#MeToo unless it's Palestine: Why Western feminists ignore proven Israeli rape of Palestinians

 

In the immediate aftermath of October 7, before the dust had settled and the wholesale destruction of Gaza had commenced, claims of sexual assault and rape were quickly plastered across newspapers by Western feminists.

High-profile figures penned pieces about not believing Jewish women and the undermining of the #MeToo movement, with the claim of "systematic rape" lapped up by governments, Israeli military officials, and swathes of undiscerning media alike.

Establishing the facts of sexual violence during wartime is challenging, especially as the Israeli government deliberately muddies the waters by shifting narratives, presenting witnesses with undisclosed ties to the government, and suspending normative investigative practices.

But while we should always believe women and remain outraged by rape, it's clear the claim of "systematic rape" was weaponised by the Israeli government to justify the massacre of Palestinians.

The main question is therefore why the sexual assaults of Palestinian women have not provoked a similar outrage.

Over the past ten months, the selective empathy of high-profile feminists and feminist organisations in the UK has become increasingly apparent.

While swift statements on social media and articles supporting Israeli women are plentiful, there is a notable silence regarding the dire conditions of Palestinian women.

The deliberate overlooking of the extensive sexual and reproductive harm inflicted on Palestinian women by the Israeli onslaught is troubling, especially since one would assume this is a primary concern of feminism.

Since October 7, hundreds of Palestinian women have been detained in Israeli custody and subjected to inhumane treatment, including sexualised torture, naked beatings, threats of rape, and, in two verified instances, rape.

Even if the two verified rapes documented in the UN report from February 19, 2024, were somehow overlooked, how can the decades-long history of gender-based violence inflicted on Palestinian women by the Israeli army over the past 76 years be ignored?

Numerous reports detailing this violence against Palestinian women and children, long before October 7, are readily accessible online.

These reports come from major Israeli rights groups, such as the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, Jerusalem-based Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling, and B’Tselem (one report from 2009 among many others), in addition to several reports from the UN.

All these reports, based on protocols used in legal hearings, legal complaints, lawyer documentation, and detainee testimonies, depict sexual violence, torture, and other cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of Palestinians in Israeli detention.

Suppose feminist discourse genuinely seeks to address gender-based violence in war. In that case, the ongoing atrocities against Palestinian women should have been included in all those articles to uphold the integrity of the movement.

Despite the overwhelming evidence of the past 10 months — 40,000 Palestinians killed, around half of them women and children, and more than 21,000 children reported missing — the feminist movement has not learned from its initial one-sided stance when emotions ran high and perspectives were narrow.


The ongoing violence endured by Palestinian women and children continues to be glaringly neglected. Similarly, the recent UN report from June 12, 2024, appears to have gone unnoticed, failing to stir any conscience or prompt a substantial response.

This report detailed how the Israeli Security Forces systematically targeted and subjected Palestinians to sexual and gender-based violence, including forced public nudity, forced public stripping, sexualised torture and abuse, and sexual humiliation and harassment.

The report also documented that Israeli soldiers filmed themselves ransacking homes, rummaging through drawers filled with lingerie to mock and humiliate Palestinian women, referring to them as 'sluts,' concluding that this gender-based violence was intended to humiliate and degrade the Palestinian population as a whole

A culture of sexual violence
This sexual and gender-based violence extended to men as well, with the report highlighting that males were repeatedly filmed and photographed by soldiers while subjected to forced public stripping and nudity, sexual torture, and inhumane treatment.

Just last week, disturbing footage surfaced from the Sde Teiman detention facility, reportedly showing the gang rape of a Palestinian by Israeli soldiers. Israeli ministers, including Bezalel Smotrich, were swift to condemn the leaking of the video rather than its contents. Some, like Likud's Hanoch Milwidsky, went so far as to justify the rape. As expected, Western feminists remain silent.

It’s unsettling but not unexpected that there appears to be little sympathy for Arab men, who are often portrayed in deeply rooted racist stereotypes as inherently misogynistic and barbaric. The stark contrast in empathy, whether conscious or unconscious, exposes a blatant bias among high-profile feminists in the UK and contributes to normalising Israel’s actions against Palestinians.

The deafening silence from the rest of the feminist community is equally damning; ignoring the horrifying images from Gaza over the past ten months signals a dehumanisation so profound that the suffering has lost its impact.

Remaining silent on one of the worst atrocities against women and children in our lifetime is indefensible. When 70% of those killed are women and children; when Palestinian women are digging through rubble to find their missing children; when mothers are holding their lifeless babies; when families are burning to death in refugee camps while they sleep; when mothers watch their children die from hunger as a result of Israel’s starvation campaign; and when children cry for food amidst famine conditions, silence is not a matter of being ‘politically correct’ — it is a betrayal of feminist principles.

Recent events during the Gaza genocide have highlighted the feminist movement’s failings, casting a shadow of shame over it.

During one of the deadliest weeks in Gaza since October 7, some feminists were instead fixated and preoccupied with commenting on UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer's ‘sexy’ look. Do we live in a parallel universe?


This deliberate focus on superficial issues, while ignoring pressing concerns, signals a loss of direction in the movement and shows that those leading it — many of whom were once trusted — are harbouring anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab racism, and Islamophobia.

This couldn’t be more obvious than when some so-called feminists aligned with figures like Tommy Robinson, a convicted criminal known for his far-right ideology and promotion of false narratives about Muslims, asylum seekers, and migrants, mirroring the disturbing resurgence of far-right rhetoric in the UK.

While these views have led some astray, making it difficult to envision their return, the feminist movement still holds hope if it can steer back towards its foundational values.

One glaring lesson from recent events is the pervasive racism among some UK feminists, as even the bare minimum expectation —to acknowledge the struggles of Palestinian women enduring systemic marginalisation — has not been met.

For the feminist movement to rise above this mess, it must be unequivocally clear that there is no room for racism. Overcoming this tribal feminism that serves only selective interests demands recognising and addressing prejudices as they emerge, holding everyone accountable.

The collective power of the feminist community should never be underestimated. Just as some figures have been elevated to high-profile status, those who betray the core principles of feminism must face the risk of becoming irrelevant.

By thoughtfully choosing whom to support and elevate, both as individuals and as feminist organisations, the movement can uphold its integrity and ensure its values remain truly inclusive and anti-racist. There is no room for racism in feminism, and as Angela Davis wisely stated, "In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist”.

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Urdu did not have a word for "rape".

When partition happened, men of all three religions took it upon themselves to humiliate the other group by ensuring that their women carried the sperm of the other's religion. Mass rapes took place. Carried out by men of all three religions against women of all three religions. In case a woman got raped, it was likely that she'd be killed by her own male family members in order to protect their honour. The situation got so bad that the only way women could think of saving themselves from such a fate was to end their lives themselves. Suicides became common. Women would often jump in wells to kill themselves until wells started filling up with dead bodies. At one point women had to actively search for wells with some space left to die in.

August 1947, two states celebrated indepedance. Urdu did not have a word for "rape".
When Bengal asked for its independance, it did so because the East Pakistanis felt deprived of its right. The Bengali man realized he would never be allow to run his own country or be a part of it. The Pakistani man could not fathom how the Bengali man could place his interest over national sovereignity. War ensued. Thousands died as an army turned against its own people. Thousands were raped. In one of the most horrifying cases on war crimes in modern human history, the Pakistani army raped thousands on Bengali women in an effort to insert their sperm in the Bengali lineage as payback for the Bengali man to prioritize his interests over national cohesion. The number of rapes was so high that rehabilitation of these women became one of the top most priorities of the newly born Bangladeshi state. The government promised economic reward to men who would marry these victims of wartime rape. In a war torn, newly independant state, men jumped at the opportunity. They married these women, claimed their economic reward and left them soon after. Further stigmatizing these women, until they started being conflated with sex workers.
Pakistan lost a war. Committed one of the biggest incidents of war crimes. Lost half the country. Thousands of women had their lives turned upside down.
Urdu did not have a word for "rape".
When Zia-ul-Haq came into power, he put into practice the Hudood Ordinance. One of those laws contained the Islamic judgement on Zina.
The Islamic judgement on Zina states that if an individual accuses two people of adultery, he is required to bring forth at least four eye witnesses as evidence. In case of failure, the individual would be charged with defamation. The laws of Zina were meant to ensure that public acts of sex did not become common, and any act taking place behind closed doors did not become a matter of public debate, and be dealt with privately.
Men raped women prior to the imposition of the Hudood law. Men raped women after the imposition of the Hudood law.

Women tended to remain quiet after being raped in order to protect familial honour. So they did.
But rapes can get women pregnant, and now when a woman carried a child of rape in her womb, she had to go to the police station in order to report her rape so that she not be accused of adultery.
The law then asked her the question that was supposed to protect her against defamation: bring forth four witnesses of rape. Because you see, urdu did not have a word for rape. Despite a national history so closely tied to it, it did not have the concept of rape. Female anguish was not spoken of in our national language. It was not heard. It was only inflicted.
As far as the imposition of Hudood Ordinance in Pakistan was concerned zina was adultery, zina was rape. And if zina had taken place, then the person claiming it to have taken place, in this case a pregnant victim who is left with no option but to report, had to bring forth four eye witnesses of her rape. How do you bring forth four witnesses in the case or rape, when the entire logic to bring forth four witnesses was to ensure that the private does not become public.
The catch: the woman has reported she was raped. Rape is zina in this reality. There is a life in her womb as testament to it. But there is no man.
The woman has "confessed" but there aren't four eye witnesses to support her against the man she accuses.

The raped woman is sent to jail for Zina under the Hudood Ordinance.
Sometimes no man was sent to jail for being the counterpart. In case that the rapist was influential, it was arranged that some other man be accused for it instead. This man could be anyone. Someone who was in love with the victim. Someone who friends with her. Someone who was cordial to her. Someone who took pity on her. It doesn't matter. As long as the two could be placed in the same vicinity by the locals. The man was then accused. Taken into custody. Tortured and forced a false confession out of.
In the 1980s, as Pakistan celebrated itself as the nation that brought a super power to its knees, women were being sentenced for their own rape. And men were being dissuaded from even being seen close to them.
Because Urdu did not have a word for "rape".
That is when women took to streets and demanded this be put an end to. Remember the iconic image of women burning their dupattas? It was in one of the many protests women conducted against Zia's multiple misogynistic laws to protect the "Islamic" culture.
Women marched.
After decades of being raped. Being killed by brothers and fathers after being raped. Killing themselves to prevent from being raped. Being raped in a war by their own army. Being exploited after being raped by their own men. Being raped and being sent to jail for it, women finally forced the language to create a word for that experience.
In the 1980s, we finally had a word in the vocabulary that described the experience of women in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan: Zina-bil-Jabr.
It was still just a word. Not the law. Introducing Zina bil Jabr in the vocabulary meant that in the case of rape a woman can accuse her rapist under Zina bil Jabr instead of Zina. And her accusation not being taken as a confession of adultery. She still had to produce four eye witnesses of rape in order for there to be a conviction. Again, impossible.
The introduction of the concept of Zina bil Jabr meant that the state will not punish the woman for being raped. It did not mean that the state would protect her against being raped.
Men knew that the chances of being convicted in the case of rape were slim to none. Thus, there was nothing preventing them from raping women like they used to by the state.
What followed was a feminist struggle of years. Women repeatedly argued that the four-witnesses-for-rape charge is an impossible condition for any victim to fulfil.
To which, men responded that it is Islamic law. Men argued that Islam has given women rights already. Demanding there to be an overturn in the law is the result of a westernized mind being antagonistic towards Islamic traditions of the country.
1) It is not an Islamic Law.
2) Pakistan has a history of sexual violence against the women
3) We have heard it. We still hear it. We will hear it for eternity.
After another two and a half decades of struggle, in 2006, there was finally a act passed in the assembly: The Women Protection Act of 2006 that removed the four eye witness condition from a rape charge.
The act stated that in case of a rape charge, forensic evidence will be considered adequate evidence for a man to be charged with rape.
We got a word for our experience four decades after they said we were independant.
We got a shot at justice 59 years after they said we were independant.
Islamic Republic of Pakistan, this.
Men raped women when they got this country.
Men raped women when they lost this country.
Men raped women when they went on a Holy War.
And men never had a word for what they did to us.
Women were raped.
Women were killed for being raped.
Women killed themselves to prevent themselves from being raped.
Women were raped by the men they paid to protect them.
Women were married as a stepping stone and discarded.
Women were raped and were sent to jail for it.
Women were raped and were made to stay quiet about it because they couldn't possibly prove it in courts.
Women marched.
Women marched against a dictators.
Women fought for a word to describe decades worth of trauma. The trauma of existence in this hellhole.
Women fought against the state. The men with guns.
Women fought against decades of stifling tradition.
Women fought against the men who have the Holy Book on their chest and darkness in their hearts.
Women fought against every man who ridiculed her. Who raised his finger on her character. Who accused her of being a pawn of the enemy.
Women fought against the men who raped her.
Women fought for the law that gives her a shot at justice.

So never tell me what our culture is. Never utter the same words to me that you uttered to these women. Because I know what our culture is. Our culture is to rape women and celebrate our nationhood on her body. Our culture is to rape women and celebrate our religion on her body. Our culture is to not even have a word for male atrocities. Our culture is to make enemies of the women who fight against those atrocities.
If men were made to remain quiet for the atrocities they have committed on us, none of them would be allowed to ever speak again.
I will set fire to your culture and dance around the pyre. Watch me dance.
Women breathe because women march.
And women will.

Written by: Aiman Faisal

Laia Abril: the photographer bearing witness to rape

In a devastating exhibition, the Spanish artist depicts the clothes women, girls – and some men – were raped in. She talks about how her work reveals an epidemic of sexual violence – and how she copes.

What shocks me is how none of this shocks me. It is a familiar story. Weinstein’s team attempt to destroy her in court. Why didn’t she go to the police? Why did she take so long to speak out? Why didn’t she ask a co-star such as Sylvester Stallone to protect her? Yes, she was really asked this. Weinstein denies the charges. The jury started their deliberations on Tuesday.

I am taking in Sciorra’s recent testimony on the way to Paris to meet Laia Abril, a young Spanish artist with a new exhibition – A History of Misogyny, Chapter Two: On Rape. Abril uses photographs, testimonies, framed facts and quotes, archive material and various relevant objects in a way that makes her journalistic training apparent. The boundary between art and activism dissolves as Abril digests stories and then delivers them in ways “that people would be able to relate to” – even if they’d rather not go where they lead.

Given the subject matter, I expect Abril to be sombre. She is the opposite: charming and full of energy and easy to talk to, and I begin to see how so many people have trusted her with their stories and pain. The exhibition is still being installed when I arrive. Downstairs are huge black and white photographs of clothes people were raped in. Above the pictures are their testimonies.

This is not what I was expecting. I have seen shows featuring such clothing before, but there is something about how they are presented here, as objects in their own right, that dislocates you, makes you look anew. Their owners’ testimonies then provide the gut punch. Take the beautiful wedding dress from Kyrgyzstan. It was worn by Alina, who was a victim of ala kachuu, a form of bride kidnapping that is still practised in the country. She was captured and then made to marry the man who “ravished” her.

“I was a 21-year-old student in my fourth year at Arabaev University,” her testimony relates. “I wanted to be a fashion designer.” After the attack, she feared being a cause of shame: “My grandmother asked me not to disgrace the family.” So Alina put on the dress and married the man who raped her.

A photo of a US military uniform brings me up short. Meredith says being in the army means everything is “mission first”. In such a world, a woman does not want to be seen as “weak and emotional”. Meredith knew she had to downplay any injuries – and spent a year being raped by her commander, not wanting to think of it as rape, nor of herself as a victim. I walk past a nun’s habit belonging to a mother superior who abused novices, then a burqa belonging to a woman who was raped continually in a forced marriage in Afghanistan. “It was not sex,” she says, “it was marital rape.”

It took two years for Abril to develop enough trust with these women for them to send her their clothing. “It’s a collaborative process,” she says. Sometimes she talks to them through such intermediaries as psychiatrists. She does not want to subject anyone to yet more trauma.

As we chat, she tells me about the things that motivate her, in particular the infamous “wolf pack” case in her native Spain. In 2016, an 18-year-old woman was gang-raped by five men who were later tried and found guilty only on lesser charges of sexual abuse, as the prosecution could not prove they used violence. One judge said they should all have been acquitted and their only crime was the theft of the teenager’s phone. Last year, after a public outcry, the Spanish supreme court found the men guilty of rape.

In 2018, Amnesty International looked at rape legislation in 31 countries across Europe. Only eight have consent-based definitions. In the remainng 23 countries, if the offence does not include physical violence, it is not classified as rape. What Abril pushes us to confront, then, is rape as an institution, one that is both historicised and normalised. She gives the individual stories context, detailing all the methods that are deployed to blame rape on the woman, from lawyers pointing out that a victim may have been wearing a thong (one is photographed) to “the two-finger test” still used in India, Pakistan and Morocco. This procedure is to determine if a raped woman’s vagina is “habituated to intercourse”. If two fingers can be inserted, the argument goes, it indicates that the sex was consensual.

Then there is the thriving new industry of repairing hymens – or “rebuilding honour” as it’s called in some of the images, adverts, texts and pictures collated by Abril. Not to mention the chastity belts and the strange machines invented to cure frigidity. A vagina can be brought to erotic life by, you guessed it, rape.

There are signs of resistance, though. Abril pays tribute to the wonderful Gulabi vigilante women of India, with their pink saris and huge sticks to beat rapists. There, encased in glass, is one of their wooden weapons. There are also projections from various revenge movies, including I Spit on Your Grave and Ms 45, about a mute woman who goes on a killing spree after she is raped twice.

A triptych of hundreds of blurred faces stops me dead. All of these men, found guilty of abuse, were priests in the Catholic church – not all of the victims in this show are female. How does Abril cope with these stories? “Don’t worry,” she says. “I have two therapists now. When I was working on abortion, for Chapter One, the issue seemed fixable by law, by decriminalisation. But this – rape – is global.” She gestures around the room at all the evidence of horrific acts. “This is an epidemic.”

It is also a war crime, something Abril is well aware of, having visited Bosnia and heard how rape was used as a weapon of war during the 1992-95 conflict. Under the title Rape Camps, she has placed the words: “Serb troops violated between 12,000 to 30,000 Bosnian women.” She also heard stories about Serbs forcing brothers to rape their sisters in front of their parents. “The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia,” she records, “declared that ‘systemic rape’ during wartime was a crime against humanity.”

What Abril sees – and makes us see so clearly – is the institutionalisation of rape through such things as marriage, the military and the church. I am not sure I like the phrase “rape culture” but she does. Rape is the culture, it seems. There are quotes on the wall from Donald Trump (“Grab ’em by the pussy”) and US congressman Steve King, who last year asked if there would be any population of the world left if it wasn’t for rape and incest.

All of this arouses emotion – and it’s meant to. I return to a picture I had avoided earlier. It’s a tiny dress belonging to a five-year-old who was sexually abused by a teacher at her school in Colombia. The other parents turned against the girl’s mother when she complained. Abril describes opening the parcel when it arrived. “The dress was so small,” she says. “I went into meltdown.” It was a while before she could photograph it. Yet, she says, something happens as the work goes up on the walls. All of these stories, all of this information changes her. “ I begin to feel lighter,” she says, and I can sense that.

Education is part of the answer, we agree, but the focus on individuals is not enough: rape happens because it is embedded in the culture. The #MeToo movement may have alerted us to this, but Abril’s work carries a terrifying message: that rape is normal, that it is a system, a way of controlling women across time and culture. You can look away, and I wouldn’t blame you, but Abril refuses to. “I want to understand,” she says. “I want people to understand.”

Some letters have fallen off a wall and she goes over to pick them up. I can’t help noticing that it’s almost all the letters from the word “rapist”. “Isn’t it strange that those are the letters that are falling?” says Abril. We both laugh uneasily.

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Bangladesh admits its workers returning home after sexual abuse in Saudi Arabia

Bangladesh’s Ministry of Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment department has admitted for the first time last Thursday that its female workers are being called back to the country from Saudi Arabia because of the growing reports of physical and sexual abuse coming out of the Gulf kingdom. According to the new government report, Bangladesh is now admitting that a worrying number of Bangladeshi female workers are being abused in Saudi Arabia, with some serious cases of rape, food deprivation, and psychological and physical torture.

Not only are workers being called back to their home country, but this new reports notes down mainly 11 reasons why Bangladeshi female workers, many if not most who work as maids or domestic workers, also ran away from their employers in Saudi Arabia. These reasons include non-payment of salaries, physical abuse, deprivation of food, and denial of sick leave. At least 35% of the returnees had left because of sexual abuse.

Just last month, over 100 Bangladeshi maids returned home to Bangladesh after serious abuse from their employers in Saudi Arabia, while over the course of this year Bangladesh saw over 900 female workers flee Saudi Arabia. Last year, the number was more than 1,500 female workers who returned back to Bangladesh after suffering abuse.

Bangladesh first signed an agreement with Saudi Arabia in 2015 in regards to sending female workers to work as maids, after other countries like Indonesia stopped sending workers due to the continued reports of physical and sexual abuse in Saudi Arabia. Since 2015, 234, 831 Bangladeshi female workers have moved to Saudi Arabia to work as maids and domestic workers. Since 2015, however, there have been growing reports of Saudi’s continued abuse towards its foreign domestic workers, with many forced to seek protection within the kingdom if their passports were confiscated, or fleeing the country after escaping their employers.

In a shocking report by Middle East Eye, it was revealed in 2018 that Bangladesh was forced to set up numerous safe houses across Saudi Arabia to help protect the hundreds of Bangladeshi women who faced sexual and physical abuse and torture from their employers, many of whom are forced to run away from their employers and remain highly traumatized.

Rothna Begum, who works as the senior women’s rights researchers at Human Rights Watch, states the cases of Bangladeshi maids and female workers being abused are unfortunately commonplace inside Saudi Arabia, with a shocking 90-95% of cases showing the domestic worker has had their passport confiscated by their employers, essentially binding them in forced servitude. Speaking to The Independent, Begum states:

They face excessively long shifts of 15 to 21 hours with no days off at all. They might be locked inside the house or compound. They may be deprived of food or given spoiled food – the leftover bits of food on a plate. They are subject to psychological abuse in the form of verbal abuse such as shouting and insults. There is also physical abuse such as the pulling of ears, being burnt with hot water, and then there is sexual abuse which ranges from verbal to being touched, attempted rape, and actual rape.”

Female workers in Saudi Arabia are subject to highly controversial punishments, which includes the ability to be charged for moral crimes by Saudi officials. Being raped by their employers often results in maids and domestic workers, many of whom come from Bangladesh, to be subject to punishment for having sex outside of marriage. Fleeing from their homes can also constitute as a crime, in a country that seemingly has very little in terms of protection for international migrants. Begum explains:

I have documented many cases across the Gulf where men have come into the woman’s room and have either tried to rape them or actually raped them. Women have talked about being sold to another employer and not being paid salaries or having their wages delayed. The range of abuses can amount to forced labour or sometimes even slavery where the employer refuses to pay them and says things like ‘I bought you’.”

As the reports of abuses towards its domestic workers and migrants continue, Saudi Arabia must be held accountable for these crimes. Bangladesh has of yet not stopped the flow of workers into Saudi Arabia, however as the numbers of Bangladeshi female workers returning home continues to grow, scarred and abused from horrifying conditions from within Saudi Arabia, it must be taken into serious consideration whether or not punishable human rights abuses are being committed on a wide scale from within the kingdom.

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A dictator raped me. I want justice

Fatou A. Jallow was interviewed and named as part of the Human Rights Watch report on former Gambian president Yahya Jammeh’s sexual assault of young women

In June 2015, when I was 18 years old, the then-dictator of my country raped me.

I had just won Gambia’s national beauty pageant and Yahya Jammeh immediately began to court me, lavishing me and my family with gifts. He had running water installed at my family’s house, gave us expensive furniture, and offered me a job as a “protocol girl” in the State House, which I turned down. He even offered to marry me. But I refused.

So Mr. Jammeh used the pretext of the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan to have me come to his palace for a Quranic recital. There, with the help of his aides, including his cousin, a woman who claimed to be my friend, he locked me in a room and told me “No woman has ever rejected me. Who do you think you are?”

His face changed; his eyes were red. “You think you can get away with it?” he asked. He then slapped me, injected me with a liquid, and raped me. A few days later, I escaped from Gambia and went to live in Canada.

Today, it is Mr. Jammeh who is in exile, in Equatorial Guinea, and I am returning to Gambia to speak out. What Yahya Jammeh did to me was a crime. I know that many other women were abused by the dictator, who had set up a system to lure women to visit him or work for him in the presidential palace. Mr. Jammeh behaved as if the women of Gambia were his property. Well, we are not, and we never were.

I come from a culture where rape is not named. We never spoke of it among my family, my community, nor in school. Even in drama class, where we portrayed all other topics, rape was not addressed. We made skits about early marriage, child pregnancy, and female genital mutilation, but we never so much as whispered about how some men force themselves onto girls and women against their will.

Growing up, I saw young girls chastised for getting pregnant, but no one questioned how it happened. I remember seeing girls tremble at the sight of an uncle and do anything to avoid taking food into his room. They were in a horrific situation they had no name for.

A Gambian Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC) is now documenting the abuses committed during Mr. Jammeh’s 22 years in power. On the menu: The killing of demonstrators; the arrest and torture of journalists; enforced disappearances; the massacre of 56 migrants from Ghana, Nigeria and other countries; his phony “HIV treatment program” which forced patients to give up retroviral drugs and put themselves literally in his hands.

The TRRC will also hold hearings on sexual violence. I expect to testify before the TRRC, and I hope that other women will feel able to come forward, in closed session or in public, to tell their stories. I want them to be able to speak their truth, and take any shame they might feel, and put that shame where it belongs: on the rapists.

The Commission has Gambians glued to their televisions and radios as former Jammeh accomplices accuse him directly of ordering murders and other crimes. The TRRC has the power to recommend prosecutions and I hope that the Gambian government will request Mr. Jammeh’s extradition to stand trial. Getting him will not be easy. He has been seen partying and cavorting like a celebrity with Equatorial Guinea’s own dictator, Teodoro Obiang.

But I will not give up until Yahya Jammeh is brought to justice. I want to look him in the eyes and say before him what I am saying today. I want Mr. Jammeh to see that I, and the many other women he abused, are not broken as he intended. That we have the power that he tried to take from us.

I want to be in the same room with him again - a courtroom this time - and answer that question he asked me: “Who do you think you are?”

I am Fatou A. Jallow.

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Farishta: Outrage over Pakistan child murder

The family of a 10-year-old Pakistani girl who was abducted and murdered have said they were ignored by police when they tried to report her missing.

They say police told them the child might have eloped, and they were made to carry out errands for officers

Farishta vanished in Islamabad on 15 May and a body believed to be hers was found on 20 May.

Police are investigating if she was raped and tortured, and protests are being held to demand justice.

The individual police officers involved deny wrongdoing.

Hundreds protested in central Islamabad on Tuesday calling for justice.

The case has been compared to the rape and murder of six-year-old Zainab Ansari in January 2018 - which sparked outrage and protests across the country. Calls for action are being made on social media, under the hashtag #JusticeFor Farishta.

What do the family say?
"The police didn't help us at all," Farishta's father Ghulam Nabi told the BBC at Tuesday's protest, which blocked a major intersection. "They would ask me to clean their office, to move their furniture, and to go get fruit for their Iftar [fast-breaking] dinner from the market.

"I was so distressed during those [four] days that I couldn't tell night from day."

Farishta's father says police did not take the case seriously
On Wednesday, a case was formally registered against several police officials, alleging negligence. The chief of Shahzad Town police station, Muhammad Abbas Rana, has been suspended.

But he defended his and his officers' conduct, saying they had pursued the case and interviewed the family and neighbours on 16 May. He said the family were responsible for the delays in registering the case and that they did not follow it up properly. He denied they had been made to clean the police station.

Separately three people have been arrested in connection with Farishta's disappearance, Dawn newspaper reports.

A formal investigation was only launched on Sunday after a politician raised the case with the inspector general of Islamabad police.

The mutilated body of Farishta was found the following evening, triggering complaints that her life could have been saved had the police acted promptly.

Mr Nabi said that Mr Abbas Rana had initially refused to register a case - known as an FIR - telling him that his daughter might have "eloped with someone of her own free will". Mr Rana denied this.

Farishta went missing on Wednesday 15 May after she went out to play in the eastern Islamabad neighbourhood where her family lives. She did not return as expected when the evening call for prayer began at the local mosque - signalling the breaking of the daily fast.

At that time, families gather for a meal known as Iftar - and Farishta's absence triggered a panic.

After scouring the neighbourhood and checking with friends, her family went to the police to file a missing person report.


On Monday evening, their worst fears were realised when Farishta's body was found. After being told that the doctor meant to conduct the autopsy was on leave - and so it would be delayed - the family decided to stage a sit-in at the hospital.

They were joined by leaders and activists from the Pashtun Protection Movement (PTM), a group which advocates for the rights of Pakistan's minority Pashtun community, to which Farishta's family belongs.

They come from Mohmand, in north-west Pakistan, and are among tens of thousands of families displaced by Pakistan's war on terror in that region.

"The dead body lying in this coffin is not just mine but everybody's daughter," said Mr Nabi.

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“When Your Whole Family is Destroyed Why Will You Not Fight for Justice”: Bilkees Rasool

 “ I am happy that the court has acknowledged the pain I had to go through. Finally, the court has accepted it. I have waited for it for so long,” said Bilkis Rasool, almost in tears as she addressed the media today.

It was a press conference everyone who has been following the travails of the victims of the horrific Gujarat violence 2002 had been waiting for. Bilkis, then a young girl was gang raped. 14 members of her family, including her three and a half year old daughter was killed. Other female members of her family were raped and murdered before her eyes, memories that continue to haunt her.

She filed her first FIR in Limkheda police station in March 2003. And since then has moved from court to court seeking justice.

“I had full faith in my Constitution and always believed that justice would be done,” she said. The court ordered compensation of Rs 50 lakhs to her. Bilkees said that now she will settle down in one place, and leave her nomadic life behind. She along with her husband Yaqub and family had been moving from house to house, locality to locality, in search of security and justice.

She said that she will use part of the compensation to help others fighting similar battles. Bilkis was pregnant when she was raped, and alter gave birth to her second daughter Hajra. She said she wanted her girl to be a lawyer. “One of my daughters was lost, we did not even get her body, I pray she is in heaven and rests in peace,” she said.

“I saw my Saleha being stoned in front of me I saw my three old girl dying. We could not even bury her,” the survivor of Gujarat 2002 said. Bilkis wants to help other children, and will create a Saleha fund from the compensation money to be able to do so.

Asked what kept her going, her response was simple: “when you have seen your entire family, your life destroyed, why will you not fight for justice.”

The long years of struggle have taken a toll. The relief has still to sink in. As her lawyer Shobha pointed out, the system was weighed against her. “One has to read the chargesheet to understand how the system tried to save the perpetrators. In the closure report Bilkis was not even examined for rape, only for injury,” she said. The lawyer said that the picture changed only after the CBI was brought in . Even then when everything else failed, the advocates filed for compensation. And this, Shobha said, is that very rare case when maximum compensation has for rape has been granted by the court.

Yakub, Bilkis’ husband, has been virtually living on daily wages for these 17 years. He works when he gets a job. He said that the Gujarat government failed in helping the family, and not even provided security when they were under threat. The family has moved in Gujarat, then to Delhi, Lucknow and Mumbai. Today Bilkis is living with her family of seven in Devgadh Baria’s Rahimabad relief colony. They were trying to flee town on that fateful day as mobs had started attacking the Muslims. She boarded a bus with 17 members of her family. The bus was attacked by a mob and 14 of her family were killed. Apart from her daughter, her mother too died. Bilkis was five months pregnant at the time.

She was left for dead. She woke up in blood and bodies around her. She still has nightmares. She has four daughters now but the wounds remain.

Timeline of the Initial Years

March 3 2002: Bilkis Rasool was gang raped. 14 members of her family , including her 31/2 year old daughter, murdered. Several female members of her family also raped and murdered. Bilkis was the only eyewitness and adult survivor of he horrific massacre.

March 2003: Bilkis files first FIR in Limkheda police station. Names rapists but this was not included in the FIR.

March 25, 2003: One year after incident Summary A report filed and accepted by Limkheda Judicial Magistrate effectively closing case. Inconsistencies cited as reason.

April 2003: Bilkis approaches National Human Rights Commission that does not directly take up her case but requests senior counsel Harish Salve to represent her in the Supreme Court.

April 2003: Bilkis herself becomes a petitioner in Supreme Court. Her main prayers are: quashing of Summar A order of Limkheda Magistrate, CBI enquiry and action against errging Gujarat police officers, compensation.

September 25, 2003: SC asks Gujarat government to stop state CID investigation. State CID had started harassing Bilkis and members of her extended family.

December 18, 2003: SC asks CBI to undertake investigations.

January 22, 2004: CBI arrests 12 accused.

February 11, 2004: CBI files interim report where several gross violations and complicity of Gujarat police highlighted.

March 2004: CBI arrests two police officers.

April 19, 2004: CBI files chargesheet against 20, including six police officers and two government doctors.

May 12, 2004: CBI files final report disclosing gross violations and complicity of the Gujarat state.

May, 2004: Witnesses given CISF protection by the Supreme Court as Bilkis and witnesses face threats.

July 2004: Bilkis files additional petition requesting transfer of cases outside Gujarat.

August 6, 2004: SC orders Bilkis case to be transferred to suitable court in Mumbai.

January 13, 2005: Charges framed against 19 of the 20 accused. Trial of one Dr Sangeeta Prasad separated as she is declared medically/mentally unfit for trial.

February 22, 2005:Bilkis examined by Special Public Prosecutor continues. She identifies in court the 12 accused who raped her, killed her daughter, and raped and killed members of her family.

Case went on in the Supreme Court, being challenged by the accused. She was finally awarded compensation by the court in 2019.

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India: 17 men charged with raping 12-year-old girl over months

Seventeen men have appeared in court in the south Indian city of Chennai charged with repeatedly raping a 12-year-old girl over the course of seven months.

The case is generating intense anger, including from the city’s legal fraternity, some of whom were part of a mob that allegedly attacked some of the accused before they appeared in court on Tuesday.

The accused men included security guards, lift operators and plumbers working at the 300-apartment block where the girl lived, police said. 

The men, whose ages range from 23 to 66, allegedly sedated the girl and then took her into the elevator and into vacant apartment buildings to assault her. Indian media have reported that the girl, whose hearing is impaired, was also taken to a basement, terrace, gym and public restrooms.

 India’s abuse of women is the biggest human rights violation on Earth

Deepa Narayan

 

Read more

The Times of India reported that the first to assault her was a 66-year-old elevator operator in the largely unoccupied apartment complex. It was alleged he then brought other men from outside the complex who filmed the assaults.

Local media said the men threatened the girl with knives and told her they would release videos of the assault if she told anyone.

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Noura in her own words: Teen who killed rapist husband shares her story

Sudanese teenager Noura Hussein, who is on death row for killing her 35-year-old husband, in a case that has sparked international outrage, has spoken out for the first time about her forced marriage, and the rape and struggle that happened when she stabbed him.

CNN obtained a first-hand account from the 19-year-old, who is currently awaiting retrial in an Omdurman prison cell after appealing her death sentence.

The teenager's story has put a spotlight on forced marriage and marital rape in Sudan, where the legal age to enter into marriage is 10 and marital rape is not a crime.

Noura's family made her get married at 15, but allowed her to finish school. Three years later, after a public marriage ceremony, her husband tried to consummate the marriage. After refusing to have sex with him on their "honeymoon," she says he raped her as members of his family held her down. A day later her husband tried to rape her again, and she stabbed him to death. When she went to her parents for support, they turned her over to the police.

The Sudanese government has not responded to CNN's requests for comment on the case.
Noura's first-hand account was obtained by CNN. It has been translated, and lightly edited for clarity and length.

Noura Hussein: He told my parents that he wanted to marry me when I was in the 8th grade.
They fooled me after I sat the secondary school exams at the end of that year.
And the first time I even saw him was a week after he proposed the marriage to my uncle.
And from the first time they told me I refused. I told them I don't want to marry, I want to study.
I spoke to him directly and said, "I don't want to marry you."
I fled to Sinnar to my aunt's house, but two days later they brought me back and the religious ceremony took place, two weeks after he first proposed, in our house.

Afterwards I had no communication with him. If he visited the house I left. I told him, I don't want you.

The wedding ceremony was three years later after I sat my school leaver exam. They did all the usual rituals for the wedding, his family are well off, but in all that time I didn't take anything from him -- not a single penny.
I was overwhelmed with anger, I didn't want this man.
I sat in the hairdressers contemplating suicide.

I cried sitting next to him. In the car he kept coming closer to me and I kept moving away. We arrived at the honeymoon flat, I locked myself inside one of the rooms and lay down fully clothed.

This went on -- I refused to eat, I refused to leave my room. On the third day he told me it's time you open the door so I don't break in. I refused but while he slept I crept out and found the door to the flat was locked.
On the ninth day his relatives came, his uncle told me to go to the bedroom. I said no so he dragged me by my arm into the bedroom and his cousin slapped me. All of them tore at my clothing. His uncle held me down by my legs and each of the other two held down my arms. He stripped and had me while I wept and screamed. Finally, they left the room. I was bleeding, I slept naked.
The next day he grabbed me, threw me on the bed and tried to climb on top of me. I was fighting back and my hand found a knife under the pillow. We began grappling over the knife. He cut my hand and bit down on my shoulder.
I ran to my parent's house. I had no idea how I got there. I was still carrying the knife.

I was hoping to finish studying law and then marry, my dream is to be a judge.

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Bites and a broken bed: New details in case of Sudan teen who killed rapist husband

Slashes to her hands, bite marks embedded in her shoulder, and a broken bed.

As the defense team for Sudanese teenager Noura Hussein submitted an appeal to save her life, CNN has learned new details about the struggle that unfolded when she killed her husband, who she says raped her following their forced marriage.

The legal team representing the 19-year-old, who was sentenced to death earlier this month for murder, filed the appeal on Thursday in the capital Khartoum following an international outcry over Hussein's case.

"Noura and indeed the women and girls of Sudan have too often been treated as chattel to be traded and given away as though they are property and as though they have no rights," activists with the Justice for Noura campaign said in a statement on Thursday. "Here today, united and in one voice we wish to say -- enough!"

The teenager's story has shone a spotlight on the issues of forced marriage and marital rape in Sudan, where the legal age of marriage is only 10 and marital rape is legal.

Hussein's family compelled her to marry at 15, but she refused and ran away for three years. Her father forced her to complete the wedding ceremony in April 2017. After refusing to have sex with her husband on their "honeymoon," she says he raped her as his brother and two cousins restrained her. A day later her husband tried to rape her again, and she stabbed him to death. When she went to her parents for support, they turned her in to the police.

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The Imam and the Rape Victim

Imam Abdul Razzaq is not famous. He has probably never been outside of his native Pakistan, let alone his small village of Meerwala. You’ll most likely never see him on television or read about him much. But he has done what many Imams and most men still find very difficult to do: defend a gang-raped woman in the face of other, more powerful (and armed) men.

On an otherwise ordinary Friday in June 2002, Imam Abdul Razzaq gave a Khutba. But not just any Khutba – it was a sermon with shock value. In it, he condemned the gang rape of Mukhtar Mai, which had occurred a few days earlier. Mai was a young woman whose teenage brother was falsely accused of engaging in a relationship with a woman from a “higher” tribe. The punishment for this, according to village elders was for his sister, Mukhtar Mai, to be gang-raped by men from the “offended” woman’s tribe. And that she was.

After being raped and paraded naked in front of hundreds in a place where women do not venture outside without being modestly dressed, and billboards of semi-clad females are virtually non-existent, Mai contemplated suicide.

This traumatized woman would have done it – until Imam Abdul Razzaq knocked on her door.

The Imam convinced both Mai and her father to press charges. He went with them to the local police station and helped them report the incident. Then, he delivered his Khutba and called a journalist to give the crime publicity. Once the article about the horrific attack came out, the news spread first within Pakistan. Then, a few weeks later, the BBC picked it up and brought it to the world.

The publicity gave Mai the strength countless women raped in similar fashion never received. It gave her courage in the face of the seemingly insurmountable mountain of misogyny.

Imam Abdul Razzaq never received rape crisis training; he did not complete a degree in Women’s Studies; he was not pressured by Western non-governmental organizations (NGOs), nor has he ever lived in a part of the world where discussions about women’s rights, women’s equality, feminism or gender justice take place. His village, at least at the time of Mukhtar Mai’s rape, had virtually no electric power service and no telephones.

But Imam Abdul Razzaq received a different kind of training. It was in not just reading and memorizing the Quran, but truly living by its commands of justice.

“O you who believe! stand out firmly for justice, As witnesses to Allah, Even As against yourselves, or your parents, or your kin, and whether it be (against) rich or poor: for Allah can best protect both. follow not the lusts (of your hearts), Lest you swerve, and if you distort (justice) or decline to do justice, Verily Allah is well- acquainted with all that you do” (Quran 4:135).

Imam Abdul Razzaq knew that rape is wrong, regardless of how often it happens, who it happens to, or where it happens, whether it is in the alleys of Meerwala or on the streets of Manhattan. Imam Abdul Razzaq also knows that giving Khutbas is necessary, but to truly stand up for what’s right, especially for a woman whose cries are normally unheeded by the society around him, requires action.

This great, underappreciated Imam, also understands that violence against women is not a “women’s issue”. It is a men’s issue as well. In fact, it is very much a “Muslim issue”. It is about the core of Islamic teachings: justice for the weak, and standing up for what is right in every way we can, with every tool at our disposal.

During this month of March, which is Women’s History Month, Imam Abdul Razzaq’s example is one more Muslims should highlight, discuss, and emulate. He is an example not only for Imams and male Muslim leaders, but Muslim men across the board.

May Allah make us just to all, especially the weakest and most vulnerable of our communities, following the lead of Imams like Imam Abdul Razzaq.

Sound Vision team conveys its Salam to Imam Abdul Razzaq and to Mukhtar Mai. Both symbol of courage, wisdom, and justice.

Peace,
Abdul Malik Mujahid, Sound Vision

The Real Instinct Lurking Behind the Kathua Horror

The rapes at Unnao and Kathua have shaken most of us. And yet it needs to be said that the Kathua rape falls in an entirely different category. The abduction, brutalisation, multiple rape and finally murder of the eight-year-old girl was an act of communal or ethnic ‘cleansing’. It was done with an intent to rid Kathua of the presence of the Muslim Bakarwal community. That it was done on “behalf of the nation” was clear when we saw the tiranga being waved to cover the crime, led by people who are known as officers of the court.
Rapes of children in this country are not a rarity. We have heard of even eight-month-old babies being brutalised by men. So it is not the age of the victim alone that should shake us. Nor indeed the manner of the rape. Humans have the capacity to imagine novel depravities. Newer forms of horrors can be and have been invented and executed.

Apart from the act itself, it is the brazen and cunning support for the criminals which was displayed on the streets of Jammu under the cover of the national flag which should lead us to pause and question how as a society we have reached this point. The lawyers proved that the rapists were not alone in this ritual of the rape and murder of a little Muslim girl. I know some people will object to my describing the girl as Muslim. Let us call her a child and the rapists merely as rapists. But was she not raped and killed for being a Muslim? Was it not done to scare all the Bakarwal (Muslims) families away from Kathua?
It was the tri-colour dance on the streets of Jammu which was the most disgusting. But that should not have surprised us either. Look at the cunning calculations that lay behind what the lawyers were asking for: besides demanding the case to be transferred to the CBI from the crime branch of the police of the Jammu and Kashmir, they also demanded that Rohingyas be evicted from the area and that the policy regarding the use of tribal land be scrapped.

All three demands have a common element: demonisation of Muslims. The cleverness behind the demand of a CBI investigation cannot be missed. The crime branch of the state police had put together a coherent account of the act and was going to file a chargesheet. The idea was to block the move and allow a respite for the criminals. The CBI, being what it is nowadays, would have slowed down the investigation and would also have given an excuse for the government that a higher agency was looking into the crime, for have not we been demanding time and again for cases to be transferred from the state investigative agencies to the central body? That breathing space would then have been used to mobilise support for the perpetrators among the Hindus of Jammu.
Where did this overconfidence of ‘nationalist’ politics, displayed in Jammu, come from? How and why did lawyers, politicians and others feel emboldened to block the police from filing the chargesheet, take out a procession and give a call for a bandh? Why did they feel assured of popular support? Were they only the most vocal, articulate ones from a community the rapists and their supporters were trying to mobilise in their anti-Muslim campaign?

We have forgotten that a jhanki (tableau) lauding the hacking and murder of Mohammad Afrazul by Shambhulal Regar was taken out in a  Ramnavami procession at Jodhpur. The organisers of the procession feigned ignorance – nobody was ready to take responsibility for the bizarre aesthetic demonstration of support of a vile act. We did not ask how a tableau could be smuggled into a procession? The criminality of it was soon forgotten. We need to recall that substantial support did and does exist for the murderer Shambhulal at Rajsamand. People argue that since “love jihad” is real, what Shambhulal did has a justification, his purpose was right.
Long before the defence for the rapists and killers of Kathua and Shambhulal, Gujarat had witnessed a most macabre yatra centred around the defence of the mass murders and rapes that were part of the genocidal violence against Muslims in 2002. The then chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, had undertaken this yatra in the name of the glory of Gujarat. He asked his audience if they believed in the stories of looting and burning of houses, of children being killed and women being raped. He blasted the opposition for telling the world that Gujarat was full of looters , murdered and rapists. In his public meetings he, in his sinister style, lobbed the question before his people: Did murders take place? Did rapes take place? Did killings take place? And he coaxed the audience to deny all of it. The Hindus of Gujarat are still in denial of the rapes and murders of Muslims; and if they are truthful to themselves, they have an explanation – or even justification – for the horrific acts
We know that Kausar Bi was abducted, raped and murdered. The investigative agencies told us that this was done in the knowledge and under the watch of the then home minister of Gujarat, Amit Shah. He now leads the party which rules India, after having secured a discharge from the trial court that the CBI refused to appeal. Kausar Bi’s murder and the murder of her husband, Sohrabuddin, was justified by the then chief minister in the name of fighting terrorism.
A similar campaign of denial of violence, which included looting, destroying of properties of Muslims, murders and rapes, was witnessed in Muzaffarnagar. We see women in Kathua sitting on a dharna against the police action in the rape and murder case and we are taken back to the scenes of hordes of women coming out to prevent police from entering their villages to arrest their sons, brothers and husbands who were accused in these acts of violence. We saw the body of an accused being wrapped in the tiranga in Dadri where Akhlaq was lynched after being dragged out of his home.
How can we also forget the murderous assault by the lawyers of Delhi on Kanhaiya Kumar? Are they not brothers-in-arms of the agitating lawyers of Jammu? Before expressing its annoyance at the act of the lawyers of Jammu, the Supreme Court should have asked itself why it decided that the case of assault against Kanhaiya should not be pursued. Why did it say that let the buried be buried?  
Rapes should worry us. The rape of a helpless child is most reprehensible. But more disturbing is   the fact that the perpetrators and their supporters pass off such acts as ‘nationalism’. We write off the seriousness of each act of violence against Muslims and Christians by comparing it with the enormity of the crimes committed by Hitler. But as Jairus Banaji has pointed out, there is a serial element in the episodes of such violence as all of them essentially spring from a genocidal impulse. So what we have since the recrudescence of communal violence against Muslims in 1961 is the serial impact of that impulse. We think that the incidents are isolated but we need to realise that they are merely episodes of a serial.

I see the media turning its attention to the new victims, the Bakarwals in this case. We read about their way of living and the way they think. Poems are already being written as elegies to the raped and murdered child. All this is fine and the sentiment behind it should be respected. But we need to take a hard look at ourselves. We need to shift our gaze. We need to look at the politics of rape, murder and violence against the Muslims and Christians of this country which has been legitimised by politicians through their incessant propaganda. We need to ask our pundits how they could see hope in a person who has perfected the politics of hatred against Muslims and Christians into an art and who never misses an opportunity to inject this venom in the body polity of this country. Why are we overawed by him?

The eight-year-old child in Kathua is the latest addition to the long list of girls and women – named and unnamed – who have been raped, brutalised and killed for being Muslim. This fact should not be blurred. She was not raped and killed because she was a child. The fact of the rape is important but more important than that is the politics behind this rape and murder. So it is not merely the manner and method employed to crush a fragile life that we need to discuss. That is what we see the media doing. There is a perverse pleasure in doing that. Let us not allow ourselves to be swallowed by that.
Let us not restrict ourselves to the demand of justice for the victim. She is beyond that. It is now time for the people of the country to decide how long they will remain under the spell of fake nationalists.

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Hear the Chilling Details of the Kathua Rape Chargesheet | The Quint

Why is gang rape rampant in India? | Inside Story

Assad’s rape victims break their silence

The torture victim stood in front of her tormentor wondering what treatment would be meted out this time in the notorious Branch 215, also known as Raid Brigade run by military intelligence in Damascus. Would it be a merciless beating or would it be another sex assault on her already broken body?

The start of the investigation was interrupted suddenly by a ringing telephone and she watched and listened with incredulity as the voice laughing and giggling down the line prompted the torturer to break into a warm smile. Almost automatically, he softened the tone of his voice, for that is the effect most daughters have on their fathers.
In the seconds that he looked away from his torture victim he had morphed from brutal monster into a warm and caring father. This was one of the more chilling aspects that emerged from the stories I heard from Syrian women who have been swept up on an industrial scale and thrown into Bashar Al-Assad’s prisons since the start of the 2011 war. The cold reality is that the mass rapes, sexual assaults, punishment beatings and mental torture are being inflicted on women routinely by someone else’s fathers, husbands and even grandfathers.

At the end of the shift, these men must return to their family homes and normality, having completely destroyed the lives and souls of the women and young girls in their grip. The harsh reality is that if your husband works in Branch 215 then he is probably a serial rapist or is standing by as a spectator watching the most heinous, unimaginable crimes being carried out on women prisoners and girls.
I wonder how this particular monster responded when he got home and was asked, “What did you do today, Daddy?” Obviously he would not be telling his daughter about the teeth he smashed, the bones he had broken or the sex he had forced on his victims.
While trying to shine a light on this dark underbelly of the Assad regime, I met several women who ended up in Branch 215 or other equally terrifying prisons and ghost jails run by the Syrian regime. In every encounter, the image of Bashar Al-Assad loomed large, either in portraits hanging on walls or on the T-shirts worn by the men responsible for the brutal rapes.

Yes, you read that accurately. Incredible as it may seem, the face of the Syrian leader is emblazoned on T-shirts worn by the rapists in his employ, as if he defiles Syrian women by proxy. No wonder that many who manage to get out of the prisons cannot bear to look at the face of the Syrian leader. Those small, thin lips and piercing stare must send shivers down their spines every time they see his image.

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Kashmir 'mass rape' survivors fight for justice

"We were getting ready for bed when the soldiers came. They took the men away. Some started drinking alcohol. I was holding my two-year-old daughter in my arms when they tried to grab me.

"I resisted, and in the scuffle she fell out of my arms, and out of the window. She was crippled for life.

"Three soldiers grabbed me, tore my pheran, my shirt - I don't even know what all happened after that. There were five of them. I still remember their faces."

Zareena was also in the same house. It had only been 11 days since her wedding.

"I had returned from my parents' house that very day.

"Some soldiers asked my mother-in-law about all the new clothes hanging in the room, so she told them, 'here, she is our new daughter-in-law, our new bride'.

"What happened after that, I cannot begin to describe it. We haven't just been wronged, what we have faced is an infinite injustice. Even today when we see soldiers we start shaking with fear."

The people of Kunan and neighbouring Poshpora accuse the Indian army of carrying out a planned mass rape of the women in these two far-flung villages. They also claim that while the women were gang-raped, the men were subjected to horrific torture, and that they have been fighting for justice these last 26 years.

In Srinagar when I spoke with a minister in the state government, Naeem Akhtar, about these allegations he said that in conflicts like Kashmir truth often gets obscured by the layer of dust that settles on it.

And now it seems a group of young Kashmiri women are determined to wipe this dust away.

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-41268906