Calcutta Notebook
I C

Rape is such a rising  social evil that every segment of the society feels unsafe today. Most of the victims and their families blame it on their fate for helplessness. One reason rape, rather gang-rape continually shows a upward swing in crime graph is the absence of any powerful social movement against objectification of women, pornography and vulgarisation of female bodies in visuals. Political parties, more precisely their women fronts are reluctant to organise public opinion against this menace. They are more interested in women’s reservation in parliament and legislatures. They talk eloquently about how to empower women through self-help group and panchayet. Some times, they talk of human rights only as a passing reference in any crisis situation. Maybe, drawing room feminists in this country don’t directly feel the heat and stigma of gang rape in their social environment.

Not that education alone will be able to make it a safe place to live in for all otherwise campuses where eve-teasers and rapists abound, would have been a scene of tranquillity and moral heaven. Rape-related violence is no less horrific than what is happening in streets and slums. The politicians with notorious criminal background are in almost all political parties including left parties. They themselves resort to rape to marginalise their opponents and rivals in politics and business.

People are losing faith in the custodians of law and order because they are hardly above board. They take the rape issues lightly unless there is political pressures from some quarters. Or they will show a little bit of activism if they sense money in the case.

In peace or in war rape is a powerful weapon against the socially and economically disadvantaged. In today’s world, millions of young women and children are kidnapped or sold by their starving families, or lured with the promises of employment and then sold across borders into a sex-slaves trade on a scale never seen before in history.

Sexual violence against women is embedded in the very nature of policing system and maintaining armies. Security forces always treat women as prizes while on duty or doing combing operation in Junglemahal or Chattisgarh.

An army whether in India or in USA, behaves in a similar way. The persons in power simply support the idea of moving troops from barracks to brothels to the battlefields. How America encourages its army to indulge in rape is now an open secret.

In the US military women are raped and sexually assaulted by male soldiers at nearly twice the rate as in civilian society; nearly 1 in 3 women soldiers will be raped and assaulted in the short span of 2-6 years while serving. Women soldiers are more in danger of being raped by a fellow soldier than of being killed by enemy fire. Because of the element of betrayal, rape and sexual assault contributes more strongly to developing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) than combat-related stress. The long-term consequences for these women are severe PTSD and lifelong problems with depression, alcohol abuse, and chronic illness. Journalist Helen Benedict, who has studied women serving in Iraq, said the woman-hating in military culture is so pervasive, from boot camp through active duty, that she could only describe it as "sexual persecution."

The response of the US military command structure has been to downplay and cover up this epidemic wherever possible, or to give lip service to promises of reforms, while continuing to do little or nothing. Women who report military sexual assault can expect to be ignored, threatened and retaliated against, including by being diagnosed with a "psychiatric disorder" and discharged. As a result, the great majority of women who are raped or sexually assaulted do not report it.

At the same time, in the military, sex is increasingly equated with violence. The most grotesque scenes of sexualised torture from the US-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq are reproduced at porn sites, as are battlefield scenes of Iraqi women's bodies with their clothes torn off; there are even depictions of US soldiers gang-raping Afghani women during military assaults. This is all part of degrading those they conquer.

With more than 200,000 troops stationed in 130 countries-not counting the 90,000 troops in Afghanistan or the hundreds of thousands of private contractors working for the military, sex slavery flourishes around US bases worldwide. In 2009 former prostitutes in South Korea accused their government and the US military of taking a direct hand in the sex trade from the 1960s to 1980s, complete with a testing and treatment system to ensure the prostitutes used by American troops were disease-free. "Our government was one big pimp for the US military," one of the south Korean women said.

The issue of Korean ‘comfort women’ has been stressing Korean psyche since the Japanese invasion during the second world war. In truth what is true of US army is true for all reactionary armies.

Frontier
Vol. 45, No. 19, Nov 18-24, 2012

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