Ms. Ensler spoke of her encounter with an 8-year-old girl during one of her trips to Congo. The girl’s father had been killed in an attack, her mother was raped, and the girl herself was abducted. The child was raped by groups of soldiers over a two-week period and then abandoned.
The girl felt too ashamed to allow herself to be held, Ms. Ensler said, because her injuries had left her incontinent. After explaining how she persuaded the child to accept an embrace, to be hugged, Ms. Ensler said, "If we’re living in a century when an 8-year-old girl is incontinent because that many soldiers have raped her, then something has gone terribly wrong."
Despite the presence in the region of the largest U.N. peacekeeping mission in the world, no one has been able to stop the systematic rape of the Congolese women.
If these are not war crimes, crimes against humanity, then nothing is.
Ponder that. Read it again. It is the conclusion of a column by Bob Herbert entitled The Invisible War. Perhaps read the whole column. Then if you can and are still willing, only then, go below the fold.
Yesterday was a strange day for me, rich and yet disturbing. The most disturbing parts came from the behavior of several of my students. That put me in a meditative, reflective mood. I departed school to head North, in the opposite direction from my home, to meet a fellow denizen of this blog who was staying with her son and daughter-in-law. The ensuing two hour conversation with va dare was rich, and further deepened my reflection. Last night the 2nd half of Bill Moyers' Journal featured a conversation with a man whose work has had a huge impact upon my own life, my approach to teaching, the author Parker Palmer. That was both rich and yet disturbing. I pondered the foregoing events until perhaps 1 this morning before going to bed, awoke later that usual, after 6:30, still in a reflective mood.
And then I read Bob Herbert.
If these are not war crimes, crimes against humanity, then nothing is.
What is our responsibility as human beings when we learn of such atrocities?
In another column I read today, Rebecca Hamilton writes in the Boston Globe that the possibility of an arrest warrant against Omar Al Bashir, the leader of Sudan, for the atrocities in Darfur, may already be having a salutary effect. In An inkling of hope, justice for Darfur she concludes
Even a small increase in the vigor with which the crimes in Darfur are condemned could lead to behavioral change in Khartoum. No one in the ruling party wants their government to be an international pariah. If the price for avoiding this is to ensure that Sudanese citizens are not the victims of mass atrocity in the future, then it is a price that Khartoum's current and aspiring political leaders may well be willing to pay - even before Bashir is in the dock.
Yet I am not encouraged, but saddened. Or should I say that I find the possibilities of which she writes rich and yet disturbing? It is enriching that the world may finally speak with sufficient voice to lessen and perhaps prevent future similar atrocities on the part of the government of Sudan. It is disturbing that despite world-wide attention over many months we can only hope that an action that is not enforceable, the issuance of an arrest warrant, might finally see a slaughter, which includes mass rape, coming to an end.
Rape. It is a subject about which I have written before, shortly after Christmas. Far too often it has been used as an instrument of power, of oppression.
But I am hard put to think of any historical occasion on the scale of what is happening in the "Democratic" Republic of the Congo. Yes, the Pakistani Army used rape as an instrument of shame of Bangladesh. And found that those actions were part of the reason the Indian Army intervened to end the atrocities.
I consider myself reasonably knowledgeable about world affairs. I read (online for the most part) several major newspapers daily, papers like the Times and the Washington Post which still offer substantial coverage of foreign matters. I also peruse the websites of several overseas news outlets, to ensure that I am not limited by what American editors and publishers think is important. But until I read Herbert's column, I was not aware of the scope of what is going on in the Congo. For which I feel ashamed.
But that is only the beginning of my sense of shame. Because I am unaware of any outcry in this country. Is it that we care about Darfur because there is oil, or because the atrocities somehow fit into our willingness to demonize some who are Muslim? Could it be that the more black or "not like us" the victims might be the less we are concerned about their suffering, no matter how horrible it might be?
I don't know. In another column in today's New York Times, Charles Blow cites data that shows whites are far more likely to have an anti-black bias than blacks have an anti-white bias. Writing in part in response to Eric Holder's recent words about cowardice, Blow concluded
The fear of offending isn’t necessarily cowardice, nor is a failure to acknowledge a bias that you don’t know that you have, but they are impediments. We have to forget about who’s a coward and who’s brave, about who feels offended and who gets blamed. Let’s focus on the facts, and let’s just talk.
Let's focus on the facts
Yes, we are rightly concerned - even consumed - by the financial crises (that is a deliberate pluralization) confronting our nation. Our concern certainly extends far enough to recognize the problems are not confined to the United States. We have much work to do to save our own nation, not merely economically but also morally.
I was sad because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet. Perhaps we find that our compassion and concern goes this far, a recognition of the suffering of others. But that famous line goes further. So I said, ‘Got any shoes you're not using? If our only response is to see either how the situation can turn to our advantage, as offered in the second bolded sentence, that is bad. It is no less bad to say "thank God that's not us" and turn away.
How can we as human beings remain silent at the kind of systemic atrocities described by Herbert? Have we reached a point of being anesthetized by repeated exposure to wide-scale atrocities in other nations? Or might we now, as Americans, be at least subconsciously cowed against speaking out by our awareness of our own systemic atrocities at Abu Ghraib and in secret prison: raping children before their parents as a means of attempting to obtain information is certainly not something which we willingly shout as proof of our moral superiority as a nation.
When Moses sought to intervene in a fight between two Hebrews he is reminded of his own violence, when he had killed an Egyptian who was beating another Israelite. Perhaps because he had sought to keep hidden his prior intervention? Or because even when justifiable, violence to the point of death is usually seen, by caring people, as something for which there should be some shame?
What then should be the feeling for unwillingness to confront wrongs, for silence in the face of such horror, for unwillingness to take on the burden that can lead to some sense of regret for causing death or injury? Should not such inaction be a cause for even greater shame?
I find myself struggling for words this morning. I am sure I will not be the only one who notices the Herbert column. Perhaps others can write about it more cogently, more effectively than can I. Why then do I post this?
Because if, having felt the horror in reading it, I did not attempt to make it better known, to confront myself and my nation in the shame we should feel in NOT knowing and NOT acting, then in some way I would become complicit in the ongoing tragedies, the continued atrocities.
It is not my wife. I have no daughter. My mother is already dead. None of that matters.
Offenses like these against ANY women is a crime against ALL women. And more. Allowing or accepting in any fashion such continued and widespread atrocities is itself cowardice far worse than anything about which Eric Holder spoke, and it is a complicity by silence in a crime against all of humanity.
Whatsoever you do to the least of my people, that you do unto me. The challenge from the 25th Chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. To begin in any fashion to divide humanity into us versus them, or those like us and those different than us, or to those worthy of our help and those not, . . . all such divisions potentially have an end point as horrifying as the mass rapes in the Congo.
The Invisible War
That is an ironic expression. Too often war and its crimes get done in the shadows, on our behalf, and like Colonel Jessup argues in "A Few Good Men" it is something we don't want to know, we merely wish to accept the perceived benefits of such actions: greater access to cheap Iranian oil from overthrowing Mossadegh, a perceived sense of vengeance in the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Muhammed...
War should never be invisible. When necessary, which often is not, we should be forthright, and accept the shame that should accompany our failure to have acted sufficiently and early enough to have made war unnecessary. Even when our wars are purely defensive, which is almost never the case.
The Invisible War - invisible only to those who willingly blind themselves, who avert their own eyes.
And there is no legitimate justification for rape as an act of war, of dominance, of suppression. And no one should EVER avert their eyes or shut their minds or remain inactive the face of such horror. Arrest warrants from the ICC are insufficient. Humanity demands something more, even if it is merely being forced to acknowledge our shame at our own inaction and thus our acquiescence. Perhaps that shame can begin to motivate us to do more?
I have no answers, and acknowledge that others can write about this better than can I. That does not allow me to remain silent. So I wrote this.
I hope and pray as always for
Peace
Today I read Bob Herbert. Like my day yesterday, I had an experience that was rich and yet disturbing. I do not feel any peace right now.
What about you?