Women, Violence, and the Media: Readings in Feminist Criminology

Chapter 7. Media Images of Wartime Sexual Violence: Ethnic Cleansing in Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia

chapter  MEDIA IMAGES OF WARTIME SEXUAL VIOLENCE Ethnic Cleansing in Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia Yaschica Williams and Janine Bower The most insidious form of news control is silence. Silence is a form of rewriting history; it transforms events into non-events. Erlich, , p.  Conflicts involving ethnic cleansing, such as those that occurred in the former Yugoslavia between  and , in Rwanda in , and more recently in Sudan’s Darfur region, have all involved the systematic rape and sexual mutilation of females. As a weapon of war, sexual violence devastates local victims and has been used to destroy entire ethnic communities . International bodies have recognized systematic sexual violence as a form of genocide in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. In the United States, however, the public responded quite differently to these conflicts: Yugoslavian ethnic cleansing was seen as important, involving U.S. interests ; the others, arising in Africa, were viewed as unimportant, being outside the areas of American engagement. The incongruity between the uniform horror of ethnic cleansing and the American tendency to select one but not the other led us quite naturally to ask questions about the role of news media in shaping or reinforcing perceptions of genocide. In seeking to answer such questions, our research has led us through the literatures on sexual violence and ethnic cleansing, on the media and public perceptions , and on the civil wars in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. A working knowledge of the two conflicts can be gleaned from some basic facts. Between  and , the period of civil war in the former Yugoslavia, Bosnian Serbs attempted to drive Muslims out of Bosnia and Herzegovina in order to seize their lands and thereby establish an ethnically pure state. In the course of this conflict, over , Bosnian Muslims were murdered and over , young girls and women were raped·  · by Bosnian Serbs (UNIFEM, n. d.). Ethnic diversity was a factor in the civil war: . of the population were Serbian,  were Bosniak,1 and . were Croat. The population was divided along religious lines, too:  of the population were Muslim,  were Orthodox, and  were Roman Catholic (Central Intelligence Agency, a). In the Rwandan crisis, the Hutus attempted to gain control over populated areas and natural resources, which required driving out or killing Tutsis (Central Intelligence Agency, b). In a three-month period in , over , Tutsi were murdered and over , young Tutsi girls and women were raped by [Hutu] soldiers and civilians (UNIFEM, n. d. a). At the time of the conflict,  of the population were Hutus, whereas the minorityTutsis accounted for  of the population. Roman Catholics made up . of the population, Protestants represented ,  of the population were Adventists, and . of the population were Muslims. Literature Review Sexual Violence and War Ethnic cleansing has shown how limited individual explanations of rape can be. The “sexual urge” argument assumes that rape serves as an outlet for sexual desire, but it has been questioned on grounds that rape occurs even when soldiers have alternative means for satisfying sexual urges. The “biological argument” assumes that elevated levels of testosterone or a genetic predisposition are responsible for male sexual aggression against women. Both theories falter because they fail to explain the increased incidence of rape during wartime and to account for variations in the prevalence of rape from one society to another. Sexual attacks on women “are not the sum total of a couple of hundred thousand genetic predispositions for aggressiveness” (Seifert, , p. ). Nor is wartime rape an unfortunate “by-product” of war, as we are keenly aware that rape and sexual violence against “enemy” civilian females has been invoked as a strategy of war (Price, ).2 Mass rape as a strategic tool of war has accompanied the major con- flicts of the twentieth century. Table ., giving a history of sexual violence during times of war, provides rough estimates of the scope of the problem (see Skjelsbaek, b, pp. –). The summary begins in  media images of wartime sexual violence·  · yaschica williams and janine bower·  · Table . History of Sexual Violence During Times of War Year Victimized Group Incident – Korean Women , women forced into prostitution by (“comfort women”) Japanese military personnel. Women were forced, lured, and kidnapped into sexual slavery in all areas occupied by the Japanese.  Chinese women , Chinese women were raped, sexually tortured, and murdered in Nanking following the Japanese takeover of the city in . There were reports of  gang rapes a day. – German women...