Rape as a weapon of war may date to the dawn of conflict. But in Ukraine, female lawmakers are waging a campaign to turn sexual violence by Russian soldiers against the invaders. “No one thought that such cruelties and atrocities could happen in the middle of Europe,” says Lesia Vasylenko, a Ukrainian Member of Parliament who in March traveled from Kyiv to London, where she and three other female lawmakers urged Prime Minister Boris Johnson to stop U.K. trade with Russia on the grounds that it was funding the rape of their countrywomen. A few weeks later, they took their message to Paris, raising the same issue with President Emmanuel Macron. On April 21, they will head to Brussels, seat of the European Union. “It’s important that people do not avert their eyes from this crime,” says Vasylenko. When Russian troops retreated from areas around Kyiv on April 1, official reports of sexual violence, which had trickled in during the five weeks after the invasion, suddenly took the shape of a systemic, coordinated campaign of sexual violence. Women and girls were the main target, but victims spanned old and young, male and female.
Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, Lyudmyla Denisova said that 25 teenage girls were kept in a basement in Bucha and gang-raped; nine of them are now pregnant. Elderly women spoke on camera about being raped by Russian soldiers. The bodies of children were found naked with their hands tied behind their backs, their genitals mutilated. Those victims included both girls and boys, and Ukrainian men and boys have been sexually assaulted in other incidents. A group of Ukrainian women POWs had their heads shaved in Russian captivity, where they were also stripped naked and forced to squat. Human rights monitors say the number of additional cases extend into the scores, stoking fears for Ukrainians both still under Russian control or facing the prospect of becoming so, as Moscow launches a massive assault in the country’s east. “These sex crimes…are a weapon of war in order to humiliate, subjugate, terrorize and force people to flee the territory,” says Marta Havryshko, Research Associate in contemporary history at the I. Krypiakevych Institute of Ukrainian Studies and a URIS Fellow at Basel University. “Russian soldiers are trying to send a signal to the whole community: we are the winners, you are weak, we will destroy you, so you better give up your struggle for independence.” The Ukrainian campaign reflects the evolution of outrage. Rape was first recognized as a war crime in 1919, but many wars and decades passed before the first prosecution of rape as a war crime took place, against a Rwandan politician in 1998. The U.N.’s first prosecution was for the Former Yugoslavia, when Serbian forces maintained “rape camps” as what judges deemed “an instrument of terror.”
via imes: Ukrainians Are Speaking Up About Rape as a War Crime to Ensure the World Holds Russia Accountable