Passionate Cry From the Heart In a passionate cri de coeur in the Huffington Post, Eve Ensler and Stephen Lewis have drawn our attention to rampant use of rape in the escalation of the ongoing conflict in the DRC (Congo).   We have heard about the hundreds of thousands (mostly women) fleeing the fighting  there.  We have not heard, until now, the reason so many are running-to escape rape. The level of sexual violence there is so extreme that Ensler and Lewis  are calling it femicide.                                                                                                                                                                               Rape as War Strategy There’s nothing new about rape in war which has been  going on since the beginning of time. What is different now is the use of rape as strategy, it’s deliberate employment, along with the use of guns and by armed men, to achieve their goals in warfare.  Consider the impulse to attack, to hurt other people or to make them pay for perceived injustices. How can one  inflict injury?             Physical assault             Knives/spears/swords             Burning/fires             Rape/sexual violence/enslavement             Guns/grenades/rocket launchers             Bombs/landmines/nuclear bombs             Verbal violence Rape Is Easy and Convenient A lot of these methods require that you take a huge risk to your own safety or they may require great skill in their use.

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 Nanking.  Directed by Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman. Written by Bill Guttentag, Dan Sturman and Elisabeth Bentley. (2007). With the participation of Woody Harrelson, Mariel Hemingway, Jurgen Prochnow and others. Japanese Invade China August 1937 In August 1937 the Japanese Army invaded China, bombarding Shanghai first, and when that city had fallen, headed for the lovely old capital city of Nanking. What followed there in December 1937 has come to be known as the Rape of Nanking, during which upwards of 200,000 civilians were slaughtered and at least 20,000 women and girls were raped.  The exact facts of these horrific war crimes are still debated by the Japanese and the Chinese.

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This is a continuation of the conversation we started last week addressing the costs and impact of our long habit of engaging in the use of armed violence to solve conflict. Last week we looked at the costs to the combatants themselves and the sponsoring nation/group of engaging in violence. This week we will focus on the other costs of armed violence and the deeper, hidden costs of this form of problem solving.                                                                                                                                                                     Costs to Victims and Collateral Damage Civilians, men, women, children, the aged, none of them matter during the relentless march of armed violence. All their needs are swept aside. Everyone is a target.

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