U.S. MILITARY CONSENTS TO RAPE WOMEN

Today's Democracy Now with Amy Goodman features a report of rapes committed by colleagues of the U.S. Military in Iraq, specifically defense contractor KBR.

This report is based on an article in The Nation magazine by Karen Houppert, published on April 3rd, 2008.

Two women have come forward and stated that they were drugged and gang raped by their colleagues. One of the perpetrators was a U.S. soldier, and one is a U.S. contractor, and both are U.S. citizens.

There is an insidious degree of CONSENT to such ugly and heinous acts.
Often, the victims of rape are intimidated and threatened to prevent them from speaking out and reporting what happened to them.

One of the women was the only medic at her station, and could not leave or report the fact that her coworkers at her station drugged and gang raped her. She chose to stay there and treat the wounded and waited to come out with this horrendous crime until she could get transfered. She had to stay there and work with the men who raped here for 7 weeks before her transfer went through.

HOW CAN THIS BE HAPPENING?
WHY ARE HUMANS SO BARBARIC?

Please take the time to listen to this and say a prayer for ending this brutality.

I feel so upset and inspired to take further action to rally an outcry against this atrocity.

I'm not sure how to do this yet, but I need to be a voice against this sort of thing.

We have to raise our consciousness about the fact of how ubiquitous rape is, even in the United States, even in the United States Military...

Did you know that 1 in 3 women in the world will be or have been raped?
Why is this?
Why do we seem to have a culture that consents to this sort of treatment of women?
Why are women shamed for being raped?

WE MUST STOP THIS!

WE MUST CHANGE THE PUBLIC'S VIEW OF SEXUAL ASSAULT. THERE IS TOO MUCH CONSENT.

Amnesty International, of which I've been a member since 1986, when a representative for this vital human rights watchdog group approached me on the San Francisco City College Campus, urges us to contact the U.S. Congress to demand that they do something about the rapes going on in Iraq.

You can see what they have to say and use your power to stop this violence, here, on the Amnesty International website.

Please also go to UNIFEM and add your voice to the SAY NO TO VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN campaign, headed up by Nicole Kidman.

End Violence Against Women

"One in three. That stark figure sums up the crisis confronting women throughout
the world. Of three young girls sitting in a classroom, learning to read and write, one will suffer
violence directed at her simply because she is female. Of three women sitting in a market,
selling their crops, one will be attacked — most likely by her intimate partner — and hurt so
severely she may no longer be able to provide for her family. Throughout the world, this violence
will be repeated: globally, one in three women will be raped, beaten, coerced into sex or
otherwise abused in her lifetime. Violence against women has become as much a pandemic as
HIV/AIDS or malaria. But it is still generally downplayed by the public at large and by policymakers
who fail to create and fund programmes to eradicate it."
--Noeleen Hayzer, Executive Director, UNIFEM, in the report, Not a Minute More, Ending Violence Against Women.

I just added a link to UNIFEM in my Helpful People section.

UNIFEM is the United Nations organization that has been designed to help stop violence against women, worldwide.

UNIFEM states that it targets the following issues regarding women:
(1) reducing feminized poverty
(2) ending violence against women
(3) reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS among women and girls, and
(4) achieving gender equality in democratic governance in times of peace as well as war.


Did you know that 1 in 3 women in the entire world are or will be victims of some kind of abuse?

Please take some time to find out how you can get involved in helping to stop this epidemic of terrorism against women.

Thank you.
Leila Kincaid