War and Sex Slavery

Muslim Women

I have just finished reading a compilation from the memoirs of General Kazim Karabekir, who led the Turkish Army to take over occupied Eastern Anatolian cities from Russia back and also had to fight against Armenian Army in the Caucasus. The theme of the compilation is Armenian atrocities exerted on Muslims in Eastern Anatolia and The Caucasus between 1917 to 1920 covering the area from Erzincan to Yerevan. Reports of some other officers have also been added as appendix. I have no intention to share hair raising reportings of where, how many people were subject to atrocities and what methods were used etc., but one thing that particularly stuck in my mind: Beautiful young girls and women abducted from villages and taken away to be coerced to prostitutiton in Yerevan and Russia. Heroines appear at such times to alleviate our heavy hearts while we are reading about such tragic events. Seher and Kamer took the knives and weapons of men they had to sleep together when the men fell asleep,  ran away to the mountains and set up a bandit and gave hard times to the threatening men. If all women were that mighty and brave, men would dare not abduct them! Alas, women suffer very heavily at war times.

Comfort Women

Coincidentally, Cumhuriyet Newspaper Sunday Edition dated March 31st, 2013 had an article about 'comfort women'. They  were women and girls forced into a prostitution corps created by the Empire of Japan. The first "comfort station" was established in the Japanese concession in Shanghai in 1932 with volunteered prostitutes from Japan. However, as Japan continued military expansion, the military found itself short of Japanese volunteers, and turned to the local population to coerce women into serving in these stations during WWII. The  number is estimated as 200.000. Those who could make it home kept silent about their experience through fear and shame, and threats received from the Japanese military. However, one by one survivors started to speak out in the early 1990s. Former “comfort women” and their supporters have built a global movement to seek justice and call on the Japanese government to apologise for the human rights violations it was guilty of. Japan has already apologized and states that reparations were settled in 1965 with Korea, but apparently victims are not satisfied with the arrangements.

ICRC's web page titled Customary IHL  contains the following passage under Rule 93 : Rape and Other Forms of Sexual Violence:

The prohibition of rape under international humanitarian law was already recognized in the Lieber Code.[1]  While common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions does not explicitly mention rape or other forms of sexual violence, it prohibits “violence to life and person” including cruel treatment and torture and “outrages upon personal dignity”.[2]  The Third Geneva Convention provides that prisoners of war are in all circumstances entitled to “respect for their persons and their honour”.[3]  The prohibition of “outrages upon personal dignity” is recognized in Additional Protocols I and II as a fundamental guarantee for civilians and persons hors de combat.[4]  Article 75 of Additional Protocol I specifies that this prohibition covers in particular “humiliating and degrading treatment, enforced prostitution and any form of indecent assault”, while Article 4 of Additional Protocol II specifically adds “rape” to this list.[5]  The Fourth Geneva Convention and Additional Protocol I require protection for women and children against rape, enforced prostitution or any other form of indecent assault.[6]  Rape, enforced prostitution and any form of indecent assault are war crimes under the Statutes of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and of the Special Court for Sierra Leone.[7]  The expressions “outrages upon personal dignity” and “any form of indecent assault” refer to any form of sexual violence. Under the Statute of the International Criminal Court, “committing rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy … enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence” also constituting a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions or also constituting a serious violation of common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions constitutes a war crime in international and non-international armed conflicts respectively.[8]  Furthermore, “rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity” constitutes a crime against humanity under the Statute of the International Criminal Court and “rape” constitutes a crime against humanity under the Statutes of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.[9]

War and enforced prostitution is a topic which needs to be addressed effectively  for women not to suffer for this reason any longer.

 References

Karabekir, Kazım. 1917-20 Arasında Erzincan'dan Erivan'a Ermeni Mezalimi [Armenian Atrocities between 1917-20 from Erzincan to Yerevan. Compiled by Ömer Hakan Özalp. İstanbul: Emre, 2000. 384pp.

Comfort women
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_women
http://www.comfort-women.org/
http://www.amnesty.org.nz/files/Comfort-Women-factsheet.pdf
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/04/south-korean-comfort-women-sue-japan-rock-band/

ICRC. Customary IHL. http://www.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v1_cha_chapter32_rule93

Top photo is taken from http://idrisyavuz.blogspot.com/p/tarihi-belgelerle-ermeni-mezalimi.html, the middle one from http://ahickshope.net/sex_amoung_allies.htm, bottom one from  http://www.icrc.org/eng/war-and-law/index.jsp.

Armenian Holocaust:My Story blog by Selma Aslan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Gayriticari-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.