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Summary: New data drawn from reports of crimes of sexual violence in the Syrian conflict give us a snapshot of the scale and scope of this horror, and how sexual violence is being used as a tool of war.
[11 July 2012] - The Women’s Media Center project Women Under Siege has been collecting reports [on human rights abuses] out of Syria for three months, during which time we’ve seen many stories ... in which multiple attackers, usually government forces, are said to gang rape women in their homes. We have also mapped stories at the extreme edge of nightmares; of teenage girls given shots that immobilise them while their genitals were burned or filled with mice. Government forces and others appear to be carrying out appalling sexualised attacks against women, men, and children in Syria as the conflict there continues. To step back from the red dots on our map and try to understand the sexualised violence of Syria’s war, our team of doctors, activists, and journalists has taken the 81 stories we’ve gathered so far, from the onset of the conflict in March 2011 through June 2012, and broken them down into 117 separate pieces of data on everything from rape to the consequences of sexualised violence, such as depression, HIV, and pregnancy. “The data we have so far suggest sexualised violence is being used as a tool of war, although possibly haphazardly and not necessarily as an organised strategy,” said Dr. Karestan Koenen, associate professor of epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and the lead epidemiologist on the mapping project. “These reports indicate that post-conflict intervention will need to address the consequences of sexualised violence for victims.” Government perpetrators have committed the majority of the attacks we’ve been able to track: 61 per cent, including attacks against men and women, with another six per cent carried out by government and shabiha forces together. These soldiers or officers have allegedly carried out 58 per cent of rapes against women; shabiha (plainclothes militia) attackers 14 per cent; government and shabiha working together five per cent; and another or unknown attacker 26 per cent. In 42 per cent of the incidents of sexualised violence against women that we found, the victims were allegedly attacked by multiple people at once, suggesting a disturbingly high rate of gang rape. To read the full article, click here. Further Information:
Owner: Lauren Wolfepdf: http://www.womenundersiegeproject.org/blog/entry/the-ultimate-assault-ch...