Far From the Tree

by Solomon, Andrew

  1297 This passage is based on my interview with Tina Gordon in 2007. All names in this passage are pseudonyms.

  1298 See Stigma Inc., “Information,” at http://web.archive.org/web/20060221101659/www.stigmatized.org/information.htm.

  1299 This passage is based on my interview with Emily Barrett in 2008. All names in this passage are pseudonyms.

  1300 This paragraph relies on Diana E. H. Russell, Rape in Marriage (1990). The 14 percent statistic occurs on page xxxii, the story of the Burnhams on pages xvii–xviii.

  1301 The quotation from Louise McOrmond-Plummer (“The woman raped by her partner was routinely blamed”) comes from her article “My story of partner rape” (2006), http://www.aphroditewounded.org/loustory.html; see also Patricia Weiser Easteal and Louise McOrmond-Plummer, Real Rape, Real Pain: Help for Women Sexually Assaulted by Male Partners (2006).

  1302 This passage is based on my interview with Ashley Green in 2007. All names in this passage are pseudonyms.

  1303 The reference to “coerced childbearing as a weapon in the arsenal of power and control” occurs on page 27 of Anthony Lathrop, “Pregnancy resulting from rape,” Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic & Neonatal Nursing 27, no. 1 (January 1998).

  1304 The quotation from the first woman coerced into bearing children (“He raped me to keep me pregnant all the time”) occurs on page 23 of Raquel Kennedy Bergen, Wife Rape: Understanding the Response of Survivors and Service Providers (1996); the quotation from the second (“They own you when you have a child by him”) occurs on page 219 of Jacquelyn C. Campbell et al., “The influence of abuse on pregnancy intention,” Women’s Health Issues 5, no. 4 (Winter 1995).

  1305 This passage is based on my interview with Mindy Woods and Larry Foster in 2007. All names in this passage are pseudonyms.

  1306 This passage is based on my interview with Barbara, Jeffrey, and Pauline Schmitz in 2007. All names in this passage are pseudonyms.

  1307 Statistics on numbers of war children can be found on page 7 of Kai Grieg, The War Children of the World (2001).

  1308 The quotation from Ruth Seifert (“The rape of women communicates from man to man . . .”) occurs on page 59 of her essay “War and rape: A preliminary analysis,” in Mass Rape: The War against Women in Bosnia-Herzegovina, edited by Andrea Stiglmayer, translated by Marion Faber (1994). It has been condensed. The passage in full: “In the context of war, rape can be considered the final symbolic expression of the humiliation of the male opponent. As experience teaches us, the myth of man as protector that is mobilised in most wars is really nothing more than a myth. There is by no means a cultural imperative to protect women from war and its consequences. This is not to say that this myth has no social effect and possesses no psychological reality for many men (and women). Neither do I mean to deny the possibility that isolated men do protect isolated women (just as isolated women protect isolated men). But in principle women are always laid open to the consequences of war. Furthermore, the rape of women carries an additional message: it communicates from man to man, so to speak, that the men around the women in question are not able to protect ‘their women.’ They are thus wounded in their masculinity and marked as incompetent. In the former Yugoslavia, this communicative function from man to man is clearly evident when buses with women in sixth, seventh or even eighth months of pregnancy were sent back over enemy lines, usually with cynical inscriptions on the vehicles regarding the children about to be born.”

  1309 Susan Brownmiller’s characterization of wartime rape as an “extracurricular battlefield” occurs on page 182 of her essay, “Making female bodies the battlefield,” in Mass Rape: The War against Women in Bosnia-Herzegovina, edited by Andrea Stiglmayer, translated by Marion Faber (1994). The passage in full (pages 181–82): “During World War II, when the Germans were on the march again, atrocious rapes were committed on the bodies of Russian and Jewish women in the occupied villages and cities while still more women were dragged to brothels or to death. When the tide reversed and the Soviet Army began advancing into German territory on the road to Berlin, it was the turn of German women to experience the use of their bodies as an extracurricular battlefield.”

  1310 Books consulted on the Rwandan genocide include Alison Liebhafsky Des Forges, “Leave None to Tell the Story”: Genocide in Rwanda (1999); Jean Hatzfeld, Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak (2005); Elizabeth Neuffer, The Key to My Neighbour’s House: Seeking Justice in Bosnia and Rwanda (2002); Binaifer Nowrojee, Shattered Lives: Sexual Violence during the Rwandan Genocide and Its Aftermath (1996); Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda (1999); and Johnathan Torgovnik, Intended Consequences: Rwandan Children Born of Rape (2009). For journalistic coverage, see Donatella Lorch, “Rape used as a weapon in Rwanda: Future grim for genocide orphans,” Houston Chronicle, May 15, 1995; Elizabeth Royte, “The outcasts,” New York Times Magazine, January 19, 1997; Lindsey Hilsum, “Rwanda’s time of rape returns to haunt thousands,”Guardian, February 26, 1995; Lindsey Hilsum, “Don’t abandon Rwandan women again,” New York Times, April 11, 2004; and Emily Wax, “Rwandans are struggling to love children of hate,” Washington Post, March 28, 2004.

  1311 The Rwandan proverb “A woman who is not yet battered is not a real woman” is reported on page 20 of Binaifer Nowrojee’s report for Human Rights Watch, Shattered Lives: Sexual Violence during the Rwandan Genocide and Its Aftermath (1996).

  1312 The role of Rwandan media in inciting genocide is discussed in Dina Temple-Raston’s remarkable book Justice on the Grass (Free Press, 2005). See also Russell Smith, “The impact of hate media in Rwanda,” BBC News, December 3, 2003. Also, in his remarkable PhD dissertation, “Propaganda and conflict: Theory and evidence from the Rwandan genocide” (Stockholm University, 2009), political economist David Yanagizawa found a direct correlation between hate radio and violence by analyzing locations of transmission towers and topographical impediments to transmission, and the locations and numbers of subsequent genocide prosecutions.

  1313 Statistics on wartime rapes in Rwanda are supported by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs news report “Our bodies, their battle ground: Gender-based violence in conflict zones,” IRIN News, September 1, 2004. Estimates of the numbers of wartime rapes and births come from the introduction by Marie Consolée Mukagendo, “The struggles of Rwandan women raising children born of rape,” in Johnathan Torgovnik’s photo essay, Intended Consequences: Rwandan Children Born of Rape (2009): “The struggles of Rwandan women raising children born of rape”: “While there is little information available on the real numbers of rape victims at the national level, a study in 2000 by Human Rights Watch estimated up to five hundred thousand women were raped systematically during the genocide. In Rwanda, abortion is illegal, but many women used more primitive methods to abort their pregnancies or traveled to neighboring Zaire (Congo) in order to obtain an abortion because they were unable to cope with the prospect of raising a child fathered by a militiaman. Many other women, however, had children in the aftermath of the genocide and are now raising them alone.

  “The National Population Office of Rwanda estimated that the number of children born of forced impregnation to be between two and five thousand. However, according to information provided by victim groups, the number may actually range between ten and twenty-five thousand children. Rwanda is a heavily patriarchal society; so children are identified with the lineage of their fathers. This means that most members of society perceive the children of wartime rape as belonging to the enemy. They are often referred to as ‘les enfants mauvais souvenir’ (children of bad memories) or ‘enfants indesirés’ (children of hate) and others are named ‘little killers’ by their own mothers and by the community. As a consequence, often as soon as the mothers reveal the truth of their rape, they face rejection by their families and lose any support from the community, which harbors deep emotional scars from the genocide. So many of the women were girls dur
ing the genocide, and acknowledging the rapes, publicly or privately, can dash their future hopes of marriage. Josette, a mother to eleven-year-old Thomas, explains, ‘My uncle didn’t welcome me into his house. He asked me who was responsible for my pregnancy. I said it must be the militias since many of them had raped me. He said I shouldn’t enter his house carrying a baby of the Hutus and chased me away. I left, but I didn’t know where to go.’ These mothers and their children are simply not accepted into the community and struggle for support.

  “. . . To date there has been no systematic effort to identify the children of rape or to evaluate their needs and the needs of their mothers specifically.”

  1314 See Padmasayee Papineni, “Children of bad memories,” Lancet 362, no. 9386 (September 6, 2003).

  1315 The phrase living legacy of a time of death comes from Emily Wax, “Rwandans are struggling to love children of hate,” Washington Post, March 28, 2004.

  1316 The quotation from Catherine Bonnet occurs on page 79 of Binaifer Nowrojee’s report Shattered Lives: Sexual Violence during the Rwandan Genocide and Its Aftermath (1996), citing to Bonnet’s paper, “Le viol des femmes survivantes du génocide du Rwanda,” in Rwanda: Un génocide du XXe siècle, edited by Raymond Verdier, Emmanuel Decaux, and Jean-Pierre Chrétien (1995), page 18. The Bonnet quote in full: “The psychopathy of pregnancies resulting from rape in Rwanda is the same as that which has been observed in France and in the former Yugoslavia: these pregnancies are rejected and concealed, often denied and discovered late. They are often accompanied by attempted self-induced abortions or violent fantasies against the child; indeed, even infanticide. Suicidal ideas are frequently present. Some women probably committed suicide without revealing the reason when they discovered that they had become pregnant by their rapist-tormentor.”

  1317 All quotations from Jean Damascene Ndayambaje come from my interview with him in 2004.

  1318 All quotations from Espérance Mukamana come from my interview with her in 2004.

  1319 The loaded names chosen by some women are cataloged in Emily Wax, “Rwandans are struggling to love children of hate,” Washington Post, March 28, 2004.

  1320 All quotations from Alphonsine Nyirahabimana come from my interview with her in 2004.

  1321 All quotations from Célestin Kalimba come from my interview with him in 2004.

  1322 All quotations from Marie Rose Matamura come from my interview with her in 2004.

  1323 General information sources on rape as a tool of war include Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will (1975); Maria de Bruyn, Violence, Pregnancy and Abortion: Issues of Women’s Rights and Public Health (2003); and the Global Justice Center report The Right to an Abortion for Girls and Women Raped in Armed Conflict (2011). For further information on rape in specific conflicts noted in this passage, see Nayanika Mookherjee, “‘Remembering to forget’: Public secrecy and memory of sexual violence in the Bangladesh war of 1971,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 12, no. 2 (June 2006); Martina Vandenburg and Kelly Askin, “Chechnya: Another battleground for the perpetration of gender based crimes,” Human Rights Review 2, no. 3 (2001); Michele L. Leiby, “Wartime sexual violence in Guatemala and Peru,” International Studies Quarterly 53, no. 2 (June 2009); “Comfort women,” Encyclopedia of Rape, pages 46–48; the Amnesty International report “Liberia: No impunity for rape” (2004); and Louise Taylor’s report for Human Rights Watch, “‘We’ll kill you if you cry’: Sexual violence in the Sierra Leone conflict” (2003).

  1324 The statement “These incidents of rape are clearly aimed to subjugate, humiliate, and terrorize the entire community, not just the women and girls raped by the militias” appears on page 5 of the Human Rights Watch report “Sexual violence and its consequences among displaced persons in Darfur and Chad” (2005).

  1325 See “Rape of Nanking,” Encyclopedia of Rape, pages 194–96.

  1326 Rape as a weapon during the conflict in Bangladesh is discussed in Robert Trumball, “Dacca raising the status of women while aiding rape victims,” New York Times, May 12, 1972; Aubrey Menen, “The rapes of Bangladesh,” New York Times, July 23, 1972; and Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will (1976), pages 78–86.

  1327 The quotation from the Kosovar husband (“If I were normal, I would keep the kid, accept my wife . . .”) comes from Helena Smith, “Rape victims’ babies pay the price of war,” Observer, April 16, 2000.

  1328 The quotation from the Bosnian rape survivor (“It was a hard birth . . .”) occurs on page 131 of Alexandra Stiglmayer, “The rapes in Bosnia-Herzegovina,” in Mass Rape: The War against Women in Bosnia-Herzegovina, edited by Andrea Stiglmayer, translated by Marion Faber (1994).

  1329 See Helena Smith, “Rape victims’ babies pay the price of war,” Observer, April 16, 2000.

  1330 This passage is based on my interview with Marianne Mukamana in 2004.

  1331 The quotation from the East Timorese rape survivor (“I was used like a horse by the Indonesian soldiers . . .”) occurs on page 337 of Susan Harris Rimmer, “‘Orphans’ or veterans?: Justice for children born of war in East Timor,” Texas International Law Journal 42, no. 2 (Spring 2007), citing to Galuh Wandita et al., “Learning to engender reparations in Timor-Leste: Reaching out to female victims,” in Engendering Reparations: Recognising and Compensating Women Victims of Human Rights Violations, edited byRubio-Marín (2006).

  1332 The characterization of children of rape as a “symbol of the trauma the nation as a whole went through” occurs on page 16 of Elisabeth Rehn and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s report to UNIFEM, Women, War and Peace: The Independent Experts’ Assessment on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Women and Women’s Role in Peace-Building (2002).

  1333 The quotation from Zahra Ismail (“This creates a problem for ensuring fundamental social benefits for children . . .”) occurs on page 18 of her dissertation, “Emerging from the shadows: Finding a place for children born of war” (2008).

  1334 See Robert McKelvey, The Dust of Life: America’s Children Abandoned in Vietnam (1999).

  1335 The citizenship status of children conceived in rape during the Bosnian conflict is explored in Joana Daniel’s thesis, “No man’s child: The war rape orphans” (2003); and “Children born of war rape in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Convention on the Rights of the Child,” in Born of War: Protecting Children of Sexual Violence Survivors in Conflict Zones, edited by R. Charli Carpenter (2007), pages 21–39; see also the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre report, Birth Registration and Armed Conflict (2007).

  1336 The denial of citizenship to offspring of Kuwaiti women raped during the Iraqi occupation is discussed in Kathy Evans, “Kuwait’s rape children offer bitter reminder,” Guardian, July 29, 1993.

  1337 The quotations from Zahra Ismail about wartime-rape-conceived children as victims occur on pages 13–14 of her dissertation, “Emerging from the shadows: Finding a place for children born of war” (2008). The passage in full: “Children born of war are after all also, albeit secondary, victims of the rape, who are denied their basic rights based on biological origins. The status of children born of rape as rights bearers, victims of genocide, or as refugees of war has only been addressed on the periphery, and never as part of the forced pregnancy dialogue. This failure to connect the fate of rape victims with the fate of their children within legal discourse is both unsettling and surprising, especially in light of the widespread awareness of the plight of these children in the media during the aftermath of violence in the former Yugoslavia. However, by the time the War Crimes Tribunal and the International Criminal Court (ICC) started the debate on the issue of genocidal rape in the mid 1990’s, the inclusion of forced pregnancy as a war crime, and the issue of war rape children had dropped out of the media and out of the site of human rights activists and scholars.11 Thus following its consideration as a war crime and a severe breach of the Geneva Convention, forced pregnancy has so far been treated solely as a women’s issue, not giving children born of war any consideration. This not only led to their mar
ginalization but also contributed to their being overlooked as victims, and later being somehow cast into the perpetrator camp.”

  1338 Pursuant to Article 7, part 1, of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (full text at http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/crc.htm), every child “shall be registered immediately after birth and shall have the right from birth to a name, the right to acquire a nationality and, as far as possible, the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents.”

  1339 R. Charli Carpenter discusses UK policy on the adoption of babies from the Balkans in her paper “War’s impact on children born of rape and sexual exploitation: Physical, economic and psychosocial dimensions” (presented at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, conference The Impact of War on Children, April 2005).

  1340 This passage is based on my interview with Marcelline Niyonsenga in 2004.

  1341 The quotation from Bishop Carlos Belo and Susan Harris Rimmer’s commentary occur on page 332 of her paper “‘Orphans’ or veterans?: Justice for children born of war in East Timor,” Texas International Law Journal 42, no. 2 (Spring 2007).

  1342 The technical name for the Helms Amendment is Section 104(f) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, as amended. The full text of the amendment can be found at http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/22/2151b, and an extensive discussion of its ramifications appears in the Global Justice Center report The Right to an Abortion for Girls and Women Raped in Armed Conflict (2011).

  1343 See the Global Justice Center report The Right to an Abortion for Girls and Women Raped in Armed Conflict (2011), page 10: “The denial of abortion as cruel and inhuman treatment has also been recognized by the Human Rights Committee. In the case of KL v. Peru, the Committee concluded that the denial of abortion to a woman whose life was endangered by a pregnancy constituted a violation of Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which prohibits torture and cruel and inhuman treatment.”

  1344 All quotations from Janet Benshoof come from my interview with her in 2011.