Sexual Violence Spreading in African War Zones

Unicef says social turmoil leads to an epidemic of sexual abuse

Sexual violence is spreading in African conflict zones like an epidemic, the United Nations has warned.
Feb. 13th. (BBC) - The UN's children's fund, Unicef, says rape is no longer just perpetrated by combatants but also by civilians. The organisation said rape was most common in countries affected by wars and natural disasters. "When societies collapse there seems to be a licence to rape. This is a major concern to us," Unicef Deputy Executive Director Hilde Frafjord Johnson said. Sexual violence appeared to accompany a significant uprooting of society when some of the social norms crumble, she said.

Things happen that are unheard of in other African communities Unicef's Hilde Frafjord Johnson

Ms Johnson said that in Kenya reported cases of sexual violence had doubled within days of the recent post-election conflict erupting. "Things happen that are unheard of in other African communities suddenly happen in these situations, and that is why we call it epidemic proportions, because it takes a life of its own," she said. She added that rape was also prevalent in trouble spots in Sudan, Chad and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where victims range from a few months old to octogenarians. The warning comes as Unicef launches an appeal for $856m to help women and children who are victims of conflicts and other emergencies across the continent. Sudan tops the list of countries in need of aid with Unicef calling for $150m.
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Saudi Rape Case Lawyer 'Reinstated'

Jan. 21st. (CNN) -- The Saudi lawyer who represented a woman kidnapped and raped by seven men said his license to practice has been reinstated. Lawyer and human rights activist Abdul Rahman al-Lahem told CNN's Nic Robertson that the Justice Ministry has reinstated his license. Al-Lahem had previously told CNN that the Saudi judge revoked his license as punishment for speaking to the media about his client's case, which attracted international attention. His client, an engaged teenager, was raped by seven men who found her alone with a man unrelated to her. She has said she was meeting with the man to retrieve a photograph. The attack took place in Qatif in March 2006.

The seven rapists were sentenced to two to nine years in prison but she also was sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in prison for having violated the kingdom's strict Islamic law by being alone with an unrelated man. The woman's sentence provoked outrage in the West and cast light on the treatment of women under Saudi Arabian law. Under Saudi law, women are subject to numerous restrictions, including a strict dress code, a prohibition against driving and a requirement that they get a man's permission to travel or have surgery. In challenging what he said were his suspension and disbarment, al-Lahem said he had received threats on his life from the religious right.

Last month, Minister of Justice Abdallah bin Mohammed al-Sheikh, in a phone call to a Saudi Television newscast, said the lawyer's license had never been revoked. "Such decisions are made through institutions in the kingdom," he said. "The punishment of the lawyer or any lawyer does not come from a reaction; it comes from a carefully examined procedure within a special council in the ministry." He said the council charged with deciding law license revocations had not issued any decisions in the case.
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Saudi King 'Pardons Rape Victim'

Saudi women are subject to strict sex segregation laws

The Saudi king has pardoned a female rape victim sentenced to jail and 200 lashes for being alone with a man raped in the same attack, reports say.

London Dec. 17th. (BBC) - The "Qatif girl" case caused an international outcry with widespread criticism of the Saudi justice system. The male and female victims were in a car together when they were abducted and raped by seven attackers, who were given jail sentences up to nine years. Press reports say King Abdullah's move did not mean the sentence was wrong. Quoted by the Jazirah newspaper, Justice Minister Abdullah al-Sheikh said the king had the right to issue pardons if it served the public interest. Women in Saudi Arabia are not allowed to mix with men who are not close family members.

The custodial sentence plus 200 lashes was imposed after the woman, who has not been named, appealed against an earlier sentence of 90 lashes. The Saudi king frequently pardons criminals at the Eid al-Adha festival which takes place this week, but correspondents say that is usually announced by the official press agency. The BBC's Heba Saleh says the king's decision to pardon the woman victim is already arousing controversy with some contributors to conservative websites, who say he has breached the rules of religion in order to appease critics in the West. The US had called the punishment "astonishing", although it refused to condemn the Saudi justice system. Human rights groups had been calling on King Abdullah, who has a reputation as a pro-Western reformer, to change it.

The justice ministry recently rejected what it saw as "foreign interference" in the case and insisted the ruling was legal and that the woman had confessed to having an affair with her fellow rape victim. Earlier, the woman - who is a Shia Muslim from the Qatif area - had reportedly said she met the man in order to retrieve a photograph of them together, having herself recently got married. She says two other men then entered the car and took them to a secluded area where others were waiting, and both she and her male companion were raped. The woman's companion was sentenced to 90 lashes. It is not known if his sentence was also lifted.
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Rape of Girl, 15, Exposes Abuses in Brazil Prison System

BRASÍLIA, NY Times Dec. 12th. — The police jail at Abaetetuba could not be torn down soon enough for Márcia Soares, a lawyer and federal human rights official here. To her, the jail has come to symbolize everything that is wrong with Brazil’s efforts to safeguard women and children from violence. It was at Abaetetuba, in the NE state of Para on the fringes of the Amazon, that a 15-year-old girl arrested on suspicion of petty theft was illegally placed among 34 male inmates in late October. For 26 days they treated her as their plaything, raping and torturing her repeatedly. Sometimes she traded sex for food; other times, she was simply raped, federal investigators here said. The police in the jail did more than turn their backs on the violence. They shaved her head with a knife to make her look more like a boy, investigators said, and now are blaming her for lying about her age.

The case is causing soul-searching here in Brazil’s capital, where federal officials have become increasingly concerned about the treatment of women and minors in the nation’s crowded prison system and the failure of judges throughout the country to prosecute cases of torture. Women make up only 5 percent of Brazil’s prison population, but the number is growing. States have not built enough jails and prisons with separate facilities for women, even though federal law requires such separation. A recent study commissioned by the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva showed that female prisoners were being illegally placed with men or transvestites in five Brazilian states and being subjected to torture and sexual abuse. Even as Brazil was raised in November to the United Nations highest human development category, its spotty human rights history and mixed record of punishing those guilty of abuses have been an Achilles’ heel internationally. A SWAT team operates in Rio de Janeiro to root out and kill drug traffickers with impunity. The police are rarely convicted under a 1997 law against torture, because of an “institutionalizing of torture” under Brazil’s military dictatorship and more than 300 years of slavery, said Paulo Vanucchi, Brazil’s human rights minister.

The case of the 15-year-old will be another test of justice in the largely lawless Amazon region. Two years ago, a Brazilian rancher ordered the killing of Dorothy Mae Stang, 73, an American-born nun and rain forest advocate. She was shot to death on a jungle road. The rancher, Vitalmiro Bastos de Moura, was sentenced to 30 years in prison. What has been particularly disheartening to federal human rights officials in the case of the 15-year-old girl is how many people had the chance to protect her. Ms. Soares, the lawyer, said the police, the judge and a public defender who had visited the jail all knew the teenager was in an all-male setting. “Several officials were aware of what was happening, and at worst they were complicit in it,” Ms. Soares said. “It’s a very serious situation.” Ana Júlia Carepa, the governor of Para, has been scrambling to clean up the mess since the situation became public late last month. Ms. Carepa pressed Raimundo Benassuly, the state police chief, to resign the day after he said publicly that the girl had lied about her age because she had a “mental deficiency.” The police have said that the girl had claimed she was 19, not 15, during several run-ins with the law. Ms. Soares said that officials, including the judge in the case, a woman, did not press the girl for documentation proving she was an adult, even though she is under five feet tall and weighs about 80 pounds. “When I first saw her I thought she was 12, not 15,” Ms. Soares said. For Ms. Carepa, the girl’s age is beside the point. “If she is 15, 20, 50, 80 years old or almost 100, it doesn’t matter,” she told journalists in Rio last month. “A woman cannot be in a cell with men.” Ms. Carepa said that the jail would be torn down and replaced with something that has facilities for women.

The judge who placed the girl in the all-male jail, Clarice Maria Andrade, is being investigated and could lose her job. Two others in her office are accused of altering a document to make it seem as if the judge had approved a transfer from the jail shortly after the police made the request, not 12 days later. Local officials were already familiar with the girl before she was arrested and placed in the Abaetetuba jail on Oct. 21. Growing up in a broken home, she had left school before and frequented an area known for child prostitution, Ms. Soares said. At the time of her arrest, she was shuttling among her parents’ homes and an uncle’s house, and no one seemed to keep careful tabs on her. During the 26 days, no relative came to the jail looking for her. Within her first two days in jail, a man raped her in the bathroom, the girl told investigators. Inmates rely on visiting relatives to bring food. With no such visits, extreme hunger soon overtook the girl and she began trading sex for food, investigators said. Other men, however, simply raped her when they wanted to, and tortured her for amusement, investigators said. Some placed crumpled papers between her toes as she slept and lighted them, Ms. Soares said, adding that the girl still had burn marks on her feet.

Residents heard the girl’s screams from the road, which is near the jail windows. Yet for weeks no one came to her rescue. It was only after an anonymous note reached the local child protection services agency that she was removed from the jail. In recent days, she and her family have been relocated under a federal witness protection program. The girl’s father complained of death threats from the police. He said they had tried to press him to say that the girl was 19 or 20. “It’s now up to us to protect her and help her to start a new life,” Ms. Soares said. “And we need to keep up the political pressure, so that justice has a chance.”
by Alexei Barrionuevo
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Shock at Saudi Rape Victim's Sentence

WASHINGTON Nov. 21st. (AP) - The State Department expressed astonishment yesterday about a Saudi court's sentence of six months in jail and 200 lashes for a woman who was gang raped. Department spokesman Sean McCormack stopped short of stronger language against its close ally in the Middle East. On Monday, Canada said it would lodge a complaint and called the sentence barbaric. "I think when you look at the crime and the fact that now the victim is punished, I think that causes a fair degree of surprise and astonishment," McCormack said. "But it is within the power of the Saudi government to take a look at the verdict and change it."

The sentencing came as the United States is trying to get Saudi Arabia to co-sponsor a US-organized conference next week in the United States to work toward a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. President Bush telephoned Saudi King Abdullah yesterday about the conference. The decision by the Qatif General Court more than doubled the woman's sentence after she was convicted of being in the car of a man who was not a relative.

The woman initially had been sentenced to 90 lashes after she was convicted of violating rigid laws on the segregation of the sexes. The Saudi court said the woman's punishment was increased because of "her attempt to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media." The Saudi Ministry of Justice stood by the verdict yesterday, saying that "charges were proven" against the woman. Under Saudi Arabia's strict interpretation of Islamic Sharia law, women are not allowed in public in the company of men other than relatives. The seven men convicted of raping the woman were given prison sentences of two years to nine years. The woman has said the 2006 attack occurred as she tried to retrieve her picture from a male friend. While in the car with the friend, two men climbed into the vehicle and drove to a secluded area. She said she was raped by seven men, three of whom also attacked her friend.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch said the verdict "not only sends victims of sexual violence the message that they should not press charges, but in effect offers protection and impunity to the perpetrators."
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UN Accuses Sudan Militia of Mass Abduction and Rape

GENEVA August 21st. — The United Nations' human rights office on Tuesday accused forces allied with Sudan's government of mass abduction and rape of women and girls in Darfur, acts it said could constitute war crimes. Its latest report, based on testimony from victims and witnesses, called on Khartoum to investigate reports that about 50 women were forced into "sexual slavery" after an attack on the rebel-held town of Deribat in South Darfur's Jebel Marra region last December. The abductees, who included many children, were held for about one month, and beaten and raped repeatedly, often in front of each other, the report from the office of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour said. "Witnesses indicated that the abduction, rape and other human rights violations that continued throughout the period were committed by the same group of men who conducted the actual attack," it said.

The report concluded that the Sudanese government bore responsibility for the abuses committed by the official Popular Defence Forces (PDF) militia and the Abu Gasim faction. Sudan's army had provided air and ground support for the raids which resulted in 36 civilian deaths. The UN report named three men as possibly sharing criminal responsibility for leading the attacks on Deribat, and the abductions and sexual abuse. "A series of violations have been committed that constitute both violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law. Some of these may also constitute war crimes", it said. "The government should issue immediate clear instructions to all troops under its command including PDF and other militias that rape and other forms of sexual violence will not be tolerated, that they constitute war crimes," it continued.

An estimated 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have fled their homes in Darfur since mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms against the government in the vast western region in 2003. Sudan denies mass rapes in Darfur. On Monday Justice Minister Mohamed Ali al-Mardi said that reports by international rights groups on abuses were "criminal." "All reports...about genocide and mass rape are frivolous and obviated by malice," he told Reuters. "They are executing policies of other nations like the United States ... against Sudan." The U.N. report said a "pattern of mass abduction" which began with the Darfur conflict, appeared to be ongoing. The report covers a six-month period ending in May 2007.

The victims in Deribat, who were mainly from the Fur tribe, may have been targeted because the Fur community in Jebel Marra has been perceived as sympathetic to Sudan Liberation Army rebels who stayed outside the 2006 Darfur peace deal, it said. Jebel Marra region is a stronghold of Abdul Wahed Mohammed el-Nur, leader of a faction of one of the Darfur rebel groups.
STEPHANIE NEBEHAY
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