Mass Rape Research Articles

Humanitarian Crisis in Indian Jammu and Kashmir: An Analysis

Human rights violations in the part of Kashmir ruled by India are the subject of this article. The part of Kashmir under Indian administration suffers from the ongoing violation of human rights. Their daily lives now involve everything from political repression and the oppressive conditions of free speech to mass murders, forced disappearances, torture, rape, and sexual abuse. Extremist organizations, border guards, and the Indian Central Reserve Police Force have all been charged with and found guilty of serious violations of human rights against Kashmiri civilians. The rebels in Kashmir believe that the part of the country that is ruled by India is a part of Pakistan. Thus, the only people who are allowed to live on that area are Pakistanis. However, the question of how far it is acceptable to create one's existence at the expense of ending the lives of people who are completely innocent and have no fault of their own other than the fact that they were born on that property emerges. Numerous questions have been raised by this upheaval, all of which deserve our serious attention and prompt resolution.

Silences of Memory: Liberator Sexual Assault in the East at the End of World War II

ABSTRACT Allied accounts of the liberation of Jewish survivors of Nazi camps and forced marches near the end of World War II highlight the long-awaited release of prisoners from captivity and the threat of annihilation. Missing from most accounts, however, are the voices of women whose victimization did not end with the arrival of their liberators. This article examines the phenomenon of sexual violence at liberation, specifically, assaults committed by Soviet soldiers against Jewish women survivors of Nazi camps. It posits that most accounts of camp liberation contain a memory void, that is, a space in historical narratives that obscures events or actors that are an ill fit with the dominant collective memory. This work fills this gendered memory void with the voices of Jewish women survivors and witnesses and seeks to construct a more nuanced account of liberation in the East. It draws on testimonies and memoirs which reveal that sexual violence against Jewish survivors has commonalities and differences with the mass rapes committed by the Soviet army against non-Jewish German women. The voices of Jewish women confirm that Soviet troops often viewed the fact that women had survived Nazi persecution as evidence of complicity with the Nazis, fueling a thirst for revenge. Many Jewish women became victims of sexual violence at liberation, yet they also exercised agency in protecting themselves, family, friends, and sometimes strangers. After the war, stories of women helping women to hide, escape, and survive are more central in many testimonies than those of men helping women.

How to think about the instrumental politics of mass rape: a critical appraisal of feminist approaches

ABSTRACT Mass rape and other forms of sexual violence in ethnic conflict, as their incidence in Bosnian and Kosovo wars in former Yugoslavia showed in the 1990s, cannot be relativised along some strategy of either ‘victimization’ or ‘everyone is guilty’ within an antiquated framework of ethnic-religious hatred. In this case as in others, the local notions of honour and blood cannot be taken uncritically to be binding cultural traits that ought to determine social behaviour. Incidentally, they cannot either account for a structured ideology of ‘men’s war against women’, or for a postmodern feminist ideology of gender and the moral panic of a ‘patriarchal dream-order’ restored. In this article, I offer a critical appraisal of the stereotyped and relativising accounts of feminist and human rights scholars, a critique very much needed for an anthropological approach attentive to cultural ideology and activism. To understand the effectiveness of mass rape in a military strategy of ethnic cleansing, I suggest local cultural concepts and moral relativist ideas are not culturally given, but instrumental resources deliberately mobilised.

State Crime

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda’s historic judgment in the Akayesu Judgment established that rape and other forms of sexual violence can be an actus reus of genocide as defined by the United Nations Convention on Genocide Article II. The Akayesu Judgment therefore provides a logical framework to analyze a hidden episode of extreme post-colonial state violence in the newly independent Zimbabwe, namely a state policy of mass atrocities in Matabeleland and parts of the Midlands, targeting the minority Ndebele ethnic group during Operation Gukurahundi. The specific foci of this study are the patterns of mass rape and sexual violence in the military operation between 1983 and 1984 in Matabeleland. Drawing on 36 in-depth interviews with survivors from throughout Matabeleland, this study provides a critical new lens on Operation Gukurahundi through its identification of uniform systematic patterns of rape and other forms of sexual violence across Matabeleland. The article concludes that the patterns of rape and other forms of sexual violence identified in this study are indicative of a state policy of systematic genocidal rape between 1983 and 1984, deployed with the intent and effect to destroy, in part, a specific ethnic group, namely the minority Ndebele of Zimbabwe, thereby fulfilling every condition of the Genocide Convention principles of genocide.

Operation Gukurahundi: A Policy of Genocidal Rape and Sexual Violence in Zimbabwe, 1983–1984

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda’s historic judgment in the Akayesu Judgment established that rape and other forms of sexual violence can be an actus reus of genocide as defined by the United Nations Convention on Genocide Article II. The Akayesu Judgment therefore provides a logical framework to analyze a hidden episode of extreme post-colonial state violence in the newly independent Zimbabwe, namely a state policy of mass atrocities in Matabeleland and parts of the Midlands, targeting the minority Ndebele ethnic group during Operation Gukurahundi. The specific foci of this study are the patterns of mass rape and sexual violence in the military operation between 1983 and 1984 in Matabeleland. Drawing on 36 in-depth interviews with survivors from throughout Matabeleland, this study provides a critical new lens on Operation Gukurahundi through its identification of uniform systematic patterns of rape and other forms of sexual violence across Matabeleland. The article concludes that the patterns of rape and other forms of sexual violence identified in this study are indicative of a state policy of systematic genocidal rape between 1983 and 1984, deployed with the intent and effect to destroy, in part, a specific ethnic group, namely the minority Ndebele of Zimbabwe, thereby fulfilling every condition of the Genocide Convention principles of genocide.

The Bosnian Genocide: A Case for Multiculturalism

The objective of this research is to investigate the causes, impacts, and aftermath of the Bosnian Genocide to propose preventative strategies against future genocides. A literature review of primary sources and current scholarly papers is presented to analyze the significant influence of economic and historical events preceding the genocide, the determinant causes of which were the advocation of the “Greater Serbia” ideology and the changing socioeconomic dynamics between Bosnia and Serbia. The clear intent of the Bosnian War was to systematically enforce a nationalist Serbian agenda whose primary goals were the complete eradication of the Bosniak community through the destruction of their cultural landmarks and the deliberate killings of Bosniak men and mass rape of women. The Bosnian Genocide resulted in the Dayton Agreement that ended the war and the formation of the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The results of this study culminate in recommendations to avert future instances of genocide, such as limiting the political power of the head of state to ensure accountability through checks and balances, establishing security measures to protect the Bosniak community from violent crimes, diversifying the national economy by creating job opportunities in non-military sectors, implementing an educational campaign at the primary level to encourage respect for minority groups, enacting anti-discrimination laws, and engaging Bosniak community leaders in decision making. These recommendations are made not only to support preventative measures but also to promote an acceptance of multiculturalism that is crucial to avert future genocides in an increasingly globalized society.

The Weaponization of Feminism in a Time of Genocide: A Response to Masha Gessen

In this essay, the author considers how the focus on mass rapes allegedly committed by Hamas on October 7 achieves coherency through race, leaving feminist politics mired in racial politics. The feminist truism that women are always raped in war is relied upon to confirm that mass rapes took place on October 7—a weaponization of feminism designed to shut down questions about evidence and the deliberate circulation of false narratives about rape, and, importantly, to legitimize Israeli state violence and genocide in Gaza. Masha Gessen’s July 2024 essay in the New Yorker on the weaponization of sexual violence in war provides an illustration of how an apparently feminist story about sexual violence in war travels along racist rails and gives birth to a storyline about civilized Europeans—in this case Jews—forced to use genocidal force to defend their homeland from marauding, brutal, and misogynist Arabs.

제주4·3과 젠더기반폭력

The Jeju 4·3 Incident constitutes state violence targeting civilians, including gender-based violence, mass killings, and war crimes. However, throughout the Cold War era, all acts of violence were justified and concealed under anti-communist ideology. In particular, gender-based violence perpetrated against the socially vulnerable during armed conflicts has remained largely silenced. This paper reframes the essence of the Jeju 4.3 Incident through the prism of gender-based violence. At that time, gender-based violence, primarily perpetrated by military and police forces of the Northwest Youth Corp, included violence and murder against pregnant women and fetuses, sexual torture, killing of escapees and their families, sexual assault and rape, sexual exploitation and murder, mass rape, forced marriage, and forced sexual acts, comprising eight types of mechanisms. These acts were combined with acts of violence constituting war crimes and crimes against humanity under international law, such as civilian killings, mass killings, and torture. Gender-based violence in the Jeju 4·3 Incident clearly indicates that it was a genocide approved by state power, involving indiscriminate killings and human rights abuses against civilians, which is beyond the level of suppressing certain leftist factions. Therefore, further investigation is necessary to redefine the nature of the Jeju 4·3 Incident.

Sarah Polley’s take on the Me Too moment: adapting Women Talking to the big screen

Abstract This article discusses Sarah Polley’s 2022 film adaptation of Miriam Toews’ novel Women Talking (2018), inspired by a case of mass rapes in a Mennonite colony in Bolivia, as part of the Me Too moment; a new zeitgeist that has modified the conditions of reception for survivor testimony. We examine it as an audiovisual product that amplifies the resonance of the original text and contributes to the current wave of feminist testimonial practices about sexual violence, constituting an instance of narrative activism that promotes social change. Through our analysis of the dynamics of storytelling in the film, we prove that Polley’s cinematic strategies place emphasis on the women’s lived experiences and points of view, distilling the words of the book to capture the key elements of their discussion (forgiveness, justice, obedience, trauma, and structural violence) and, rarely but significantly, deviating from the original text to achieve her goal of female-centred focalisation. While scholars and survivors have described the battle over the narrative in rape cases, Polley does not leave room for it. In line with #MeToo, the movie takes an ethical listening stand, presenting female testimony as valid evidence. The question at stake is not whether the protagonists have been raped by the men of the colony, but what they are going to do about it; and, by extension, what the viewers are going to make of their story as told by themselves.

Operation Gukurahundi: A Policy of Genocidal Rape and Sexual Violence in Zimbabwe 1983–1984

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda’s historic judgment in the Akayesu Judgment established that rape and other forms of sexual violence can be an actus reus of genocide as defined by the United Nations Convention on Genocide Article II. The Akayesu Judgment therefore provides a logical framework to analyze a hidden episode of extreme post-colonial state violence in the newly independent Zimbabwe, namely a state policy of mass atrocities in Matabeleland and parts of the Midlands, targeting the minority Ndebele ethnic group during Operation Gukurahundi. The specific foci of this study are the patterns of mass rape and sexual violence in the military operation between 1983 and 1984 in Matabeleland. Drawing on 36 in-depth interviews with survivors from throughout Matabeleland, this study provides a critical new lens on Operation Gukurahundi through its identification of uniform systematic patterns of rape and other forms of sexual violence across Matabeleland. The article concludes that the patterns of rape and other forms of sexual violence identified in this study are indicative of a state policy of systematic genocidal rape between 1983 and 1984, deployed with the intent and effect to destroy, in part, a specific ethnic group, namely the minority Ndebele of Zimbabwe, thereby fulfilling every condition of the Genocide Convention principles of genocide.

Gender-Based Violence in Bosnia From Conflict to The Post-Conflict Setting

This review article aims to investigate gender-based violence in wartime and post-war Bosnia. While the existing literature exclusively focuses on the relationship between gender and nationalism, this article rather addresses the psychological and economic violence against women in Bosnia. By adopting a continuum approach, this study uncovers how different forms of violence against women interact with each other from the conflict to the post-conflict contexts. Through a literature survey, this study depicts how gender-based violence has been reproduced from past to present in the case of Bosnia. In discussing gender-based violence, it dwells upon the intersections between mass rapes, forced pregnancy and traumatization. As the main argument, this article contends that sexual violence during the war triggered the spiral of violence and further led to stigmatization and marginalization of these women in the post-war context. It is especially argued that the persistent public stigma is the most blatant manifestation of psychological violence against female rape victims. In addition, it is shown that the overlapping processes of conflict, patriarchy and neoliberalization have led to a series of economic injustices, such as, in the form of the dispossession, poverty and exclusion of women in Bosnia. This article overall suggests establishing linkages between sexual, psychological and economic violence against women during the conflict and post-conflict processes.

Poland and the Holocaust in the Polish-American Press, 1926–1945

Poland and the Holocaust in the Polish-American Press, 1926–1945

Beyond Rape Culture? Toward A Theory of the Work of Rape

Beyond Rape Culture? Toward A Theory of the Work of Rape

Meanings of Mass Rape During the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda: Understanding Intersectionality Through Survivor Testimonies

Abstract: Women were targeted for rape during the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda because of their gender and ethnicity. Gendered and ethnic violence became intertwined in Hutu extremist propaganda, as it sexualized Tutsi women, instigated ethnic hatred, and incited men to commit rape on a massive scale. Rape as genocide was used as a weapon to annihilate Tutsi women physically, psychologically, socially, and economically. Many survivors were rendered infertile due to damaged reproductive organs or mutilated genitals and disconnected from their bodies due to psychological trauma. Those who were raped encountered severe stigmatization and marginalization: they were deemed unsuitable for marriage, were abandoned by their fiancés or husbands, and were ostracized by their communities. This rendered survivors extremely vulnerable economically, as by law, women are unable to own houses or possess land. Rape was used to reduce the Tutsi population through the transmission of AIDS, infertility issues, pregnancies as ethnic cleansing, and the breakdown of families, communities, and cultural practices. Rape is extremely taboo in Rwanda, and cultural and linguistic considerations add an extra layer of difficulty that survivors must navigate in order to tell their stories.

Wspomnienia polskiej uczennicy zesłanej w okresie powojennym na Syberię w perspektywie dokumentów

Background: The article aims to present the fate of children sent with their families to the Soviet Union in the post-war years, preserved in the memory and private collections of Janina Góral (de domo Nesterowicz). The interview touches on such topics as Soviet crimes, conditions in Siberia, the denationalization of Polish children, the struggle against religion, rape – including an example of a mass rape whose victims and perpetrator are still alive – and attempts to cope with inhuman realities. The collected materials also describe the reality of Soviet school, daily and family life of exiled Poles in Siberia. Objectives: Initially, the recording of Janina Góral’s testimony by a team of volunteers from the group Niezapomniani – Inicjatywa Brzeskiej Młodzieży Patriotycznej within the framework of the Kotwica Pokoleń project was aimed at popularizing the history of Brzeg witnesses to history. With the deepening of the research, it became a priority to compile the collected materials into one coherent narrative, which will help answer the question about the course of the deportation of the person reporting and the brutal reality she faced at that time in school and beyond. Methods: The main tool used in the research is oral history, recorded as part of the Kotwica Pokoleń project. The primary source critique was done on the basis of sources, from the private collections of the person who gave his account. These included school certificates, personnel files, schoolgirl characteristics, and documents related to the repatriation, delivery duty and work of Michal Nesterowicz, Janina’s father. Criticism was also extended to Russian and Polish literature related to the issue under study. Results: With the help of the research, the exact history of Janina Góral’s education from grades 4 to 9 was determined, the overwhelming majority of which took place in Siberia near the town of Zima. In addition to determining the living conditions and the course of the deportation, attention was paid to the various forms of oppression and dangers faced by Polish children. Conclusions: The research showed the inconsistency of Janina Góral’s account with the documentation. They also revealed the communist school system in Siberia in light of the experiences of the Polish schoolgirl, and expanded knowledge of life in forced settlements in the Soviet Union in the Irkutsk region. In addition, they revealed the crime of gang rape that occurred against two exiled Polish women and a Ukrainian woman. They also demonstrated the value of combining research conducted by the oral history method with private collections. In addition, they draw attention to the trauma that war and captivity leave in a person.

An Ubuntu-Christocentric Comparison of Gold Mine Companies and the Zama Zama Enterprise in the West Rand District Municipality

The recent mass rape of eight women from a team shooting a music video on an unused gold mine dump near West Village, in Mogale City, in the West Rand District Municipality, of Gauteng Province, South Africa sparked a national outcry about Gender-based Violence (GBV) in the country. The men who gang-raped the women are called zama zamas (loosely translated ‘trying to attain luck’). The incident has raised two disturbing developments in the post-1994 South African context. First, statistics show that 1100 women were sexually violated in the first three months of 2022 in South Africa. The current president of the country, Cyril Matamela Ramaphosa, declared GBV a national pandemic in his Covid-19 pandemic speech. Second, it also reminded the nation about the trend of business enterprises placing profit at the expense of poor and vulnerable workers. The article focuses on the second development by applying two Ubuntu values and a Christocentric approach to compare gold mine companies and the zama zama enterprises in the region. It also concludes by proposing an alternative to the problem of illegal gold mining in the region.

The Fakes of Sexual Narrative in the Information Warfare

The proposed article is based on the report presented at the conference “The Days of Science at NaUKMA” on January 26, 2022, just one month before the Russian invasion. Back then it seemed impossible. The active phase of the previous military confrontation ended in 2015 and it transformed into a positional and hybrid warfare. Since then, some representatives of Ukrainian scientific community, under the guise of “science without politics,” continued to cooperate with Russia, from publishing their research in Russian journals to holding joint conferences and more. The author of the article, despite the rejection, did not see this as an intention but rather a misunderstanding of the objective reality. Therefore, the purpose of the report was to prove that hybrid warfare is a covert but real war in the context of post-truth.Post-truth as a mode of meanings functioning is a shift of boundaries between the real and the imaginary; it does not equal lie but rather is negligence, indifference to the truth, which entails uncertainty of positions and substitutions of concepts. Fake, on the other hand, is a specific form of misinformation which has accompanied hybrid warfare. However, on February 24, 2022, the war took the form of an open escalation, the planning of which was denied by Russia in accordance with the genre of hybrid warfare with its cortege of fakes.The choice of the topic focused on the sexual narrative is relevant, in particular due to the public joke of Russian President Putin towards Ukrainian President Zelensky at a press conference in Moscow on February 8, 2022, directly related to rape, which became widely known in the media. As it turned out later, it was not a joke but a certain affirmation, an intention of thinking, which turned into mass rapes of Ukrainian women and children by Russian soldiers in the new stage of Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Congo from Leopold II to Félix Tshisekedi

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a country that has a significant number of natural resources that have not brought its inhabitants prosperity, but have become a cause of their exploitation and poverty instead. Congolese people have experienced many injustices for over a century mainly because of the political governance in the country. They suffer from hunger, numerous diseases and poverty; they also experience numerous violations of the human rights, including mass murders, rapes and mutilations, as well as the recruitments of child soldiers by the Congolese army and various armed groups from the Congo and neighbouring countries. The modern Democratic Republic of the Congo is an unstable state, particularly vulnerable to the actions of numerous rebel organizations. The causes of the contemporary socio-political situation in this country can be found primarly in its history, starting from the cruel times of Leopold II during the Belgian colonization, then through the Mobutu dictatorship and all subsequent presidents. The aim of the article is to present the undemocratic governments in the Congo, which led to the exploitation of its inhabitants and contributed to the current unstable situation of the country.

Where are my brothers?

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been called the “rape capital” of the world. For almost two decades, people in the east of Congo have suffered violent abuses including killings, mass rape, mutilations, sexual slavery, and abductions, committed by local armed forces, rebels, and civilians. Helpless women and girls are raped, while the society looks on. Rape culture is upheld by the absence or lack of enforcement of laws addressing violence against women and discriminatory laws. In Genesis 34, while Dinah’s brothers are concerned and sympathise with their sister who has been raped by killing the rapist, Jacob kept silent. Approaching the text from a context of rape and sexual violence impunities against women, one is given the impression by the narrator that Jacob does not seem to be much concerned about his daughter’s rape but is obsessed by his own reputation, while Dinah’s two blood brothers desire for vengeance turns into excessive violence. If read from a bosadi womanhood perspective, Genesis 34 should stimulate the Congolese society to seek law enforcement strategies that would help reduce violence and end rape and sexual assault impunity against women. This article interrogates and examines the motives behind Jacob’s inaction and Levi and Simeon’s violent actions to challenge and outline the failures of the DRC system to support and care for women.

The motif of tears: representations of activism and suffering in the Liji Alley Museum in Nanjing

ABSTRACT Although the International Military Tribunal for the Far East condemned and prosecuted rape crimes, there was only limited justice for victims of militarised sexual abuse. This goes especially for the majority of victimised Chinese women. The court’s focus was on the so-called Rape of Nanking rather than on the sexual enslavement in military brothels. After the Second World War, the stories of the Chinese women used as military sex slaves by the Japanese military were soon excluded from the heroic Chinese master narrative. Outrage over mass rape was not primarily concerned with violence towards women, but rather with the ‘humiliation’ of men as nationalist subjects. In this article, I will focus on the Liji Alley Former Comfort Station Exhibition Hall in Nanjing and analyse how the museum moves in politically contested arenas and how activism and suffering is represented in the exhibition. How are the personal stories of former ‘comfort women’ used to evoke emotional reactions in the visitors and to what end?