"United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Kofi Annan, attending an African
Union (AU) conference in Banjul, Gambia, tried yesterday to persuade
Sudanese leader Omar Hassan al-Ba****r to reverse his "incomprehensible"
opposition to a UN force to stop the bloodshed in Darfur.
The focus of this year's 53-state pan-African gathering, which opened on
Saturday, was on urgent action to damp down conflicts in Somalia and
Sudan's
Darfur region, but diplomats said there was little chance of progress.
Annan, who met al-Ba****r on the fringes of the AU summit, said Darfur was
"one of the worst nightmares in recent history".
http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/topstories.aspx?ID=BD4A225747
This article is from 2004, but these incomprehensible atrocities are going
on this very day:
Feminism's Deafening Silence
By Phyllis Chesler
FrontPageMagazine.com | July 26, 2004
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=14365
The images from the Sudan are horrific: Wounded, starving, diseased
adults,
skeletal, dying infants. Some people have referred to this as "ethnic
cleansing." Indeed, an estimated two million black African Christians,
Muslims, and animists have been massacred by ethnic Arab Muslims over the
last 21 years. Today, an estimated 1.2 million people have been internally
displaced, and 170,000 have fled across the border into Chad. At least
30,000 human beings have been massacred by the state-sanctioned Janjaweed
("men on horses") in the last six months.
The United Nations did nothing during this time except condemn Israel for
crimes it did not commit. The French? They are too busy condemning Ariel
Sharon to notice a real human rights atrocity. Thus, the French continue
to
oppose UN sanctions against the Sudan. To their credit, the American House
and Senate have just passed a bi-partisan resolution that defines the
massacres as "genocide."
Still, although we are overwhelmed with images of suffering, one image is
missing. We have no photos of what I shall describe as "gender cleansing."
The systematic use of repeated, public, gang rape as a weapon of war
cannot
be captured in a single photo.
According to Amnesty International, eyewitness-survivors have seen girls
as
young as eight repeatedly gang-raped; their captors break both their arms
and their legs when they try to escape. Women and children have described
being kidnapped and kept as domestic and ***ual slaves, and of being
gang-raped every night in captivity.
The damage to a woman's self-esteem and sanity is impossible to calculate.
Suicide, life-long anxiety, depression, and nightmares are among the many
symptoms. To rub salt into the wound, Amnesty International re****ts that
Janjaweed women sing (!!) to cheer their men on when they rape other
women;
they also utter racial insults to the women being raped.
Those feminists who immediately condemned Lyndie England and the American
military as "depraved" in the matter of the torture of Iraqi male
prisoners
in Abu Graib are, so far, noticeably silent. Mind you: I am only calling
for
even-handedness; I am not defending torture or prisoner abuse.
As the author of Woman's Inhumanity to Woman, I am not surprised by the
behavior of the Janjaweed women -- although the cruelty is rather
breathtaking. Like men, women also internalize ***ist values and are
capable
of both cruelty and compassion. Women are mainly cruel towards other
women.
Like men, many women cling to the status quo, even to one that demeans
them.
While rape has been used as a weapon, not merely as a spoil of war,
before,
most notably in Algeria, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Afghanistan, there is
something
uniquely sadistic going on in Sudan. The women who are being gang-raped by
Arab Islamists are also women who have been genitally mutilated (either
****oridectomized or infibulated). These crude, mutilating "surgeries,"
often conducted by village women, result in tissue scaring and loss of
elasticity. (Infibulation involves leaving only a small opening for
urination and menstruation. Normally, these women have to be cut open wide
enough for intercourse when they marry).
Repeated rape must be excruciatingly painful and must cause severe
physical
and psychological damage. The rape victims (who are Muslims as well as
Christians and animists), have been raised to view their genitalia as
"unclean" and shameful. Tribal honor is bound up with female chastity --
this is why rape as a tactic is being used to destroy not only the
individual woman but also her entire social fabric. Many Sudanese women
have
been taught that ***ual activity -- including rape -- is always the
woman's
fault. Some Sudanese tribes believe that a pregnancy cannot result from
rape; thus, raped women who become pregnant will be suspected of having
voluntary *** with the enemy.
Amnesty International believes that many raped women are not re****ting
their
rapes. They fear their families will ostracize them; perhaps they also
blame
themselves for the shame they have brought on their families and tribes.
If
they are pregnant, their families will never accept a baby born of rape.
Honorably, the United States calls it genocide. The Sudan Campaign: A
Coalition to Stop Genocide, Slavery, Starvation, and Religious Persecution
has organized arrests and hunger strikes at the Sudanese Embassy in
Wa****ngton D. C.
But, where are the leftists and feminists who are so quick to condemn both
America and Israel for "ethnic cleansing" and racism?
I am on many feminist academic and activist listserv groups. During the
last
two months, the matter of the Sudan has not commanded much attention. What
has? Defeating Bush, cosmetic surgery, discrimination against
transgendered
people, defeating Bush, gay marriage, abortion, defeating Bush.
Make no mistake. I am in favor of elective surgery and abortion, and
against
discrimination, but I am puzzled by the isolationism and self-involvement
of
activists who should be part of making a difference.
I understand that the situation in Sudan is politically and practically
complicated. Technically, rebel groups did oppose the government which, in
turn, set the Janjaweed militia loose on them. Can food and medicine be
safely distributed without being siphoned off by corrupt warlords? Will
sanctions only hurt the most vulnerable people? Will nothing short of a
full-scale military invasion really stop the genocide and the "gender
cleansing?" Dare America -- which has been so defamed because of
Afghanistan
and Iraq -- invade Sudan?
During the European Holocaust, people did not see the photos or receive
re****ts of the genocide in process. In the matter of the Sudan, we cannot
claim that "we did not know," "no one told us." We know. We have heard
and
seen everything. To do nothing renders us complicit in what is happening.
Those who survive such torture in war are more haunted by what the
presumably good people failed to do than they are by the criminals whose
evil character is already well known to their victims.
May we never have to learn this from first-hand experience.
Phyllis Chesler, Ph.D., is the author of twelve books including her
latest,
THE NEW ANTI-SEMITISM. THE CURRENT CRISIS AND WHAT WE MUST DO ABOUT IT.
She
is working on a new book about the im****tance of independent thinking
among
women for Palgrave-Macmillan (St. Martin's). She may be reached through
her
website www.Phyllis-Chesler.com.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Phyllis Chesler is the well known author of classic works, including
the
bestseller Women and Madness (1972) and The New Anti-Semitism (2003). She
has just published The Death of Feminism: What's Next in the Struggle for
Women's Freedom (Palgrave Macmillan), as well as an updated and revised
edition of Women and Madness. She is an Emerita Professor of psychology
and
women's studies, the co-founder of the Association for Women in Psychology
(1969) and the National Women's Health Network (1974). She is currently on
the Board of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and lives in New York
City. Her website is www.phyllis-chesler.com.
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