Sexualized
Violence against Iraqi Women
by US Occupying Forces
A Briefing Paper
OF INTERNATIONAL EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
prepared by
Kristen
McNutt, Researcher, Association of Humanitarian Lawyers
Presented to
The United Nations Commission on Human Rights
2005 Session, March, Geneva
Contact: ied@igc.org
Als Worddokument: http://psychoanalystsopposewar.org/resources_files/SVIW-1.doc
Iraqi female detainees have been illegally detained,
raped and sexually
violated by United States military personnel. Women who stay at home in
traditional roles are more likely to be imprisoned as bargaining chips
by US troops seeking to pressurize male relatives, according to the New
Statesmen (UK)[1]. In December 2003, a woman prisoner, “Noor”, smuggled
out a note stating that US guards at Abu Ghraib had been raping women
detainees and forcing them to strip naked. Several of the women were
now pregnant.[2] The classified enquiry launched by the US military,
headed by Major General Antonio Taguba, has confirmed the note by
“Noor” and that sexual violence against women at Abu Ghraib took place.
Among the 1,800 digital photographs taken by US guards inside Abu
Ghraib there were, according to Taguba's report, images of naked male
and female detainees; a male Military Police guard “having sex” with a
female detainee; detainees (of unspecified gender) forcibly arranged in
various sexually explicit positions for photographing; and naked female
detainees.[3] The Bush administration has refused to release
photographs of Iraqi women prisoners at Abu Ghraib, including those of
women forced at gunpoint to bare their breasts (although these have
been shown to Congress). [4] UK Member of Parliament Ann Clwyd (L) has
confirmed a report of an Iraqi woman in her 70s who had been harnessed
and ridden like a donkey at Abu Ghraib and another coalition detention
centre after being arrested last July. Clwyd said: "She was held for
about six weeks without charge. During that time she was insulted and
told she was a donkey."[5]
The Italian journalist, Giuliana Sgrena, reports that In the middle of
the night, American soldiers broke into the home of Mithal al Hassan
and arrested both her and her son. “The soldiers later ransacked the
apartment. Denounced as part of a vendetta, Mithal was condemned
without trial to eighty days of horror in the company of other women
prisoners who, like her, were subjected to abuse and torture. She has
since spotted her tormentors on the internet.” [6] A culture of honor
prevents many women from telling stories of rapes. The account given by
“Selwa”, illustrates this. In September 2003, Selwa was taken by US
military personnel to a detention facility in Tikrit, where an American
officer lit a mixture of human feces and urine in a metal container and
gave Selwa a heavy club to stir it. She recalls, “The fire from the pot
felt very strong on my face.” She leans forward and sweeps her hands
through the air to show how she stirred the excrement. “I became very
tired,” she says. “I told the sergeant I couldn’t do it.” “There was
another man close to us. The sergeant came up to me and whispered in my
ear, ‘If you don’t, I will tell one of the soldiers to fuck you.’”
Selwa could not continue with the story.[7]An Iraqi girl, Raghada,
reports that her mother, imprisoned at Abu Ghraib, was forced to eat
from a toilet and was urinated on[8].
Iman Khamas, head of the International Occupation Watch Center, a
nongovernmental organization which gathers information on human rights
abuses under coalition rule, has said; “one former detainee had
recounted the alleged rape of her cell mate in Abu Ghraib.” According
to Khamas, the prisoner said; “she had been rendered unconscious for 48
hours.” She claimed; “She had been raped 17 times in one day by Iraqi
police in the presence of American solders”.[9]
Another woman, "Nadia," reported that she was raped by US soldiers at
Abu Ghraib prison. She continues to be "imprisoned" by painful memories
that left her psychologically and physically scarred. [10]
Late last year, attorney Amal Kadham Swadi, one of seven female lawyers
now representing women detainees in Abu Ghraib, began to piece together
a picture of systemic abuse and torture by US guards against Iraqi
women held in detention without charge. This was not only true of Abu
Ghraib, she discovered, but was, as she put it, "happening all across
Iraq". Amal Kadham Swadi states that “sexualized violence and abuse
committed by US troops goes far beyond a few isolated cases.” [11]It is
unknown as to exactly how many female detainees there are. ‘The
International Committee of the Red Cross reports that 30 women were
housed in Abu Ghraib last October, 2003, which was reduced to 0 by May
29, 2004”.[12]
Swadi visited a detainee held at the US military base a Al-Khakh, a
former police compound in Baghdad. The detainee disclosed that,
“Several American solders had raped her and that she had tried to fight
them off and they had hurt her arm”.[13]
These and other incidents are being covered up for US domestic
consumption. President G W Bush has insisted that these were the
actions of a few and were not the result of military policy. However, a
fifty-three-page report, obtained by The New Yorker,
written by Major General Antonio M. Taguba and not meant for public
release, points to complicity to sexual torture by the entire Army
prison system. Specifically, Taguba found that between October and
December of 2003 there were numerous instances of “sadistic, blatant,
and wanton criminal abuses” at Abu Ghraib.[14]
The cover-up by the Bush Administration appears to include the
silencing of victims. Professor Huda Shaker al-Nuaimi, a political
scientist at Baghdad University, who is interviewing female prisoners
as a volunteer for Amnesty International, reports that the woman,
called “Noor,” who smuggled the letter out of Abu Ghraib, is now
presumed dead. “We believe she was raped and that she was pregnant by a
US guard. After her release from Abu Ghraib, I went to her house. The
neighbors said that her family had moved away. I believed that she was
killed”.[15]
It is well known that the US has a culture of rape: one in six women in
the United States has experienced an attempted or completed sexual
assault.[16]Reinforcing the climate of sexual violence, photos
purporting to be of raped Iraqi women by US troops are surfacing on the
web [17], with some are later removed. [18]Actual pictures can be
viewed, as of this writing, at the La Voz de Aztlan website [19] which
reports that many of the pictures are now on pornographic sites.
Women Civilian War Casualties
In October 2004, the Iraq Body Count (IBC) website counted casualties
of the US attack against Fallujah. IBC concluded that 572 and 616 of
the approximately 800 reported deaths were of civilians, with over 300
of these being women and children. [20] The Chinese news agency Xinhua
reported that dozens of Iraqis, including 20 medics, were killed when
the US bombed a medical clinic in Fallujah. The clinic was just erected
to substitute for the main hospital which was seized by the U.S. on
Monday. One doctor told Reuters "There is not a single surgeon in
Fallujah. We had one ambulance hit by US fire and a doctor wounded.
There are scores of injured civilians in their homes whom we can't
move. A 13-year-old child just died in my hands."[21] Because of the
serious assault on medical neutrality, on 18 November 2004 the
Association of Humanitarian Lawyers filed an emergency petition at the
Organization of American States Inter-American Commission on Human
Rights on behalf of “unnamed, unnumbered patients and medical staff,
both living and dead, of the Falluja General Hospital and a trauma
clinic.” International Educational Development, Inc, joined this action
immediately thereafter.
According to the Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena, napalm appears to
have been used on women and children during the US attack on Fallujah.
[22]
U.S. Military Prevents the Delivery of Medical Care to Women Civilians
The Fourth Geneva Convention forbids attacks on emergency vehicles and
the impediment of medical operations during war. The main hospital in
Amiriyat al-Fallujah was raided twice by US soldiers and the Iraqi
National Guard; first on November 29, 2004 at 5:40 am and again the
next day. Staff reported; “In the first raid about 150 soldiers and at
least 40 members of the Iraqi National Guard stormed the small
hospital”.[23] Staff reported; “They divided into groups and were all
over the hospital. They broke the gates outside, they broke the doors
of the garage, and the raided our supply room where our food and
supplies are”.[24] Staff members were then handcuffed and interrogated
for several hours about resistance fighters. One staff member recounts;
“The Americans threatened that they would do what they did in Fallujah
if I didn’t cooperate with them”.[25]
Medical care for civilians was blocked by snipers that are set up along
the roads to Fallujah that fire on ambulances. Doctors from the main
hospital in Amiriyat al-Fallujah are reporting; “The Americans have
snipers all along the road between here and Fallujah. They are shooting
our ambulances if they try to go to Fallujah”.[26] In addition, medical
supplies are being blocked from being sent to hospitals by US troops.
In nearby Saqlawiyah, Doctor Abdulla Aziz reported that supplies were
being blocked from reaching or leaving Amiriyat al-Fallujah; “They
won’t let any of our ambulances go to help Fallujah. We are out of
supplies and they won’t let anyone bring us more”.[27]
Obstruction of medical care to the civilian population of Iraq seems to
be a pattern that has persisted. Dr. Abdul Jabbar, orthopedic surgeon
at Fallujah General Hospital claims that; “The marines have said they
didn’t close the hospital, but essentially they did. They closed the
bridge, which connects us to the city, and closed our roads. They
prevented medical care reaching countless patients in desperate need.
Who knows how many of them died that we could have saved?”.[28]
In addition to blocking supplies and aid to victims, hospital staff has
been handcuffed and interrogated and patient care has been violently
disrupted. “We were tied up and beaten despite being unarmed and having
only our medical instruments,” reported Dr Asma Khamis al-Muhannadi
present during the raid on Fallujah General Hospital. She reported
abuse to civilian patients as well; “troops dragged patients from their
beds and pushed them against the wall…I was with a woman in labor, the
umbilical cord had not yet been cut,” she said. “At that time, a U.S.
soldier shouted at one of the [Iraqi] National Guards to arrest me and
tie my hands while I was helping the mother to deliver”.[29]
1. Hilsum, Lindsey, “Worldview” New Statesman, October 4, 2004, http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FQP/is_4708_133/
ai_n6258533
2. Hassan, Ghali, “Colonial Violence against Women in Iraq” 31 May, 2004
Countercurrents.org , online, Internet, http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-hassan310504.htm.
Also see, Bazzi, Mohammed, U.S. using some Iraqis as bargaining chips,
Newsweek, 26 May 2004.
3. “Executive summary of Article 15-6 investigation of the 800th
Military Police Brigade by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba”
NBC News, March 4, 2004, online, Internet, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4894001/
4. Luke Harding, “The Other Prisoners,” The Guardian U.K. 20 May 2004,
online, Internet: www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/9/4566/printer.
5. Ibid.
6. Sgrena, Giulana, “Interview with an Iraqi woman tortured at Abu
Grhaib”, Il Manifesto, July 21, 2004, online, Internet, http://www.ilmanifesto.it/pag/sgrena/en/420dc5a37ba4d.html
7. McKelvey, Tara, “Unusual Suspects, What happened to the women held
at Abu Ghraib? The government isn’t talking. But some of the women are”
. American Prospect Online, February 1, 2005, http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPr
int&articleId=9044
8. Ciezadlo, Annia, “For Iraqi women, Abu Grhaib’s taint”, Christian
Science Monitor, May 24, 2004, http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0528/p01s02-woiq.html
9. Ghali Hassan, “Colonial violence Against Women in Iraq,” Counter
Currents.org 31 May 2004, online, Internet: www.countercurents.org/iraq-hassan310504.htm.
10. “ Iraqi Woman Recalls Abu Graib rape ordeal”, July 21 (no year),
Islam Online, online, Internet: http://islamonline.net/English/News/2004-07/21/article06.shtml
11. Luke Harding, “The Other Prisoners,” The Guardian U.K. 20 May 2004,
online, Internet: www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/9/4566/printer.
13. http://www.thinkingpeace.com/pages/arts2/arts210.html
12. Luke Harding, “The Other Prisoners,” The Guardian U.K. 20 May 2004,
online, Internet: www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/9/4566/printer
14. Hersh, Seymour, The New Yorker, 2004, http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040510fa_fact
15. Ghali Hassan, “Colonial violence Against Women in Iraq,” Counter
Currents.org 31 May 2004, online, Internet: www.countercurents.org/iraq-hassan310504.htm.
16. US Center for Disease Control and Prevention, quoted in “V-Day
Statistics”,Women’s Center, Duke University, March 16, 2005, http://wc.studentaffairs.duke.edu/vdaystats.html
17. “Photos on the net…Iraqi woman raped” Islamic Online, May 3 (no
year), online, Internet,
http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2004-05/03/article03.shtml
18. “The rape of Iraqi women and girls by US soldiers”, Black Oklahoma
Today, March 16, 2005, online, Internet, http://www.blackoklahoma.com/html/modules.php?name=News&file
=article&sid=335”
19. See http://www.aztlan.net/iraqi_women_raped.htm and
http://www.aztlan.net/nineyearoldrapevictim.htm .
20. IBC Press Release, 26 October 2004, http://www.iraqbodycount.net/press/index.php#pr9
21. Democracy Now, Headlines for November 10, 2004, : http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/10/1536241
22. Sgrena, Guiliana, “Napalm Raid on Falluja, 73 charred bodies –
women and children – were found” 23 November 2004, http://www.ilmanifesto.it/pag/sgrena/en/420dd721e0ff0.html
23. Dahr Jamail, “US Military Obstructing Medical Care in Iraq,”
Antiwar.Com 14 December 2004, www.antiwar.com/jamail/?articleid=4158.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid.
:: Article nr. 11094 sent on 14-apr-2005 07:21 ECT
:: The address of this page is : www.uruknet.info?p=11094
:: The incoming address of this article is :
psychoanalystsopposewar.org/resources_files/SVIW-1.doc