"They rape a woman, five or six of them at a time — but that is not enough. Then they shoot a gun into her vagina," says Dr. Mukwege. [Dr. Denis Mukwege of Panzi Hospital in eastern Congo] "In all my years here, I never saw anything like it. ... [T]o see so many raped, that shocks me, but what shocks me more is the way they are raped."
I encourage you to watch this video, although the content is extremely disturbing. With a nod to webranding, it should be mentioned that the doctor in the video below describes the practice of inserting sand and leaves into the rape victims' vaginas, or more aptly, remnants thereof.
Feminisms is a series of weekly feminist diaries. My fellow feminists and I decided to start our own for several purposes: we wanted a place to chat with each other, we felt it was important to both share our own stories and learn from others, and we hoped to introduce to the community a better understanding of what feminism is about.
Needless to say, we expect disagreements to arise. We have all had different experiences in life, so while we share the same labels, we don't necessarily share the same definitions. Hopefully, we can all be patient and civil with each other, and remember that, ultimately, we're all on the same side.
Let's take a look at the plight of Iraqi women since the U.S. invasion.
This is my humble attempt to stop a misperception; unknowingly or not, the specious argument I quote below has no merit whatsoever. I'll leave the male circumcision debate to others, but this? No. I won't concede.
Some forms of female genital mutilation are actually less harmful than male circumcision (google "harborview female circumcision" for an example). Do you really disagree?
Female genital mutilation (FGM), often referred to as 'female circumcision', comprises all procedures involving partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs whether for cultural, religious or other non-therapeutic reasons. There are different types of female genital mutilation known to be practised today.
More in extended. Graphic descriptions follow and you should probably stop reading now if you're squeamish.
Sami Al Hajj, 37 years old, father of a young son, Sudanese national, al-Jazeera photojournalist, has been illegally imprisoned at the Guantanamo prison camp for over four years now. As of today, Sami has been on hunger strike for 114 days.
"Aside from the fact that Guantanamo Bay is a legal and humanitarian scandal, the Americans seem to be holding Al-Hajj simply because they have it in for Al-Jazeera. How else can you explain the fact that he has been held for four years without being charged while other journalists have been cleared and released in no time at all?" (Reporters Without Borders)
In September of 2006, President Bush felt the need to appear on national television, smirk and proclaim the following untruthful statements:
We knew that Zubaydah had more information that could save innocent lives, but he stopped talking. As his questioning proceeded, it became clear that he had received training on how to resist interrogation. And so the CIA used an alternative set of procedures. These procedures were designed to be safe, to comply with our laws, our Constitution, and our treaty obligations. The Department of Justice reviewed the authorized methods extensively and determined them to be lawful.
On Jan. 7, 2005, while on assignment for the Christian Science Monitor, freelance reporter Jill Carroll was kidnapped in Baghdad. Her translator, Alan Enwiyah, was murdered. On Jan. 17, Carroll's captors issued a statement demanding that the United States free all female Iraqi prisoners in U.S. custody, and threatened to kill Carroll if their demand was not met within 72 hours.
A long-running hunger strike at Guantánamo Bay gained several participants in recent weeks amid complaints over conditions at a new unit of the prison. All were being force-fed through tubes, Navy Cmdr. Robert Durand, a Guantánamo spokesman, said Monday.
How many is "all?" Somewhere between 13 and 40, depending on the DOJ's story or the statements of defense attorneys.
"My wish is to die," 27-year-old Adnan Farhan Abdullatif of Yemen said through his lawyer. "We are living in a dying situation."
Suicide is almost always a desperate act by someone who feels helpless and hopeless.
"I am slowly dying in this solitary prison cell," says Omar Deghayes, a British refugee and Guantánamo Bay prisoner. "I have no rights, no hope. So why not take my destiny into my own hands, and die for a principle?"
Just as the heart beats in the darkness of the body,
so I, despite this cage, continue to beat with life.
Those who have no courage or honor consider themselves free,
but they are slaves.
I am flying on the wings of thought, and so,
even in this cage, I know a greater freedom.
Written - well, actually scratched onto a styrofoam cup using his fingernails, by Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost. Mr. Dost is an Afghani national who was released from Guantánamo in April 2006, after three years of illegal imprisonment.
Poems from Guantánamo: The Detainees Speak will be published this fall by the University of Iowa Press.
"It violated everything I personally believed in and all I'd been taught about the rules of war." -- Sergeant Joseph Darby
In January 2004, Sergeant Joseph Darby, found himself in a conundrum that none of us can really understand without having experienced. Darby, then a 24-year-old Army Reservist serving at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, had uncovered information and let his conscience be his guide.
Darby was a member of the 372nd Military Police Company, the unit in charge of guarding prisoners at Abu Ghraib. When Darby learned of the abuse taking place against Iraqi prisoners, he was torn between loyalty to his fellow soldiers and horror that they seemed capable of torture.
The soldier who triggered the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal by sending incriminating photos to military investigators says he feared deadly retribution by other soldiers, and was shocked when Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld mentioned his name in a Senate hearing.
"I had the choice between what I knew was morally right, and my loyalty to other soldiers. I couldn't have it both ways," Darby says in the September [2004] issue of GQ magazine.
In exchange for a plea of guilty and a statement denying that he had ever been tortured in U.S. custody, David Hicks is a step closer to returning home to Australia today.
GUANTANAMO BAY: A US military tribunal convicted Australian al Qaeda trainee David Hicks of supporting terrorism, making him the first war crimes convict among the hundreds of foreign captives held for years at the Guantanamo prison camp.
The tribunal judge accepted Hicks' guilty plea as part of an agreement that limits his sentence to seven years in prison, in addition to the five years he has been held at the Guantanamo base in Cuba. But the deal allows for at least part of his sentence to be suspended.
