It has commonly come to be known that sexual violence is
integrally associated with shame and stigma. The logic that aggressors employ
in using this tactic as a weapon of war is usually meant not only to undermine the individual but also the collective identity of an entire community. In this way
aggressors destroy social relationships and the fabric of a community that thrive on traditional religious and moral understandings of the
institution of marriage and family. In a recent UN Security
Council Meeting dealing with the repercussions of sexual violence in conflict situations, Acting Special Representative of the Secretary General of
Sexual Violence in Conflict Adama Dieng stated that not only does sexual
violence “turn victims into outcasts by fracturing families and corroding
community structures but it also prevents justice from really being done.” In
Dieng’s words it is the “stigma that kills and prevents victims from coming
forward. Much of the
time it is this fear and cultural stigma prevents most survivors from claiming
their rights and the proper legal assistance available
to them.
Social stigma associated with sexual violence may in some
societies be even more pronounced than in others. Research
has, for example shown that in the MENA region while the rate of sexual
violence is quite high the prosecution and conviction of rape is quite rare.
This can be attributed to the fact that rape victims will probably face a
plethora of stigma associated with the crime, part of which includes dishonour
and accordingly a diminished prospect at marriage. The severity of the stigma
that attaches is evident through some of the laws that are promulgated in some
Islamic countries which go as far as forcing rape victims to marry their rapists
in an attempt to restore family honour and dignity. In such situations it is believed that
the woman who has been raped is better off being married to her rapist as a trade for her decency and honour. No doubt this is where some people err
and confuse Islamic law by mistakenly equating rape with adultery or fornication.
Interestingly the Quaran condemns the crime of rape classifying it as one of
the violent and vilest crimes and clearly denotes it as a form of terrorism.
Considering the social stigma of sexual violence, often
faced in some communities it may not be so far fetched in trying to understand
the recent events surrounding Rohingya particularly the plight of Rohingya
women and children who have fallen prey to and who have become victims of
sexual violence in recent months. The massive
displacement of this Burmese ethnic group has reached a climax as of last
year where approximately half a million Rohingya have fled the country leaving those displaced living in refugee camps all across neighbouring Bangladesh . Since 1824 the Rohingya as a Muslim minority
in Myanmar have faced and continue to face a plethora of discrimination. This
has been due to the fact that they have been rendered citizenless following
applicable legislation regulating their status in Myanmar and are therefore seen as illegally residing in the country. As a result, many have been unable
to get access to basic human rights some of which include proper access to
education, religion, healthcare, and employment.
As a further consequence, tensions emanating
out of the relationship between Buddhist and Rohingya in Rakhine state has
further exacerbated matters and has acted as a catalyst in the most recent humanitarian
crisis in Myanmar. This has led to large-scale attacks against Rohingya including
large- scale sexual attacks where women and children have been indiscriminately
targeted. Increasingly evidence confirms that Myanmar’s military uses
systematic mass rape and sexual violence as a form of ethnic cleansing, the impact
of which is to arguably destroy this ethnic minority. Employing sexual violence
as a weapon of war has evidently demonstrated that such violations are so
powerful in Rohingya communities that it threatens to derail family life and family honour. From interviews conducted with Rohingya victims of sexual violence it
has become apparent that many victims of rape much of the time keep the details
of their sexual violations a secret fearing that their status as ‘soiled’ women
will not only undermine their existing relationships with family and friends
but more so, the relationships they hold with their husbands. In other
words, there is a fear that once their husbands discover that they have been
sexually violated they might face further rejection and dispossession. Single
women also face a similar fear and stigma, namely that they will never be
married or desired as a prospective partner should their ‘status’ as one who has been sexually marred, come out into the open. An explanation for this might
be that the violation in question is deemed to be so shameful that erroneously
part of the blame falls on the victim rather than on the sole perpetrator/s of
the crime. Women in some instances may thus be seen as complicit in the act of
rape and may therefore be perceived as having sex outside the boundaries of
their marriage union and their religion
It is not surprising, that perpetrators of sexual
violence also realize these benefits and therefore employ sexual violence methodically, as an alternative to weapons, but nevertheless still as a very effective weapon of war. What may
however come across unusual, in this particular instance could be however, the fact that
Buddhists who are much of the time considered to be peace loving and
non-violent have been the ones who have been pivotal in orchestrating these vicious and planned attacks. This goes to show that Western understandings of Buddhism
tend to idealize and romanticize Buddhism and that Buddhism itself like any other
religion may be prone to corruption and used to promote violence and extremism if wrongly wielded. This raises a number of issues that I will address in a future
post, namely the origins of violence in Buddhism as a
means to political ends; additionally, the role of women in Buddhism
considering the inferior position that women hold in Buddhist culture and
relatedly, the role of sex in Buddhism if one considers the use and value of
women as sexual consorts in Tantric Buddhism. Finally the reasons why
anti-muslim or anti- Rohingya sentiment has been spreading in Myanmar will be pondered upon to consider the deeper issues at play.
Posted by Ingrid Roestenburg Morgan
