WUNRN
GUINEA:
MILITARY RAPE & SEXUAL VIOLENCE - CALL FOR JUSTICE & SUPPORT
|
|
|
(file photo) |
DAKAR, 9 October 2009 (IRIN) - At an 8 October gathering of Guinean women beaten
or raped during the recent military attack on demonstrators, all wept as one
young woman presented torn clothes soldiers had ripped off of her.
“We all collapsed in tears. It is unspeakably painful what happened here in
Guinea,” Aïssata Daffe of the Union des Forces Républicaines political party
told IRIN.
The gathering was part of an ongoing effort by local NGOs and civil society
organizations to collect information about the sexual violence during the 28
September military
crackdown in order to appeal for assistance and justice.
NGOs are still trying to determine how many women and girls were raped. For now
33 cases have been documented, according to local and international aid
agencies.
The data search requires neighbourhood visits, people involved in the efforts
told IRIN. Many women are simply staying home, afraid to seek help. Added to
the usual stigma attached to rape is fear. Rumours have been rife – and doctors
have recounted – that soldiers have entered hospitals and taken away women who
said they were raped.
“What I know for sure is that soldiers came into a health centre and took the
women who were there with rape injuries,” said one of two doctors who told IRIN
this happened.
Human rights workers and residents of Conakry say a climate of fear has
overcome the population, and many civil servants are afraid to talk. Two other
doctors told IRIN they do not think rapes occurred.
“I know people are saying that on the radio and internet, but I do not believe
that rapes happened during the events of 28 September,” a public hospital
doctor told IRIN.
“They are afraid to talk,” said Mamadi Kaba, president of the Guinea office of
the human rights group RADDHO. “Whether or not they have received specific
instructions from the junta, they are afraid to give any information [about the
events of 28 September].”
An aid worker who requested anonymity told IRIN: “It is very difficult for
health professionals who are divided between their ethical and medical
responsibilities and the risk they take treating these victims.”
Appeal
NGOs and political associations will appeal for ongoing medical and
psychological assistance to rape victims. They will also urge women to go after
their perpetrators.
“This absolutely must not stand,” said Nanfadima Magassouba, president of the
National Coalition of Guinea for the Rights and Citizenship of Women
(CONAG-DCF).
Junta leader Moussa Dadis Camara on 7 October announced the creation of a
national commission of inquiry into the events of 28 September. But a coalition
of political parties and civil society organizations has rejected this, calling
for an international investigation.
CONAG-DCF plans to observe a national day – possibly to coincide with the
International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women 25 November –
“to draw attention to the magnitude of the damage”, Magassouba told IRIN.
Even in Guinea, which since independence in 1958 has regularly seen military repression
of civilians, the sexual violence that took place on 28 September was a
shock.
“We did not know Guineans could do this to Guineans,” Magassouba said.
One activist told IRIN in her neighbourhood is a 15-year-old girl who was
gang-raped during the violence. “Soldiers raped her, one after another. When we
saw her she could not even sit.”
Political party UFR’s Daffe said moving past the fear and repression is
essential. She said she and her colleagues are visiting families of victims in
an effort to repair a crushed collective morale.
“We must get past this; we must catch people before they get so discouraged
that they stop contributing to the fight,” she said. “We need them for the fight.”
_______________________________________________________________________
----- Original Message -----
From: WUNRN
ListServe
To: WUNRN ListServe
Sent: Tuesday, October 06, 2009 1:54 PM
Subject: Guinea - Seized by Violence - Rampant Victimization of
Women
WUNRN
Guinea, officially Republic of
Guinea, is a country in West Africa.
The Atlantic coast borders Guinea to the west, along with Guinea-Bissau.
Senegal forms
its inland northern border, along with Mali, to the north and
north-east. Côte d'Ivoire is to the south-east, Liberia to the
south and Sierra Leone to the southwest. Islam is
demographically, socially, and culturally the dominant religion. Approximately
85 percent of the population is Muslim.
________________________________________________________________
Guinea
- Seized by Violence, Women Are Prey
October
5, 2009
CONAKRY, Guinea — Cellphone snapshots, ugly and hard to refute, are circulating here and feeding rage: they show that women were the particular targets of the Guinean soldiers who suppressed a political demonstration at a stadium here last week, with victims and witnesses describing rapes, beatings and acts of intentional humiliation.
One photograph shows a naked woman lying on muddy ground, her legs up in the air, a man in military fatigues in front of her. In a second picture a soldier in a red beret is pulling the clothes off a distraught-looking woman half-lying, half-sitting on muddy ground. In a third a mostly nude woman lying on the ground is pulling on her trousers.
The cellphone pictures are circulating anonymously, but multiple witnesses corroborated the events depicted.
The attacks were part of a violent outburst on Sept. 28 in which soldiers shot and killed dozens of unarmed demonstrators at the main stadium here, where perhaps 50,000 had assembled. Local human rights organizations say at least 157 were killed; the government puts the figure at 56.
But even more than the shootings, the attacks on women — horrific anywhere, but viewed with particular revulsion in Muslim countries like this one — appear to have traumatized the citizenry and hardened the opposition’s determination to force out the leader of the military junta, Capt. Moussa Dadis Camara.
Diplomats said the violence had irreversibly undermined Mr. Camara’s standing with other countries.
If internal opposition continues to grow, Captain Camara may be forced either to leave power or to tighten his grip with an even more authoritarian government.
Bernard Kouchner, the foreign minister of France, the former colonial power here, said his country could no longer work with Captain Camara, and urged “international intervention.”
The exact number of women who were abused is not known. Because of the shame associated with sexual violence in this West African country, victims are reluctant to speak, and local doctors refuse to do so. Victims who told of the attacks would not provide their names because they were afraid of retribution.
But the witnesses were adamant. “I affirm, in categorical fashion, that women were raped, not just one woman,” said Mamadou Mouctar Diallo, 34, an opposition leader who said he had been severely beaten himself. “I saw many rapes.”
Three women who said they had been attacked described their ordeal in an interview this past weekend. “We didn’t know the soldiers were going to harm us,” said the middle-aged woman who said she could not sleep at night. She spoke slowly in a darkened room, seated on a bed with two other women. They were in a villa in a district at the edge of the capital here.
“We heard gunfire,” she said. “I tried to flee.” With weapons going off, suddenly “it was like a henhouse.”
She ran, but a soldier barred the way.
“He hit me,” she said. “And he tore my clothes off. He ripped my clothes off with his hands.”
Then, she said, “he put his hand inside me.” The soldier hit her on the head with his rifle, requiring stitches, she said. She also had large welts from the beating.
“We are traumatized,” she said slowly, looking down.
Mr. Diallo said he saw at least 10 women raped at the stadium.
Describing one such assault, he said: “I saw a woman who was stripped naked. They ripped off, they tore off her clothes. They surrounded her. They made her lie down. They lifted up her feet, and one of the soldiers advanced. They took turns.”
One woman interviewed at the suburban villa here described how a soldier had ripped her robe off with a knife. She had a large cut on her backside, where a soldier had stabbed her with his knife, and deep bruises on her shoulders.
The third woman said she had been whipped by a soldier. “When I went out, I saw one of the soldiers lying on top of a woman,” she said. “A lot of women were raped.”
Corroboration of the attacks came from at least one foreign aid organization in the Guinean capital. Jerome Basset of the Conakry mission for Doctors Without Borders said his team had treated three rape victims and three other victims of sexual violence in the hours after the demonstration.
Brutal repression of antigovernment demonstrators has occurred in Guinea before, notably in 2007, when security forces shot several hundred people demonstrating against the repressive regime of Lansana Conté, who preceded Captain Camara.
Rape is a fairly common tool of military repression in Africa, but large-scale violence against women has not been a previous government tactic here. “This time, a new stage has been reached,” said Sidya Touré, a former prime minister who was also beaten at the stadium and said he had witnessed brutalities there. “Women as battlefield targets. We could never have imagined that.”
“Where could people get the idea to start raping women in broad daylight?” Mr. Touré asked, in an interview at his home here. “It’s so contrary to our culture. To molest women using rifle barrels. ... ”
Captain Camara, asked in his office at the sprawling military camp here last week whether rapes had occurred, responded: “I wasn’t at the stadium. These are things people have told me.” He has repeatedly disclaimed responsibility for the killings at the stadium, blaming opposition figures instead.
He reiterated these disclaimers in an interview broadcast Sunday on Radio France Internationale, even as Mr. Kouchner, the French foreign minister, said in a radio interview that “group massacres aren’t internal matters.”
Opposition figures here said that they were discussing further ways of countering the government, and that they would not be stopped by last week’s bloody repression.
A diplomat here, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak on the subject, said Saturday that “the writing is on the wall for the junta, certainly vis-à-vis the international community, and I hope vis-à-vis the local community.”
Meanwhile, the sexual violence, along with the number of people unaccounted for after last week’s crackdown, continues to trouble many here.
“They especially tore into the women,” said another former prime minister, François Lonsény Fall, who was also at the stadium. “They were seeking to humiliate them.”
“We want a force of intervention to protect us from the ferocity of the Guinean Army,” Mr. Fall said.
================================================================
To contact the list administrator, or to leave the list, send an email to:
wunrn_listserve-request@lists.wunrn.com. Thank you.