WOMEN SUFFER MOST IN RACIST ATTACKS

Seneiya Kamotho  English/Kenya   The interlocking oppression of discrimination based on ethnicity and gender is never more brutal than with respect to the act of rape. Rape was used as a weapon of war during much of the conflict in Bosnia. Unfortunately there are no reliable statistics on the number of women who were raped, since few women are willing to come forward to speak publicly about sexual violence committed during the war. At the Omarska concentration camp in northern Bosnia. Nusreta Sivac was repeatedly raped an beaten along with approximately 40 other women. Five women reportedly died in Omarska. Though she was never involved in politics, Nusreta Sivac was targeted as being a Muslim intellectual, who along with Croat intellectuals, were the first targets of the Serbs. Most women are silent about what happened to them because of the stigma. It is very difficult for them to come forward. One woman's husband divorced her.... He couldn't get past her being raped, and now she is scared that her son will find out everything about her experience. The effects of the brutality continue. The rapes had political purpose, to intimidate and humiliate and degrade the woman and others by her suffering and to ensure that they would flee and never return. Systematic rape was used as a tool of genocide. Rape was used as a systematic means of torture in Bosnia. Women were raped during interrogation. In some communities women were taken to holding centres, schools, or sports halls, where they were raped, gang-raped and abused repeatedly, sometimes for days and weeks at a time. Women report that in addition to the rape they were taunted with ethnic slurs and cursed by the rapists who said their intent was to forcibly impregnate women as a haunting reminder and trauma.