Saturday, October 25, 2008

too awful to look. too awful to look away.

NY Times article about rape in the Congo http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/world/africa/07congo.html

What is to be done? The NYTimes comes dangerously close to excusing rape and negating this whole article by accepting the history: "rape has always been a weapon of war." I am not sure that is the correct reasoning or reference here. Rape is now collateral to the AIDS epidemic and to poverty in Africa (to desperation, really). Rape is part of the high school and college experience for many women. Rape is part of violent street crime throughout the world.

Why is it that rape is "just one of those things" perpetrated throughout history but attacking a church or a mosque is an outrage? Yes, I realize that technically rape is against humanitarian law and the Vienna Convention, but it does not seem to trigger international action in the way that other atrocities do.

And, how is this not genocide? It seems to me that prohibiting reproduction while maiming or killing a generation of women satisfies parts of the genocide convention. There is no political will, of course to deal with this.

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