Women Hold Up Half The Sky
-Brenda Gonzalez & Ruben Vera
The shame in "Honor"
In throughout the MIddle East women are being sexually abused. The emphasis on sexual honor is today a major reason for violence against women.
War Weapons
In 2008, the United States declared rape as a "war tactic".Mass rape is an effective as slaughtering people, yet it doesn't leave corpses that lead to human rights prosecutions. Where men are normal victims of war, women have become weapons of war to be tortured and terrorize the rest of the population.
"When I treat rape victims, I tell the girls not to go to the police," Dr.Syed added. "Because if a girl goes to the police, the police will rape her."(84)
"All militias here rape women, to show their strength and to show your weakness," said Julienne Chakupewa.(84)
"It has probably become more dangerous to be a women than a soldier in an armed conflict."(84)
Victims of Rape
Du'a was a beautiful Kurdish girl living in northern Iraq. She was seventeen when she fell in love with a Sunni Arab boy. One night she stayed out with him, her parents assumed they slept together. Everyone insisted that she must die including her family. So eight men dragged her out into the street and stoned and attacked her. It took Du'a thirty minutes to die. "For a women to starve to death is a small matter, but for her to lose her chastity is a calamity."(81)
Young boy soldiers and Malitias
Noel Rwabirinba is a child soldier in Congo, said that it is the troops RIGHT to rape women. His exact words are "If we see girls, it's our right, we can violate them." Not just militias but other men from the villages would rape women with knives, sticks, bayonets, or else they fire their guns into the woman's vagina.(86)
Interviews with women
The journalists asked many women in Darfur to share their stories. Several women who told of having been raped when leaving their camps to get firewood. The journalists asked the obvious question, why not just stay in the camp? Why don't the men collect firewood? One women replied patiently, "When men leave the camp they're shot dead. When the women leave they're ONLY raped. After ten minutes, a long line of women formed nearby. The journalists asked what they were doing and they answered "We're all rape victims, we're waiting to tell our stories, too."(87)
Heal Africa in the Congos
Heal Africa is a Hospital that is in Congo whom helped Dina. They 150 beds with usually 250 patients, with 14 doctors and 210 staff members. You can already get an image of how hard it must be too work their. Lyn, Harper and one other person are the only non-congolese workers their. Getting food, water and electricity is rough, and they've had tragedies happen. In 2002 a volcano erupted and the hospital grounds were filled with about 8ft of lava, no matter what happened the hospital fought threw it with American donations.