IWD 2024 — War and WomenArticle published on by Ravinder Randhawa . .
Whilst International Women’s Day aims to strengthen women’s dignity and worth, women caught in conflicts across the globe are subjected to barbaric, inhuman abuses. This blog, being written against the backdrop of the punitive war being waged by the Israeli state in Gaza, will focus on the unconscionable transgressions against women during wars. The wars may have occurred in different states, at different times, but their targeting of women is similar and calculated. When armies march in, the invasion isn’t just into territory but into women’s bodies too, as if one is the other. Humanity, decency and mercy drain away with bloodlust and bullets.
“International humanitarian law aims to prevent and alleviate human suffering in war without discrimination based on sex. But it does recognize that women face specific problems in armed conflict, such as sexual violence and risks to their health.”……. In addition, women must be “especially protected” from sexual violence. This includes rape, forced prostitution and any other form of indecent assault, all of which constitute war crimes. The threat of sexual violence against women is also prohibited.
Many Palestinian female detainees have been reluctant to report abuse for fear of retribution. It may be a long time before we know the true extent of the violence and suffering inflicted on women during the Israel-Hamas war. Meanwhile, UN independent experts have expressed concern at accounts that detained Palestinian women and girls have suffered many forms of abuse, including sexual assaults such as being stripped naked and searched by male Israeli army officers, beatings, rape, and having degrading photos uploaded to the internet.
Hamas has been accused of deploying sexual violence in a “systematic and intentional” manner during their attacks on 7 thOctober 2023, by The Association of Rape Crisis Centres in Israel. The UN’s special envoy Pramila Patten’s report found “there are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred during the 7 October attacks in multiple locations across Gaza periphery, including rape and gang-rape, in at least three locations.”
Both Hamas and Israel have denied the accusations of abuse and sexual violence against women. Well, they would — wouldn’t they?
If we go a little further back in history, namely the Bangladesh war of independence in 1971, between West Pakistan and East Pakistan (later Bangladesh), we come across ‘The Butcher of Bengal’, General Tikka Khan (the West Pakistani commander), who launched a brutal crackdown on the East Pakistan independence movement. Culminating in the Bangladeshi genocide, with all the associated horrors of such savagery, women and girls not exempted. In fact, they were singled out for a new form of violent imperialism: to be impregnated with “blood from the west,” (meaning West Pakistan).
This barbaric endeavour was instituted with merciless efficiency: military-style rape camps were set up across the country, in what historians now interpret as the first recorded example in the 20 thcentury, of rape as a “consciously applied weapon of war”. “We lay like corpses, and then the raping began”. It’s estimated that well over 200,000 to 400,000 women could have been victims. When the war ended and the women were gradually discovered and rescued, many became victims for a second time: branded by social stigma and ostracised by their communities. Mujibur Rahman, founding father of Bangladesh, honoured them with the title ‘Birangona’ (war heroine), in an endeavour to raise their status; a rehabilitation programme was initiated to provide shelter, training and counselling, whilst temporary legislation allowed for late abortions, and an international campaign was launched for the adoption of abandoned babies. Despite these efforts the stigma and shame persisted throughout the decades, thousands of women silently suffering across Bangladesh, plagued by nightmares and horrific memories.
Art, the truth-teller, has challenged the stigma inflicted on the Birangona women and begun to tell their stories. Leesa Gazi, the British-Bengali writer and director, having heard about them from her father, travelled to Sirajganj, about 200 kilometres from Dhaka, and managed to gather the testimonies of 21 Birangona women living there. Collecting terrible stories of rape, imprisonment and torture — followed by the second punishment of ignominy: forty years later still taunted for losing their honour, and their children stigmatised. Gazi spent the next few years developing a one act play, and later, making an award-winning documentary, Rising Silence.
The Sirajganj women were invited when the play was first staged in Dhaka. As the drama unfolded one of the women fainted and had to be led away. After the performance, the women faced Gazi and her theatre company with a taut silence. And then one of them spoke, “Go out and tell the world our story.” Rising Silence, the documentary, is doing just that.
In a 2019 interview Gazi argued that we can’t afford to ignore or dismiss historic sexual violence, “We could dismiss their accounts as isolated incidents of a forgotten war in a distant land, committed nearly 50 years ago. The problem is that the same pattern of sexual violence and rape in armed conflicts continues to be used today,” she said, referencing events in Myanmar and South Sudan.
Kali Theatre chose the 70 thanniversary of The Declaration of Human Rights to run their season of War Plays in 2018. Included was the play Hecuba Birangona. The writer, Sayan Kent takes the story of Hecuba and relocates it to a rape camp in the Bangladesh Independence War. “Hecuba Birangona is about (the) voiceless having a voice. Women are abused and exploited all the time in conflict situations. There is much shame where sexual crimes are involved (perpetrators, government and women survivors) and often people don’t want to talk about it. But these women have to live with their past. I wanted to show the humanity of these women in inhumane conditions, and by writing about what happens to women in conflict is my way of keeping this issue in the public consciousness. Only by talking about these things can we come to some sort of resolution.” (Sayan Kent)
Governments, politicians (mostly male) take the decision to wage war, to mobilise their forces and unleash untold violence. It’s the military, the combatants, the soldiers (mostly male) who go to war; who carry the hardware: the guns, grenades, bombs. Why then are weapon-less women, the civilians, the non-armed, the mothers, grandmothers, daughters, sisters, schoolgirls, the ones who’re abused, beaten, violated, imprisoned and disappeared?
Ultimately, we circle back to the essential mission of IWD: to create equality as an ethos, a practice and a founding principle. When women are participants in national decision making, when women inform national and international laws, then the issues of sexual abuse in conflict situations can have legal redress and legal reparation. The tenets of military training can be changed, the link between territory and women’s bodies can be cut.
International Women’s Day isn’t just a PR exercise, it’s a reminder of how we can have a better world; how the gears and cogs of decision making from local, to national and international level can shift, reset and produce different patterns. Research has demonstrated that when women are involved in peace negotiations and settlements, the agreements last longer.
We cannot call ourselves civilised until we’ve stopped using war as a way of settling disputes. The old idea of ‘might is right’, is way past its ‘use by date.’ Not only is war immoral but it fractures our world, creating injustice, trauma and enmity, the breeding grounds for further conflict. As a species we possess the incredible tools of intelligence, reason and imagination, expressed through sophisticated languages and ideas; we have the analytical ability to look back at our history and the intellectual creativity to look forward. To formulate futures which nourish peace and prosperity for all.
I understand that on our planet exist governments and politicians whose motivations arise from self-interest, ideology and the lust for territory. Such forces should not be resourced by an endless arsenal of bombs, munitions and support. We can no longer afford wars and violence but we can certainly afford peace and a more equal world.
The cogs and levers of change can only be reset during peacetime — in order to change future outcomes in war. The greatest, most imperative reset is the creation of pathways and opportunities for the inclusion of women at every level, at every institution. Women should be informing the ethos of military training in peacetime, setting the standards and ethics for conduct during war; establishing a framework for redress by women who’re abused, and bringing to account those military personnel guilty of crimes.
International Women’s Day celebrates the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women, but above all, the day also marks “…a call to action for accelerating women’s equality.”
The women of Palestine and every woman caught up in conflict across the world, cannot afford to suffer more wars and abuse. The mechanisms for change must begin to move now.
IWD 2024 #InspireInclusion
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Filed Under: Tagged With: Blog Birangona women, Gaza, IWD 2024, Palestinian women, War and women
Originally published at https://www.ravinderrandhawa.com on March 8, 2024.