And the rapes are not to satisfy lust, but rather to do permanent damage and totally intimidate the population.
Now word has come out of Iran that a prison was set up just to lock up thousands of peaceful demonstrators who objected to the recent fraudulent election. Many of the arrested this time are members of the ruling elite – the children of clerics and government officials. In this prison, reports are coming out that everybody – both women and men – have been sexually tortured to do the kind of damage we find in the Congo. Hospitals have reported on this – and public horror is growing. Even Ayatollah Khamenei, who let the thugs and goons loose on the populace, has ordered this prison closed.
For most of the world, human beings live lives of law and order, decency and charity better than life has ever been before. We are among the lucky. But the old horrors of our human past have reemerged among people who are educated and modern enough to know how monstrous their actions are. This should not be tolerated.
What of a group of young Liberian boys, immigrants to the U.S., who gang raped an 8-year-old girl? They are children. But what of their parents – who hotly defend the boys and condemn the little girl? And what of the girl’s parents, who only blame her?
The civilized world must deal with its own remnants of violence – and either retrain or deport its immigrant practitioners. Rape and incest are not acceptable. Honor killings and wife battery must not be excused as “cultural differences.” Hillary Clinton has her work cut out for her abroad – and we have it at home.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman is an historian, lecturer, and author who also writes for the Santa Cruz Sentinel. You may contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or http://www.globalthink.net/.
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