Some things are so awful that writing fails one. Mass rape in war-torn Africa is one of them.
I tried for a very long time to come up with some words to preface this node with, something articulate, erudite and worthy of E2's writerly ethos; but I just can't. The raw horror can only be allowed to speak for itself - but it is a mute horror. It is a nightmare we don't tell anyone about.
A bunch of people cleverer and braver than me have decided that the horror should no longer be mute. They are organising a campaign called Silence is the Enemy, and below is the post I wrote promoting it on my blog yesterday.
Apologies for the crosspost - but this is important.
In Liberia, sexual predation during the civil war was “normal.” One major survey found that 75 percent of women had been raped — mostly gang-raped, with many suffering internal injuries.
The incidence of rape has dropped since then but is still numbingly high. An International Rescue Committee survey in 2007 found that about 12 percent of girls aged 17 and under acknowledged having been sexually abused in some way in the previous 18 months.
In DRO Congo:
I think of Beatrice, shot in her vagina, who now has tubes instead of organs. Honorata, raped by gangs as she was tied upside down to a wheel. Noella, who is my heart -- an 8-year-old girl who was held for 2 weeks as groups of grown men raped her over and over. Now she has a fistula, causing her to urinate and defecate on herself. Now she lives in humiliation.
In Darfur:
According to a report published today by a charity, the Alliance for Direct Action against Rape in Conflict and Crises, there has been a rise in sexual violence in the region. In the past five weeks alone, more than 200 women in Darfur's largest displacement camp, Kalma, have been sexually assaulted. Unicef and other charities working on the ground have expressed concern about the gang rape of minors by up to 14 men.
In Somalia:
Many gangs carry knives in case they come across a girl who has undergone female genital mutilation and then had her vagina stitched nearly shut to safeguard her chastity, a custom of many families here.
One of the worst things about reading reports like these is the sense of hopeless impotence one feels; after all, what can we, sitting here in the West, do to protect the next generation of girls, or stop the phenomenon of strategic mass rape from spreading to more conflict zones? As it is, femicide and systematic rape are a growing phenomenon in Latin America, so the idea is obviously a popular one. As someone said, destroying an entire society through rape is cheap warfare.
Isis The Scientist is determined that we will do something about it, though. She is running this great, imaginative campaign where herself and a bunch of other Scienceblogs writers will donate all of their June page-hit revenues to Medecins Sans Frontieres, who provide front line medical care to the women and girls who are the victims of these terrible crimes.
Here are the URLs of the participating blogs - all you need to do is click and generate page hits for these bloggers, and the money will go to MSF, so visit them early and often:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/
http://scienceblogs.com/isisthescientist/
http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/
http://scienceblogs.com/bioephemera/
http://scienceblogs.com/neurotopia/
http://scienceblogs.com/authority/
http://scienceblogs.com/drugmonkey/
http://scienceblogs.com/ethicsandscience/
Palliative care, however, is not enough. Isis is also planning to start a letter writing campaign to the US Ambassador to the United Nations, asking her to use her position to bring the issue of mass rape and femicide into the open and onto the international agenda. No amount of aid money will help a country whose women have been all but destroyed in body and spirit; no amount of sex education, AIDS prevention and diplomatic outreach will do a lick of good for Africa if there is only one half of a human society that can be engaged with there. Women are the key to the future of the continent, and publically acknowledging that they are being systematically tortured and assaulted is the first step in stopping the nightmare.
That is why the campaign is being called "Silence is the Enemy". There is a Facebook group and a Twitter hash tag of the same name, for anyone who wants to read about its progress or add their voice in support.
Isis is very generously letting me piggy back off of her letter, so when it's been published I'll put it up here on my LJ and ask you to send it to the British Ambassador to the United Nations, Sir John Sawer.
I really, really hope that you will agree to stand up and be counted with me as voices of rage and passion in the defense of the vulnerable women and girls in conflict zones around the world.