Avenge my sisters

I'm not an advocate of violence.  I don't think the state should be able to make life-or-death decisions i.e. capital punishment.  I don't own a gun, and there's not much that could incite me to hurt or kill.  Except for this:

After gang raping women and girls, soldiers are piercing their labia and padlocking their vaginas shut. Hot plastic as well as sticks and bayonets are being inserted into the women. Six-month-old girls have been raped to death.

Gang rapes are so severe that many women are suffering from fistula (the tearing of the vaginal wall so that the contents of the colon and urine seep in). Unable to reach medical care, some women are dying of massive infections. Even if the women do reach a doctor, fistula is very hard to repair—few practitioners can do it.

To intensify the cruelty, soldiers are even shooting women in the vagina, destroying their systems so completely that numerous operations are necessary—and even then repair may not be possible.

Despite how horrifying all this seems, there is nothing new Under the Rape Sun. ‘Fistula Rape,’ I call it—needing to find my own vocabulary for a reality rarely written about. The Romans, at one time, inflicted it on women in wartime. The Japanese were masters at it—the soldiers own photos of Nanking show naked, dead Chinese women in the streets, objects like pitchforks shoved into them.

Nothing new, either, about “sexual terrorism,” the use of women’s bodies as battlefields for male cruelty, for political ends—we have seen it all before, in Bangladesh, Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur. (And now in Iraq.)

This is happening right now, in 2008, in many parts of the world.   A nauseous tip of the hat to Little Miss Brightside, who frequently shines a light on the atrocity of terrorism and torture against women.   This particular conflict is not about diamonds.  I guess that's old hat.  The latest substance being mined in the Democratic Rapeublic of Congo is an unrefined metallic ore called coltan.  It's in your PlayStation 2.

At the center of the conflict is the unrefined metallic ore, coltan. After processing, coltan turns into a powder called tantalum, which is used extensively in a wealth of western electronic devices including cell phones, computers and, of course, game consoles.

Allegedly, the demand for coltan prompted Rwandan military groups and western mining companies to plunder hundreds of millions of dollars worth of the rare metal, often by forcing prisoners-of-war and even children to work in the country's coltan mines.

"Kids in Congo were being sent down mines to die so that kids in Europe and America could kill imaginary aliens in their living rooms," said Ex-British Parliament Member Oona King.

Killing children in mines, killing babies, children and women by raping them to death.   Life is cheap in the Congo, but coltan is expensive.  A woman is just a piece of meat, especially a woman from a different country, tribe, ethnic group.  Just a piece of meat to fuck until it's dead.  And if you can't somehow fuck it to death, shoot it afterwards.  The spoils of war. 

Like the monster who decapitated that boy on the bus, I just cannot comprehend the level of violence committed on women during war.  It seems as though any last shred of humanity is willingly tossed aside and men forget that they are men.  They become Reavers or Morlocks instead, existing only to satsify their bloodlust, feeding off the flesh and terror of women and children.   This is not an ancient evil, something that we have evolved past in human history.   It was in Bosnia just over 10 years ago.  It is in Iraq now, committed by western soldiers and contractors.   Just this June, over 2200 Congolese women reported being raped.  

This makes me wish for vengeance for my sisters.   It makes me wish that Kali would appear in the raping fields and destroy the fiends with sword and fire, their blood covering her altar, their skulls dangling from her garland, their deaths clearing the way for the rebirth and healing of their victims.  

We will never have peace in the world as long as there are men who are so willing to do such incomprehensible violence and damage to their sisters, mothers, daughters, grandmothers, cousins, friends and neighbors.  

Repeat after me, and keep repeating until it becomes a universal truth: RAPE IS ALWAYS WRONG.  RAPE IS ALWAYS UNACCEPTABLE.  RAPE AS A TOOL OF WAR IS A WAR CRIME AND A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY, AND ITS PERPETRATORS SHOULD BE BROUGHT TO JUSTICE. 

May all rapists ultimately get what they deserve. 

Om Kali Ma 

Jai Kali Ma