![]() "They were saying 'we will make you breed Punjabi children'," she said, with the aim of weakening the integrity of the opposing ethnic group.Īmnesty this year accused the pro-government Janjaweed militias in Sudan's Darfur region of using mass rape in order to punish, humiliate and control non-Arab groups. The same tactic was used in a "very strategic attack" by state-backed Pakistani troops during the fight for Bangladesh's independence in 1971, Ms Sahgal said. "Women were raped so they could give birth to a Serbian baby." ![]() "In Bosnia systematic rape was used as part of the strategy of ethnic cleansing," it said. ![]() "Therefore if one group wants to control another they often do it by impregnating women of the other community because they see it as a way of destroying the opposing community."Ī report by Medecins Sans Frontieres says it first came across rape as a weapon in the 1990s. "Women are seen as the reproducers and carers of the community," she said. Rape is often used in ethnic conflicts as a way for attackers to perpetuate their social control and redraw ethnic boundaries, she said. Gita Sahgal, of Amnesty International, told the BBC News website it was a mistake to think such assaults were primarily about the age-old "spoils of war", or sexual gratification. So what motivates armed forces, whether state-backed troops or irregular militia, to attack civilian women and children? And while Amnesty cites ongoing conflicts in Colombia, Iraq, Sudan, Chechnya, Nepal and Afghanistan, the use of rape as a weapon of war goes back much further.įrom the systematic rape of women in Bosnia, to an estimated 200,000 women raped during the battle for Bangladeshi independence in 1971, to Japanese rapes during the 1937 occupation of Nanking - the past century offers too many examples. The opportunistic rape and pillage of previous centuries has been replaced in modern conflict by rape used as an orchestrated combat tool. Rape and sexual abuse are not just a by-product of war but are used as a deliberate military strategy, it says. Women's bodies have become part of the terrain of conflict, according to a new report by Amnesty International.
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