Tag Archives: sexual violence

Content warning: Where’s the outrage? UN Report confirms Hamas committed rape of hostages and it’s ongoing

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Important Takeaways:

  • UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict Pramila Patten visited Israel to collect evidence and reported that there was “clear and convincing” evidence corroborating Israeli accusations of rape by Hamas in three locations.
  • At the Nova music festival and its surroundings, there are reasonable grounds to believe that multiple incidents of sexual violence took place with victims being subjected to rape and/or gang rape and then killed or killed while being raped. Credible sources described finding murdered individuals, mostly women, whose bodies were naked from their waist down – and some totally naked – tied with their hands behind their backs, many of whom were shot in the head.
  • The mission team also found a pattern of bound naked or partially naked bodies from the waist down, in some cases tied to structures including trees and poles, along Road 232.
  • In kibbutz Re’im, the mission team further verified an incident of the rape of a woman outside of a bomb shelter
  • With respect to hostages, the mission team found clear and convincing information that some have been subjected to various forms of conflict-related sexual violence including rape and sexualized torture and sexualized cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and it also has reasonable grounds to believe that such violence may be ongoing.

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Women seek to reclaim Delhi’s streets – but more men show up

By Annie Banerji

NEW DELHI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – How can women reclaim the streets when they fear venturing out alone?

That was the challenge faced by the organisers of a street festival in New Delhi held to encourage Indian women to reclaim public spaces this week, as the country reeled from the latest gang rape and murder to hit the headlines.

“It seemed that most women came with their families, male friends or partners,” said Kiran, a police inspector who goes by one name, of the Step Out At Night festival organised by the city authorities on Thursday night.

“We hoped women would come without fear … but maybe this needs to be done more often to make them feel safe enough to do so,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on Friday.

India has a grim record of sexual violence against women, with an average of some 90 rapes reported each day in 2017, according to latest federal data.

Thursday’s event came amid angry protests over the gang-rape and murder of a 27-year-old veterinarian near the southern city of Hyderabad last week.

Four suspects were shot dead during a reconstruction of the crime early on Friday by police who said they had tried to seize weapons. the killings drewing praise from many on social media but raised concerns over due process.

India strengthened its laws on sexual violence against women after the 2012 gang rape and murder of a woman on a Delhi bus that led to an outpouring of anger.

But critics say enforcement remains weak. On Thursday, a rape victim was set alight by a gang of men as she made her way to court.

In Delhi, dubbed India’s “rape capital” due to high levels of sexual violence, hundreds of women turned out for the festival, which included music and dance performances and gender equality themed games including snakes and ladders.

One female lawmaker tweeted a photo from the festival which showed her eating street food with a small group of women and throngs of men in the background.

Nishtha Gupta, a 22-year-old Delhi University student who attended, said she had asked her brother to accompany her “because my parents feel better knowing he’ll be with me”.

“The idea behind the festival is great … to have more women be visible and present in public spaces, but that’s not going to happen overnight,” she said.

Kalpana Viswanath, co-founder of an app that provides safety-related information, said the festival was a positive first step for women to assert their right to public spaces.

“As long as there are more women in public spaces, it will be safer just by virtue of there being more women,” said Viswanath, whose app, Safetipin, was a co-organiser.

(Reporting by Annie Banerji @anniebanerji, Editing by Claire Cozens. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters that covers humanitarian issues, conflicts, land and property rights, modern slavery and human trafficking, gender equality, climate change and resilience. Visit http://news.trust.org to see more stories)

‘Pervasive’ digital sexual violence against women skyrockets in Singapore

By Beh Lih Yi

KUALA LUMPUR (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – From online stalking to revenge porn, cases of digital sexual violence have spiked sharply in Singapore, women’s rights campaigners warned on Monday as they called for reforms to clamp down on the emerging form of crime.

The tech-savvy nation has seen several high-profile cases this year, including a university student who was filmed in the shower and several arrests made over the distribution of nude photos on an online chat group.

Such abuse cases – aided by technology – nearly tripled to 124 last year, up from 46 in 2016, according to figures compiled by Singapore’s gender equality advocacy group AWARE, based on cases that it has assisted.

More than half of the 2018 cases involved images, including illicit filming, distribution of nude photos and upskirting – the surreptitious filming or taking of photographs under girls’ and women’s clothes – it added.

“New factors – such as the widespread availability of recording technology, and our 24/7 channels of communication – make these actions all the more pervasive and damaging today,” said Anisha Joseph, head of the Sexual Assault Care Centre at AWARE.

Singapore’s home affairs ministry said it did not track sexual violence cases that used technology.

Parliament in May has passed new laws targeting online sexual abuse, including voyeurism, upskirting and unsolicited intimate images, or “cyber flashing” – with maximum jail sentences ranging from two to five years.

Law Minister K. Shanmugam has previously said these reforms would help ensure Singapore be a “safe home” for women.

From Britain to Germany and South Korea, there has been a flurry of cases in recent years using the advancement and easy access to technology to sexually assault women.

France outlawed upskirting in 2018 while Britain followed suit this year. Germany also said it would enact a similar law.

In South Korea, tens of thousands of women took to the streets last year to protest against so-called “spycam porn”, the illicit filming in toilets or changing rooms and selling the footages online later.

Monica Baey, who was filmed by a man during her shower inside a university hostel earlier this year, said the law needed to change to treat the crime more seriously in Singapore, where eight out of 10 residents are internet users.

The man who filmed her was given a police warning and suspended from the university for a semester.

“It’s a case of sexual assault even though there is no physical contact,” the 23-year-old student told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from Singapore, adding she was “traumatised” over the incident.

“It’s not something that can be seen as less serious just because it was committed through a mobile phone,” she said. “The victims still face a lifelong trauma.”

(Reporting by Beh Lih Yi @behlihyi; Editing by Zoe Tabary. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s and LGBT+ rights, human trafficking, property rights, and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)

Indian court upholds death for 2012 Delhi gang rape convicts

FILE PHOTO: A television journalist sets his camera inside the premises of the Supreme Court in New Delhi February 18, 2014. REUTERS/Anindito Mukherjee/File pho

By Sai Sachin Ravikumar and Suchitra Mohanty

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India’s Supreme Court on Monday upheld the death penalty for three men convicted in the gang rape of a young woman in Delhi in 2012, a landmark case that brought an unprecedented level of attention to violence against women in the country.

The brutal rape of the 23-year-old medical student, who died of her injuries, had sparked nationwide outrage and forced changes in the law. But six years later, there are few signs that sexual violence against women is abating.

In 2016, there were around 40,000 rapes reported in India – up 60 percent from 2012, according to government data, and more cases go unreported, activists say.

“Crimes against women will keep on rising unless the criminals are sent to the gallows,” the father of the victim, who cannot be named under Indian law, told reporters after the Supreme Court ruling.

A three-member bench led by Chief Justice Dipak Misra dismissed petitions filed by the men to review a 2017 order by the top court, which had confirmed the death penalty given to them by the Delhi High Court.

“There is no merit in the petitions,” said Justice Ashok Bhushan, who read out the judgment.

The three men – Pawan Gupta, Vinay Sharma and Mukesh Singh – had asked the Supreme Court to consider less severe punishment. A fourth man, Akshay Thakur, did not petition the court to review his death sentence.

Following the 2012 case, India launched fast-track courts and a tougher rape law in April this year that included the death penalty for rape of girls below 12.

Nevertheless, more rape cases have come to light since then, and it remains hard for victims to receive timely justice.

The conviction rate of people arrested for rape was 25 percent in 2016, while the backlog of rape cases pending trial stood at more than 133,000 by the end of that year, up from about 100,000 in 2012.

(Reporting by Suchitra Mohanty and Sai Sachin Ravikumar; Editing by Darren Schuettler)

Young girl’s rape triggers more angry protests in India

FILE PHOTO - Supporters of India's main opposition Congress party participate in a candle light vigil as they protest against the rape of an eight-year-old girl in Kathua near Jammu, and a teenager in Unnao, Uttar Pradesh state, in Ahmedabad, India April 13, 2018. REUTERS/Amit Dave

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Protests erupted in southern India over the rape of a nine-year-old girl, as anger over the failure of police to stem a series of sex attacks on children boiled over.

Reported rape cases in India have climbed steadily over recent years to around 40,000 in 2016, or about 100 a day, with many more believed to go unreported. Child rape accounts for about 40 percent of the reported cases.

A mob blocked highways on Thursday and sat on railway tracks near Guntur, in the state of Andhra Pradesh, demanding public punishment for a rickshaw puller accused of the attack.

The crowd attacked the accused’s house and thrashed his son, media said.

On Friday, the accused, said to be around 55, was found hanging in a wood and police said he had likely committed suicide.

Several cases of sexual assault of children have come to light in recent weeks from different parts of the country, leading to an outpouring of anger.

The government introduced the death penalty for the rape of girls younger than 12 last month after a particularly gruesome case of rape and murder of a Muslim girl in Jammu and Kashmir state.

Police superintendent Venkata Appala Naidu said the girl who had been assaulted in Guntur was recovering in hospital.

Registered cases of sexual violence have been rising despite the national outrage that followed the fatal gang rape of a student on a bus in New Delhi in 2012.

(Reporting by Malini Menon; Editing by Nick Macfie)

U.N. expert says Myanmar government employs starvation policy in Rakhine

REFILE - CORRECTING TITLE Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, Yanghee Lee (R) gives her report next to the Chairperson of the Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar Marzuki Darusman, during the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 12, 2018. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

GENEVA (Reuters) – The Myanmarese government appears to be pursuing a policy of starvation in Rakhine state to force out the remaining Muslim Rohingya population, a U.N. investigator said on Monday.

The military has also started new offensives in Kachin and Kayin states, Special Rapporteur Yanghee Lee told the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.

Lee said atrocities against the Rohingya Muslim minority “bear the hallmarks of genocide”. She called for the council to set up an entity in Bangladesh, where more than 650,000 Rohingya have fled, to collect evidence for potential trials.

Myanmar’s envoy Htin Lynn rejected Lee’s remarks and called for the council to fire her.

Lee said the violence in Rakhine had eclipsed anything seen in recent years in Myanmar, where the government has also fought insurgents in Shan, Kayin and Kachin states.

She had received information that the military mounted new ground offensives last week using heavy artillery in Kachin’s gold and amber-mining area of Tanai.

Myanmar’s military had also advanced into Mutraw District in Kayin State, an area controlled by the Karen National Union, despite a ceasefire agreement, she said.

“This ceasefire violation led to 1,500 villagers from 15 villages having to flee. I am very concerned about these continuing offensives; the path to peace is through inclusive political dialogue, and not through military force,” she said.

In Rakhine state, Myanmar appeared to be pursuing a policy of forced starvation to make life there unsustainable for the Rohingya, Lee said.

Marzuki Darusman, chairman of a fact-finding mission on Myanmar set up by the council, said his team had received a flood of allegations against the security forces in Rakhine, Kachin, Shan and elsewhere.

“All the information collected by the Fact-Finding Mission so far further points to violence of an extremely cruel nature, including against women,” he said.

“The Fact-Finding Mission has met with women who showed fresh and deep bite marks on their faces and bodies sustained during acts of sexual violence.”

Myanmar’s ambassador Lynn did not respond to the criticism in detail but told the council it was wrong to assert that Myanmar’s leadership remained indifferent to the allegations.

“Our leadership and the government shall never tolerate such crimes. We are ready to take action, where there is the evidence,” he said.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

#MeToo effect: Calls flood U.S. sexual assault hotlines

Volunteers on the National Sexual Assault Hotline work both over the phone and via web chat at the offices of the U.S.'s largest anti-sexual violence organization, the Rape Abuse Incest National Network, in Washington, U.S., January 12, 2018.

By Lisa Lambert

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The phones at U.S. sexual assault hotlines have been ringing in record numbers as the #MeToo social movement spurs victims to reach out for help, sending organizations scrambling to keep up.

Calls spiked when the movement began in October, with people waiting up to three hours to talk to someone at the country’s largest one, the National Sexual Assault Hotline.

The number of calls to the hotline operated by the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) surged 25 percent in November from a year earlier, and another 30 percent in December, according to RAINN. Its 209,480 total calls in 2017 were the most for any year since its founding in 1993.

Last fall, actress Alyssa Milano of the television show “Charmed” asked women who had been sexually assaulted or harassed to post “Me Too” in response to allegations made against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.

Weinstein, accused of sexual abuse by dozens of women, has denied having nonconsensual sexual contact with anyone. Reuters has not been able to independently confirm the accusations.

At the national hotline’s call center, the lights that workers flip on to indicate they are on the phone never seemed to turn off, said Celia Gamboa, a manager at the national hotline. The chat app most callers prefer was flooded with messages, she said. The #MeToo movement almost always came up.

“It wasn’t just a one-time thing,” Gamboa said. “We’re just going to continue to see that type of flow into the future.”

RAINN added 40 employees to its staff of 200 and stepped up volunteer recruiting, said CEO Scott Berkowitz. That has helped chip away at the wait times, he said.

Elsewhere, Network for Victim Recovery of D.C. saw a spike in calls about sexual harassment. Executive Director Bridgette Stumpf said that unfortunately, the center can often only recommend private attorneys for people whose harassment did not include violence, adding such help may be too expensive for many victims.

The DC Rape Crisis Center now sees an average of 70 people a week seeking legal, physical or psychological help, up from 30 to 40 before #MeToo, said Executive Director Indira Henard. It also saw a bump in donations last fall following the #MeToo postings.

“It is for the record books,” Henard said. “I don’t believe there has ever been a time in our history when we talked about sexual violence and its impact this way.”

(Reporting by Lisa Lambert; Editing by Scott Malone and David Gregorio)

Pregnant in a war zone: What are your choices?

Queen Rania of Jordan meets with Syrian refugee women during her visit at the Kara Tepe refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos

By Astrid Zweynert

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – In Yemen women give birth in caves to avoid air strikes, in war-torn Syria child marriages are increasing, while in eastern Ukraine, where conflict has been raging for two years, domestic violence is rising, aid agencies have been reporting.

Even though these scenarios are typical of the hardships faced by women in conflict zones or disasters, too little is being done to address their needs beyond providing them with the most basic humanitarian aid, said Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

“The focus is on water, food and shelter and that’s crucial and life-saving but life does go on in conflicts and disasters, including sex and births,” Osotimehin told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview in London.

Numerous studies have shown women in need of aid because of conflict or disaster are more vulnerable to sexual violence, sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies, he said.

An UNFPA report last December said more than 500 women a day die from complications arising from pregnancy and child birth in countries facing conflict or disaster.

“Even in peaceful times, it can be difficult to become a mother. But in a war zone, on a boat with smugglers, or in a refugee camp, being pregnant is truly daunting,” Osotimehin, a physician and former Nigerian minister of health, said.

As humanitarian crises have multiplied in recent years and more than 100 million people now being in need of assistance, women’s health and reproductive rights are often an afterthought, he said.

URGENT NEED

UNFPA said in February it is seeking $107 million to meet the needs of women and girls affected by the war in Syria, the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

Four million people out of around 13.5 million in need of humanitarian assistance inside Syria are women and girls of childbearing age, U.N. data shows.

Among those who have taken refuge in neighboring countries, 1.2 million are of childbearing age.

Osotimehin said child marriage is now being used by desperate parents in Syria, who fear for the safety of their daughters and marry them off in the hope that they will be protected and provided with food and other necessities.

In other war-torn countries the needs of women and girls are equally pressing.

In Yemen, where war has been raging for more than a year, Medecins Sans Frontiers said in February that pregnant women had been seeking shelter in caves to give birth rather than risk going to a hospital.

Osotimehin urged world leaders and aid agencies gathering for the first humanitarian summit in Istanbul, Turkey, later this month to make women’s and girls needs a key part of the humanitarian response as standard.

“It is crucial to direct humanitarian aid to protect women of childbearing age, both to lessen present suffering and reduce it in the future, but current resources are insufficient,” he said.

TALK BUT LITTLE ACTION

Global leaders launched a new women, peace and security program last March, including workshops, training and guidelines to ensure that gender equality and the needs of women and girls are an integral part of the humanitarian response.

While there has been no lack of talk about the needs of women in conflict zones, too little is being done to translate words into concrete and coordinated action, said Osotimehin.

The U.N. adopted a resolution on women, peace and security in 2000 and a call to action saw donors and international agencies commit in 2013 to reducing violence against women in emergencies, while a London summit in 2014 agreed steps to tackle impunity for the use of rape as weapon of war.

Despite those efforts it is unclear how much money is being invested on these issues because there is no uniform way of reporting funding and what it is spent on, said Osotimehin.

(Reporting by Astrid Zweynert; Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, which covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, property rights and climate change. Visit news.trust.org to see more stories)