Rape In Wartime

From CNN - Listening to the Victims:

It began as a headache. Then her throat started to feel tight. A dull pain welled in her chest and her joints ached.

But Victoria Sanford continued to do the interviews. Even in the middle of the night, the women in Guatemala always managed to find her, the "gringa" they heard had come to listen to them.

It was the early 1990s, years before the international community would formally recognize the Guatemalan government's role in the systematic rape of its Mayan women -- and decades before the current violence in Libya and elsewhere around the Middle East would once again remind the world of the brutal effectiveness of rape as a weapon of war.

Editor's Note: This is the first of two stories focusing on rape as a tool of war. The second story, being published tomorrow, looks at the untold stories of rape in the Holocaust. Both stories contain graphic language; discretion is advised.

 

Edith Cavell by Diane Souhami

Review in the Financial Times:

The British nurse Edith Cavell worked as part of a Belgian resistance network during the first world war, operating from the training school she had been recruited to set up in Brussels in 1907. The Germans had turned her school into a Red Cross hospital, where she and her nurses treated German soldiers as well as French, Belgian and British. Cavell was asked to help injured British soldiers by resistance leaders who were members of the Belgian aristocracy. She hid soldiers in the hospital, and provided false papers, guides and safe houses en route to Holland.

The school, however, came under increasing scrutiny and suspicion until Cavell and several of her colleagues were arrested. She was tricked into making a false confession; a hasty trial followed, conducted in German, culminating in the death sentence. A series of diplomatic blunders and a lethargic response on the part of the US ambassador in Brussels were insufficient to divert proceedings and Cavell, along with her colleague Philippe Baucq, were executed at dawn on October 12 1915 at the national rifle range outside Brussels.

Europe: Cadiz Declaration

From Euroalert:

European women in charge of ministries and other european political organisms gathered at Cadiz on the occasion of the "European Summit of Women in Power" have produced a joint statement condemning the low participation of women in certain spheres of public life and its absence at high levels of responsibility and decision making.

After their meeting in Cadiz, organized by the Spanish Presidency of the European Union, the EU women ministers and political leaders have signed a joint document which is a statement of principles, objectives and termination of the current reality of the situation of women in public life.

In this paper, already known as the "Declaration of Cadiz", the European leaders have pledged to work to make gender equality a priority on the political agendas of Member States and of the EU and to intensify their efforts to identify and address the obstacles which prevent, impede, or limit the participation of women decision-makers, especially in the fields of politics, economics and knowledge society.

The ministers call on governments, European institutions, academic and scientific, social and economic agents and media to remove the obstacles which prevent the full participation of women in all areas of society and their access and progression in decision-making positions, thus contributing towards a fairer, more equal, more inclusive and successful society. The full text of Cadiz Declaration can be found on page site of the Spanish Presidency of the Union.

It is expected that in 2010 the European Commission will renew its pledge to promote equality, and adopt a gender equality strategy to replace the current road map for equality between women and men.

European Women Expolited?

From Deepa Babington in the Daily Star:

European women are being forced to work like men, travel alone and sleep in hotels out of necessity rather than choice, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi lamented to an incredulous crowd of 1,000 Italian women on Friday. In a rambling speech that alternately drew boos and applause from the smartly-dressed women, Gadhafi said European women had been pushed into the workplace after wars in the last century because their men had been killed off.

The women in attendance, including ministers and prominent businesswomen, initially responded with boos but applauded when Gadhafi said he believed in equal rights for men and women, who should be free to marry and divorce at will.

And this from the Inquirer:

Women in the Arab and Muslim world are treated like "furniture" and the situation requires a "feminine revolution", said Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi, ANSA news agency reported Friday.

"Women are like a piece of furniture you can change when you want and nobody will ever question why you did so," Kadhafi told an audience of women who included leading figures from the world of culture, politics and the economy.

"The world needs a feminine revolution based on a cultural revolution," he added, without elaborating.

Kadhafi, on the third and final day of a visit to Italy, evoked great women in Italian history, from the writer Matilde Serao to actress Claudia Cardinale.

Before his speech, Italy's equal opportunities minister Mara Carfagna said she would call on Kadhafi to support moves to ensure that African women could benefit from the rights enjoyed by women around the world.

Kadhafi, who has in the past described himself as a defender of the feminist cause, has a unit of women-only bodyguards trained at an elite Libyan officers' academy.

Swiss Miss Exonerated

Further to my June post "Rehabilitation for Swiss Miss" comes this article from The Independent:

Anna Goeldi, the last women to be executed in Europe for witchcraft, has been finally exonerated and her death considered "judicial murder".

Swiss finally clear the last "witch" beheaded in Europe:
"Anna Goeldi was executed for being a witch more than 220 years ago, the last one beheaded in Europe. On Wednesday, the Swiss cleared her name. The parliament of the Swiss canton (state) of Glarus decided unanimously to exonerate Goeldi as a victim of "judicial murder", said Josef Schwitter, a government spokesman.

Several thousand people, mainly women, were executed for witchcraft between the 14th and 18th centuries in Switzerland, and elsewhere in Europe. Yet Goeldi's trial and beheading in the village of Mollis was in 1782, when witch trials had largely disappeared from the continent.

Goeldi, a maidservant for a prominent burgher, Johann Jakob Tschudi, was convicted of "spoiling" the family's daughter, causing her to spit pins and have convulsions. Yet Tschudi, a doctor and magistrate, was said to have had an affair with Goeldi; if that had come out, his reputation would have been seriously damaged.

The case was brought to light through a book by a local journalist, Walter Hauser. The move to exonerate came after a long debate in the eastern Swiss region, and was taken after talks with the Protestant and Roman Catholic churches. Last year, the canton's executive branch and the Protestant church council refused even to consider exoneration, but the Glarus parliament urged the executive branch to reconsider. In June, the Glarus executive branch asked parliament to ratify the exoneration.

The Glarus government said the Protestant church council, which held the trial, had no legal authority and had decided in advance that Goeldi was guilty. She was executed even though the law at the time did not impose the death penalty for non-lethal poisoning.

A museum featuring Goeldi opened in Mollis last year on the 225th anniversary of her death. "

Rehabilitation for Swiss Miss

From: Europe's Last Executed Witch to be Cleared
"Swiss authorities are preparing to exonerate the last woman in Europe to be executed for witchcraft.

Anna Goeldi, a maid in the small alpine region of Glarus, was beheaded in 1782 for being a witch after she confessed under torture to conversing with the devil and poisoning the daughter of the house. Campaigners claim she was the victim of a conspiracy between the eastern town's judical and Protestant church authorities.

Goeldi was employed by the family of a rich married politician, who after having an affair with her denounced her for witchcraft claiming she made his daughter spit pins and suffer convulsions. The trial and beheading in the village of Mollis was carried out at a time when witch trials had disappeared from most places in Europe.

She was executed even though the law at the time did not impose the death penalty for nonlethal poisoning, it added. Goeldi's torture and execution was even more incomprehensible as it happened in the Age of Enlightenment when "those who made the judgment regarded themselves as educated people," the government said in a statement.

Several thousand people, mainly women, were executed for witchcraft between the 14th and 18th centuries in Switzerland, as they were elsewhere.

The ruling will be referred to the Swiss Parliament for final approval."