by Yana Spencer
“In the cases we have investigated, the age of victims of sexual and gendered-based violence ranged from four to 82 years” stated Eric Mose, Chair of Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, to the Human Rights Council at the end of September. The commission found that Russian soldiers had committed GBV crimes. These acts included sexual violence, torture, and inhuman treatment. There are examples of cases where relatives were forced to witness the crimes. All this sounds too familiar, like a déjà vu (traumatic flashback) from Kosovo.
Less than 100 km from Pristina lies the small, picturesque town of Gjakova, which in 2016 I was privileged to visit to run therapeutic baking workshops with widows of war. After establishing a rapport with these clients of Medica Kosova, who had been through such unimaginable wartime horrors, I was invited to visit a women’s cooperative in one of the villages. The menfolk of this place were killed right in front of their relatives’ eyes. Women witnessed the killings of their brothers, sons, husbands and fathers. In every house I visited, a portrait of the deceased men hung on the central wall of the living room and the women still all wore black, mourning their losses, many years after the war. During one of the heart-to-heart conversations we had, I asked “Do you think there will ever be a generation who can put the hatred to one side?”. The women became quiet, their faces changed. My translator and NGO coordinator looked me in the eyes and said: “I will tell you one fact and you decide for yourself. We know of cases during the war when the Serbian army would force a male family member to rape their female relatives in front of the whole household”. I was very quiet for the rest of my visit. I could not comprehend how such inhumane treatment could even exist!
But history has seen it all. Kosovo, along with Ukraine, are unfortunately not the only examples.
Between 50,000 and 200,000 women were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese army during the Second World War; giving birth to the phenomenon of ‘comfort women’. During the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, the Pakistani military raped between 200,000 and 400,000 Bengali women and girls in a bid at genocide. During the 1990s the Bosnian Serbs ‘introduced’ ethnic cleansing to the world with 20,000 to 50,000 estimated rapes during Bosnian war, 80 percent of which happened over a prolonged period of imprisonment. Violence erupted during the Rwandan genocide of 1994, when, over the course of 100 days, up to half a million women and children were raped, sexually mutilated, or murdered. In more recent years, the world has learned of new GBV crimes – Yazidi women and girls raped and tortured by IS, Burmese government forces committing rape and other sexual violence against ethnic Rohingya women, and Boko Haram targeting women and girls in North-East Nigeria. The actual term ‘rape as a weapon of war’ first came into use in the summer of 2008, when in Goma, the Democratic Republic of Congo (dubbed the ‘Rape Capital of the World’ due to the prevalence and intensity of all forms of sexual violence there), the UN Security Council voted in favour of a resolution classifying rape as a weapon of war.
A friend from Kosovo sends me a video from the GBV conference she is attending; officials from Kosovo and Ukraine comparing notes. It’s surreal, as in 2016, listening to the lessons from Kosovo, I didn’t for a moment think that something similar would happen again. Shortly after the start of the full-scale Russian invasion, the Ukrainian Ombudsman for Human Rights investigated war crimes committed by Russian forces in one small newly liberated area. There was an announcement to the world, telling of the gruesome discovery of 25 girls, aged 14-24, who had been systematically raped during the occupation in the basement of a house in Bucha. Nine of them were pregnant. According to survivor accounts, Russian soldiers had told them they would rape them to deliberately prevent them from having Ukrainian children. Rape is being used by Russians in Ukraine as a ‘military strategy’ and a ‘deliberate tactic to dehumanise the victims’ according to the UN. The victims are mostly women and girls, but also men and boys, with many cases emerging of sexual violence against children, who are raped, tortured and kept hostage. The Russian army are using the same playbook as Slobodan Milosevic’s forces, whose goal was to destroy ethnic Albanians’ identity, and the Pakistani army who impregnated as many Bengali women as they could to create a generation of children in East Pakistan born with blood from the West.
Rape alone is a very complex issue, rape used as a tool during conflict – even more so. It is a patriarchal narrative told within a position of a power and often has one or two pre-meditated goals – to conquer the enemy psychologically by dishonouring their women and/or a genocidal intent. Nowadays, rape is less often symptomatic of a prolonged sexual deprivation of troops, or considered as a ‘reward’, than during the Second World War. Rape is one of the cruellest forms of violence, as wars eventually end, but the devastating outcomes of rape as a weapon of war persist from generation to generation, enabling a deep hatred to fester, especially given that this topic is taboo in many cultures. How many victims of Russian sexual crimes are going to be discovered in Ukraine as more territories are liberated? How many women will come forward to seek help? How many children will be born of wartime rape? Fortunately, Ukraine is learning fast from its Balkan neighbours; quickly adapting and providing the necessary help to survivors of wartime GBV.
Another text arrives: “We, the women of Kosovo, know what it is like; we have been through the horrors of war”. Perhaps the power is finally ebbing away from these outdated patriarchal narratives. Even if the crimes have not changed, at least they are now being openly discussed – progress compared to even my 2016 visit to Kosovo.
Yana Spencer is a journalist and women’s right activist, running Tamu Bakery – a social enterprise which empowers women and girls, who have been affected by gender-based violence, through baking therapy.
