Rape of Women in War

1.1 Victory Celebration

During sexual intercourse, men penetrate women’s bodies and, at climax, ejaculate their semen inside them. In other words, sexual intercourse effectively takes place inside women’s bodies. And while for men these moments have provided pure pleasure for hundreds of thousands of years and lasted a few minutes on average, women’s bodies were sacrificed. Contraceptives, which were not invented until the 20th century, were unavailable, and abortions were not an option; therefore, women risked becoming pregnant every time, which led to their bodies swelling and effectively turning into incubators. In the absence of laws protecting women, men could abandon them while they were pregnant and go about their lives as usual, while the women could not even prove who the father was, since paternity testing was not possible. They bore the physical consequences alone for months on end, to the point of risking death in childbirth, since cesarean sections and other life-saving medical procedures did not exist, nor was there an epidural to alleviate the intense pain. Therefore, sexual relations have been regarded from time immemorial as inherently and distinctly asymmetrical, in which men are described as invading women’s bodies and conquering them, while women are seen as surrendering to them. This perception characterized sexual relations even when they were consensual, let alone when they were forced.

In light of this, sexual relations have, in fact, been historically perceived as symbolic relationships between conqueror and conquered, between ruler and ruled, and between the one who holds the upper hand and the one who submits to him, just as on the battlefield. It is therefore no wonder that the rape of the wives and daughters of those defeated in war has, since time immemorial, been regarded as a display of the victors’ absolute and unchallenged victory. Through this act, they demonstrated the might of their army, their strength, their superiority, and their dominance, while the bodies of the victims symbolized, in their amused eyes, the territory of the vanquished that they had conquered. For them, raping these women was a metaphorical celebration of territorial conquest; for what more conclusive and striking proof of the vanquished’s utter defeat could there be than a display in which their wives and daughters spread their legs for the victors—a physical posture etched as the unmistakable symbol of total surrender? And so, these displays, as is the nature of such displays, were deliberately held in public. In many cases, the women and girls were first dragged and gathered together (for example, in the center of the village), where they were stripped and violently forced to lie on the ground, side by side, while the male residents of the area, including their own family members, were forced at gunpoint to watch as they were raped repeatedly by the fighters in their victory display. Daughters were raped before their fathers’ eyes, and mothers were raped before their children’s eyes.

The display sometimes lasted for hours, until they had been raped by all the fighters present at the scene. After the display ended, in many cases the victims were paraded naked by the fighters who had raped them, in full view of the crowd, so that everyone could see their conquered and defeated bodies— the results of the battle. Afterward, the fighters often slaughtered the victims and deliberately left their bodies lying on the ground side by side, with their lower limbs spread apart, their vaginal openings exposed and smeared with semen, so that they would serve as visual markers of the territory of the vanquished that had been conquered by them. To this end, objects were even inserted into their vaginas, such as rods, machetes, bayonets, pointed sticks, and knives. Due to the perception that sexual relations are asymmetrical, there is not a single documented instance in the history of warfare in which a woman forced a male captive to have sex with her as a display of victory over him.

1.2 Dehumanization

One of the victors’ primary goals was to strip the vanquished of their humanity (dehumanization) and portray them in the collective consciousness as non-human, as beasts, and even as objects, in order to break their spirit, undermine their faith in their cultural and religious traditions and in their leaders, to collapse their ethnic and family foundations, to undermine their connection to the region, and even to rob them of the will to live—thereby bringing about their surrender, disintegration, destruction, displacement, and the elimination of any chance of rebuilding, and ensuring that even survivors who managed to escape would never return to their lands. While men underwent this process through various means, women almost always endured it through rape, a practice specifically targeted at them. Rape has been considered since time immemorial the ultimate humiliation of a human being, and it is no wonder: the perpetrators strip the victims of all their clothes, expose their most private parts, and then lie on their naked bodies as if they were objects, effectively masturbating inside their internal organs. They do not let up until they reach the peak of their pleasure and force them to receive the secretion that has accumulated in their testicles and seminal vesicles, without any regard for their desires, feelings, or thoughts, and while completely ignoring their pleas, their groans and whimpers, as if their bodies were nothing more than mindless, unconscious vessels. Their humanity is utterly trampled and erased. It is therefore no wonder that the primal realization that there is nothing more degrading than being raped has been etched into the human consciousness.

The dehumanization described above is inherent in every criminal rape, while in wars it takes on an even more brutal form, since during such conflicts the victims were often not raped behind closed doors or in a secluded alley far from prying eyes, but in public, before the eyes of many. Nor were they raped alone, but together with the women of their families and communities, side by side, as they heard one another screaming and wailing in vain, and with the mutilated bodies of their loved ones lying all around them—a situation that led to utter helplessness and despair. In most cases, they were not raped just once, but repeatedly by many men—sometimes dozens or even hundreds of men—each taking his turn. And as if that were not enough, they were not raped by men considered criminals, but by men regarded as heroes and objects of admiration, who wore official uniforms in the service of the new sovereign in the region and on his behalf. In fact, they were raped by them in a legal and institutionalized manner, in accordance with the law and morality of the new regime, which viewed this as their natural and justified punishment; therefore, after the rapes, not only did the perpetrators not flee the scene, but they boasted of their actions. Often, they were even paraded naked in full view of everyone as if they were used objects, as a final expression of their dehumanization.

The fighters sometimes even forced men—including leaders and religious leaders—at gunpoint and through torture to rape their own daughters and the women of their people themselves, in order to portray them as beasts. There are horrifying accounts of fathers forced to rape their daughters, brothers forced to rape their sisters, and sons forced to rape their mothers. In many cases, even after the victims had breathed their last, the combatants continued to rape their corpses as a mockery of the meaninglessness of their deaths, a direct continuation of the dehumanization that had already reduced them to objects. After raping the victims, they often slaughtered those who were still alive, leaving no trace of their humanity, not even in their remains. Scenes of rape in wars are horrifying spectacles that recurred in systematic patterns. The victims’ bodies were found naked, decapitated, dismembered, and lying side by side in degrading positions.

1.3 Punishment and Deterrence

Rape has long been considered the most effective means of punishment and deterrence against women, even in peacetime, due to the utter humiliation they endure in those moments, which is intended to drive home to them, through their own flesh, the superiority of men over them, their place, their subjugation, and their inferiority. Until the 19th century, legal systems around the world effectively permitted men to rape their wives as a means of punishment and deterrence within the institution of marriage. Wars were viewed as conflicts between men, while women were considered merely secondary and marginal figures; after all, for hundreds of thousands of years, they were not even regarded as independent human beings in their own right, but rather as the property of men. Their coveted bodies were initially considered the legal property of their fathers, and after they were sold into marriage, the legal property of their husbands. Therefore, in wars, combatants raped them primarily to take revenge on their men (the men of their families and communities) and to punish and deter them. In other words, even though they vented their merciless cruelty on the women’s bodies, the women were for the most part merely indirect targets— property that was destroyed—while the primary goal was to harmthe owners of that property.

It is no wonder that raping men’s wives and daughters was considered the ultimate means of punishment and deterrence against them, for in all cultures throughout history—and still in many cultures today, particularly in patriarchal societies— men’s honor is directly influenced by the concealment of the sexuality of the women and girls in their families, since covering their bodies—which they view as shameful (from head to toe)—and preserving their virginity are, in fact, core values for them. Therefore, this punishment is considered a complete humiliation and a trampling of their honor and status as proper protectors, and thus it has become the most formidable and effective weapon of war to control the defeated population, take revenge on it, punish it, deter it, instill terror in it, and render it submissive. Women were often deliberately gang-raped in front of their family members (including in interrogation rooms) in order to break them, extract information from them, and force them to cooperate. It is no coincidence that the male genitalia have been described since time immemorial as a particularly effective strategic weapon of war—one that is always within the fighters’ reach and comes at no cost, unlike bullets and bombs.

1.4 War Trophies

Until the 19th century, military circles around the world supported the idea that in wars, the entire defeated population (including women and children) is the enemy, and therefore the conquerors have rights of conquest over it, including the right to enjoy the bodies of its attractive women and girls. In fact, men have been fighting one another since the dawn of history over the physical resources of women, even in peacetime. The reason for this (aside from their primary biological role in reproduction) is that they view these resources as highly alluring, providing them with one of the greatest pleasures in this world. Therefore, for generals and commanders, the readily available and accessible physical resources of the women who fell into their hands were the ultimate reward they could bestow upon their warriors after victory in battle—to maintain their loyalty, lift their spirits, boost their morale, and instill motivation for the battles ahead. It also served as an incentive for men to enlist in armies and to strive to conquer as much territory as possible. Women were the warriors’ reward and, at times, even the primary reward promised to them. For centuries, the battle cry was To the victor go the spoils, and women were the spoils. They were consideredwar prizes and a key componentof the victory trophy. Therefore, once the battle was decided, commanders would declare victory celebrations during which they permitted their men to gang-rape the wives and daughters of the vanquished, each in turn, as a token of appreciation for their excellence in battle.

The warriors had often traveled vast distances through blood, fire, and death, and spent long periods in a harsh, all-male environment, far from their wives and daughters; thus, when young women and girls fell into their hands, they were like prey to packs of starving wolves. Since the dawn of history, the prevailing view has been that they could not be expected to restrain themselves and refrain from satisfying their urges. This was considered natural, almost inevitable, and the way of the world. And it is no wonder, for since time immemorial, men have taken pleasure in raping even their own people’s daughters and even their own wives (the mothers of their children) within the institution of marriage, which permitted the practice throughout the world; therefore, one can only imagine the sheer sadistic pleasure they experienced when they succeeded in raping the wives and daughters of their enemies. Historical writings document warriors who, in fact, described this as one of the greatest pleasures a man could experience. The victims were mostly young women and girls (including pregnant women), particularly those who were attractive and whose bodies were considered highly seductive; however, they often included young girls and even elderly women as old as 80, whether due to a scarcity of available women or to their twisted preferences. In cases where supply fell short of demand, each woman was often raped repeatedly by numerous warriors who gathered around her and waited with great excitement for their turn. The warriors usually raped them with extreme brutality to further heighten their excitement.

In cases where it was decided to exterminate the entire defeated population, while the fighters killed the men immediately, they often kept the women—especially the attractive ones—alive for a few more hours to enjoy their alluring bodies one last time to their amused delight and to revel in their suffering in their final moments. Consequently, in many cases, women were raped right at the edge of the death pits at the extermination sites, mere moments before they were killed. At times, the fighters also raped their corpses to revel in the expressions of death still etched on their faces and to take pleasure in the utter desecration of even their remains. After satisfying their lust, they would even deliberately cut off their breasts to play with them, as these were viewed as organs whose sole purpose was to pleasure men. For those whose very nature is rooted in psychopathic and sadistic impulses, battlefields have always been the ultimate arenas for their release.

1.5 The Spread of the Genome

Generals and commanders permitted—and even encouraged—their soldiers to rape the wives and daughters of the vanquished, in order to forcibly impregnate them as the ultimate expression of their unquestionable victory over them. And this is no wonder, for if the perfect victory in a war of survival is the spread of the genome, what victory could be more impressive than one in which the genome conquers the enemy’s eggs? Due to women’s primary biological role in reproduction, the conquerors who succeeded in raping them forced their bodies to reproduce their population, their culture, and their religion—and, in a cruel irony, to give birth to the next generation of their warriors, particularly in patrilineal societies where it is believed that offspring inherit their ethnic origin from their father. The age-old practice of groups of invading males capturing local females and raping them on a regular basis was so widespread that it led to changes in the composition of the world’s population: less stability in human Y-chromosome DNA groups, which are passed down from father to son, compared to human mitochondrial DNA groups, which are passed down from mother to child.

Pregnant women who were taken captive were often subjected to forced abortions through kicks to the abdomen and the insertion of fists and sharp instruments into their vaginas, in order to first kill the fetuses belonging to the defeated menand clear their wombs for re-impregnation by the victorious men. Until the 20th century, emergency contraceptive pills and safe abortions had been unavailable for hundreds of thousands of years, and in war zones—even in contemporary history—they are often still unavailable. Therefore, even survivors who were freed immediately after being raped could not terminate the pregnancy, and nine months later they gave birth to the offspring of the warriors who had raped them, effectively spreading their genome through their own bodies. In other cases, the goal was simply to ensure that they would no longer pass on the genome of the group to which they belonged; therefore, after the warriors raped them, they forcibly inserted sharp objects into their vaginas, completely destroying their reproductive organs.

1.6 Brotherhoods of Warriors

Armies have long been considered the world’s most exclusive club, reserved for men only. Masculinity in the military—the power of the formidable weapons held exclusively in their hands, their spiritual connection to them, their discipline in following orders, and the simple logic of the chain of command—established them as the superior, warrior species in the war for survival. During battles, they relied on firepower and armor against their male adversaries, which led to mutual recognition of their strength and courage and established them as equal opponents. However, once the fierce and bloody battles between them had ended, the victors turned their attention to the women of the vanquished, who had been left behind along with the children and the elderly, and it was precisely in these moments that the optimal conditions and the perfect psychological backdrop existed to feel contempt and mockery toward their helplessness, and to view them as inferior and marginal. And what more direct and blunt way is there to demonstrate this to them than by raping them? The positioning of women over thousands of years as helpless in times of war is what led to the entrenchment of the word female in male discourse as an expression of derision toward a weak and cowardly person. In their eyes, there is no more humiliating expression.

The rape of women in war has, since time immemorial, also served as a primary tool for forging cohesive military groups. Combatants gang-raped captured women, with the encouragement of their commanders, to strengthen the bonds among them and foster a sense of unity and loyalty within their units, particularly when they were forcibly conscripted into war. In contrast to peacetime, when men compete with one another for women and are possessive of them, they passed the women from one to another, thereby demonstrating their comradeship to one another. In many armies that also conscripted young boys, commanders often ordered them to watch older soldiers gang-rape a captive and then to rape her themselves in front of themas a rite of passage, so that they could prove their masculinity—which symbolized dominance and control— their desire to penetrate, conquer, subdue, and defeat, and their cruelty even toward the defenseless (qualities that armies considered essential on the battlefield), while simultaneously establishing their status and reputation.

1.7 The Institutionalization of Rape

The number of females from the civilian population who were taken captive usually far exceeded the number of males, with the explicit purpose of raping them. Military and civilian authorities institutionalized their rape to maximize the exploitation of their sought-after bodies and thereby maintain the fighters’ loyalty over time. The second objective was to ensure that combatants raped women who underwent regular medical examinations, so that their bodies would not transmit diseases and infections from one combatant to another, thereby reducing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and preserving the army’s combat effectiveness. The third objective was to use women as a reproductive resource, and the fourth—to profit from them. They were held along the front lines in rape camps or rape stations, which were often derisively referred to as brothels. They were not considered human beings, but rather military supplies, and were treated like plundered livestock. Women’s wings in detention facilities often functioned as rape stations as well, including for police officers and guards. Groups of combatants visited them regularly, and the lines were long, especially after they returned from battle. Upon arrival, they selected, according to their preferences, those who aroused their desires and raped them in designated rooms. Throughout these detention facilities, the desperate screams of women being raped were a daily occurrence. At times, fighters were also permitted to borrow them to bases and other locations. Others were transported to rape stations in the rear, where they were routinely raped by men conscripted into the war and by fighters before they left for the front and upon their return.

In many wars, fighters were permitted to return home with the captives and turn them into their sex slaves or forcibly pimp them out individually to extract regular profits from their bodies. Others were sent to markets and sold as sex slaves or forcibly placed in brothels in the rear and enslaved as prostitutes. Another practice was to forcibly marry them off to combatants and civilians so that they could be raped on a regular basis in accordance with the laws and traditions accepted in their communities. Historical sources sometimes did not explicitly mention that the marriages were forced, since history is written by the victors; however, what woman in her right mind would willingly agree to marry a man who had just annihilated her entire family? In many cases, the wives and daughters of defeated rulers were specifically forced into marriage with the rulers and their families as part of the humiliation. The captives were not considered human beings and had no rights. They were regarded as the property of the vanquished and were plundered along with the livestock. Like livestock to farmers, they were kept alive solely to exploit their sought-after physical resources. Whenever their captors desired to rape them, not only did they have no right to refuse, but they were ordered to submit to the rape with complete submission. Those who dared to resist or even showed the slightest sign of dissatisfaction with their fate were often beaten and even slaughtered. Captives who became pregnant were sometimes subjected to forced abortions to prevent them from giving birth to offspring as inferior as themselves and to ensure continuous and sustained use of their bodies as a resource.

Many female captives ended their lives in captivity, often shortly thereafter, as a result of the brutal and frequent rapes they endured. After wars ended—particularly large-scale wars—the proportion of men in the defeated population was greatly reduced, especially the young and strong. For the most part, only women, children, and defenseless elderly remained, their fate entirely in the hands of their enemy. Consequently, even many of the survivors who were not actually held in detention facilities were routinely raped in their homes, in their villages, in the fields during raids, and in interrogation rooms—by the leaders, officials, soldiers, police officers, and civilians of the new regime. The victims had no one to complain to because they were raped with the support and even encouragement of the regime, which generally continued to view them as enemies and even as an inferior subrace destined to serve it. Of course, in the rare instances where men from the defeated population dared to have relationships with the wives and daughters of the victors, most regimes took a hard line to preserve their honor and racial purity, based on the belief that sexual relations between men and women are asymmetrical.

1.8 Human Consequences

In wars throughout history, there are documented cases in which women and girls in areas about to fall into enemy hands were killed by their own families in advance, to spare them their inevitable fate. Others were dressed in boys’ clothing and had their heads shaved to make their bodies appear less attractive. Those who were raped and survived were often left with severe disabilities as a result of the frequent and brutal rapes they endured, such as broken limbs, fractured pelvises, and skull fractures that caused vision and hearing impairments. Some were left with severe gynecological injuries, such as vaginal tears and perforations between the vagina and the anus, the rectum, the large intestine, and the adjacent bladder (fistulas), causing severe pain, chronic leakage of urine and feces, intestinal obstruction, an inability to stand or walk due to nerve damage—a common side effect—and even death. Many contracted sexually transmitted diseases and infections, such as syphilis, gonorrhea, and the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS. Many survivors became pregnant and gave birth to the children of the men who raped them, with all the devastating psychological consequences that entailed. Young girls who became pregnant suffered from dystocia (obstructed labor) and fistulas, because their pelvises and birth canals had not yet developed sufficiently to accommodate a baby’s head.

The psychological trauma suffered by the victims is so profound, devastating, and fatal that rape is effectively considered the murder of the soul. Long-term effects include ongoing trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), sleep disorders, eating disorders, somatic disorders, depression, anxiety, nightmares, multiple somatoform disorders, flashbacks, fears, helplessness, sadness, disorientation, despair, panic attacks, stress, paranoia, depression, insomnia, and suicidal thoughts. Many survivors developed self-hatred toward their own female bodies, which they began to view as inherently dirty and shameful. Some took their own lives as soon as they could, because death seemed preferable to them. In many cultures, they were even expected to take their own lives to erase all traces of the humiliation, while those who dared to continue living were often ostracized, called derogatory names such as whores, and even slaughtered. Most survivors remained silent and kept their experiencesa dirty secret out of fear, disgust, and shame.

Many survivors were left with psychosocial problems, isolation, and difficulty forming relationships with men. In many cultures, they were considered impure and unfit for marriage in the eyes of men, because their bodies were already perceivedas used and tainted commodities. Those who were married were beaten and raped even by their own husbands, or abandoned by them and rejected by their families and communities, with the support of government officials, who also viewed them as symbols of filth. They were often left to live in abject poverty, mainly in rural areas and without medical care, because medical facilities such as hospitals and clinics had been completely destroyed or severely damaged during the war. This situation was exacerbated by the loss of professional expertise due to the destruction or flight of medical staff from the region, as well as the poor or insufficient supply of essential resources such as running water, electricity, and medication. The situation of female survivors—who were already on the margins of society and lived in chronic poverty in rural areas—was dire.

1.9 Male Victims

Almost all victims of rape in wars throughout history have been women and girls. The rape of men is rare, though it may be perceived as even more humiliating, because by doing so, the perpetrators erase the victims' status in society as men by transforming them from conquerors into the conquered. In effect, they treat them like females —in their own words—and in the eyes of men, there is no greater humiliation than this. The first reason why, in almost all cases, the perpetrators raped only women and girls is that most of them were heterosexual men. The second reason is that women are physically weaker, and therefore easier to rape with bare hands. The third reason is the fear that the perpetrators might be mistakenly suspected of homosexuality, which many men consider a taboo and a great insult. Therefore, in cases involving male captives, objects were often inserted into their bodies instead of genitalia, or they were forced at gunpoint to rape one another. There are numerous harrowing accounts of male captives who were forced, under torture, to rape one another before the amused eyes of the combatants. The rape of children and young boys in wars, on the other hand, was more common; yet even then, their bodies—which had not yet developed into those of men—were perceived by the perpetrators as resembling those of women in places where women were not available, such as in detention facilities, while the perpetrators even mocked them by calling them names like cunts (a derogatory term for female genitalia).

1.10 The Phenomenon as the Norm

For hundreds of thousands of years, it was an accepted norm to rape women as a form of punishment—not only during wars and not only enemy women, but also in everyday life. After World War II, for example, 5,000 women in Norway who were suspectedof collaborating with Germany were arrested and forcibly sent to camps without any legal proceedings, where they were brutally raped for a year and a half. In fact, until the late 20th century, this phenomenon was very widespread throughout the world, even within the institution of marriage. In the United States, for example, until 1993, the law explicitly permitted men to rape their wives. Therefore, when they were sent to the battlefields, this norm was already deeply ingrained in their consciousness and was perceived as their natural, unquestionable right. This subsection is an essential introduction to understanding the history of the phenomenon that will be discussed in Chapter Two; for if men routinely raped their own women and even the mothers of their children to punish them, one can only imagine the merciless cruelty they displayed toward the wives and daughters of their enemies who fell into their hands. The events to be discussed are merely the tip of the iceberg of a widespread phenomenon, for many thick volumes could be devoted to documenting it.

In certain cultures, particularly in the Pacific Islands throughout history, it was customary to impose a punishment known as revenge rape, punitive rape, retributive rape, or parallel justice. This was a punishment inflicted on men in retaliation for their actions, sometimes in the context of tribal warfare. As part of this practice, men from rival families or tribes would select females from the families or tribes of the men against whom they were seeking revenge—such as their daughters or sisters—and rape them (usually in a group). This form of punishment was traditional and even institutionalized throughout history. For example, in Asian societies, councils of tribal elders known as jirgas used to rule that members of the plaintiff’s family and even members of the tribe were legally entitled to rape one (or more) women or girls from the family of the man convicted of a serious crime against them—usually his young, virgin daughters—in order to punish him. The councils chose which of the man’s female relatives would be raped by them and whether they would be raped once or on a permanent basis for the rest of their lives. If it was decided to rape them on a permanent basis, they were torn from their homes, taken to the men’s homes, and forcibly married to them so that they could be raped in accordance with the law and tradition. Often, for the rest of their lives, they became the slaves of these men, who continued to view them as members of the family or tribe that had wronged them. They were systematically raped by them.

In Pakistan, this punishment is called wani (in Urdu: ونی) and is sometimes spelled wani or wanai. It is a Punjabi word derived from the word wani, which means blood. In various regional languages of the country, it is also called sak, sangchati (Urdu: سنگ چتي), and sawara (Urdu: سوارہ). It is also called Baad. The country’s Law Commission has determined that the principleof qisas in Sharia—which means retributive justice—is the rationale behind this tradition. The young, virgin daughters of convicted men, aged 4–14, were selected as victims. They were sometimes raped by the accusers in public, in front of residents or representatives, to ensure that the ruling was carried out. After being raped, their families and tribes often expected them to take their own lives to erase any trace of the humiliation. This punishment was accepted throughout history and was legal until 2011. It remains very common among tribal and village councils, including the Panchayats, in the provinces of Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and tribal areas—particularly in rural areas where local police often turn a blind eye and enforcement is weak. An early reference to this tradition dates back some 400 years, when two Pathan tribes in northwestern Pakistan fought each other in a bloody war that resulted in hundreds of deaths. The naib (regional ruler) called for the establishment of a council of elders from both sides to issue rulings. The council determined that the daughters of the convicted men’s families would be forcibly married off as qisas to the families of the plaintiffs.

In 2002, a 12-year-old boy, Abdul Shakur Tatla of the Tatla tribe, from the village of Mirwala, was accused of having an affair with a woman in her late 20s, Salma Nasin, a member of the wealthier Mastoi Balochi tribe. In retaliation, he was taken by three men from her tribe to a sugarcane field, where they repeatedly gang-raped him anally. In addition, their tribal council (the Panchayat) ruled that his punishment would be for his 28-year-old sister, Makhtaran Bibi, to also be forcibly married to a man from their tribe. However, villagers rejected the ruling and demanded that she be humiliated just as the woman from their tribe had been humiliated for having sex outside of marriage. Therefore, the Panchayat Council ruled again that the boy’s punishment would be for his sister to be gang-raped by several men. In June 2002, she was brought before the council and dragged by force to a nearby hut, where she was gang-raped by four men from the tribe, in front of ten villagers who watched her being raped to ensure that the ruling was carried out. She was then paraded naked through the village so that the villagers could see that she had been raped. In her village, she was expected to take her own life.

In 2008, a prolonged bloody conflict broke out in West Balochistan province, sparked by a dead dog, which resulted in the deaths of 19 people, including five women. The council ruled that the men’s punishment would be that 15 of their daughters, aged 3–10, would be forcibly married off to members of the plaintiffs’ families. In 2011, the council ruled that the punishment for a man accused of committing a crime would be that his 12-year-old daughter be forcibly married to an 85-year-old man. In 2012, a dispute broke out between two clans following an accusation of murder. The man accused of the killing could not be found, so the council, led by Balochistan Provincial Assembly member Mir Tariq Masuri Bogati, ruled that 13 girls aged 4–16 from the accused’s clan would be forcibly married to men from the other clan. The sentence was carried out, and Bogati stated that the practice was valid as a means of resolving disputes. In July 2017, a teenager was accused of raping a 12-year-old girl in the city of Multan. The Panchayat Council ruled that the teenager’s punishment would be that his 16-year-old sister would also be raped. In June 2020, a teenager was accused of having a relationship with the cousin of a 41-year-old married man without the man’s consent. The council ruled that the teenager’s punishment would be for his 13-year-old sister to be forcibly married to the plaintiff, becoming his additional wife. Many other cases go unreported.

In Afghanistan, this form of punishment is called baad, in which a female relative of a convicted man is forcibly married to a member of the plaintiff’s family. It is practiced in several regions, particularly among the Pashtuns. Girls from families that have accumulated large debts are also forcibly married to their creditors. In 1976, Section 517 of the Penal Code was enacted, stipulating that female family members selected as victims must be under the age of 18 and may not be widows. The penalty for violating this restriction is only up to two years in prison. There are no known cases of a council member or family member being arrested or tried for this offense. In certain regions of Ghana, the punishment for family members who commit this offense is sometimes to give a virgin woman or girl to the family of the victim to serve as a sex slave. In such cases, she is not granted the status of a wife but is considered merely a slave.

2.1 Wars in Judaism (1500 BCE–135)

Around 1500 BCE, Judaism took shape. From that time onward, the Jews possessed intermittent military power until the Bar Kokhba revolt, in which they were finally defeated by the Romans in 135. The rape of women during wars is documented and described in the Bible. Judaism extensively addressed the question of whether to permit warriors to rape the wives and daughters of their enemies during wartime. According to Maimonides and most halakhic authorities, a Jewish warrior who desires a captive woman may rape her on the battlefield, but only once, after which he must refrain. Rashi represented another major school of thought, according to which a warrior is forbidden to rape a woman during wartime, but is permitted to take her captive and subsequently convert her and marry her by force. This school of thought is even more cruel because the rape is not a one-time occurrence; it permits the warrior, after the war, to rape her on a regular basis for the rest of her life. Why postpone the rape? The accepted answer is that the warrior will know that the release is in his pocket, as the Sages put it, like bread in his basket. In such a situation, the prediction is that the warrior will calm down and return to battle with much greater motivation. However, it is doubtful whether this theory is correct, since in most cases, the closer a person is to achieving his goal, the more frustrated he becomes if it is denied him. On the other hand, the Sages expressed reservations about rape, but not out of compassion for the victims, rather out of concern that Jewish warriors would come into contact with non-Jewish women (gentiles).

The halakhic permission to rape the wives and daughters of enemies during wartime is known as the law of the beautiful woman. The criteria for determining which female captives could be raped were very permissive. Soldiers were permitted to rape even married women and young girls. They did not have to be beautiful, even though the Torah describes them as such—whether due to a limited supply or a soldier’s particular preference. This makes sense, since otherwise it would have been necessary to assign rabbis to the soldiers to judge which of the captives were beautiful enough to be considered permissible to rape. Maimonides and the other poskim who permitted warriors to rape captives even on the battlefield effectively allowed them to violate the prohibitions against having contact with non-Jewish women and married women, based on the understanding that their urge to rape them was so great as to be uncontrollable. By permitting them to rape these women, the Torah effectively yielded to the unbridled urges of warriors far from kosher women and came to terms with this reality. Kabbalah presents the view that God looked upon the Torah and created the world according to it—that is, the Torah preceded the world—yet here the position of the poskim is extremely permissive. It is the Torah that must adapt itself to men’s urges.

The permission to rape captives during wartime did, however, include restrictions: in every area the warriors conquered, each warrior was permitted to rape only one woman. A warrior who desired to rape ten women was required to conquer ten cities. This restriction was also intended to instill in the warriors a motivation to conquer more and more territory. Warriors were also forbidden from raping captives in public, so as not to create the appearance of sanctioning the violation of the prohibition against having contact with non-Jewish women and married women outside of wartime. Therefore, after a warrior chose the captive he wished to rape, he first had to take her to a place where no one else was present and rape her there. According to one opinion, fighters were permitted to rape female captives only in wars that ended in a decisive victory, because in wars where the balance of power is even, there is a concern that enemy fighters would also rape the women of their families; therefore, it is better to avoid entering a cycle of rape and retaliatory rape.

The Jewish permission to rape the enemy’s wives and daughters during wartime was valid in periods when the warriors were on their own territory and possessed military power—a situation that, in fact, did not exist for some two thousand years and only returned after the establishment of the State of Israel; however, this practice was not codified in halakhic rulings. Even today, rabbis agree with the principle permitting combatants to rape women during wartime; however, in their view, this ruling is not applicable at present because the physical attributes of Arab women are not sufficiently alluring to Jewish combatants and therefore would not give them pleasure, as long as they are fighting in the Middle East and not, for example, in Scandinavia. However, Rabbi Eyal Karim, who served as Chief Military Rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces, defended this halakha and ruled that, as part of maintaining the army’s combat readiness and the soldiers’ morale, the boundaries of modesty and kashrut may be breached, such that it is permissible to satisfy one’s evil inclination by having intercourse with attractive non-Jewish women against their will, out of consideration for the soldiers’ hardships and for the greater good. The rabbi of Safed, Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, ruled: The moral principles underlying this ruling are certainly relevant to our times as well.

2.2 Wars in Islam (610–present)

Throughout history, from the time of the Prophet Muhammad to the modern era, wars and armed conflicts have played a significant role in the development and expansion of Islam. The central concept guiding the military doctrine isjihad, which, alongside its profound meaning as a spiritual and internal struggle, also serves as a religious justification for armed struggle in defense of the faith. These theological and legal principles have accompanied the conquest campaigns of many Muslim states and empires over the course of 1,400 years—from the conquests of the Arabian Peninsula, through the confrontations with the Crusades, to the anti-colonial struggles—and have shaped the nature of warfare in the Muslim world.

According to Islamic law, Muslim men were permitted to rape the wives and daughters ofinfidels (transliterated: kuffār) who had been taken captive in jihad wars and to turn them into their sex slaves, even if they did not wish to have children with them. It was ruled that there was no age restriction, and it was permitted to rape even young girls as soon as their bodies were capable of penetration. Likewise, it was permitted to rape married women, even if their husbands were still alive. To resolve the profound contradiction between the obligation to shun unbelievers and the permission to engage in sexual relations with female unbelievers, the halakhic framework established a distinction between their impure consciousness and their physical bodies, which are considered a highly sought-after resource that brings men great pleasure, and therefore ruled that it is the right of Muslim men to enjoy it as a reward for their devotion to the faith and their achievements on the battlefield. The permission was also intended to entice men from other countries to convert to Islam and join the jihad. Fighters who fell in battle and did not get to enjoy the bodies of the infidels were promised, instead, 72 virgin maidens in Paradise. This tradition, which became very widespread, was adopted from a pre-Islamic practice that had been reformed, so that only non-Muslim captives were permitted to be raped. The rape of the wives and daughters of infidels is considered by men in Muslim societies to be the ultimate humiliation. This can be seen in the obsession with which they, by contrast, zealously guard the modesty of their female family members—for example, by covering them from head to toe—to ensure that no foreign man defiles them even with his gaze.

Given Islam’s permission to rape female captives, the number of women taken captive far exceeded that of men. While the men were taken for manual labor and combat, the women were mostly forced to become sex slaves for Muslim men (transliterated: Surriyyāt). After a victory in battle, all the female captives were systematically and institutionally distributed and were initially considered the common property to which all Muslim men had a right. The imam or caliph (supreme commander) could declare, even on the battlefield, which of the captives would become the sex slaves of their captors. Although Islamic law required them to wait for the official distribution, many commanders and fighters could not restrain themselves and raped them right on the battlefield. Subsequently, all of them were transported from the war zone (Dar al-Harb) to Muslim territory (Dar al-Islam), where the emir, the Caliph, or his deputy, would grant 80% of them to the victorious fighters in accordance with Sharia law, while 20% were taken as khums (a tax) and given to the Prophet and his family during their lifetimes or sold as sex slaves to merchants in the markets to enrich the state treasury. Every man was permitted to hold an unlimited number of female captives and to rape a different captive at any time as he pleased. Married men were also permitted to take female captives and rape them on a regular basis alongside their marriages. This was, in fact, the only framework in Islam that permitted men to have sexual relations with women outside of marriage. After raping them several times and satisfying their desires, men were permitted to sell them or give them as gifts to other Muslim men.

The captives whose bodies were considered the most alluring were reserved primarily for the upper class. Those transported to the palaces were held in slave quarters (crowded, communal sleeping halls that were sometimes built to accommodate thousands of captives at a time) so that they would be available to the rulers. The rulers would choose from among them the captive they wished to rape at that moment. The one chosen was first taken to the harem baths to ensure her body was free of blemishes. She was thoroughly washed, groomed, perfumed, and dressed in thin, transparent garments. The goal was to transform her body into a cleaner, more fragrant, and more alluring vessel that would bring the ruler maximum pleasure. She was then taken to his private chambers, where he raped her, often multiple times. Once her body had satisfied him, she was returned to the slave quarters. In the Islamic world, female captives were effectively enslaved as prostitutes under a common practice whereby men purchased them for a fixed period at markets for the sale of sex slaves; after raping them several times and their bodies had satisfied them, they returned them to the sellers under the pretext of being dissatisfied with them. In Shi’ite Islam, there existed a halakhic mechanism called tahliil (تحليل), which permitted men to make the female captives in their possession available to their guests (family members, relatives, and neighbors). During their stay, the captives were taken to one of the bedrooms in the house, where they were raped by the guests.

Female captives were in constant danger of being raped later on by rival factions when they recaptured the areas where the women were being held. Muslim women and girls were also frequently raped by conquerors during the Islamic conquests because they belonged to a community that was not considered sufficiently Muslim. The Almohads, for example, regarded Muslims who did not support Almohadism as infidels, and therefore considered it legitimate to turn their wives and daughters into sex slaves. In the 12th century, during the conquest of the Almoravid Empire, Muslim men who did not support Almohadism were exterminated by the Almohads, while women and girls were forced to become their sex slaves. Two women were taken captive by the founder of Al-Muhadism himself, Abd al-Mumin, when he conquered the fortress of Dai, and they were forced to become his sex slaves. One of them became pregnant after being raped by him and bore him a son, Abu Sa’id Uthman. While Islamic law permitted Muslim men to rape non-Muslim women, it naturally prohibited Muslim women from having sexual relations with non-Muslim men.

The captives’ bodies were considered the lawful property of their masters, and they were completely subject to their will. They were ordered to be ready to be raped by them at any moment. In cases where they dared to resist, the men were permitted to physically force themselves upon them and beat them. The recommendation was not to strike them in the face so as not to disfigure them and thereby diminish their value should they later be sold. Furthermore, unlike Muslim women who were required to wear veils, they were ordered to walk about both indoors and outdoors with their heads, hair, necks, arms, and calves completely exposed, to distinguish them from respectable women, and because their bodies were considered merchandise intended to provide pleasure to men, and therefore had to be subject to constant scrutiny by potential buyers to assess their value, quality, and flaws. The second caliph, Umar ibn al-Khattab, personally struck a slave woman who dared to cover herself with a veil and rebuked her, saying, Do not imitate free women. This incident did not remain merely a historical anecdote. Islamic jurists turned it into a binding legal precedent. Women and girls who were finally freed from Islamic captivity were often slaughtered by their relatives to erase any trace of disgrace.

2.2.1 Testimonies and Rulings (610–present)

The Qur’an and the Hadith contain numerous texts that establish the right of Muslim men to rape captive non-believers. Sura 4 (verse 3) states: If you fear that you will not be able to treat them equally [in polygamous marriages], then [marry] only one, or those whom your right hand possesses [captives]. Sura 4 (verses 23–24) states that the following are forbidden to you... married women, except those whom your right hand possesses [captives]. Commentators Jalal al-Din al-Mahalli and Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti said of this verse: It is permissible for you [Muslim men] to have sexual relations with those women whom you have taken captive, even though their husbands are alive in Dar al-Harb [the land of the enemy]. In Sura 4 (verse 25) it is written: If any of you lack the means to marry free believing women, he may marry young girls… from among those whom your right hand possesses [captives who have been forcibly converted to Islam]. In Sura 23 (verses 5–6) and Sura 70 (verses 29–30), it is written that the ideal believers are those who guard their chastity—except with their wives or with those whom their right hands possess [captives], for in that case there is no blame upon them. In Sura 33 (verse 50) it is written: O Prophet! Behold! We have permitted you… those whom your right hand possesses [captives] whom God has given you as spoils of war.

In the book *Tzahih Muslim* (8:3432) it is written: Abu Sa’id al-Khudri reported that during the Battle of Hunayn, the Messenger of God sent an army to the region of Awtas, which encountered enemy forces and fought them. After they had overcome them and taken them captive, it appeared that the companions of the Messenger of God refrained from having sexual relations with the captive women because their husbands were polytheists [idolaters]. Then Allah revealed… [the verse]: And [forbidden to you are] married women, except those whom your right hands possess [captives]. In the book Sunan Abu Dawood (31:4006), it is written that Mu’awiya ibn Hida asked the Prophet: O Messenger of God, from whom should we conceal our private parts, and to whom are we permitted to reveal [them]? The Prophet replied: Conceal your private parts from everyone except your wife and those whom your right hand possesses [captives].

In Sahih al-Bukhari (59:637), it is reported from Burayda ibn al-Hasib al-Aslami, who was one of the Prophet’s companions: The Prophet sent Ali ibn Khalid to bring the khums [one-fifth of the spoils]… And Ali bathed [after raping one of the captives]… When we reached the Prophet, I pointed this out to him [that he had raped one of them]. He said: O Burayda! Do you hate Ali?… Do not hate him; [he deserves to enjoy himself]—he deserves more than that from the khums. In Volume 3, Chapter 113, after Hadith No. 436, it is written that ‘Ata’ ibn Abi Rabah said: There is no sin in embracing a slave girl who has become pregnant [by another man]. Allah said: Except for their wives and those whom their right hands possess [captives], for then they are not to be blamed. In the Muslim legal treatise Al-Hidayah (cited in Lal, 1994, Chapter 11), it is written that the purpose of acquiring female captives is to engage in sexual relations [rape] and to produce offspring.

2.2.2 The Laws of Al-Azal (610–present)

The Prophet permitted his warriors and followers to rape captive infidels so that they might enjoy their bodies, but concerns arose that as a result, the women would become pregnant and bear offspring as inferior as themselves. Therefore, he dealt at great length with the question of how they should act whenever they rape them and reach the moment when they are about to ejaculate at the height of their pleasure: Should they withdraw immediately and ejaculate outside so as not to impregnate them, or are they permitted to remain inside them and ejaculate inside? The prophet believed that they should not be deprived of the most pleasurable moment for men, and therefore ruled that he even recommended they ejaculate inside them. He added that if, as a result, they became pregnant, that was their fate, and his followers were not responsible for it. As for married female captives, he ruled that since they are infidels, their marriages are null and void even if their husbands are still alive; therefore, it is permissible to rape them as if they were single women and to ejaculate inside them as well. He also urged his married followers to ejaculate inside their wives and declared that if they become pregnant as a result, it is the will of Allah. However, the Prophet ruled that their wives’ bodies are their spoils of war, and therefore they are free to decide as they wish how to proceed. His ruling is anchored in Islamic law. The practice of withdrawing before ejaculation is called al-‘azl (transliterated: Al-‘Azl; in Arabic: العزل).

In the book Al-Muwatta’ (29:100), one of the most important jurists in history, Imam Malik ibn Anas, stated: A man is not permitted to practice coitus interruptus with a free woman unless she has given her consent. [However] there is no prohibition against practicing coitus interruptus with a slave woman even without her consent. A man who marries a slave woman belonging to another person may not engage in coitus interruptus with her unless he has obtained her owner’s permission. In Sahih al-Bukhari (3:34:432, 3:46:718, 5:59:459, 7:62:137, and 9:93:506), in Sahih Muslim (8:3371, 8:3372, and 8:3373), and in *Al-Muwatta* (29:95), the Prophet’s companion, Abu Sa’id al-Khudri, recounted that they went out with the Prophet to battle against the Banu al-Mustaliq and received several women— excellent Arab women, in his words—as spoils of war. He testified that they lusted after them, and since they had not enjoyed the company of women for a long time and were far from their own wives, they were eager to satisfy their urges; however, at the same time, they also demanded a ransom for them. Therefore, every time they raped them, they withdrew before ejaculating. Afterward, they said to themselves that since the Prophet was among them, they should ask him about this practice. The Prophet replied to them in astonishment: Do you really do that [withdraw before ejaculating]? He repeated the question three times and added: It is better for you not to do that, but noted that they were free to act as they wished, and if they became pregnant as a result, that was their fate.

In Sahih al-Bukhari (8:77:600), it is related that a man from the Ansar (the residents of Yathrib who supported the Prophet) came to the Prophet and told him: We take captive girls, and we love wealth. He asked for his opinion regarding the fact that when they rape them, they withdraw before ejaculating. The Prophet replied in astonishment: Do you do that? It is better for you not to do that. He added that if it is decreed that they become pregnant, they will become pregnant. In the book Sunan Abu Dawood (11:2166), it is related that a man came to the Prophet and said to him: O Messenger of Allah, I have a young slave girl, and I withdraw my penis from her [every time I rape her and am about to ejaculate]. I do not want her to become pregnant. He added that while he was raping her, he desired what men desire [that is, only to enjoy her body]. The Prophet replied that although he was permitted to withdraw from her before ejaculating, if she was destined to become pregnant, she would become pregnant.

In the book *Zahih Muslim* (8:3377, 8:3378, and 8:3379), this practice was mentioned in the presence of the Prophet, who said: Why do you act this way [withdrawing from their bodies before ejaculating]? They replied: There is a man... who has a slave girl and has sexual relations with her, but he does not want her to become pregnant. The Prophet rebuked them, saying, There is no harm in not doing so [if you ejaculate inside them], but if it is decreed that they become pregnant, they will become pregnant. In the same book (8:3383 and 8:3384), the Prophet’s companion, Jabir ibn ‘Abdullah, recounted the story of a man who came to the Prophet and told him: I have a slave girl who serves us, and I have sexual relations with her, but I do not want her to become pregnant. The Prophet replied to him: Engage in coitus interruptus with her if you so desire, but whatever is decreed for her will come to pass. The man waited for a while, and then returned and said: The girl has become pregnant. The Prophet replied to him: I told you, whatever is decreed for her will come to pass.

In the book Al-Muwatta’ (29:99), there is an account of a man from Yemen named Ibn Fahd, who approached the Prophet’s companions, Zayd ibn Thabit and al-Hajjaj ibn ‘Amr ibn ‘Aziya. He said: Abu Sa’id! I have female slaves… [However] not all of them please me enough that I would want a child from them, and so he asked whether, whenever he rapes them, he is permitted to withdraw from them before ejaculating. Zayd turned to al-Hajjaj and said: Give your opinion, al-Hajjaj… We are sitting with you to learn from you. Hajjaj replied mockingly: [A captive is not a human being but] your field. If you so desire, water her [ejaculate inside her], and if you so desire, leave her thirsty [withdraw from her before you ejaculate]. This is what I heard from Zayd. Zayd confirmed: He spoke the truth. In the same surah (29:100), it is recounted that the Prophet’s cousin, Abdullah ibn Abbas, was asked about this practice. Abdullah, who practiced this himself, believed that there was no more conclusive evidence of this than the direct testimony of his young female slave, whom he regularly raped. He called her over and said to her: Tell them [what I do every time I rape you and the moment comes when I am about to ejaculate]. The embarrassed girl remained silent in the face of his humiliating question, and after she hesitated to speak, Ibn Abbas proudly declared to those present: It’s all right; I do that myself [I withdraw from her body before I ejaculate].

2.2.3 The Battle of Khaybar (628)

The Battle of Khaybar took place in 628 CE in the Khaybar oasis on the Arabian Peninsula, between Muhammad’s army and the local Jewish community. The Muslims attacked Khaybar, which consisted of a series of well-fortified strongholds, due to fears that the local Jews were collaborating with the enemies of Islam. After a prolonged siege and the fall of the strongholds one after another, the Jews surrendered. Under the terms of the surrender, commonly known as the Treaty of Khaybar, the Jews were permitted to remain in the area and cultivate their lands, in exchange for handing over half of their agricultural harvest to the Muslims. The conquest of Khaybar and the revenue from the local harvests significantly strengthened the economic and military standing of Muhammad and the fledgling religion of Islam. However, the arrangement was temporary, and during the reign of Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab, the Jews of Khaybar were permanently expelled from their land. The battle occupies a prominent place in Islamic history, and the name Khaybar has become a historical symbol often used as a warning or a protest against Jews today.

After the conquest of the oasis, men and boys were slaughtered, while women and girls were taken captive and forced to become sex slaves of the conquerors. The Prophet’s companions told him that among the captives was a 17-year-old Jewish girl named Safiyya, who was exceptionally beautiful. She was the daughter of Khayy ibn Akhtab, whose head had been severed on the prophet’s orders on the night of the massacre in the city of Al-Madinah; however, she had already been forced to become the slave of the prophet’s companion, Dahya al-Kalbi. The Prophet summoned him and ordered him to hand the girl over to him; in return, he was permitted to take other captive girls as slaves in her place—whomever he desired. Because of Tzfiya’s beauty, al-Kalbi agreed to this only in exchange for seven other captives. The Prophet ordered his cousin, A-Zubayr ibn al-Awwam, to first torture the girl’s husband, Kana’ana ibn A-Rabia. He was later beheaded as well. Before the Prophet raped the girl, he forced her—on her way to him—to look at the bodies of the beheaded men, the inhabitants of the oasis. He then took her to his bed and raped her that very night her family was slaughtered. She was subsequently taken by him as spoils of war and forcibly married to him as one of his wives (Sahih al-Bukhari, 2:14:68).

2.3 The Jingkang Incident (1127)

The Jingkang Incident, which took place in 1127, was a dramatic turning point in Chinese history and marked the fall of the Northern Song Dynasty. As part of the Jin–Song Wars, forces of the Jin Dynasty, originating in the Manchuria region, captured the capital city of Kaifeng. During this conquest, Emperors Huizong and Qinzong were taken captive along with many members of the royal family and courtiers, an event sometimes referred to in historical sources as the Jingkang Humiliation. The fall of the city and the capture of the royal family led to the collapse of the regime in northern China and the shift of the political center of gravity southward, where the Southern Song Dynasty was established. The event had profound consequences, as it reshaped the political map of East Asia and led to a prolonged period of division between the non-Chinese north and the south, which was ruled by the surviving Song dynasty. Historians view this event as a severe military and political failure of the Chinese government, which influenced the national consciousness in China for generations and became a symbolof national humiliation in the historical memory.

After the city’s conquest, women residing in the palaces—including princesses, imperial musicians, and maidservants—were distributed as spoils and systematically raped en masse by the invaders. The victims were ordered, under threat of death, to submit to rape by members of the Jin dynasty’s nobility, regardless of their previous social status. Princesses who dared to refuse to be raped by them upon surrender were slaughtered. Many women, including princesses, took their own lives to avoid being raped. The daughter of the defeated Emperor Huizong, Princess Zhao Fujin, who was already married, was forcibly married to a prince of the Jin dynasty who desired her. Emperor Taizong issued a decree ordering that the defeated emperor’s three other wives—whose names were Xu Shengjing, Yang Diao’er, and Chen Wuan—also be given to the prince as sex slaves. Other women were forced to become sex slaves for additional princes. The granddaughter of one of the princes from the defeated dynasty—who was the daughter-in-law of the prime minister and the wife of a minister—was purchased for less than ten ounces of gold. In Chinese society, members of the imperial family of the Song dynasty who were taken captive and sold as sex slaves to the conquerors were considered a disgrace; therefore, Chinese rulers in later dynasties decreed that a woman who had been raped or was about to be raped was obligated to take her own life, since continuing to live was not an option for her.

2.4 The Mongol Conquests (1202–1368)

The Mongol conquests, which began in the early 13th century under the leadership of Genghis Khan and continued under his successors, created the largest contiguous land empire in history. These military campaigns were characterized by high mobility, advanced cavalry tactics, and psychological warfare, and spanned vast territories from Asia to Eastern Europe. This massive expansion led to the collapse of established empires and the destruction of many cities, along with a staggering death toll estimated in the tens of millions. However, this military success also had a profound sociological and economic impact: the empire’s control over vast territories gave rise to thePax Mongolica, which enabled an unprecedented flow of trade, technologies, and ideas along the Silk Road routes between the East and the West. The Mongol expansion was ultimately halted by internal divisions, succession struggles, and military defeats, such as the historic defeat at the Battle of Ain Jalut. The demographic and geopolitical impact of these conquests reshaped the world order and left a lasting mark on the development of the Eurasian continent.

During the conquests, women and girls were systematically raped by Mongol warriors. The earliest known instance of mass rape attributed to the Mongols, even before the empire’s official establishment, occurred in 1202, when Genghis Khan, founder of the Mongol Empire, and his ally, the commander Toghrul Khan, joined forces to conquer the regions inhabited by the Tatars. After the conquest, Genghis Khan ordered the execution of every Tatar man and boy taller than a wagon stake, in his own words, and the capture of Tatar women to be raped. In another instance, his son, Ögedei Khan, sent an army of 25,000 soldiers to conquer northern China. On his orders, the surviving defeated soldiers were raped by his troops. After Ögedei conquered the lands of the Oirats, his soldiers, acting on his orders, raped 4,000 Oirat girls aged seven and older. Some of them were subsequently taken captive and transported to his harem. The rest were distributed to caravanserais throughout the Mongol Empire and forced into prostitution.

One of the Mongols’ patterns of behavior toward enemies who agreed to surrender was to force their rulers to give their daughters to Genghis Khan. For example, in October 1209, the Mongols laid siege to the cityof Gongxingfu in the Kingdom of Xie. Emperor Xiangdzong surrendered, realizing that continued resistance against a superior army was futile, and in return was forced to agree that the kingdom would not only become a vassal state but that one of his daughters would also be forcibly married to Genghis Khan. In another instance, in November 1213,after the Mongols had plundered the entire North China Plain in three campaigns beginning in December 1212,thenewruler of the Jin dynasty, Huashahu,was overthrown, and the new government was forced to surrender and agree that one of its princesses would be forcibly marriedto Genghis Khan. In March 1241, the empire invaded the Kingdom of Hungary for the first time, where its soldiers raped women en masse. The monk Rogerius of the Puglia region, who survived, documented these rapes and wrote that the soldiers derived pleasure from the humiliation the women endured in those moments. In 1241–1242, Mongol soldiers also invaded Austria and reached the town of Wiener Neustadt, where they slaughtered residents and ate their bodies, taking particular pleasure in eating the bodies of women and young children. However, while elderly and disabled women were slaughtered and eaten immediately, virgin girls and beautiful women were first raped to death and only then were their bodies eaten. Women’s breasts were considered particularly exquisite, and therefore, in cases where there were more bodies than needed, they were sometimes the only part of the bodies that was eaten. Furthermore, their breasts were cut off and served to the leaders as a special delicacy.

2.5 The Destruction of Aleppo (1400)

The conquest of Aleppo in 1400 was a pivotal event in the war between the Timurid Empire and the Mamluk Sultanate. Following an invasion of Armenia and Georgia, Timur Lang’s forces reached the city in October. They were confronted by a substantial Mamluk army numbering over 30,000 soldiers. In the main battle, Timur employed advanced tactics of rapid cavalry flanking maneuvers alongside the use of elephants at the center of his formation. These attacks broke the Mamluk lines, forcing them to retreat in panic toward the city gates and suffer heavy casualties. On October 30, Timur began razing the city, and it finally surrendered in early November. After the surrender, Timur ordered a mass slaughter of the civilian population and erected a tower outside the city made of 20,000 skulls as an act of psychological terror. The destruction was total, and as the historian al-Bistami described it, Timur’s army was a force of devastation: he gathered every scoundrel and swindler to sow terror and shed blood. Senior Mamluk commanders were killed in battle or taken captive in chains, leading to the collapse of the region’s defenses. After the city’s destruction, Timur’s forces continued their campaign of destruction southward toward Hama, then Homs, and ultimately—to Damascus

When the city was invaded, the women and children fled to the city’s Great Mosque in a desperate attempt to find refuge. The soldiers entered the mosque and massacred all the children, while the women were stripped naked and bound with ropes in preparation for their public, gang rape. Even noblewomen and virgins were stripped and bound in this mosque and in smaller mosques. At the same time, soldiers led their fathers and brothers to the mosques and forced them to watch as their female relatives were raped. Each woman was raped repeatedly by numerous soldiers. After being raped, they were left naked and bound for the next soldiers in line. Many residents were massacred by the forces, and the leadership ordered their heads to be cut off and thrown into a pile outside the city until a tower of 20,000 skulls was formed. The bodies were not buried but were left lying as carcasses in the streets and mosques, spreading a stench throughout the city.

2.6 The Imjin War (1592–1598)

The Imjin War (1592–1598) was a series of two massive military invasions launched by Japan against Korea with the aim of conquering the peninsula and using it as a staging ground for the conquest of Ming China. The first invasion, launched on the orders of the Japanese ruler Toyotomi Hideyoshi, initially met with tremendous success as the Japanese conquered vast territories in Korea, but was halted following the intervention of Chinese military forces and the extraordinary successes of the Korean navy. In 1597, following a brief ceasefire and the failure of negotiations, Japan launched a second invasion. This campaign was met with more stubborn resistance from a Korean-Chinese coalition and guerrilla warfare by local militias. The war was characterized by unprecedented destruction and devastation, during which Korea lost a significant percentage of its population and infrastructure. In 1598, following Hideyoshi’s death and the Japanese defeat at the Battle of Noryang, the campaign came to an end, leading to the withdrawal of Japanese forces. This war had far-reaching regional consequences, including the dramatic weakening of the Ming Dynasty in China and the strengthening of the new regime in Japan, while Korea was left with a legacy of devastationand national trauma that lasted for generations.

During the war, Korean women and girls were often brutally and mercilessly raped by Japanese, Chinese, and Korean soldiers, regardless of their age. Accounts reveal that Japanese soldiers identified three main needs for soldiers during wartime: grain stores, knowledge of local geography, and [raping] beautiful women. The heads of all the young men in the area were often beheaded by Japanese soldiers, while all the attractive women, along with the looted goods, were loaded onto horses and oxen. A Korean girl who was taken captive was transported to one of the Japanese warships, where she was forced to become a sex slave for the soldiers stationed on board. She testified: I remained motionless with fear at the bottom of the boat for many long hours, so I had no idea what was happening in the outside world. Another Korean girl was forced to become a sex slave for the Japanese samurai Kuroshima Mitsufusa. Women were also brutally and indiscriminately raped by the Chinese forces of the Ming Dynasty and the Korean forces of the Joseon Dynasty. When Hideyoshi believed that China had surrendered and was ready to accept him as emperor, he issued the victors’ demands, the first of which was that the daughter of the defeated Ming emperor be sent to Japan and forcibly married to him.

2.7 The Destruction of the Seven Cities (c. 1600)

The Destruction of the Seven Cities is a historical term describing the destruction and abandonment of seven major Spanish settlements in southern Chile around the year 1600. The event was triggered by a widespread uprising of the Mapuche and Viliche peoples, which began in 1598 with the Battle of Corralaba, in which the Spanish governor was attacked and killed. In the years that followed, Mapuche forces raided the settlements and succeeded in destroying all seven Spanish cities south of the Bío Bío River. Thousands of Spaniards were killed in the battles, and others were taken captive. The destruction of the cities marked the end of the Spanish conquest phase in the region and the beginning of the distinct colonial period in Chile. Following this defeat, the Spanish were forced to concentrate their economic and demographic efforts in central Chile, while in the south, a prolonged military frontier was established between the Spanish and the indigenous peoples. The loss of the cities was a severe blow to the Spanish Empire, which lost its sources of gold and manpower in the region. The ongoing and arduous struggle against the indigenous peoples in southern Chile even led contemporary historians to dub the region Indian Flanders, by analogy to the War of Attrition that Spain was waging in Europe at the time.

During the destruction of the cities, the women were mostly spared by the Mapuche. The goal, according to the Spanish soldier Alonso González de Najera, was to take advantage of them (in Spanish: aprovecharse de ellas), that is, to rape them. In this instance, 500 women were taken captive and raped repeatedly, resulting in the birth of many mestizo children. It is possible that these children had a significant demographic impact on Moche society, which had been devastated by war and epidemics. In 1641, some of the women were freed during Spanish raids and through negotiations between various Moche groups and Spanish authorities, which took place in the fields of Quillin. The Spanish men disowned the children born to the raped women. Some women did not return to their families and remained with the Mufuche men. The Spanish men attributed this phenomenon to the women’s shame at having been raped by their captors and to their weak character as women.

2.8 The Destruction of Magdeburg (1631)

The Destruction of Magdeburg, sometimes referred to as the Wedding of Magdeburg, took place in May 1631 during the Thirty Years’ War and is considered one of the most brutal and horrific massacres in European history. The Protestant city of Magdeburg, which was then one of the largest and most important cities in Germany, was besieged by forces of the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic League under the command of Gottfried Pappenheim and Johann Tsercles von Tilly. After about two months of siege, on May 20, the Catholic forces breached the city walls. Immediately after the breach, the soldiers—some of whom had not been paid—began a violent and unrestrained looting spree, torturing civilians who refused or were unable to hand over their property. At the same time, buildings in the city were set ablaze, and the fire spread rapidly, burning the vast majority of the city to the ground. Of the city’s approximately 25,000 residents, some 20,000 were killed in the fighting, suffocated by smoke, or burned to death, and only a small minority survived—mainly those who had taken refuge in the local cathedral. The destruction was so dramatic that the term Magdeburgization became a common expression in the German language to describe total devastation. In a letter written by Pappenheim, he boasted of the destruction and described the event in these words: There is no doubt that such a terrible deed and suchdivine punishment have not been seen since the destruction of Jerusalem.

After the city was conquered, the soldiers complained that they had not been paid for their service. They began breaking into every household they encountered and demanding valuables from the residents. A surviving city council member, Otto von Greike, testified: Once the residents had nothing left to give the soldiers, the real misery began. Women and girls were gang-raped by them. The devastation was so immense that the term Magdeburgization (transliterated: Magdeburgization; in German: Magdeburgisieren), derived from the city’s name, became a common term for decades to describe a region whose inhabitants had been plundered and exterminated, whose women and daughters had been raped, and which had been razed to the ground. Other cynical terms, originally used by Protestants when they mercilessly exterminated Roman Catholic residents, included Magdeburg justice, Magdeburg mercy, andMagdeburg pardon.

2.9 Siege of Fort Zeelandia (1661–1662)

The siege of Fort Zeelandia, which took place between 1661 and 1662, brought an end to the Dutch East India Company’s rule in Taiwan and marked the beginning of the Tongning Kingdom. The siege was led by Koxinga, a military commander who remained loyal to the Ming dynasty. Koxinga retreated from China due to the rise of the Qing dynasty and sought a strategic island as a new base for his forces. In April 1661, he landed in Taiwan accompanied by a massive fleet of hundreds of ships and some 25,000 soldiers. While the Dutch secondary defenses fell quickly, the main Fort Zeelandia, commanded by Governor Frederick Coytt with a force of fewer than 2,000 men, put up a tenacious defense. Coesinga employed a combined siege strategy that included massive bombardments, blocked maritime supply routes, and even repelled a Dutch reinforcement attack. The turning point came in the winter of 1662, after a deserter from the fortress revealed a critical weakness in the defensive line to the attackers, leading to the capture of a commanding position. On February 1, the Dutch finally surrendered, in an event etched into historical memory as an illustration ofhow an East Asian army could defeat a Western power.

Before the siege, Dutch men routinely ordered the indigenous Aboriginal residents of nearby villages to hand over their women so they could be raped. In response, in December 1652, the Aborigines launched a rebellion that was suppressed by Dutch forces. In 1662, after the fortress was captured, the tables turned: the Chinese executed the Dutch men and expelled the rest from the island, while they kept the women and girls captive to rape them and turn them into sex slaves. Coen chose as his sex slave a girl who was the daughter of the Dutch missionary Antonius Hambroek, whose head had been cut off on his orders. She was described by the Dutch commander Kauas a very sweet and pleasant young woman. The rest of the women and girls were sold as sex slaves to soldiers or forcibly married off to them as secondary wives. The fortress diary states: The best ones were reserved for the commanders’ use and later sold to the rank-and-file soldiers. In 1684, some of the captives were still alive, but they were not released until their deaths.

2.10 The Manchu Occupation of Xinjiang (1759–1912)

Qing dynasty rule in the Xinjiang region began in the late 1750s and continued until the fall of the empire in 1912. The region’s name, which means New Book, was given to it after Emperor Qianlong’s armies subdued the Dzungar Khanate. The conquest was accompanied by a brutal decision to exterminate the Dzungar people—a move defined in scholarshipas genocide—which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the depopulation of the region of its original inhabitants. To consolidate its control, the empire resettled the depopulated territories with Chinese civilians and Muslims, while the inhabitants of the desert oases (now known as Uyghurs) were placed under a strict military regime headquartered in the city of Ili. Throughout the 19th century, the region suffered numerous upheavals as a result of fierce rebellions, but the Chinese government managed to regain control of the territory and, in 1884, officially made it a full-fledged province.

In 1757–1759, during the Altishahr Khojot Rebellion, after supplies ran low, Manchu soldiers stationed at a military camp in the Yarkand Prefecture under the command of General Jiaohui slaughtered Uyghur Muslims living in the area and subsequently cooked and ate them. In cases where a married couple was captured, the man was eaten immediately, while the woman was first gang-raped by them and only cooked and eaten the following day. In 1765, Uyghur Muslim women were gang-raped for months by Manchu servants, the Manchu official Su-Cheng, and his son, which led to the Uighur Revolt. In response to the revolt, the emperor ordered the massacre of the town’s residents. All the men were slaughtered, while all the women were taken captive. In captivity, they were repeatedly raped by Manchu soldiers and officials. Between 1818 and 1820, the daughter of the patriarch of the Muslim community, the Haksak of Kokand, was also repeatedly raped by a Manchu official.

2.11 The Batak Massacre (1876)

The Batak Massacre took place in May 1876 in the Bulgarian town of Batak, during an uprising known as the April Uprising against Ottoman rule. Irregular forces of the Ottoman army, known as the Bashi-Bozuk, surrounded the town and forced the residents to surrender their weapons in exchange for a promise that their lives would be spared. Immediately after the residents surrendered, the forces began a horrific mass massacre. Thousands of innocent Bulgarian civilians were slaughtered, and many of them perished when they were burned alive while trying to find shelter inside the Church of Sveta Nedelya. The death toll from the massacre is estimated in the thousands, and the entire town was looted and razed to the ground. Press reports of what had occurred in Batak caused deep shock in the Western world and led to a wave of fierce condemnation of what came to be known as the Bulgarian atrocities. The unprecedented international public pressure paved the way for the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878) and ultimately for the establishment of an independent Bulgaria.

During the massacre, women were first stripped down to their undergarments so that their valuable clothing and jewelry could be looted, and then gang-raped by the perpetrators. In many cases, after a woman was raped by the last man in line, she was slaughtered by him. Afterward, the Ottoman commander Ahmed Aga ordered all surviving residents to come out, announcing that this was to compile a list of the dead and the widows. Most of the survivors obeyed and came out, because those who disobeyed were executed. They were divided into two groups: women and men. The commander lined up the women at the back and massacred all 300 surviving men. Women who dared to protest were first raped by them, and then slaughtered as well.

American journalist Januarius McGahan testified: Not a single roof remained, not a single intact wall stood. Everything was a sea of rubble. We looked again at the pile of skulls and skeletons before us and noticed that they were all small, and that the clothing items mixed in with them and scattered around were all women’s clothes. All women and girls. From where I sat, I counted about 100 skulls, not including those hidden beneath others in the pile, nor those scattered far and wide across the fields. Almost all the skulls were separated from the rest of the bones. Almost all the skeletons were headless. The heads of all these women had been severed, and it appears the procedure was as follows: They seized a woman, carefully stripped her down to her undershirt, set aside valuable items of clothing—along with all the ornaments and jewelry she was wearing—and then as many of them as possible raped her, and the last man killed her, or did not, as he saw fit.

2.12 The Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901)

The Boxer Rebellion was a violent uprising in China against foreign intervention, imperialism, and Christianity, which took place between 1899 and 1901 toward the end of the Qing Dynasty. The uprising was led by a Chinese secret society whose members specialized in martial arts, which is why they were called Boxers (boxers) in the West. The uprising stemmed from deep frustration with the economic and political influence of foreign powers in China and the expansion of missionary activity. The Boxers attacked foreigners and Chinese Christians, and later gained the support of the Empress Dowager Cixi, who declared war on the foreign powers. At the height of the Boxer Rebellion, the Boxers laid siege to the Legation Quarter in Beijing. In response, the Eight-Nation Alliance was formed—an international military coalition that included, among others, Japan, Russia, Britain, and the United States. The combined force invaded China, rescued the besieged, and completely suppressed the uprising. The fighting ended with the signing of a harsh surrender agreement, under which China was required to pay enormous reparations to the victorious powers. The military defeat and political humiliation significantly weakened the Qing Dynasty and ultimately contributed to its final collapse about a decade later.

During the rebellion, Chinese, Manchu, and Banner Mongol women and girls were raped en masse by soldiers from the Eight-Nation Alliance. Many women were raped in the city of Peking. Chinese women and girls were raped by German and Italian soldiers before their villages were burned and their bodies thrown into wells. The mutilated bodies of Chinese women who had been raped by Allied soldiers and subsequently slaughtered were found. In Juyi County, Chinese women were routinely raped by the German Catholic priest Georg Stanz himself. The French commander justified the rape of the victims by his soldiers, stating that in doing so, the French soldier was in fact demonstrating his superiority. Thousands of women and girls took their own lives to avoid being raped by brutal Russian and Japanese soldiers. It was common practice for Allied forces to frequently capture women in order to rape them repeatedly and turn them into their sex slaves, regardless of their status or faith, whether they were virtuous or destitute, young or old. To this end, they established rape camps in the hutongs (alleys formed by sihuang-style dwellings) in the city of Peking and imprisoned them there. Among other places, they were transported to Baiyue Alley and confined in row houses as prostitutes for the soldiers. The path at the western end of the alley was blocked to prevent escape, while the eastern end was the only way in or out. This entrance was guarded, and any member of the Allied forces could enter and rape them at will.

The daughters of Yulu (Chinese: 裕禄), a Manchu standard-bearer and deputy governor of Chili Province (now Hebei Province) from the Heita clan, were specifically targeted and raped by Allied soldiers. After the capture of Beijing, all seven of his daughters were taken captive and transported to the Temple of Heaven, where they were repeatedly raped by the soldiers. They were then transported to one of the rape estates and held there as sex slaves for the soldiers. The wife and one of the daughters of the Mongolian nobleman Chongqi of the Alota clan—a scholar and high-ranking official in the Manchu court, as well as the father-in-law of the previous emperor—were also gang-raped by Allied soldiers. They were subsequently taken captive and transported to the Temple of Heaven, where they were brutally gang-raped by dozens of soldiers throughout the entire period of the occupation of Peking. Only after the withdrawal of the Eight-Nation Alliance did they return home; however, upon their return, they hanged themselves from the rafters because they could not bear the humiliation they had endured. On August 26, 1900, upon discovering this, Chongqi, in despair, also hanged himself. His son Baoqi and many other family members also took their own lives shortly thereafter.

2.13 The Genocide of the Greek People (1913–1923)

The Genocide of the Greek People was a campaign of systematic persecution and extermination of the Greek Christian population in the Ottoman Empire, which took place between 1914 and 1922. This process began during World War I and continued afterward, first under the rule of the Committee of Union and Progress and later at the hands of the Turkish National Movement. As part of the persecution, mass killings, forced deportations, death marches under harsh conditions, and the deliberate destruction of heritage and religious sites in the regions of Anatolia, Pontus, and Eastern Thrace were carried out. Hundreds of thousands of Greek civilians perished during these events, with historical estimates ranging from hundreds of thousands to nearly one million victims. Many of the survivors fled to Greece, and those who remained in the territories of the former empire were permanently displaced under the 1923 population exchange agreement between Greece and Turkey, a move that brought an end to thousands of years of Greek settlement in the region. Many scholars and organizations around the world officially recognize these eventsas a plannedgenocide, similar to the Armenian Genocide. In contrast, the modern Republic of Turkey vehemently denies this characterization, arguing that the deaths were a tragic side effect of World War I and the Turkish War of Independence, rather than the result of a deliberate policy of extermination.

During the genocide, thousands of women and girls were systematically raped by Turkish soldiers and civilians. It was a widespread practice for Turkish forces to massacre men and rape women. They were captured in Greek villages and raped for hours or even days. Some were raped by their Muslim neighbors, and others by members of the security forces. In one instance, a woman was raped by Turkish villagers for eight consecutive days. She died shortly thereafter. The women and children were subsequently sent on long death marches to Syria, during which many women and girls were raped. The women often died afterward. In the Pontus region, irregular militias under the command of Topal Osman moved from village to village, massacring residents and raping women at will. At the Vazlon Monastery, a Greek Orthodox monastery, women were raped by Turkish fighters before being slaughtered. In one of the Greek-Pontic villages, dozens of women and girls threw themselves into the river to avoid being raped by soldiers. Furthermore, the Turks established markets where Christian girls were sold as sex slaves.

2.14 The Assyrian Genocide (1914–1918)

The Sayfo (literally: sword in the Syriac language) is the term used to describe the genocide of the Assyrian people, which consisted of a series of massacres and expulsions carried out against the Christian Assyrian population throughout the Ottoman Empire and in the border regions of Persia, primarily between 1915 and 1918. These events occurred concurrently with the Armenian Genocide and the Greek Genocide, and were carried out primarily by Ottoman military forces in collaboration with local Kurdish tribes. The Assyrians, who lived in regions such as Hakkari, Tur Abdin, and Urmia, suffered mass executions, death marches, the destruction of villages, and widespread looting of property. Estimates indicate that between 150,000 and 300,000 Assyrians lost their lives during the war, leading to the eradication of a significant portion of the ancient communities in their homeland. The survivors were forced to flee, and many became refugees throughout the Middle East, creating a widespread Assyrian diaspora. Despite the scale of the disaster and its recognitionas genocide by many historians, the issue remained for many years overshadowed by parallel tragedies of the same period. As in other cases, the modern Turkish Republic consistently denies that this was a deliberate policy of extermination, claiming that the deaths were caused by the horrors of World War I and internal uprisings.

During the genocide, following a consistent pattern, men were massacred while women and children were deported. During the deportation, women and girls were raped by Turkish soldiers. Women were raped by irregular fighters even as they lay dying. Many women died afterward. Women were also sold as sex slaves to Muslim men. In the city of Urmia, home to a large Assyrian population, Assyrian girls were raped by Turkish and Kurdish men. In the large Assyrian village of Golfshan, men were massacred while women and children were taken captive and raped. In one village, girls as young as eight were raped. In another village, girls aged six or seven who tried in vain to hide on the roof to avoid being raped were captured and raped. In early 1915, several massacres took place in Azerbaijan, during which hundreds of Christians were slaughtered while women were taken captive and raped. On July 1, 1915, the village of Tel Arman was attacked by militiamen and Kurds. All the women who had been in the village were first raped by them, and only then were all the villagers indiscriminately massacred, including women and children.

In the city of Siirt, all the men were slaughtered, and the remaining 400 women and children were expelled and forced to march west toward the city of Mardin or south toward the city of Mosul, while being attacked by the police. During the march, their property, including their clothing, was looted by local Kurds and Turks. Those who could not keep up were slaughtered. Women considered attractive were pulled out of the march by police officers or Kurds, raped by them, and then slaughtered. No one reached the city of Mardin, and only between 50 and 100 Assyrian-Chaldeans (out of a population of 7,000–8,000) reached the city of Mosul.

2.15 The Armenian Genocide (1915–1917)

The Armenian Genocide was a systematic campaign of extermination against the Armenian population throughout the Ottoman Empire, which took place primarily during World War I, beginning in 1915. The campaign was planned and carried out by the government of the Committee of Union and Progress to purge Anatolia of the Armenian presence. The genocide was carried out through mass executions, forced deportations, and death marches into the Syrian desert, under extreme conditions of starvation, exhaustion, and disease. According to historical estimates, between 1,000,000 and 1,500,000 Armenians perished during these events. Many survivors were forced to leave their homeland, giving rise to the Armenian diaspora around the world. This unprecedented tragedy is considered one of the first instances of modern genocide and even served as the basis for the coining of the term genocide in the 20th century. Today, the vast majority of historians and many countries officially recognize these eventsas genocide.

Even before the genocide, the Ottoman legal system permitted the rape of Armenian women and girls. Armenian women and girls were routinely raped by Turkish and Kurdish men. Men were immediately massacred, while women and children were brutally raped and their genitals mutilated. Women and girls were forced into prostitution or into forced marriages. Kurdish and Turkish men could enter Armenian homes and rape all the women and girls living there, and even abduct them with impunity. These numerous incidents placed them in constant danger of being raped. In one instance, between 60 and 160 women were locked inside a church along with children and infants, and soldiers were sent in among them. Many women were raped to death by them. The remaining women were slaughtered with swords or bayonets, along with the children and infants. Between 1850 and 1870, the Patriarch of Armenia submitted 537 letters to the Sublime Porte in which the Armenians pleaded for protection against the rape and abduction of their women and children.

During the genocide, Armenian women and girls were raped en masse by militiamen, Turkish armed forces, public officials, and other Turkish and Kurdish men. They were raped by them brutally and systematically. Army commanders simply told their subordinates, Do whatever you want with them. The practice of raping them was widespread. Armenians were often massacred during brutal celebrations in which women were first raped by the perpetrators. Some were gang-raped on a daily basis. The rape of young girls was well documented. Turkish, American, Austrian, and German witnesses and officials testified to the systematic rape of the victims during the genocide. The only option women had to avoid being raped was to take their own lives. Many women who were raped were subsequently slaughtered with bayonets or died as a result of the prolonged rape they endured. After women were gang-raped, they often took their own lives. Many women and young girls were enslaved as prostitutes or forcibly married to Muslim men, including those who were already married. The genitals of women and young girls were mutilated, and women’s breasts were cut off. In the city of Deir ez-Zor, members of the German armed forces even assisted in opening a brothel where Armenian women were enslaved as prostitutes. The wives, daughters, and other female relatives of influential Armenian men in their communities were raped publicly and systematically by Turkish men. Male children were also raped.

During attacks on villages, men and boys were first separated from the women and children and immediately massacred en masse, while the women and children were first raped by the attackers and only then slaughtered together or deported. The women were systematically raped by them. In 1915, women and young children were sent on death marches across the Anatolian Peninsula into the desert, escorted by gendarmes (military forces authorized to operate among the civilian population). During the march, the women, young girls (and even young boys) were brutally and systematically raped by Turkish soldiers. Furthermore, their bodies were mutilated. Many of them were subsequently slaughtered by the soldiers. An eyewitness testified: It was commonplace for them to rape our girls in our presence. Very often they raped girls as young as eight or ten, and as a result, many of them were unable to walk and were shot. The German consul in Aleppo, Walter Rössler, reported that about a quarter of the young women who, in his words, were quite attractive, were regularly raped by the gendarmes, and those who were even more beautiful were gang-raped each time by groups of 10–15 men. As a result, the raped women and girls were left behind, naked and dying. Captives held in camps were routinely raped by the guards, who also allowed Bedouins to raid the camps at night and rape them. Hundreds of thousands were slaughtered in these death marches.

In addition, women and girls were selected by soldiers and gendarmes to be trafficked as sex slaves, which was a significant source of income for them. They were transported to the city of Damascus, where they were stripped by Turkish soldiers, paraded naked at auction, and sold as sex slaves in certain regions. Some were sold in Arab slave markets to Muslim pilgrims on their way to the Hajj and transported as far as Tunisia or Algeria. In Arab regions, Armenian women were sold at low prices. The maximum price for an Armenian woman was five piastres (about 20 pence at the time).

In the city of Trabzon, many women and girls were raped. The city’s police chief, Nuri, testified that the governor-general had given him young girls to rape as a gift to the Central Committee of the Union and Progress Party. The merchant Muhammad Ali testified that children were massacred at the Red Crescent Hospital, but that young girls had first been raped. He also testified that the governor-general imprisoned 15 girls there in order to rape them. An army officer, Hassan Ma’ruf, testified: Government officials in the city of Trabzon selected some of the most beautiful Armenian women from the best families. After raping them in the most brutal manner, they killed them. The German soldier, Armin Wagner, testified: Armenian women and girls are generally very beautiful. They cut off their breasts, mutilated their genitals, and their bodies lie naked, desecrated, or blackened by the heat in the fields. He testified about the appearance of the body of one of the unfortunate women who had been raped: The dark, beautiful face of Babashi, who was abducted by Kurdish men, raped, and released only after ten days, stares back at you. Like wild animals, the Turkish soldiers, officers, and gendarmes pounced on this welcome prey. An eyewitness testified that all the girls in her village aged 12 and older—and some even younger—were raped.

After the massacre, women and girls who had been forcibly married were often unable to return to their former lives because they had no family or source of income left, and because of the shame of having been raped by Turkish men. Karen Yaffe, who worked for the League of Nations in the city of Aleppo, testified that of the thousands of women with whom she spoke, only one had not been sexually abused. Many Armenian children who survived also suffered sexual abuse.

2.16 The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939)

The Spanish Civil War took place between 1936 and 1939 and was a bloody ideological and military conflict between the Republican and Nationalist camps. The war broke out following an attempted military coup against the government of the Second Spanish Republic. The Republicans were supported by the Soviet Union, Mexico, and volunteers from the International Brigades, while the Nationalist camp, led by General Francisco Franco, received massive assistance from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. The conflict was marked by extreme brutality toward the civilian population and widespread massacres, and is often regarded in historiographyas a dress rehearsal for World War II, due to the combination of tactics and modern weaponry employed in it. After nearly three years of brutal fighting that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and left entire regions in ruins, the war ended with a complete victory for the Nationalists. When the fighting ended in April 1939, Franco established a conservative dictatorship that ruled Spain with an iron fist for nearly four decades, until the dictator’s death in 1975.

During the war, Republican women and girls were raped en masse by Nationalist forces and their allies—not as a result of soldiers’ disobedience to orders, but as part of an official Nationalist policy and as a central and widespread objective. The Nationalist army promoted a targeted campaign encouraging the rape of these women. Combatants who raped them were even rewarded, such as Civil Guard Corporal Juan Vadillo and Falangist Fernando Zamkola, who were decorated by Nationalist forces after raping women in the town of Benmohoma. Nationalist soldiers would sometimes stay in the homes of poor families where no men were present, in order to rape the women who lived there permanently. In addition, 283 nuns were slaughtered, many of whom had been raped beforehand. Nationalist forces advancing on the front lines wrote on the walls of captured buildings that the daughters of Republicans would give birth to fascists after they raped them.

Women and young girls, including nurses and female militia members, were brutally raped by Falangist rear-guard soldiers. Women were first raped by them and only then slaughtered in cemeteries, hospitals, farmhouses, and prisons. Women were also brutally raped by nationalist forces and regular troops, as in the towns of Cayos and Mayales and in the village of Cantalpino, and they were also raped by Catholic nationalist soldiers. Girls as young as 12 were raped by nationalist forces, sometimes repeatedly, as in the city of Moguer. Sometimes, after women were raped by the Falangists, the Falangist symbol—the yoke and arrows of the Falange—was branded onto their breasts. In addition, many women who were raped were also force-fed castor oil, a powerful laxative, and afterward, while suffering uncontrollable diarrhea, they were paraded naked in public, including through their own towns. Many of them were subsequently slaughtered. This tactic of punishment, oppression, and humiliation, directed specifically at women, was particularly striking. Women paraded through the streets, wearing very little clothing, were sometimes forced at the same time to sing the anthem Face to the Sun of the Spanish nationalist Falange.

Women (including pregnant women) were first raped and only then slaughtered, as occurred in the district of Payares Sobira, in the city of Almendraljo, in the towns of Fuente de Cantos, Zepra, Fuente del Maestre, and Zofra, in the town of Boasio, in the village of Valdedios, and on the Aguacho estate. In the village of Pegrinos, two nurses and other local women were raped by Falangists. In another incident, a Falangist slaughtered a woman named Persquita Avilés and then raped her corpse in a cemetery. In the town of Mayales, at least four women were raped by regular Nationalist soldiers. In the town of Cayos, a woman, her daughter, and her cousin were raped by another group of regular nationalist soldiers. The three were then stabbed with bayonets by the soldiers. In the same town, a man was forced to watch as his wife, daughter, and cousin were raped by regular soldiers and then stabbed with bayonets. In the village of Margenal, two women were raped by regular soldiers. The two were then executed by having grenades placed between their legs. In the village of Cantalpino, young women were raped by regular soldiers. Near the city of Seville, female captives were loaded onto a truck and taken to be raped by nationalist soldiers before being slaughtered. Their bodies were then thrown into a well, and the soldiers marched through the city with their rifles wrapped in the women’s underwear as if they were flags. In the village of Valdedios, 14 nurses and a 15-year-old girl were raped by a group of regular soldiers under the command of General Emilio Mola, and were subsequently slaughtered by them.

In the city of Oviedo, women were raped by Falangists in the hospital courtyard. In the city of Melilla, women were raped by Falangists in the prison. On the island of Mallorca, five Republican nurses from Barcelona were captured after the Republican retreat. Falangists inserted their fingers into the women’s vaginas to check whether their hymen was still intact, and then gang-raped them in the town of Menacor. The next day, they were all slaughtered at the Son Colts cemetery. The Falangists justified their actions by claiming that the women were prostitutes, in their own words. In 1936, two sisters from Barcelona, Daria and Mercedes Buxada, were captured by Falangist forces on the island of Mallorca. The Falangists inserted their fingers into the women’s vaginas to check whether their hymen was still intact, and then brutally raped them repeatedly. The wife of a Socialist Party member, Pilar Sánchez, who was hiding from the Falangists, was also discovered by a group of four Falangists. She was beaten and raped by them. She was then taken to a cemetery and raped by them once more before being executed. A woman named Margalida Jaume, who was also on the island at the time, was raped by a Falangist. The four women were then thrown into mass graves and buried together.

On the night of August 15–16, a group consisting of civilian guards, a Falangist, and a local member of the nationalist faction arrived at the home of Vicente Lamberto Martínez in the town of Laraga, a farmer who was a member of the General Workers’ Union, as part of a severe crackdown against pro-republican leaders, supporters, and their families. Officers of the Civil Guard, a paramilitary police force, sided with the nationalists. They threatened to break down the door. Once the door was opened, they forced Lamberto into a truck, along with his 14-year-old daughter, Maravillas Lamberto, who was at home with him. The truck took them to the town hall, where the girl was raped by them throughout the night. Local witnesses heard her screams throughout the town. She and her father were then transported to the village of Iberico, 40 kilometers from the town of Larga, where she was raped by them once again in front of her father. Afterward, both were shot to death, and the girl’s naked body was thrown to the dogs. They ate her buttocks and part of her legs. A week later, a local farmer found her decomposing body while the dogs were still swarming around it. She was already in such an advanced state of decomposition that the farmers decided to burn her.

On August 27, 1936, five young women aged 16–22 were forcibly plied with alcohol in the town of Fuentes de Andalucía and then forced to perform oral sex on Falangist men before being paraded through the streets in nothing but their underwear. Their names were María León Baseril, María Jesús Caro González, Juana Laura Muñoz, Coral García Laura, and Joséfa García Laura. They were then raped by the men, and their bodies were thrown into a well. The Falangists marched through the town with the women’s underwear hanging from their rifles and hunting rifles like flags. In the summer of 1937, when Nationalist forces captured the province of Biscay, their supporters engaged in widespread sexual harassment. Women were beaten by them in public in front of their families, while half-naked. On December 24, 1938, in the town of Mayales, four women were raped, one of them in front of her husband and 7-year-old son, who were forced at gunpoint to watch her being raped. In late 1938, in the village of Onara, a 17-year-old girl was first forced to watch her mother being executed, and then brutally gang-raped before she, too, was executed.

Women and girls held in Nationalist prisons were often systematically raped. Women were ordered to submit to rape by their captors. Those who dared to refuse were often slaughtered. In the spring of 1936, women in the Extremadura region who worked as seamstresses in the homes of the wealthy attempted to form a union. After the outbreak of the war, they were put on trial, and their official sentence was to undergo sexual abuse. The rape of women was common at the Las Salsas prison. Falangists routinely visited the prison to select women to rape. Those chosen were taken out and transported to their barracks. At the Albacete prison, 30 women were raped over a three-month period by two officials. The screams of the women being raped could be heard throughout the prison. Women in prisons were constantly confronted by guards who demanded that they satisfy them in exchange for an improvement in their own situation or that of other imprisoned relatives. At the end of 1937, several female prisoners in the province of Biscay dared to refuse to submit to rape by their Nationalist military captors, even though they were told that their punishment would be execution. That night, many of them were shot.

Nationalist sympathizers characterized Republican women as immoral, seducing men with their tight-fitting clothes and flaunting their bare arms to emphasize their figures. Nationalists, including Army General Gonzalo Caipo de Yano, ruled that they must be raped so that they would experience firsthand what it means to be whores, in their words. Caypo de Yano hosted a radio show in which he, among other things, boasted that Republican women had been raped en masse in the city of Seville. He declared: Our brave legionnaires and regular soldiers [who raped them] taught the cowards among the Reds what it means to be a man. As for the women who were raped, he asserted that these communists and anarchists, as he put it, deserved to be raped, since they were, in his view, promiscuous women who freely had sex with men anyway. He declared: Now at least they will know who real men are, and not those wimpy militiamen. He even mocked them for being, as women, so weak and helpless that when real men come to rape them, they have no chance of escaping—they will be raped by them even if they struggle and kick with all their might, in his words.

2.16.1 Foreign Legionnaires (1936–1939)

Moroccan soldiers (foreign legionnaires), known as Moorish soldiers, fought alongside the Nationalists. Francoist officers and commanders promised them that they would be allowed to rape white women upon entering the city of Madrid. Officers chose the Moroccan soldiers for this task because they were known for raping women with great brutality. The practice of using Moroccan Legion soldiers to rape local women was a direct continuation of the Spanish army’s military operations in its colonial territories. Nationalist soldiers directed them to rape specific women and groups of women in the villages. Many working-class women were raped by them. Often, women were raped by them with such brutality that they died within a few hours at most. Army General Gonzalo Caipo de Yano even warned several times on his radio program that women sympathetic to the Republicans— who, in his words, were immodest —would be raped by his Moroccan soldiers. One such incident occurred in the village of Nabalcarnero, where many were also massacred. In the town of San Roque, for example, a woman was raped and then shot by a firing squad. Additional incidents occurred in the city of Seville. German soldiers who were assisting the Nationalists took photographs for their own amusement of women being raped by Moroccan soldiers and of their breasts being cut off.

Francoist commanders proudly declared that they had promised the Moroccan soldiers that, upon their entry into the city of Madrid, they would allow them to rape white Republican women. In October 1942, a journalist from the magazine *Foreign Affairs* testified that while he was present at a military camp with the officers, he heard them discussing this promise, and almost all of them agreed that the practice should continue. At the crossroads of the village of Navelcarnero, he accompanied the only Moroccan officer in the Spanish army, Al-Mizian. The journalist testified that at one point, two Republican girls, who appeared to be under the age of 20, were brought before Al-Mizian. One of them worked at a textile factory in Barcelona, and a union membership card was found in her jacket. The other, a native of Valencia, tried in vain to convince him that she had no political affiliations. After questioning them, he decided that they were to be raped to death by Moroccan soldiers. He took them to a small building that had formerly served as the village school, where about 40 Moroccan soldiers were resting. When they reached the door, roars erupted from the throats of the excited soldiers who saw the girls being brought to them. Amused, Al-Mizyan smiled affectionately at the journalist in light of what awaited them and said, Oh, they won’t live more than four hours.

2.16.2 Francoist Spain (1939–1975)

After the war and at least until the 1960s, thousands of women with ties to the Republic were frequently raped—with social acceptance of the practice—to punish their husbands. The authorities usually granted the men who raped them immunity from prosecution. Everyone was taught to look the other way when they saw Republican women being raped. These women often tried to move to cities to live in greater anonymity. Women were force-fed castor oil, a laxative, and paraded naked in public while soiling themselves in full view of everyone. Women were also raped in prisons. Anita Sirgo and Tina Pérez were both raped in prison for their involvement in the mining strikes in the Asturias region in 1962. Lidia Falcón O’Neill was imprisoned at the Yseria Prison in Madrid and the Trinidad Prison in Barcelona from 1960 to 1974. She spoke of women who were imprisoned with her and were raped. She testified: They stripped them [and raped them]. She added that macho men enjoyed venting their sadistic urges on Republican women. In many cases, the homes and property of the widows of Republican men were confiscated by the government, and many of them, living in absolute poverty, were forced to become prostitutes to make a living. This phenomenon also served the Francoists because it reinforced their perception of Republican women as inherently filthy prostitutes.

2.17 The Nanjing Massacre (1937)

The Battle of Nanjing took place in early December 1937 during the Second Sino-Japanese War and ended with the capture of the then-capital of the Republic of China by the Imperial Japanese Army. Following their decisive victory in the Battle of Shanghai, the Japanese advanced rapidly toward Nanjing. Although China’s leader, Chiang Kai-shek, ordered the city to be defended and appointed a dedicated defense force, the Chinese soldiers were exhausted and insufficiently organized to face the enemy’s military might and heavy bombardment. On December 9, the Japanese launched an all-out assault on the city walls. After a few days of fighting, the local defense lines began to collapse completely. On December 12, the commander of the Chinese force ordered a hasty retreat, which quickly turned into a complete chaotic stampede, during which many Chinese soldiers drowned in the Yangtze River or were captured. On December 13, the city was finally captured. The city’s fall immediately ledto the Nanjing Massacre, a horrific historical event in which Japanese soldiers brutally massacred tens of thousands of Chinese prisoners of war and unarmed civilians. The battle and the massacre that followed are considered tragic extremes that left a deep wound in the history of East Asia, even though the Chinese refused to surrender and continued their long struggle.

The reason the 10th Army advanced so rapidly into the city was, in fact, the agreement among the officers and their subordinates that, once the city was captured, they would be free to rape the Chinese women and girls living there as they pleased. After the city was captured, during the first six weeks, men were massacred, while between 20,000 and 80,000 Chinese women and girls of all ages and social classes who were trapped in the city—including infants and elderly women—were gang-raped by soldiers before being slaughtered. They were brutally and systematically raped by the soldiers in all areas of the city and at all hours of the day. At least 1,000 women and girls were raped every night, and many more during the day. The soldiers went door to door in search of young girls to rape.

Pregnant women were specifically targeted for gang rape, after which their abdomens were often stabbed with bayonets or cut open, and their fetuses were torn out for amusement. Even young children were shown no mercy. Their vaginas or anuses, which were too narrow for penetration, were first torn open and slit to allow the soldiers to rape them as well. Buddhist nuns were also raped. Mothers were often forced to watch as their babies were beheaded before being raped themselves. Many women were also taken captive and gang-raped. Those who dared to resist or whose faces showed any sign of refusal were stabbed with bayonets or shot. Husbands or brothers who tried to protect the victims were shot. Hundreds of men and women who were in the security zone administered by the United States—believing they had found a safe place—were periodically dragged away by soldiers who entered at will. Men were slaughtered immediately, while women were first raped by them and only then slaughtered.

During the massacres in the villages, while Chinese men were usually slaughtered immediately, the women and children were first brutally raped by soldiers and only then slaughtered. They raped the women also to demonstrate the profound contempt for other Asians that was deeply rooted in Japanese society before the war. An illustration of this can be seen during the war in southern China, in the case of a sergeant who raped and slaughtered many Chinese women and was horrified when he discovered that one of the women he had raped was a Japanese woman who had married a Chinese man and immigrated to China. Chinese men were also forced by soldiers to rape their own female relatives. Sons were forced to rape their mothers, fathers were forced to rape their daughters, and brothers were forced to rape their sisters, in full view of other family members who were forced to watch. After the women were raped, they were often slaughtered, and their bodies were immediately mutilated by being stabbed and having bayonets, long bamboo sticks, or other objects thrust into their vaginas. On December 19, 1937, American missionary James M. McAllum, who lived in the city, wrote in his diary: I have never heard or read of such brutality. Rape! Rape! Rape! We estimate at least 1,000 cases at night and many more during the day. In the event of resistance or anything that looks like refusal, there are bayonet stabs or gunshots. People are in a state of hysteria. Women are dragged away every morning, afternoon, and evening. It seems that the entire Japanese army is free to come and go as it pleases, and to do as it pleases.

Soldier Korosu Tadenobu of the 13th Division testified: We took all the men behind the houses and killed them with bayonets and knives. Afterward, we locked the women and children in a single house and raped them at night. Before we left the next morning, we killed all the women and all the children. Soldier Tedokuro Kozo testified: Women suffered the most. No matter how young or old, none of them could escape their fate of being raped. We sent coal trucks into the city streets and villages to capture as many women as possible. Each woman was then assigned to 15–20 soldiers for sexual intercourse and abuse. After the rape, we killed them as well. On November 23, the village of Nanchian’tou was set on fire. While many of its residents were locked inside the burning houses, a 17-year-old girl and a pregnant woman were raped repeatedly by soldiers until they could no longer walk. The soldiers then forcefully shoved a broom into the girl’s vagina and stabbed her with a bayonet, while they slit open the pregnant woman’s abdomen and ripped out her fetus. A 15-year-old girl was locked naked in a barracks housing some 200–300 soldiers and raped by them several times a day. A woman in her sixth month of pregnancy was raped and then stabbed 16 times in the face and body. One stab wound pierced her uterus and killed her fetus. In another case, a young woman was raped and then had a beer bottle forcefully shoved into her vagina before she was shot.

Former soldier Shiro Azuma testified openly about the derogatory terms they used when choosing which women to rape before slaughtering them: At first, we used some vulgar words like ‘Pikankan.’ ‘Pi’ means ‘hip’ and ‘kankan’ means ‘look.’ ‘Pikankan’ means ‘let’s see a woman spread her legs.’ Chinese women didn’t wear underwear. Instead, they wore pants tied with a string. There was no belt. When we pulled the string, their buttocks were exposed. We [did] Pikankan. We looked. After a while [when we decided to rape them], we said something like , Today is my day to bathe [an expression meant to mock them, implying that raping them was a necessary, everyday act]... We raped them, each of us in turn. [Afterward] we always stabbed and killed them because corpses don’t talk. We were taught that we are a superior race. However, the Chinese were not like that, and so there were many rapes, and the women were always executed. While they were being raped, the women were human. But the moment the rape ended, they became pork.

In one instance, a five-month-old baby cried while his mother was being raped by a soldier. In response, the soldier covered his mouth and nose until he suffocated to death so that he would not continue to disturb him while he raped her. In another instance, survivor Tang Junshan testified: The seventh and last person in the front row was a pregnant woman. The soldier thought it would be best to rape her before killing her, so he took her out of the group to a spot about ten meters away. When he tried to rape her, the woman resisted fiercely. The soldier suddenly stabbed her in the abdomen with the butt of his rifle. She let out a final scream as her entrails spilled out. The soldier then stabbed the fetus—whose umbilical cord was clearly visible—and threw it aside. In another case, a 19-year-old pregnant girl, in the middle of her sixth month of pregnancy with her first child, refused to be raped by a soldier, and was therefore stabbed multiple times, sustaining nineteen cuts to her face, eight to her legs, and a deep cut to her abdomen, which led to the death of her fetus.

On December 15 and 18, Robert O’Wilson, a surgeon at the university hospital in the U.S.-administered security zone, wrote in letters to his family: I could go on and on about acts of rape and brutality that are almost impossible to believe. Last night, the home of one of the university’s Chinese staff members was broken into, and two of the women—his relatives—were raped. Two girls, about 16 years old, were raped to death in one of the refugee camps. At the university’s middle school, which houses 8,000 people, the Japanese broke in ten times last night, scaling the wall, stealing food and clothing, and raping until they were satisfied. On December 17, German diplomat John Rabe recorded in his diary: In one of the houses on the narrow street behind the wall of my garden, a woman was raped and then wounded in the neck with a bayonet. Last night, up to 1,000 women and girls were raped, including about 100 young women at Ginling College… alone. All one hears is rape. If husbands or brothers intervene, they are shot. What one hears and sees everywhere is the cruelty and abuse of the Japanese soldiers.

On December 13, about 30 soldiers arrived at a house at No. 5 Xinglu Street, in the southeastern part of Nanjing, and demanded to be let in. The homeowner, a Muslim named Ha, opened the door. He was immediately executed with a pistol. His wife, Xie, was dragged from under the table in the living room, where she had tried to hide with her one-year-old baby. After they stripped her and she was raped by one or more men, she was stabbed in the chest with a bayonet, and then a bottle and a stick were thrust into her vagina. The baby was stabbed to death with a bayonet. Several soldiers then went into the adjacent room, where her parents, aged 76 and 74, and her two daughters, aged 16 and 14, were staying. They were about to rape the girls. The grandmother tried in vain to protect them. The soldiers executed her and her husband. They then stripped the two girls. The older girl was raped by two or three soldiers, while the younger girl was raped by three soldiers. The older girl was then stabbed, and a stick was forcefully thrust into her vagina. The younger girl was also stabbed with a bayonet.

On the night of December 14, women in many homes were raped by soldiers on the spot or taken captive. On the night of December 15, several soldiers entered the buildings of Nanjing University in Taoyuan and raped 30 women on the spot. Some were gang-raped, by six men each. On December 16, seven women and girls aged 16–21 were taken from the military college. Each girl was raped six or seven times a day. Only five of them returned. On January 30, at approximately 5:00 p.m., about 540 refugees crowded into buildings 83 and 85 on Canton Street. More than 30 women and girls were raped there. The women and children cried all night long. In another incident, a 62-year-old woman went to her home near the Hansiman area, and that night soldiers came to her and intended to rape her. She told them she was too old, and in response, a stick was forcefully thrust into her body. On December 16, up to 1,000 women and girls were raped, including about 100 girls at Ginling College alone.

2.18 World War II: The European Theater (1939–1945)

The European theater of World War II was a major theater of war that spanned the European continent, the Middle East, and North Africa from 1939 to 1945. The campaign began with Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland, following the annexation of Czechoslovakia—a move that led to declarations of war by Britain and France. In the early years, Axis forces achieved major victories and seized vast territories across the continent. The dramatic turning point came following the German invasion of the Soviet Union—knownas Operation Barbarossa—and the United States’ entry into the war after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Allied forces launched crushing counterattacks, including, among other things, their invasion of Fascist Italy and the landing on the beaches of Normandy, France. After years of bloody fighting, both in the east and the west, Germany was completely defeated. In May 1945, following the capture of Berlin by the Red Army, the German military declared unconditional surrender. The end of the fighting in this theater marked the conclusion of one of the most devastating periods in human history—a period that left a continent in ruins and claimed tens of millions of victims. To this day, many historians consider the war in Europea dramatic event that reshaped the world order.

During the war, women and girls from among the occupied peoples were raped en masse by soldiers of the Wehrmacht (the name of the German army) on a massive scale, particularly among the Slavic peoples of Eastern and Southeastern Europe and among other minorities considered inferior under racial laws. The army effectively permitted them to rape these women. Before female partisans and other women were raped by soldiers, the word whore was branded onto their bodies for Hitler’s forces. Soldiers would boast in detail about how their victims were raped and then slaughtered by them. In September 1939, during the invasion of Poland, Jewish women and girls were raped by Wehrmacht soldiers. During the military campaign in Poland, only one soldier was tried by a German court for a case in which women from the Jewish Kaufman family in the town of Bosko-Zdrój were gang-raped by three soldiers. However, even in this case, the German judge did not convict him of raping the women, but rather of defiling the German race — a crime known as Rassenschande (German: Rassenschande), due to sexual contact with a subhuman considered shameful for the German race, as defined by Germany’s racial policies. During mass executions carried out primarily by units of the Volksdeutsche Selbstschütz, accompanied by Wehrmacht soldiers with the assistance and under the direction of the German military administration, the male prisoners were shot immediately, while the female prisoners (Polish, Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Russian) were first raped and only then shot.

In the Soviet Union, up to 10,000,000 Soviet women were raped by German soldiers. As a result, many of them became pregnant and gave birth to more than 1,000,000 children. In the city of Borisov, 36 women and girls were raped by German soldiers and subsequently slaughtered by them. Among them was a 16-year-old girl, A. I. Malchukova, who was brutally raped, had her breasts cut off, was nailed to a plank, and then slaughtered. In the city of Lviv, 32 women who worked in a garment factory were raped by German soldiers and subsequently slaughtered by them in a public park. A priest who tried to stop them was executed. In another incident in the city, Jewish girls were raped by German soldiers and, after becoming pregnant, were slaughtered. During the Axis occupation of Serbia, 772 women were raped by German soldiers. Women were also raped by German soldiers in Yugoslavia. On the Croatian island of Brač, women were raped by German soldiers alongside arson and massacres, as acts of retribution for casualties among their own troops. During the massacre in the village of Distomo in Greece, large numbers of local Greek women and girls were brutally raped by German soldiers, and their bodies were desecrated.

During the war, millions of Jews were exterminated by the Germans. One of the main dangers facing Jewish women was also rape, a phenomenon that was widespread. Many of them were brutally raped by the Germans and sometimes subsequently slaughtered. They were particularly vulnerable to sexual abuse by their captors. Between 50% and 80% of the SS (Schutzstaffel) soldiers and police units operating in Eastern Europe sexually assaulted Jewish women. There were cases in which they were gang-raped repeatedly by groups of SS men until they collapsed on the floor, bleeding. Jewish female prisoners were sexually abused by guards at the Auschwitz concentration camp and elsewhere. SS men of all ranks would shove their fingers into the vaginas of beautiful young women. One SS officer, for example, would stand at the entrance to the gas chamber where Jews were gassed to death and grope the genitals of the young women who were led into it in their final moments. Some of the women who were raped became pregnant and were forced to undergo abortions. Even among those who managed to flee to the forests to seek refuge with partisan units, many were aware that, simply because they were women, they might be raped there as well. The social cohesion within these units sometimes reflected societal views regarding women’s roles, and the roles they were assigned were influenced by this. Consequently, women accepted into partisan units were generally excluded from combat or leadership roles, and they were often forced to provide sexual favors to men in these units in exchange for the protection they were given.

Even on the Western Front, non-Slavic women and girls from Western and Northern European countries were raped by German soldiers during the war, even though under racial laws they were considered less inferior. Many women, including French and Italian women, were raped by them in Czechoslovakia, France, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Belgium. In 1940, immediately after the invasion of France, women were raped by German soldiers. From 1944 onward, the number of incidents increased, and they occurred alongside massacres. During the Battle of the Bulge, a 15-year-old Belgian girl was raped by a German soldier from the 2nd Panzer Division in the small town of Argemont, Belgium, while the town’s residents were being massacred by other soldiers. He brutally struck her with his helmet to suppress her resistance. During the German invasion and occupation of Norway, many Norwegian women were raped by German soldiers at gunpoint. During the German occupation of the Netherlands, a woman testified that a Dutch girl was raped in front of her by a German soldier. Polish girls around 15 years old who were classified as suitable for forced labor and transported to Germany were raped by German men. Two Polish girls who were subjected to forced labor in the state of Brandenburg, Germany, and returned to the city of Kraków in Poland while already in advanced stages of pregnancy testified that they were raped by German soldiers so frequently that they were unable to perform any of the tasks assigned to them.

Women were also raped by soldiers of the Italian Army, which was part of the Axis powers and participated in the war on the Eastern Front. During the Axis occupation of Greece, many Greek women were raped by soldiers of the Royal Italian Army, including soldiers from the 24th Pinerolo Infantry Division. Women were also raped by Italian soldiers in Yugoslavia and France. During the war, there was also a phenomenon of women who, in a desperate act, agreed to be raped repeatedly and on a regular basis by a random man from the occupying forces in order to survive. In November 1941, in accordance with the new racial laws issued by the Nazis, the commander of the 18th Panzer Division ordered that any Russian woman— a subhuman, in his words—who had sexual contact with German soldiers, whether she had been raped by them or not, be handed over to the SS to be executed. Conversely, on February 20, 1942, an order was issued declaring that any Russian laborer or prisoner of war who dared to have sexual relations with a German woman would receive the death penalty. During the war, hundreds of Polish and Russian men who had sexual relations with German women were found guiltyof racial defilement and executed. After the war, veterans of the armed forces rationalized the rape of women as part of what was expected of soldiers.

2.18.1 German Military Rape Stations (1942–1945)

In 1942, Germany began establishing an extensive network of rape stations throughout most of occupied Europe for Wehrmacht and SS soldiers and officers traveling to and from the front. Women and girls from the occupied nations, particularly from Poland, were forcibly brought to these stations and confined there so they could not escape. They were derisively referred to as military brothels (German: Militärbordelle), Wehrmacht brothels (German: Wehrmachtsbordelle), and soldiers’ brothels (German: Soldatenbordelle). Wehrmacht leaders decided to establish them to allow soldiers to satisfy their sexual urges. The concern was that if women were not available to them, they would be forced to masturbate on the spot, an act considered unmanly. The Wehrmacht’s chief field surgeon even drew attention to the danger of homosexuality spreading if these brothels were not established. The second reason was officials’ concern about the continued spread of sexually transmitted diseases among soldiers as a result of the rape of random women. Despite deep fears of mixing the Aryan race with inferior races, the justification for establishing the stations was based on the argument that Aryan men were already coming into contact with naked womenof inferior races held in Nazi camps—and were raping them anyway—so it was better for them to rape them in an organized manner. In September 1941, Field Marshal Walter von Brauchitsch even suggested that weekly visits to the stations for all young soldiers be made mandatory to allow them to vent the excess sexual urges they had accumulated.

The stations were run by the Wehrmacht. They were usually set up in new buildings, though in the West they were sometimes established in existing brothels and their extensions, and often in hotels confiscated by the Wehrmacht and other buildings. In Eastern Europe, the German army and police began rounding up women and girls on the streets of occupied cities during raids and patrols to imprison them in these stations. These targeted raids were called Łapanka (in Polish) and rafle (in French). By May 3, 1941, it was reported that the German army and police had carried out mass raids in Polish cities, during which young women and girls as young as 15 were taken captive and imprisoned in these stations. Despite the Nuremberg Laws, which prohibited German men from having contact with Jewish women because they were considered subhuman, Jewish women were also imprisoned in these stations. In addition, some prostitutes, particularly in Western Europe, were forced into these stations to avoid being sent to concentration camps.

In 1942, Franz Mawick, a driver for the Swiss Red Cross delegation, wrote from Warsaw about one of the instances in which soldiers captured women and girls to staff the stations: Germans in uniform stare intently at women and girls aged 15 to 25. One of the soldiers pulls out a flashlight and shines it on one of the women, straight into her eyes. The two women turn their pale faces toward us; the first is about 30 years old. What’s this old whore doing here? one of the three soldiers laughs. Bread, sir, the woman pleads. You’ll get a kick in the ass, not bread, the soldier replies. The soldier with the flashlight shines the light again on the girls’ faces and bodies. The younger one is perhaps 15. They unbutton her coat and begin to grope her with their lustful hands. She’s perfect for bed, he says.

By 1942, some 500 stations were operating throughout occupied Europe, and according to records, at least 34,140 European women and girls from the occupied countries were held there, along with the prisoners held in rape stations set up in concentration camps. Conditions inside the stations were harsh and brutal. They were open daily from 2:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Each soldier who visited the station was allotted 15 minutes to rape one of the women held there for a nominal fee of three Reichsmarks. Each woman was raped by up to 32 soldiers every day. The victims often underwent scheduled medical examinations to ensure that their bodies would not transmit diseases or infections from one soldier to another. Victims who became pregnant as a result of the rape and whose bellies had already swollen and become visible were sometimes released, but due to the severity of their condition, they did not return to their families.

Yugoslav women were also brought to the stations, and a document from 1941 was even found in the archives of the city of Osijek in Yugoslavia, discussing plans to establish numerous stations in the city and the sanitation procedures and protocols required to maintain the health of visitors. In occupied France, even before 1942, the Wehrmacht established a comprehensive bureaucratic system of approximately 100 new stations based on an existing network of government-controlled brothels. In Paris, France, 22 brothels were confiscated by the Germans and converted into rape stations for their exclusive use. Some of the station owners made a great deal of money by catering to the needs of German officers and soldiers. The soldiers received official visitation permits issued by the Wehrmacht’s High Command of the Land Forces. In the Soviet Union, women and girls were taken captive by German forces and imprisoned in these stations. In the city of Smolensk, the German command opened a station for officers in one of the hotels, into which hundreds of women and girls were crammed and imprisoned. They were mercilessly dragged through the streets by their arms and hair.

2.18.2 German Rape Stations in Concentration Camps (1942–1945)

In 1942, Germany decided to establish rape stations in concentration camps as well, for privileged Aryan prisoners and those convicted of criminal activity—primarily the Kapos and other officials, which included Christian Polish prisoners—in order to incentivize them to cooperate and increase their productivity. Jewish prisoners were forbidden from using them. Female prisoners from the occupied nations were forcibly brought to these stations, taken mainly from the Ravensbrück concentration camp—which was a women-only camp—except at the Auschwitz concentration camp, where female prisoners from within the camp were used. The stations were derisively called camp brothels (German: Lagerbordell)and pleasure units (German: Freudenabteilungen). In some of the stations, the words field whore (German: Feld-Hure) were tattooed on the women’s breasts. Some of the women underwent forced sterilization and forced abortions, which often led to their deaths. The stations were usually built as barracks surrounded by barbed wire, each housing up to 20 women. Each barrack had several small, individual rape rooms. As a result of the frequent rapes the women endured, they were often replaced due to exhaustion and illness and taken to the Birkenau extermination camp.

In 1942, the first station was opened at the Mauthausen concentration camp. On June 30, 1943, a station was opened at the Auschwitz concentration campin Block 24. Many Polish women were held there. On July 15, a station was opened at the Buchenwald concentration camp. In early 1944, a station was opened at the Neuengamme concentration camp. In May, a station was opened at the Dachau concentration camp. On August 8, a station was opened at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In the summer of 1943 or on March 25, 1944, a station was opened at the Plösenberg concentration camp. At the end of the summer, a station was opened at the Dora-Mittelbau labor camp. The stations were open in the evenings. Prisoners were required to register for a specific day and pay two Reichsmarks to rape a woman for 20 minutes, according to a predetermined schedule. An SS officer assigned each prisoner a woman to rape. The stations created a black market among Kapos, officials, and criminals, since ordinary prisoners were penniless, emaciated, and exhausted, and they were careful not to expose themselves to the SS guard units. Furthermore, the organization’s Fourth Reichsführer, Heinrich Himmler, ordered that all homosexual prisoners make mandatory visits to the stations once a week, so that they might experience how pleasurable the women’s bodies were, as a form of conversion therapy for their sexual orientation.

2.18.3 The Ochota Massacre (1944)

Between August 4 and 25, 1944, the Runa Assault Brigade, which collaborated with the Nazis and was commanded by Bronisław Kamiński, entered the Ochota district of Warsaw. Residents of the district were massacred, and at the same time, many women were raped by soldiers. The army initially focused on attacking resistance positions on Grojcka Street, but almost immediately, soldiers from army units began raping women from the civilian population on the nearby Opczewska Street. Civilians who tried to hide in basements throughout the district were massacred by the army, while women were first raped by soldiers. Later, residents who had been taken captive were herded like cattle by soldiers toward the Żelniak concentration camp, while being beaten and shot at. At the same time, women were repeatedly pulled out of the crowd by soldiers and raped by them. In many cases, they were subsequently slaughtered. On August 5, units also entered the Radium Institute at 15 Wawelska Street, where some of the patients were massacred, while many women were first gang-raped by soldiers—a pattern that was repeated in other locations as well. The soldiers decided that the patients and eight members of the staff would remain on site, while the rest of the staff would be marched to the Żelniak camp. That evening, the nurses who had been left behind were gang-raped.

2.18.4 The Battle of Monte Cassino (1944)

On February 18, 1944, the French Expeditionary Corps, part of the Allied forces and commanded by General Alphonse Joann, captured the Monte Cassino area in Italy. The following night, thousands of Moroccan irregular soldiers serving within the four regular divisions—known as the Moroccan Goums (in French: Goums Marocains), under the command of General Auguste Guillaume, along with other French colonial soldiers, began combing the surrounding hills, and village after village fell under the control of the Moroccan soldiers. Women and girls were raped en masse by them throughout the campaign. In every town and village that was conquered, mass rape took place. More than 7,000 women and girls were raped in the rural areas of southern Lazio, between the cities of Naples and Rome, including in several locations in the Tuscany region: in the communes of Abadia San Salvatore and Morello, in the city of Siena, in the towns of Fugibonsi, Radicopani, Cola, Val d’Alsa, and San Quirico d’Orcia, and in the villages of Stroba and Garzano dell’Alsa.

The Moroccan soldiers would rape women in pairs. Each woman was held by two soldiers on either side while they raped her, both vaginally and anally. In many cases, the women suffered severe damage to their genitals, rectum, and uterus. Mothers tried in vain to protect themselves and their daughters. The men who tried to protect the victims were massacred. In the commune of Esperia, 700 women out of 2,500 residents were raped, and as a result, many were massacred. In the San Andrea area, 30 women were raped. A Red Partisan named Enzo Nizza, who was present at the scene, testified: In Babadia, we counted up to 60 victims of severe violence [rape], which took place before the eyes of their families. One of the victims was our comrade Lidia, our liaison. The French command responded to our protests by stating that it was the tradition of their colonial forces to receive such a reward after a hard battle. In the commune of Valmaio, two sisters were forced to provide sexual services to a platoon of 200 Moroccan soldiers.

One testimony described the typical manner in which the victims were raped by the Moroccan soldiers: The Moroccan soldiers, who had been pounding on the door that would not open, knocked it down, struck Roka on the head with the butt of a musket, and caused her to fall to the ground unconscious. She was dragged 30 meters from the house and raped, while her father was dragged, beaten, and tied to a tree by other soldiers. Terrified passersby were unable to come to the aid of the girl and her father because a soldier remained on guard, pointing a musket at them. British officer Norman Lewis, who served on the Monte Cassino front, testified: The French colonial forces are once again running amok. Every time they capture a town or village, mass rape occurs. Recently, all the women in the villages of Patrica, Pofi, Izolta, Supino, and Morolo were raped. In the town of Lenola, which fell to the Allies on May 21, 50 women were raped; however, since that number was not enough, children and even the elderly were raped. In the commune of Castro di Velschi, doctors treated 300 rape victims.

The French officers who watched as women were raped by their subordinates did not intervene. When residents reported the rapes, the officers shrugged and dismissed them with a smile. In the commune of Abadia, residents begged the French commanders to order their Moroccan soldiers to stop raping, but they refused, replying that it was the tradition of their colonial soldiers to receive such a reward after a hard battle. The victims raped by Moroccan soldiers were described in Italy ashaving been Moroccanized (in Italian: Marocchinate)—a term derived from the soldiers’ origin and describing particularly brutal rape. In addition, women were also raped by white officers, noncommissioned officers, and soldiers from all four divisions of the French Expeditionary Corps, some of whom spoke Italian, such as the Corsicans, who were not present in the Moroccan soldiers’ units.

2.18.5 The Soviet Occupation of Eastern Europe (1944–1945)

During the war, the Soviet Union occupied and annexed several countries and regions, including: the eastern regions of Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, part of eastern Finland, eastern Romania, and the Carpathian Ruthenia region of Czechoslovakia. In every country through which Soviet forces passed and which they occupied—during their advance against Germany and in the years that followed, 1944–1945—German, Polish, Hungarian, and Serbian women and girls were raped en masse by Soviet soldiers, including in major cities. They were raped regardless of their age, which ranged from 9 to 80; in some cases, a grandmother, mother, and granddaughter were raped together. In 1945, during the Red Army’s winter offensive, the number of women raped reached massive proportions. Women were gang-raped by dozens of soldiers. In some districts, rape orgies took place. In the Leszno district, some commanders openly declared that their soldiers were, in fact, supposed to rape women to satisfy themselves. Women were also raped by former Soviet prisoners of war and Soviet civilians working for the Soviet military administration in Germany, who often wore identical uniforms.

The commander of the Polish militia in the town of Tszbiatow issued a warning to all Polish women not to go out unaccompanied so that they would not be raped by Soviet forces. The looting of goods from stores and farms was often accompanied by the rape of farm workers, as in the villages of Zalesie, Olchów, Feliksin, and Huta Szklana, including their subsequent slaughter in the village of Łagiewniki. For women, moving trains and train stations were particularly dangerous, as in the city of Bydgoszcz and in the vicinity of the cities of Radom and Legnica. The number of ethnic Polish women raped between 1944 and 1947 amounts to 100,000, and possibly even more. Soviet forces did not distinguish between the women who fell into their hands on the basis of their ethnic background, nor did they differentiate between occupiers and victims. In the regions of Warmia and Masuria, both Polish and German women were raped by them indiscriminately. However, as a general rule, German-speaking women were raped by Soviet forces with greater brutality than women of Slavic origin. As a result of the mass rapes, an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases spread throughout the country, infecting about one-tenth of the general population. In the Masuria region, up to half of the women were infected.

In the Pomerania region, mass rape occurred. In the city of Kraków, the Soviet entry into and occupation of the city were accompanied by a wave of rapes of women and girls. Polish men who tried to rescue them while they were being gang-raped were shot. In the Silesia region, Polish women were raped en masse, along with their German counterparts, even after the Soviet front had moved much further west. In the province of East Prussia, many ethnic German women, who had been warned in advance by the Germans, fled ahead of the Soviet attack, leaving the Polish women to be raped. However, not all of them managed to escape. In late January 1945, in the town of Iława, which was under the command of Soviet commander Konstantinov, five German women from Hamburg who had attempted to flee were found a few days later, naked and dead, in the basement of a house on Rybakow Street in the town. In March 1945, near the city of Radom, 30 women who had been captured at a flax factory were locked in a house in the village of Makowo and gang-raped for a period of time, under the threat that if they did not submit to being raped by the soldiers, they would be slaughtered. German and Polish women captured on the streets of Katowice, Zabrze, and Chorzów were gang-raped by soldiers, mostly outdoors.

In March 1945, in the city of Olsztyn, there was hardly a single woman left who had survived without being raped by the Soviets, regardless of her age. On April 17, 1945, a Polish woman who worked near the Soviet garrison testified in a letter from the city of Gdańsk: Because we spoke Polish, we were sought out. However, most of the victims there were raped up to 15 times. I was raped seven times. It was terrible. In the city of Gdynia, it was reported that the only way for women to avoid being raped was to hide in basements all day long. June 1945 was the worst month. A 52-year-old woman from the town of Pinczów, who was gang-raped, testified that two Soviet veterans returning from Berlin, Germany, told her that since they had fought for Poland for three years, they had the right to rape all Polish women. In the town of Olkusz, 12 women were raped within two days, and in the Ostrow district, 33 women were raped. On June 25, in a village near Kraków, a husband and his son were shot to death, and the wife was subsequently raped. In another village, a four-year-old girl was sexually abused by two Soviet men. In the first six months of 1945, 268 women were raped in the village of Dąbska Koznia.

Polish women who had been transported to Germany for forced labor and former prisoners who had returned to the country were raped by Soviet soldiers on a massive scale. In May 1945, a mass exodus of Poles returning from forced labor in the Third Reich passed through the cities of Stargard and Szczecin. Along the way, Polish women were raped by individual soldiers and organized groups. At the end of the war, Yugoslav Communist leaders, including the Yugoslav partisan politician Milovan Jilas, protested to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin about the mass rapes committed by Soviet soldiers who had occupied parts of Yugoslavia. Stalin replied: Can’t he [Jilas] understand that a soldier who has marched thousands of kilometers through blood, fire, and death might enjoy himself with a woman? During and after the war, the survivors remained silent because they could not speak out while preserving their dignity due to traditional social taboos.

On February 13, 1945, the Red Army and the Romanian Army, during their advance toward Berlin, Germany, captured the city of Budapest, Hungary—which had been defended by Hungarian and German soldiers—and massacred 38,000 residents. During the executions, Hungarian women and girls aged 70 to 10 were raped en masse by Soviet men. Girls were taken captive, transported to Red Army barracks, and imprisoned, where they were repeatedly raped by the soldiers and sometimes subsequently slaughtered. It is estimated that up to 800,000 Hungarian women were raped by Soviet forces. The rape was so widespread that very few women in Hungary were spared. As a result, many women became pregnant and contracted sexually transmitted diseases.

2.18.6 The Occupation of Germany (1945–1948)

In 1945, Allied forces invaded and occupied Germany. Between 1945 and 1948, during the invasion and the subsequent occupation, German women and girls were raped en masse by soldiers from all the advancing Allied armies (Soviet, American, and European). It is estimated that more than 2,000,000 women and girls were raped by them. As a result, many women became pregnant. Abortions, which were illegal in the country, were temporarily permitted for this reason. Many of them died from internal injuries resulting from the brutal rapes they endured. Others died from failed abortions or as a result of contracting sexually transmitted diseases that went untreated due to a shortage of medication. Many women who were raped took their own lives, primarily because they were unable to cope with the trauma. Some were forced to take their own lives by their fathers to wash away the shame. Married women who were raped were shot to death by their husbands. Many women who were raped were called Allied whores by soldiers and other German men. They endured verbal abuse and threats from them on the streets and in their homes. In 1946, the judges at the Nuremberg Trials declared that the laws of war applied only to enemy nationals, not to allies, and therefore the rape of German women was not considered a war crime. For decades, they were ignored due to the widespread belief that this was their just fate, since it was their country that had started the war. In German society, they were considered a disgrace and were silenced.

2.18.6.1 The Soviet Occupation (1945–1948)

On October 21, 1944, soldiers of the Soviet Red Army captured the village of Nemersdorf (now the settlement of Mayakovskoye) in Germany and massacred its residents. It was one of the first ethnically German settlements within pre-war Germany’s borders to fall into their hands. All the women were raped before being slaughtered (their ages ranged from 8 to 84). Many women were shot after being raped. The bodies of the raped women were crucified. In the farmyard, naked women were nailed to a cart in a crucifixion position by their palms. Near the large Rotter Krug inn, two naked women were nailed in a crucifixion position by their palms to each of the two barn doors.

By 1945, the army had already launched a massive invasion of Germany. From the very first days of the invasion, through the establishment of East Germany in the fall of 1949, and even afterward, German women and girls were raped en masse by Soviet soldiers. Soviet war correspondent Natalia Gessa testified: Russian soldiers raped every German woman between the ages of 8 and 80. It is estimated that up to 2,000,000 German women and girls were raped by them. At least 1,400,000 women were raped in the provinces of East Prussia and Pomerania and in the Silesia region alone. At least 100,000 women were raped in the city of Berlin, both during and after the battle, based on a rise in abortion rates in the months that followed and on contemporary hospital reports. The rapes in the city were so widespread that they came to be known as the Berlin Rape. Women were also frequently raped by soldiers from rear units who arrived in waves afterward.

About half of the victims were gang-raped by Soviet forces, repeatedly—some as many as 60 to 70 times. Many were brutally and publicly raped by them, including in front of their husbands before both were slaughtered. Some were raped by soldiers of Asian and Mongolian descent fighting in the ranks of the Red Army, whom they described as savage and terrifying. German women were also raped en masse by soldiers of Kazakh descent, who were considered particularly cruel. Polish women, including girls, who were liberated from Nazi concentration camps and those held in forced labor on farms and in factories, were also raped by soldiers. Approximately 240,000 of the victims died (about 10,000 women in Berlin). In 1945–1946, 3.7% of infants in Germany were born to mothers who had been raped. In Berlin, approximately 90% of the women who were raped in 1945 contracted sexually transmitted infections. Files from the Soviet Ministry of the Interior and the secret police revealed that the leadership was aware of the mass rapes; however, when Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was told that Red Army soldiers were sexually abusing German refugees, he replied: We are too lenient with our soldiers. Let them do as they please [and rape the women who fall into their hands]. Soldiers continued to rape women until the winter of 1947–1948, when the Soviet military administration in Germany confined them to camps and guard posts, effectively separating them from the civilian population. In Vienna, Austria, between 70,000 and 100,000 women were raped by them.

During the Battle of Berlin, women testified: The next morning, we women took steps to make ourselves as unattractive as possible to the Soviets by smearing our faces with coal dust and covering our heads with old rags—our makeup forthe Ivan [a German nickname for a Soviet soldier]. We huddled together in the central part of the basement, trembling with fear, while some of us peered through the low basement windows to see what was happening on the Soviet-controlled street. We felt paralyzed at the sight of these burly Mongols, who looked wild and terrifying. In April 1945, a German woman named Magda Wieland tried to hide in the basement of her apartment building. She testified that the first Soviet soldier to find her was a 16-year-old boy of Central Asian origin. She was captured and raped by him. In May 1945, 12-year-old Hannelore Kohl, who later became the first wife of former West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, was gang-raped by Soviet soldiers and then thrown out of a first-floor window. As a result, she sustained a severe back injury that left her disabled for life. She suffered from prolonged and severe illnesses due to the trauma she endured. In 2001, she took her own life.

After the war, Soviet veterans recounted their experiences in Germany. A former army officer testified: We were young, strong, and had gone four years without women. So we tried to capture German women. Ten men raped one girl. There weren’t enough women, so we had to take young girls, aged 12 or 13. If she cried, we’d put something in her mouth. We thought it was fun. A former Marine Infantry officer in the province of East Prussia, Zakhary Agranenko, wrote mockingly in his diary: Red Army soldiers do not believein individual relationships with German women. Nine, ten, or twelve men at a time, they rape them collectively. A Red Army telephone operator testified: When we captured each town, we had the first three days for looting and… [rapes]. I remember a German woman who had been raped, lying naked with a hand grenade between her legs. I felt no shame. In one instance, a lieutenant was described as lining up a group of soldiers from his unit to organize the gang rape of a German woman who was lying on the ground. Her arms and legs were already spread apart for the first soldier in line.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who participated in the invasion of Germany, wrote about it in his poem *Prussian Nights*. In one of its stanzas, he wrote: Heringstraße 22. It wasn’t burned down, just looted and ransacked. Anka, close to the walls, half-conscious: wounded, half-alive. The little girl on the mattress, dead. How many were there? A squad, a platoon perhaps? A girl became a woman, and a woman became a corpse... Did she beg: Soldier, kill me! Accounts of rape are mentioned in the works of other Soviet writers, primarily memoirs based on their personal experiences, such as Lev Kopelev, Vladimir Galfond, Mikhail Kuryakov, Yevgeny Plymak, David Samoilov, Boris Slutsky, Nikolai Nikolin, Grigory Pomerants, Leonid Ryabichev, and Vasily Grossman. The rape of German women by Soviet soldiers was considered taboo, and the victims were silenced until after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and East Germany. Children born to women who had been raped were labeled Russian children and faced social discrimination for decades.

2.18.6.2 The American Occupation (1945–1946)

In 1945, the United States invaded Germany. Between 1945 and 1946, during the invasion and the subsequent occupation, German women and girls aged 7 to 69 were raped en masse by American soldiers and those who arrived immediately after them. Women who became pregnant and gave birth as a result were often destitute and were usually left to fend for themselves. Based on the number of mixed-race children born during this period, even if only 5% of them were born to mothers who had been raped, and only one in every 100 women who were raped became pregnant and gave birth, the result is that approximately 190,000 women were raped by American soldiers. Many armed soldiers gang-raped women and children while pointing firearms at them. In January and July, in more than a quarter of the cases, they were raped along with many others, side by side. The frequency of such incidents varied from unit to unit depending on the commander’s attitude. Soldiers would break into the homes of German families and select women to rape, while threatening their family members at gunpoint. One or more women were then raped by them. After they had satisfied themselves, the entire family was thrown out onto the street. American soldiers continued to rape German and Austrian women at least until the first half of 1946. In May and June 1946 alone, the bodies of German women were found in American barracks on five separate occasions.

When reports of rape reached the military, officials took an interest only if the soldier who committed the rape was Black and there was concern that the rape would undermine his status or the political objectives of the U.S. military administration in Germany. Women were also raped en masse by white soldiers, against whom no action was taken. The military implemented a policy of avoiding socializing with the enemy population; however, in one sector, for example, a highly regarded military commander ruled that soldiers were in fact permitted to continue raping German women despite this policy, stating in a cynical quip that copulation [rape] without conversation does not constitute socializing, meaning that since in those moments they were merely enjoying their physical desires without engaging in any human conversation with them, they were not considered to besocializing with them, and therefore were not violating the policy. The phrase became a motto among the soldiers. Furthermore, thousands of American soldiers exploited the abundant food supplies at their disposal in the face of the hunger and desperate situation of the occupied population, presenting women with two options: to be raped by them in submission or to starve to death. This offer was mockingly called Frau bait. The amused soldiers gave them food after raping them—even though they continued to view them as enemies—in order to instill in them the realization that their survival was possible only as their prostitutes.

2.18.6.3 A Woman in Berlin (1945)

In 1954, the memoir *A Woman in Berlin* (German: *Eine Frau in Berlin*) was published anonymously, covering the period from April 20 to June 22, 1945, during the Red Army’s invasion and capture of the city. The author’s identity was revealed only after her death as Martha Hillers. Hillers was a blonde German woman in her 30s who lived in an attic apartment. She wrote that when the Red Army reached the street where she lived, a sudden silence fell. The soldiers entered the buildings and the basement shelters and selected women to rape. The women who were with her in the basement desperately tried to escape from them. She tried to convince the soldiers not to rape them and looked for a commander to beg him to stop the rapes, but her pleas were almost completely ignored.

Eventually, she was gang-raped by two soldiers outside the basement. Subsequently, she was raped by soldiers many more times. On one occasion, four Soviet soldiers broke into her apartment, and one of them, named Petka, raped her. Women in the area were raped by Soviet soldiers on a massive scale. Hillers wrote: If a woman and her neighbors went to a Soviet commander to complain about the rapes and ask for his help in stopping them, he would simply laugh. Many families desperately tried to hide their young daughters so they would not be raped and lose their virginity. Later, a Russian soldier described as an old man entered the apartment and raped her in a particularly degrading manner, forcing her mouth open and spitting into it to make her swallow his spittle. After he raped her—she vomited and cried—she realized she had to find a lone wolf who could drive the pack away, so she wouldn’t be systematically and brutally raped every day by numerous random soldiers. She went out to find a higher-ranking Soviet officer. Other women made similar decisions, because it was their only option.

On the street, she met a lieutenant from Ukraine named Anatol, described as tall and strong. He told her he would come to the apartment at 7:00 p.m. That same night, the soldier Petka also arrived with some of his friends. When Anatol arrived, he behaved casually, and she discovered that his rank meant nothing to the Soviets. Over the next few days, Anatol came again and again to rape her, thereby creating a taboo among the soldiers—that her body had already been claimed by an officer and belonged to him. However, the taboo did not always hold. Among the many visitors to the apartment, she was also raped by a blond, limping lieutenant, who completely disregarded the taboo. One day, he brought a major with him so that he, too, could rape her. The lieutenant asked her if she found the major attractive. At that point, she realized she had no choice, given that Anatole had left, and so she agreed to be raped by him in exchange for supplies such as bacon, butter, sugar, candles, and canned meat that he provided her. Hillers testified that she did not want to become a prostitute, but in her view, during wartime, the wives of the defeated sometimes have no choice but to become the prostitutes of the victors in order to survive. In German society, a German woman who became a prostitute for Soviet soldiers was considered a disgrace; therefore, in 1959, when her memoir was also published in German, it was met with indifference and vilification in the country, leading Hillers to refuse to publish another edition during her lifetime.

2.18.7 The American Occupation of France (1944–1945)

Between June 1944 and May 1945, during the U.S. invasion and occupation of France, approximately 4,500 French women were raped by American soldiers, including in late summer 1944, shortly after their invasion of the Normandy region. Many women were gang-raped by armed soldiers while guns were pointed at them. Hundreds of cases of sexual violence were reported in the region. In the Manche department alone, 208 women were raped. Furthermore, the commander of the 29th Infantry Division—known as the Blue-Gray Division—Major General Charles Hunter Gerhart, established a brothel for his troops near the city of Rennes and staffed it with French women so that they could exploit their bodies in a more organized manner. Outside the building, a sign personally approved by Gerhart was posted, reading: The Blue-Gray Pen—Riding Lessons 100 francs, mocking the victims by likening them to mares kept in a pen where soldiers came one after another to ride them. In August 1945, the mayor of Le Havre, Pierre Wozin, pleaded with the American commander in the area, Colonel Thomas Wid, to set up brothels outside his city to reduce the mass rapes taking place there. Local French men testified: With the Germans, the men had to hide themselves, but with the Americans, we had to hide the women.

2.19 World War II: The Asian Theater (1941–1945)

The Pacific Theater was a major theater of war during World War II, encompassing East Asia, the Pacific Ocean, and Oceania. The conflict began with the military expansion of the Japanese Empire and took a dramatic turn in December 1941, when Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, a move that led to the United States’ entry into the war. Initially, Japanese forces scored rapid victories and seized vast territories. However, the Battle of Midway in 1942 marked a turning point, after which the Allies began an intense island-hopping campaign toward Japan. The war was characterized by massive naval and aerial battles, as well as brutal fighting in the jungles and on the islands. The campaign came to an end in August 1945, after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and at the same time, a Soviet invasion of Manchuria began. These events led to Japan’s unconditional surrender in September 1945. Scholars describe the end of the campaign asa dramatic chapter that reshaped Asia, bringing an end to the era of Japanese imperialism in the region.

During the war, women and girls in countries and territories occupied by Japanese forces were raped en masse and with great frequency. As early as the initial stages of the invasion of the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia), many women and girls—both local and European—were raped by soldiers. White women and children were raped by them in areas such as the cities of Bandung, Padang, and Manado, the town of Belora, and the islands of Terkan and Flores. Women were raped en masse during the battles fought between the cities of Shanghai and Nanjing. In Burma, Tamil-Indian women and girls who were forced to work on the construction of the railroad were raped by soldiers, who consequently contracted sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis, gonorrhea, and chancroid. In addition, Vietnamese women were forcibly married to Japanese soldiers, bore them many children, and were abandoned after the soldiers returned to Japan in 1955. Official Vietnamese historiography regarded these children as the products of rape and prostitution. The very real danger that Chitite girls would be raped by Japanese soldiers led their families to abandon the practice of endogamy and allow pure-blooded Euro-Asians, Chinese, and Indians to marry them, in the hope that marriage would protect them.

2.19.1 The Bangka Island Massacre (1942)

On February 12, 1942, the Royal Sarawak yacht attempted to flee the city of Singapore, moments before it fell to the Imperial Japanese Army. On board were Australian and British military personnel and 65 Australian Army nurses who had been serving at the 2/13 General Hospital. The ship was bombed by Japanese aircraft and sank. About 100 survivors, including 22 nurses, reached the shore of Raji on Bangka Island in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) in lifeboats. The nurses treated the wounded, and a large Red Cross sign was erected at the site.

On February 16, mid-morning, a ship carrying a Japanese officer and about 20 soldiers arrived on the island. They saw the nurses and decided to rape them. However, first, all the wounded men who were able to walk were marched to one area of the island and massacred. Subsequently, the wounded soldiers who remained on stretchers were also slaughtered. After the nurses heard rapid bursts of gunfire, the soldiers returned to them, sat down in front of them, and, after cleaning their bayonets and rifles in front of their eyes, raped most of them. Once they had satisfied themselves with their bodies, they deemed it acceptable to kill the women as well. A machine gun was set up on the beach, and the officer ordered them to wade out into the sea. When the water reached about waist level, they were shot to death. All were slaughtered except for Nurse Bolwinkel. She was shot in the diaphragm and lay motionless in the water until the Japanese left. In postwar Australia, they were considered a disgrace because they had been raped. Therefore, for nearly 80 years, the details were suppressed, and the Australian government forbade Bolwinkel from speaking about it.

2.19.2 The Manila Massacre (1945)

Between February 3 and March 3, 1945, during the Battle of Manila in the Philippines, Japanese forces, under the command of Admiral Sanji Iwabuchi, General Tomoyuki Yamashita, and Chief of Staff Akira Moto, decided to carry out a mass extermination of the city’s inhabitants. Because so many women were raped by them during the massacre, it is also known as the Rape of Manila (in Filipino: Paggahasa ng Maynila). Between 100,000 and 500,000 civilians were massacred, including women and children. Filipino women and girls were repeatedly gang-raped.

In one instance, soldiers entered a shelter where women, infants, and children were hiding. Infants and children were stabbed with bayonets while their mothers begged for mercy. The women had first been raped by the soldiers. A young girl was raped by at least 20 soldiers before her breasts were cut off. One of the soldiers placed her severed and mutilated breasts on his chest to mimic a woman and mock what he considered the shameful appearance of women, while the other soldiers laughed. They then doused the young girl with gasoline, along with two other women whom they had raped to death, and set all three on fire. The soldiers went on to set the entire shelter ablaze and killed many of its occupants. Women who tried to flee the burning building were captured and raped by the soldiers. One of them, 28-year-old López, had her breasts cut off and was then raped by soldiers, and her hair was set on fire. Another woman had her head partially severed while trying to defend herself and was subsequently raped by a soldier. On February 10, women were raped at the nurses’ quarters of the Philippine General Hospital. On February 12, 41 residents of De La Salle College were massacred, and two women were raped. One of the soldiers also raped the corpse of one of the women. Filipino civilians who tried to flee were captured and massacred, while pregnant women were slaughtered by having their bellies slit open.

In addition, 400 women and girls from the wealthy Ermita district were rounded up and transported to a selection committee, which chose the 25 women and girls considered the most beautiful. Those selected—many of whom were only 12–14 years old—were taken to the Baybio Hotel, which had been convertedinto a rape center, where they were repeatedly raped by Japanese soldiers and officers, each in turn. More than 400 women were raped at this hotel, at the Alhambra Apartment Hotel, at the Mir Amor Apartment Hotel, and at the Manila Hotel—all of which were located in the Ermita district.

2.19.3 Japanese Military Rape Stations (1938–1945)

During the war, the Japanese Army and Navy, through a government-run system, established approximately 2,000 military rape stations within frontline army camps and imprisoned women and girls from occupied countries and territories throughout the Far East in them, so that soldiers could rape them in an organized manner. Internal military correspondence indicates that one of the objectives was to reduce the spread of sexually transmitted diseases among soldiers by conducting regular medical examinations of the victims. The stations were derisively called comfort stations (transliterated: Ianjo), and the female victims were called comfort women (in Japanese: 慰安婦, transliterated: ianfu), because their bodies gave the soldiers such great pleasure that, in their amused eyes, it comforted them amid the hardships of war. In official army and navy records, they were referred to as military supplies, female ammunition, and war supply units while being transported to the stations. Their bodies were also derisively called public restrooms by Japanese men due to their use in satisfying the physical needs of many soldiers.

Between 1938 and 1945, between 360,000 and 410,000 women and girls were held at these stations. Most were young, and a significant percentage were minors. The majority were from Korea, China, the Philippines, Thailand, Burma, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Others were from Timor, Malaya, Taiwan, Manchukuo, Micronesia, French Indochina, the Dutch East Indies, New Guinea (including some Japanese-Papuans of mixed descent), and other occupied countries and territories. The camps also held about 400 Dutch women and girls who had been taken captive in the Dutch colonies, along with other European and Western women and girls, mainly from Australia. The camps were established on the Korean Peninsula, in Manchuria (now northeastern China), in Japan, the Philippines, China, Indonesia, Malaya, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma, Taiwan, French Indochina, the Hong Kong and Macau regions, and the islands of New Guinea, Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands. They were established by order of and with the support of the army and navy authorities, and were managed either directly or through private agents. The military police were responsible for supervising them in various parts of China and on the island of Java in Indonesia. The stations were so widespread that the military offered accounting courses teaching how to manage them and determine the rate of depletion or actuarial durability of the women’s physical resources held there, given the accelerated wear and tear resulting from the frequent rapes they endured.

From the very early stages of the war, as Japan began its military expansion, the authorities started taking women captive and imprisoning them in these stations. Young women and girls were captured in their homes. Members of the Navy’s military police took women captive on the streets and imprisoned them in the stations after subjecting them to forced medical examinations. Women were also transported to the stations through deception and under false promises of jobs and payments to help alleviate family debts—for example, to work in factories or as nurses—or to supposedly pursue higher education. The military imposed quotas and often directly ordered local leaders to supply women for the stations along the front lines, particularly in rural areas where brokers were scarce. In China, in cases where the locals did not provide the soldiers with what they demanded, the soldiers carried out the Three Alls policy, which meant indiscriminately capturing and raping women, while simultaneously killing everyone, burning everything, and looting everything. The women selected to be taken to the stations were separated from their families and were often first forced to watch as their families were slaughtered by soldiers. One survivor testified that when the soldiers took her, they had already begun to flay her father’s skin while he was still alive. Women whose family members had fought against the Japanese were specifically imprisoned at these stations by military forces, such as the Naval Military Police (Tokutai), which captured women and imprisoned them at stations on the front lines in China, Indochina, and Indonesia, after their fathers had dared to attack the military police (the Kempetai).

The victims were held in filthy stations without toilets, water, or washing facilities, and were not provided with sufficient food. The conditions in the stations also led to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. The women who were first brought to the stations and initially screamed and tried to resist were usually taken immediately to be raped, like all the others, so that they would quickly learn the hard way that their resistance was futile—which completely shattered their spirits and left them with no choice but to resign themselves to their fate. On ordinary days, they were brutally raped by ten men every day, and by up to 40 men on days following a battle, while being beaten repeatedly by them, especially when they dared to try to resist. They were held at the stations for an average of three years, and it is therefore estimated that each of them was raped approximately 7,500 times. Women who tried to escape or dared to refuse to submit to rape by the soldiers were tortured. They were even forbidden from taking their own lives because their bodies were considered an essential resource in the war. The families of young women who nevertheless attempted suicide were threatened with punishment.

Many women died as a result of the brutal and sustained rape they endured. Consequently, the women held at the stations were frequently replaced by others. In many cases, those who became critically ill were cast out of the stations to die alone. Most of the survivors—an exceptionally high proportion—became infertile, either as a result of damage to their vaginas after being raped repeatedly, or as a result of sexually transmitted diseases and the Selversan injections they were often given. The victims received no medical care other than treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, and even that was intended solely to ensure that their bodies would not transmit diseases from one soldier to another. They also underwent sterilizations and abortions to ensure that their bodies would continue to provide labor. Often, the women were also raped by military doctors and medical personnel themselves while being examined by them.

At least 80% of the women held at the stations were Korean and were assigned to lower-ranking soldiers. Up to 75% of them died as a result of the frequent rapes they endured. European women, on the other hand, were assigned to officers, as their bodies were considered more alluring. In 1942, approximately 800 women were trafficked from Korea to Burma under the pretext of visiting the wounded in hospitals or rolling bandages. The overwhelming majority of the girls imprisoned in the stations came from poor families. In Korea, the daughters of prominent men or officials who had agreed to surrender to Japan were not taken to the stations as a reward for their loyalty, unless they or their family members dared to show any inclination toward independence. In that country, the army and navy often delegated the task of capturing girls and transporting them to the stations to subcontractors. These contractors were usually connected in some way to organized crime groups that were paid for their services. In Korea, a traditionally Confucian society, a woman who had sex outside of marriage was considered a disgrace, and therefore the Korean girls imprisoned in the stations were almost always virgins. The military viewed this as the best way to ensure that the victims’ bodies would not infect the soldiers with sexually transmitted diseases, thereby limiting their spread, which would impair the combat effectiveness of soldiers and sailors.

In one instance, Korean women were purchased by a Japanese station manager for 300 to 1,000 yen, depending on their physical attributes. They were confined to his station, became his property, and were not released even after fulfilling the terms of servitude specified in the contract. A Korean woman named Kim Hak-sun, who was imprisoned at the station in 1941, testified that she was raped 30–40 times a day, every day of the year. She added: When I was 17, Japanese soldiers came in a truck, beat us [me and my friend], and then dragged us into the back of the truck [which transported us to one of the stations]. On the first day, I was raped, and the rape never stopped. I feel sick whenever I get close to a man. Not just Japanese men, but all men—even my husband. I tremble every time I see a Japanese flag.

In the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), the military police established these stations and imprisoned women there, including hundreds of European women and possibly even more. Some women were also forcibly taken into officers’ homes and forced to become their sex slaves. They were considered fortunate, as each of them was raped regularly by only one man. On the island of Java, many Muslim women and girls, including about 1,000 from East Timor, were imprisoned in stations and raped by soldiers. Some were transported to stations in other regions. Common destinations included eastern Indonesia, Thailand, Burma, Malaya, the island of New Guinea, and other areas outside the colony. Many of them were girls aged 14–19, including those from prominent upper-class families, whose fathers were deceived into believing that their daughters were being transported to Tokyo, Japan, or Singapore to receive an education or to work as waitresses and actresses. Some women were also transported from the island of Flores. There, all the Indonesian women and girls held at the stations were raped by 23 men every day, including an officer, two non-commissioned officers, and 20 soldiers. Each was designated to be raped by 100 men every week and received a card from each one that she was ordered to present as proof that her body was meeting the quota. An Indonesian Muslim girl from the island of Java named Siti Fatima testified that she was promised she would be taken to Tokyo, Japan, under the pretext that she would study there, but instead was taken to be raped at one of the military stations on the island of Flores.

In the Bali district, upon the arrival of the Japanese, women were sexually abused and then imprisoned in stations until all the stations in the district were filled. Dutch women were reserved exclusively for officers because their physical attributes were considered the most alluring. Approximately 400 Dutch girls, along with other European girls from refugee camps, were transported to the stations and imprisoned there. Sixty-five women were forcibly brought into them. Others, facing starvation in the camps, agreed to offers of food and payment for work, the nature of which was not fully disclosed to them. Some sacrificed themselves to protect the younger girls. The Dutch girls were raped day and night and beaten by them on a regular basis. In the town of Balora, 20 European women and girls were imprisoned in two houses. Over a period of three weeks, the women and their daughters were brutally raped by soldiers, time and again, as their units passed by the houses.

In the Philippines, approximately 1,000 women and girls were held captive at stations, some as young as 12. The stations were spread throughout the country, both inside and outside military bases, from the northern region of the Cagayan Valley to the Davao region in the south. In the town of San Ildefonso, at a soldiers’ quarters known as the Red House (transliterated: Bahay na Pula), young women were held captive and forced into sexual slavery. Survivor Narcisa Calabria, who was held at one of the stations for 18 months starting at age 13, testified that during the day the women were forced to cook, clean, and do laundry for the soldiers, and every night they were raped by them. Another survivor, Padencia David, who was brought to the station by soldiers when she was 14, was forced to wash clothes and cook for them, and was raped every night by 5–10 soldiers.

Melanesian women from New Guinea were also held at the stations. Women were transported to the stations from the town of Rabaul (now in the Papua New Guinea region), along with several mixed-race Japanese-Papuan women born to Japanese fathers and Papuan mothers. Australian Captain David Hutchinson-Smith testified that young Japanese-Papuan girls were also held at the stations. During the occupation of the island, 16,161 Papuan women were held at the stations and raped by soldiers. Prisoner of war Gordon Thomas, who was held in the town of Rabaul, wrote in his diary that each woman was apparently raped by 25–35 men every day. A Japanese naval surgeon named Kantarō Igusa, who was stationed in the town, wrote in his memoirs that the women were ordered to wash their genitals after each rape so that they would be clean for use by the next soldiers in line. However, some of them were unable to wash them effectively—partly due to inexperience—and contracted sexually transmitted diseases, until their genitals were so swollen that they cried and begged for help in vain. Soldiers continued to rape them despite the infection and their great suffering.

In Malaya, Muslim girls were forcibly taken to stations to be raped by soldiers. A Malay woman who was raped and imprisoned at one of the stations testified: [I was] like an animal; they did to me exactly as they pleased. I had to obey their orders until I surrendered. In East Timor, even girls who had not yet begun menstruating were imprisoned in these stations. These girls were raped repeatedly by soldiers. Those who dared to refuse to be raped by them upon surrender were slaughtered. In China, in the occupied city of Shanghai, the army set up stations for the soldiers. In northern Hebei Province, Hui Muslim girls were transportedto the Hui Girls’ School under the false promise that they would receive training as entertainers, but they were imprisoned and forced to become sex slaves. In Taiwan, more than 2,000 women were imprisoned in these stations by the army. More than half of them were minors. About 100 Micronesian women from Truk Lagoon in the Caroline Islands were also imprisoned in these camps.

Survivor Suki Falconberg, who was held at one of the stations, testified: Repeated penetration by many men is not a mild form of torture. The tears at the entrance to the vagina alone burn like fire on a cut. Your genitals swell and bruise. The damage to the uterus and other internal organs can also be immense... Being used as a public dumping ground by those men left me with a deep sense of shame that I still feel in the pit of my stomach—it’s a kind of harsh, heavy, sickening feeling that never completely goes away. They saw not only my naked and completely helpless body, but also heard me begging and crying. They degraded me into something low and repulsive that suffered terribly at their hands… Even years later, it takes tremendous courage for me to put these words on the page, so deep is the cultural stigma.

The army and navy distributed large quantities of free condoms to units, to allow soldiers to rape their victims without fear that their bodies would transmit sexually transmitted diseases from soldier to soldier. The condoms were branded Attack No. 1, based on the perception of the male genitalia as the most formidable weapon of war, and the victims’ bodies as territory they conquered with amused eyes. The decision to use condoms was left entirely to the soldiers, while the women had no ability to resist when they were raped by soldiers who did not use them. In July 1943 in Malaya, the army distributed 1,000 condoms to soldiers in the state of Negeri Sembilan and another 10,000 to soldiers in the state of Perak. As the war dragged on and due to shortages resulting from the sinking of nearly the entire Japanese merchant fleet by American submarines, medical care for victims at the stations was neglected, as dwindling medical supplies were reserved for service personnel. As Japanese ships were sunk one after another by American submarines, Japanese logistics collapsed, and it was therefore decided to wash condoms and reuse them, which reduced their effectiveness. Women were ordered, after being raped by military personnel, to clean their semen from the condoms used and save them for the next soldiers in line.

Before the military forces fled from lost battles against Allied forces, they slaughtered Korean female captives held at the stations because they no longer needed them as a resource. In 1944–1945, during the Japanese forces’ final stand, women held at the stations were often slaughtered or forced to take their own lives. At Truk Lagoon in Micronesia, 70 women were slaughtered ahead of the anticipated American attack, after the Navy mistakenly interpreted the American air raid as a prelude to a U.S. landing. In Burma, some of the Korean women held at the stations were executed by hand grenades thrown into the pits where they were held, and others by swallowing cyanide pills that were given to them. During the Battle of Saipan, women held at the stations took the opportunity to end their own lives by jumping off cliffs. In Burma and the Pacific Islands, women held at the stations were slaughtered so that their bodies could provide food for starving soldiers who were cut off on remote Pacific islands or trapped in the jungles of Burma. Since the captives were held at stations set up in military camps on the battlefields, many of them were also killed by Allied forces as they overran the Pacific defense lines and destroyed Japanese camps.

After the conquest of the island of Java, Allied forces, such as the Dutch and Australians, allowed Japanese forces to continue controlling the population and raping Indonesian Muslim women on the island en masse. Dutch men themselves had been raping Indonesian women for centuries, including by holding them at military outposts for Dutch soldiers. After the war, for decades, survivors did not tell their families that they had been held at these outposts, in order to hide from them the humiliation they had endured. In Confucian cultures, such as those of China and Korea, where premarital sex is considered shameful, the survivors were ignored and ostracized for decades after the war. Traditionally in these cultures, an unmarried woman must value her chastity above her life, and any woman who loses her virginity before marriage for any reason is expected to take her own life. The victims’ choice to continue living turned them into outcasts. In 2012, former Osaka Mayor and co-leader of the Japan Restoration Party, Taro Hashimoto, stated that the role of the women who were imprisoned in the stations against their will was necessary during the war, because between battles, soldiers needed to rest, in his words, on women’s bodies. In the years following the war, many Korean women were afraid to reveal that they had been held at the stations, for fear of being shunned and subjected to further humiliation.

2.19.3.1 Testimony of Jan Raff-O’Haran (1944)

In February 1944, senior Japanese officers arrived at an abandoned military prisoner-of-war camp in the town of Ambarwa on the island of Java. They ordered all young women aged 17 and older to line up so they could select from among them those whose bodies would give the soldiers the greatest pleasure. Ten women and girls were selected, including the 21-year-old Australian-Dutch woman of Irish descent, Jeanne Alida Jan Raff-O’Haran. She and six other young women were escorted by officers to a military station in an old Dutch building in the city of Semarang. On the first morning, they were photographed, and the photographs were placed on the veranda, which served as a reception area, so that the soldiers, while waiting for their turn, could choose which of them they wished to rape. Over the next four months, the young women were systematically raped and beaten by the visitors day and night, and those who became pregnant were subjected to forced abortions. Raf-O’Haran tried to resist every time she was raped, but to no avail. She even cut her hair so that her body would not tempt the soldiers, but this step had the opposite effect because her body aroused their curiosity even more.

In the society where the victims lived, a woman who had been raped was considered a disgrace; therefore, after the war, they—along with many parents of the young girls, who believed their daughters had been held at the stations—remained silent for decades. Raf-O’Haran remained silent until 1992. On February 15 , 2007, she testified: One story has never been told—the most shameful story of all: the story of the ‘comfort women,’ and how these women were forcibly taken against their will to provide sexual services to the Imperial Japanese Army. I will never be able to forget.At the comfort stations, I was beaten and raped systematically, day and night. Even the Japanese doctor raped me every time he came to examine us for sexually transmitted diseases. For 50 years, the comfort women remained silent. They lived in terrible shame, feeling filthy and dirty.

2.19.4 The Soviet Invasion of Manchuria (1945)

Between August 9 and 20, 1945, Soviet forces invaded and occupied Manchuria and the northern part of the Korean Peninsula, which were under Japanese control. During the invasion and occupation, Japanese women and girls were raped en masse by Soviet soldiers and their Mongolian allies, as occurred in the city of Harbin. They were often raped with the encouragement and even the participation of the local Chinese population, which opposed the Japanese occupation. In Manchukuo, women were repeatedly raped by soldiers on a daily basis, including 75 nurses who worked at the Sonwoo Military Hospital and girls whose family members worked for the military and on the railroad at the airport in the city of Beian. During the occupation, troops entered the Beian Airport—where some 1,000 Japanese refugees were staying—every day to rape their daughters. Every day they selected ten girls. Those chosen were raped by them repeatedly. The Soviets rejected all pleas from Japanese officers to stop the rapes, replying that the officers should hand over their wives to be raped, as they were their spoils of war. In the town of Gaganmiao—now known as Gaganmiao Zhen (in Japanese: 葛根廟鎭)—women and children were raped by soldiers, sometimes after being slaughtered. Soviet forces previously stationed in Berlin received permission from the Red Army to enter the city of Shenyangfor three days of rape.

During the Gaganmiao Massacre, more than 1,000 women and children were raped and slaughtered by soldiers and armed local Chinese rioters. In another incident, a Japanese woman was raped by residents after her child was slaughtered by soldiers. Another woman, whose child had also been slaughtered by soldiers, was stripped of all her clothes by residents and had her breasts cut off with a sickle. On August 14, women from a group of families who were trying to flee their villages, along with local leader Yamada Tami, to the city of Modangjiang, were raped by soldiers. On August 15, another group of women who were trying to flee to the city of Harbin, along with their local leader, Ikeda Hiroko, and who eventually returned to their villages, were raped by soldiers. In the northern part of the Korean Peninsula, Japanese and Korean women were also raped by soldiers. Many Japanese women married local Manchurian men (mostly Chinese), hoping they would protect them from Soviet soldiers. They were left behind and became known in Japanas abandoned war wives (transliteration: zanryu fujin).

2.19.5 The Battle of Okinawa (1945)

Between April and June 1945, Allied forces invaded and captured the island of Okinawa. During the war, Japan frequently warned its citizens that if the country were defeated, all Japanese women would first be raped by Allied soldiers and only then slaughtered by them. Therefore, soldiers and civilians in the occupied areas were ordered to fight to the death or take their own lives. As a result, in July 1944, women on the island of Saipan took their own lives in mass suicides, including by jumping off Banzai Cliff and Suicide Cliff. When U.S. Marines landed on the island, they combed through an entire village on the Motobu Peninsula. All the young men had been drafted into the war, so the Marines found only women, children, and the elderly. Taking advantage of the situation, they began hunting down women in broad daylight to rape them. Those who had hidden in the village or in nearby shelters were dragged out one by one, and before long, all the women of the village had fallen into their hands. Up to 10,000 Okinawan women were raped by the invading soldiers and those who landed later as part of the occupation.

Rape was so widespread that most of the island’s residents knew or had heard of a woman who had been raped. Many women were raped with merciless brutality, and as a result, some were left with severe physical injuries. In fact, it was not only Japanese women who were raped by soldiers; it was enough to be a woman of East Asian appearance to be deemed worthy of rape in their eyes, as happened, for example, to some Korean sex slaves whom the Japanese forcibly transported to the island. During the battle, Okinawan women were also raped by Japanese soldiers who viewed the Okinawans as inferior, just like the Chinese and Koreans. They knew there was little chance they would survive due to the military’s ban on surrender, and so they chose to take advantage of their bodies before their deaths.

In one instance, members of the 4th Marine Regiment marched south and passed a group of about ten soldiers who had gathered in a tight circle near the road. A corporal marching with them testified that the soldiers seemed quite excited and assumed they were playing craps (a dice game), and then, as we passed them, I could see that they were raping an Asian woman, each in turn. Our unit continued marching as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. In another incident, three African-American Marines aged 19–20—Private James D. Robinson, Private John M. Smith, and Private Isaac Stokes—used to visit the village of Katsuyama every week. Each time, they ordered the villagers to round up all the local women so they could rape them in what they, to their amusement, regarded asa weekly ritual. After the women were violently rounded up, they were forcibly taken to the nearby hills and raped by the marines. Some of the women who were raped became pregnant and gave birth to mixed-race children. Others became pregnant but did not give birth because they were murdered immediately after being raped or underwent backstreet abortions performed by village midwives—some even before their husbands returned from the war. The survivors were considered a disgrace, and thus almost all of them remained silent out of fear, and their rape was kept as a sordid secret. Many were left behind. Reports of rape that were received were met with wholesale disregard by the military police. More than five decades after the end of the war, the women who had been raped still did not dare to speak out.

2.19.6 The Occupation of Japan (1945–1952)

On August 15, 1945, Japan announced its surrender. The Japanese were well aware of the history in which Japanese soldiers had raped the wives and daughters of the defeated in China and elsewhere, and assumed that the Allied occupation forces would behave similarly. Consequently, the Japanese government and several prefectural governments issued warnings to women, urging them to stay in their homes and in the company of men who would protect them. The police in Kanagawa Prefecture, where the Americans were expected to land first, urged young women and girls to flee the area. Some prefectural authorities urged women to take their own lives before being raped, and if that was not possible, then immediately after being raped. They called for moral and spiritual education to enforce this directive. Upon the arrival of the occupation forces, women began to be raped by them en masse. During the Okinawa campaign and the early stages of the American occupation, thousands of women in the Ryukyu Islands were raped by soldiers. In the first month alone, at least 3,500 women were raped by them. During the first weeks of the occupation, in naval ports such as the cities of Yokosuka and Yokohama, women were frequently raped. When American paratroopers landed in the city of Sapporo, women were gang-raped by them, and some subsequently took their own lives. Japanese women who begged soldiers for food were raped by them, and sometimes received food from them afterward.

On April 4, 1946, shortly before midnight, about 50 soldiers who arrived in three trucks attacked the Nakamura Hospital in the Omori district to rape the women staying there. Upon hearing a whistle—which served as their signal to begin raping them—they raped more than 40 female patients and about 37 female staff members over the course of an hour. One of the women was holding her two-day-old baby. The infant was thrown to the floor and killed as a result, and the mother was then raped by the soldiers. Male patients who tried to defend the women were slaughtered. On April 11, between 30 and 60 American soldiers cut the telephone lines to a residential building in the city of Nagoya, and at the same time raped many women and girls aged 10–55 who were staying there, unhindered. In another case, a 10-year-old girl from Tokyo was raped to death by two soldiers. Her body was found severely mutilated in a car after she had lost a great deal of blood. A significant amount of blood had pooled in the back seat, where a blood-soaked undershirt was also found. In the cities of Yokosuka and Tateyama, many women who were alone in their homes were raped by soldiers at gunpoint or under the false pretense that they had come to give them money. Even in government offices and other public places, women who were alone were raped. In the city of Musashino, elementary schoolgirls were gang-raped.

Women were also raped by members of the British Commonwealth occupation forces stationed in Japan, which included Australian, British, Indian, and New Zealand troops. They were often raped by Australian soldiers. A survivor testified: Most people in Kura stayed inside their homes and pretended not to know anything about the rapes committed by the occupation forces. The Australian soldiers were the worst. They dragged young women into their jeeps, took them up the mountain, and raped them. I heard them screaming for help almost every night. An Australian Army officer, Alan Clifton, who served as an interpreter and investigator, testified: I was standing next to a hospital bed. Lying on it was an unconscious girl, her long black hair scattered wildly across the pillow. A doctor and two nurses were trying to revive her. An hour earlier, she had been raped by 20 soldiers. We found her where they had left her, on a desolate patch of land. The hospital was in Hiroshima. The girl was Japanese. The soldiers were Australian. Her moans and cries ceased, and she lay still. The contortions of agony on her face had vanished, and her soft, brown skin was smooth and wrinkle-free, streaked with tears like the face of a girl who had cried herself to sleep.

During the first ten days of the occupation of Kanagawa Prefecture, 1,336 women were reported to have been raped. In September 1945, in the city of Yokohama, 119 women were reported to have been raped. On September 3, for example, a woman was gang-raped by 27 soldiers. In 1946, 301 women were reported to have been raped, in 1947—283 women, in 1948—265 women, in 1949—312 women, in 1950—208 women, in 1951—125 women, and in 1952—54 women. However, these figures represent only a fraction of the total number of cases, as they refer, as noted, to reported cases only. Women who were raped were considered a disgrace in Japan, and therefore almost all of them refrained from reporting the incidents out of fear. Cases that were reported were either censored and suppressed by the military or not dealt with seriously. At the start of the occupation, the Japanese press reported on cases of rape for two weeks. In response, on September 10, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces and the U.S. authorities imposed extensive and immediate censorship on all Japanese media. This censorship included press laws and prior restraint that prohibited the publication of reports of rapes committed by the occupying forces, including all reports and statistics, and even prohibited any mention of the existence of the censorship itself. The censorship continued until the end of the occupation in 1952.

2.19.6.1 Rape Stations for the Occupation Forces (1945–1946)

In 1945, upon its surrender, Japan anticipated that Japanese women and girls would be raped en masse by Allied forces during the occupation. Therefore, on August 21, it began rapidly establishing its own extensive network of military rape stations where women and girls consideredimpure anyway—such as prostitutes and those who had already been raped—would be held, so that their bodies could satisfy the brutal urges of more than 300,000 Allied soldiers. The official justification was that this measure would protect all women and girls from rape. The stations were established in areas where the forces were stationed. Government officials referred to the women held there as patriotic dams that prevented the mass rape of pure women and girls and protected their modesty. At a ceremony attended by government and police officials,the followingoath was read: Through the sacrifice of thousands of ‘Okichis’ of our time, we are building a breakwater to stop the raging waves and to protect and nurture the purity of the race. The term Okichis is derived from the name of Saito Kichi (known as Okichi)—a servant of Townsend Harris, the first U.S. consul to Japan (1856–1861) —who was forced to sacrifice her body and provide sexual services on a regular basis in the service of the Japanese Empire.

The Japanese government established the Recreation and Amusement Association (RAA; in Japanese: 特殊慰安施設協会, transcribed as Tokushu Ian Shisetsu Kyōkai) to manage the stations and stationed 55,000 women within them. The stations were derisively called comfort stationsand consolation facilities, and the women and girls were referred to as comfort women, because their bodies gave the soldiers such great pleasure that, in their amused eyes, it comforted them amid the hardships of war. The stations were also derisively called brothels. Women from the lower classes were sacrificed and sent to the stations to protect women from the higher classes. The collaboration between the police and medical authorities in enforcing discipline and order over women considered impure left those who had been raped with no choice but to take their own lives.

From the beginning of the occupation, Allied military officials cooperated with the initiative, and in September 1945, American commanders asked the Japanese authorities to establish the stations for their soldiers, even offering the assistance of the military police if necessary. The urge among Allied soldiers to rape Japanese women was so intense that, while the stations were still under construction and some were not yet ready to open, hundreds of soldiers broke into two of the stations and raped all the women being held there. In the city of Yokohama, more than 100 American soldiers broke into one of the stations and raped 14 women held there. Up to 70,000 women were held in the stations and forced to provide sexual services to American soldiers. They were often raped. Military police and soldiers sometimes demanded free services or monetary compensation from them. The victims found it difficult to file complaints due to the power imbalance between the Japanese police and Allied soldiers. American medical officers established prophylactic stations that distributed tens of thousands of condoms per week in the red-light districts and within the large stations; nevertheless, there was a massive increase in sexually transmitted diseases among the soldiers. This was one of the reasons why, in early 1946, the stations operating under official auspices were closed. As a result, the number of women raped outside the stations—which had stood at about 40 per day—skyrocketed to an average of 330 per day after their closure. This figure illustrates that the Japanese authorities had succeeded, through these stations, in protecting many women from rape.

2.20 The Bangladesh Liberation War (1971)

The Bangladesh War of Independence took place in 1971 and was a decisive armed conflict between West Pakistan and East Pakistan. The war erupted following years of political, economic, and cultural discrimination against the people of the East and reached a point of no return after the central government refused to recognize the victory of the Awami League, led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, in the 1970 democratic elections. In late March 1971, the Pakistani military launched a brutal crackdown known as Operation Spotlight, intended to crush all national resistance. In response, Bangladesh’s independence was officially declared, and local civilians, together with deserting soldiers, formed a national guerrilla force. The conflict was marked by brutal acts and mass killings of the population—events that many historians today defineas genocide. As a result of the violence, tens of millions of refugees fled to neighboring India. In December 1971, India openly intervened in the conflict, leading to a brief all-out war against Pakistan. In less than two weeks, the combined forces of the Indian Army and Bengali fighters completely defeated the Pakistani forces, which surrendered in Dhaka. The victory ensured the establishment of a new sovereign state, in a historic eventthat redrew the map of South Asia and ended Pakistan’s control over this part of the subcontinent.

During the war, between 200,000 and 400,000 Bengali women and girls from all castes and religions (Hindu and Muslim)—and perhaps even more—were raped by members of the Pakistani military and pro-Pakistani militias. They were raped systematically and with indiscriminate brutality as part of a deliberate and organized military strategy. Men in West Pakistan believed that Hindus were inferior, and therefore Hindu women and girls were the primary targets. Hindu women were often raped first and only then slaughtered, with bayonets thrust into their genitals. In contrast, Bengali Muslim women were perceived as Hindus or as possessing Hindu characteristics, and as having a gene pool that neededto be corrected through forced impregnation as part of the West Pakistanis’ plan to create a new race. Therefore, they were deliberately raped and forcibly impregnated by soldiers and officers, and then kept alive to force them to give birth to corrected offspring. According to Bangladeshi demographics, 80% of the women who were raped were Muslim. Religious leaders (including imams, mullahs, and fatwa issuers from West Pakistan) openly declared that the forces were permitted to rape Bengali women because their bodies were, in effect, spoils of warand public property (transliterated: gonimoter maal). Non-Hindu girls were ordered to recite Muslim prayers. Those who did not know the prayers were raped, while those who did were likely to be spared.

Pakistan’s secret service (the Inter-Services Intelligence) established, in collaboration with the political party Jamaat-e-Islami, pro-Pakistani Islamist militias, such as Al-Badr and Al-Shams, which were tasked with raping Bengali women. Women were also raped by local Bengali fighters who collaborated with Pakistani forces during raids on villages, such as the Razakars. Members of the Jamaat-e-Islami party and some of its leaders, who had lost the elections in Bangladesh, collaborated with Pakistani forces in the rape of women. Among those involved were senior leaders such as Jamaat-e-Islami party leader Motiur Rahman Nizami; Jamaat-e-Islami deputy leader Dalwar Hussein Sayedi; Razak militia member Abul Kalam Azad; and leaders Golam Azam, Salah al-Din Qader Chaudhury, and Ali Ahsan Muhammad Mujahid. On July 25, the senior aide to the Secretary-General of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, Muhammad Kamaruzaman, planned and advised on the rape of women in the village of Shuhagpur. A member of the Razak militia, Abdul Qadir Mulla, raped women and minors in the Mirpur area. General Amir Abdullah Khan Niazi, who commanded the Pakistani army in Bangladesh, used to declare in the presence of officers how his army would treat Bengali women: I will change the race of this nation of bastards (transliteration: Main iss haramzadi qom ki nasal badal doonga), meaning that his soldiers would rape them and thereby force them to bear offspring of a corrected race.

The tactic for conquering towns was as follows: In the first stage, the infantry was left behind and artillery was brought to the front. Hospitals and schools were shelled, leading to utter chaos in the towns. In the second stage, the infantry entered and sorted the residents by gender, excluding small children. The women were taken to designated rape camps under guard so that their bodies would be available to the soldiers. During raids on villages by army units and militias, men were massacred in a widespread and recurring pattern, while women were first raped within the villages themselves, often in front of their family members. Some women were raped repeatedly until they died. Others who survived were slaughtered. Meanwhile, Muslim women from the Bihari community living in Bangladesh were raped en masse by Bengali nationalists because the community was accused of supporting Pakistan. Women were also raped en masse by Bengali rebels from the Mukti Bahini militia. On the night of March 25, women from Muslim families were raped by Bengali forces and militias stationed in East Pakistan, and some had their breasts cut off with specially designed knives. Many of them were refugees from the Indian state of Bihar whose families had chosen Pakistan during the partition riots of 1947. In late 1971, when India invaded Bangladesh, Bengali women were also raped by Indian military forces.

On April 17, a member of the local Razakhar forces from the village of Ramchandpur, Kanan Odin Sarkar, promised 50 Hindu families from the neighboring areas in Sharpur District—specifically the sub-districts of Badranj and Birpur, and the villages of Koolahati and Aptabgangj—safe passage to India. However, after they were rounded up, they were detained in the village of Braihat (now in the Pulwari subdistrict). Members of the Razakhar and Al-Badr militias looted their money and jewelry. Subsequently, another member of the Razakhar militia who was close to Sarkar informed the Pakistani Army of their detention. At 11:00 a.m., they were escorted by the Pakistani Army to the village of Akira, 100 meters south of the village of Braihat. They were ordered to stand in two lines near a pond: the men in the first line and the women and children in the second. Machine-gun bursts were then fired at the first row, while teenagers and children were stabbed to death with bayonets. After the soldiers had massacred them, they turned their attention to the women in the second row and brutally gang-raped them all on the spot.

From the start of the war, members of the local Razak militia, under the command of Madriç Ali, ordered the residents of the village of Naria to convert to Islam and forcibly marry their daughters to Muslim boys in order to save themselves from an attack on the village. The residents refused, and the militiamen threatened to teach them a lesson. On May 5, 12 soldiers from the Sharfor camp arrived on foot at the village via the nearby village of Sadohati. The village was populated mainly by poor and underprivileged Hindus who earned their living through manual labor. It was surrounded by numerous hills, making it inaccessible during the monsoon season, when village boats were the only means of transportation to and from the village. When the soldiers arrived in the village, the remaining residents tried to flee for their lives, but local collaborators from the Razak and Al-Badr militias prevented them from doing so. More than 100 residents were taken captive and brought to the home of Kamini Kumar Dev, a villager, where it was decided to massacre the men and rape the women. The women and children were separated from the men and locked in a room, while the men were lined up and massacred by machine-gun fire. Afterward, the women were raped by the soldiers.

As the Pakistani army spread out from the city of Dhaka toward the provinces, the Hindus tried to flee Bangladesh to seek refuge in neighboring India. On their way, they thought they had found shelter in the remote village of Boshgari in the Demra Union. On May 13, the army, aided by local collaborators, entered the area via the Bural River and blockaded the village. A collaborator named Asad led the forces into the village. As darkness fell, the men were dragged out of their homes and lined up so they could first watch their wives being raped. The women were then brought out, laid on the ground, and raped by the soldiers in front of their husbands. After the soldiers had their way with them, they massacred all the men and all the women they had raped (about 350 residents) and set their homes on fire.

On May 26, a group of five soldiers under the command of Captain Shufayat from the town of Fatuahali arrived secretly by motorboat. Beginning on the morning of May 27, the soldiers and local collaborators raided the town of Barghuna. It had been raining continuously since morning, and most of the residents remained in their homes. They were unaware of the raid and therefore had no opportunity to flee the town. By evening, the soldiers had taken some 500–600 residents captive (including about 150 women), tied them up with ropes, and led them to the sub-district prison in the town. The women were separated from the men and placed in the women’s wing. Later, the soldiers would enter the wing and select women to rape at their discretion. Those who dared to refuse to submit to rape were kicked, beaten with rifle butts, and sometimes shot to death. Afterward, all the women were taken to an adjacent empty ward, where they were gang-raped by the soldiers throughout the night. Some were also taken to be raped at the bungalow housing Wards B and C, where the armed military forces had set up their temporary camp. In the morning, the women were returned to the ward with bloodstains on their bodies as a result of the rapes they had endured.

On the night of October 6, a group of 60–65 armed Razak militia members, led by Iskandar Ali Merida, Mokul Ahmed Badesha, Ansar Ali Khalifa, and Sayed Haulder, raided the homes of the Haulder and Mitra families in the village of Angulkata. They broke down the doors and tied up the men, women, and children. They then raped the women, and only after they had satisfied themselves did they take 37 men, bound with ropes, to be killed.

At the end of the war, a West Pakistani soldier proudly declared: We are leaving, but we are leaving our seed behind. A huge number of women were left pregnant, and between 25,000 and 250,000 women were forced to give birth. During the first three months of 1972, 30,000 babies were born, and 170,000 women and girls underwent abortions, of which about 5,000 were self-induced. Some of the babies were sent for adoption outside the country, a practice encouraged by Bangladesh’s founding president, Mujibur Rahman, who declared: I do not want this tainted blood in this country. Many women took their own lives. Most of the victims contracted sexually transmitted infections. The survivors were forced to cope not only with physical injuries and trauma but also with a conservative and hostile Muslim society that viewed them as symbols of social contamination, humiliation, and disgrace, and even mockingly called them whores (transliterated: Barangonara). They were ostracized by their husbands, their families, and their communities, and only a few were able to return to their families and homes. Few men agreed to marry them, and those who did expected the state to compensate them with a large dowry. The women who did marry were often abused, and most were abandoned after their husbands received the dowry. The victims were left with little support from the state or the community.

2.20.1 Pakistani Rape Camps (1971)

During the war, the army also established military rape camps for soldiers and militia members. Girls as young as 8 and women as old as 75 were taken captive and held as sex slaves in barracks derisively called brothels. Many of them were raped en masse, and sometimes immediately afterward, they were slaughtered in mass executions. Others were left alive and raped repeatedly. Many of them were eventually slaughtered or took their own lives. Some used their own hair to hang themselves. In response, the soldiers shaved the women’s heads. In March and April, 563 teenage girls were taken captive and held by the army in a rape camp. All of them became pregnant. The army began releasing them only after they were already between the third and fifth months of their pregnancies, when abortions were no longer possible. The army also held many women in rape camps within the city of Dhaka. Most were captured at the university and in private homes. Officers not only allowed their subordinates to rape them but also used them as sex slaves themselves. Some of the women were forced into prostitution.

In one case, two sisters named Aliya and Laili were held in rape camps. Aliya was transported by the military to a rape camp when she was 13, where she was repeatedly gang-raped over a period of seven months. She was in her fifth month of pregnancy when she returned home. Lily was already pregnant when she was captured by armed forces and taken to a rape camp. As a result, she had a miscarriage. Both testified that they were subjected to verbal abuse while being raped. Another girl named Khadija, aged 13, was taken captive by a group of soldiers while on her way to school with four other girls. All five were taken to a rape camp in the Muhammadpur district of Dhaka, where they were held and raped for six months, until the end of the war.

2.21 The Indonesian Occupation of East Timor (1975–1999)

The Indonesian invasion of East Timor, codenamed Operation Lotus, began in December 1975 following the withdrawal of the Portuguese Empire and the declaration of independence by the local party. Fearing the establishment of a communist state on its border, and with the tacit support of Western nations, the Indonesian army, acting on orders from the government in Jakarta, invaded the territory and began a harsh military occupation. During the invasion and the subsequent occupation, which lasted some 24 years, the Indonesian military employed excessive force and brutal repression against resistance movements and the local population. This period was marked by severe violence, mass starvation, and disease, which claimed the lives of tens of thousands of civilians—events defined by historiansas a humanitarian disaster of the highest order. Despite stubborn resistance, Indonesia officially annexed the region as another province. Indonesian rule came to an end only in 1999, when, following a political crisis and mounting international pressure, a referendum was held under the auspices of the United Nations. In this referendum, the overwhelming majority of residents voted for independence, which ultimately led to the end of the occupation and the establishment of the sovereign state of East Timor.

During the occupation, thousands of Timorese women were raped by Indonesian soldiers as part of the campaign, sometimes simply because they were relatives or associates of men suspected of being resistance fighters. On December 7, 1975, the Indonesian military (ABRI/TNI) invaded East Timor as part of an operation known as Lotus (in Indonesian: Operasi Seroja), under the pretext of anti-colonialism and anti-communism, to dismantle the organizational framework of the government led by the Fretilin Party, which had been established in 1974, and to bring about its downfall. During the first months of the occupation, the army faced heavy resistance from rebels in the mountainous regions of the island’s interior; however, in 1977–1978, it acquired new and advanced weapons from the United States and other countries. The overthrow of the short-lived People’s Government sparked a violent quarter-century of occupation during which between 100,000 and 180,000 soldiers and civilians were killed or starved to death, including during the invasion of the capital, Dili. Indonesian forces and their auxiliaries were responsible for 70% of the killings.

The military kept files for its soldiers containing lists of womenwho were available for them to rape at any time. Women received official summonses instructing them to report to military facilities to be raped by soldiers. These lists were passed between army battalions, resulting in the women on them being raped repeatedly. Women were also systematically and institutionally forced to become sex slaves for soldiers with the army’s support, and were often forcibly married as part of army policy. Women were also raped during interrogations conducted by Indonesian authorities. In one case, a woman was forced to live with a commander in the city of Baokau. In another case, a woman was repeatedly raped during her interrogation, which lasted for weeks. Another woman was stripped and interrogated while half-naked, while being subjected to brutal sexual abuse under threat of death. In yet another case, a woman was forced to walk naked past a line of soldiers and then to enter a container filled with urine and feces. Women who were raped were considered a disgrace, and therefore hesitated to report the incidents, in addition to the intense and strict military surveillance imposed during the occupation. Children who were taken captive were also raped.

2.22 The Civil War in Sierra Leone (1991–2002)

The civil war in Sierra Leone was a brutal armed conflict that lasted over a decade, from 1991 to 2002. The war broke out when the Revolutionary United Front, with the support of foreign forces, launched a rebellion against the government of Sierra Leone in an attempt to seize control of the country’s institutions and natural resources, particularly the diamond-mining regions. The conflict was characterized by extreme violence, directed largely against the civilian population, and included mass amputations, widespread recruitment of child soldiers, and horrific massacres. During the conflict, various forces intervened, including private security companies, regional forces, and, ultimately, a peacekeeping force sent by the United Nations and the United Kingdom, which played a decisive role in driving back the rebels. As described in numerous studies, the illegal tradein blood diamonds fueled the war machine and contributed to the continued bloodshed. The war officially ended only after massive international intervention, following which the rebel organizations were disarmed and a special tribunal was established to try war criminals. The conflict left behind tens of thousands of dead, millions of refugees and displaced persons, and an entire country in need of a profound reconstruction of its infrastructure and social fabric.

During the war, between 215,000 and 257,000 women and girls were brutally raped by fighters from the United Revolutionary Front, the Revolutionary Council of Armed Forces, the Civil Defense Forces, and the army. The militia fighters raped them indiscriminately, regardless of age, but they clearly preferred to rape young women and girls, as well as virgins. Some women were raped so brutally that they subsequently bled to death. Victims were often gang-raped by multiple men (76% of survivors). Most also had objects forced into their vaginas, such as burning firewood, knives, umbrellas, and sticks. Members of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) militia would carve the organization’s initials (RUF) into the bodies of the women they raped, putting them at risk of being mistakenly identified by government forces as members of the group. Women and girls were also trafficked as sex slaves by the army and militias. One-third of the women were raped while in captivity, and 15% of them were forced into sexual slavery and even trafficked to refugee camps. In addition, women and girls were subjected to forced marriage.

Furthermore, from the start of the war and throughout its duration, the Revolutionary United Front militia forcibly recruited females and male children (up to 30% of whom were girls, and 80% of whom were between the ages of 7 and 14). The boys were given weapons and were intended to become combatants, while the girls were often denied access to weapons and were primarily intended to serve as sex slaves for the men in the militia. They were routinely and brutally raped, sometimes by a single man and sometimes in groups by several men. Recruited women were ordered to submit to being raped by them. However, although militia members were permitted to rape forcibly recruited women, they often also raped women outside the militia. The male children who were recruited were trained, among other things, to rape women and girls and turn them into their sex slaves, as part of their training as combatants. The Revolutionary Council of the Armed Forces also recruited children as combatants who raped women and girls. At the end of the war, 6% of the survivors reported that they had become pregnant, and 34% reported that they had contracted sexually transmitted diseases. Girls also contracted the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Women who were raped were ostracized from the community (both socially and economically) and labeledas unfit for marriage because they had lost their virginity. Consequently, a common phenomenon after the war was that they remained with their husbands (former rebels) who had married them by force, or were forced into prostitution in order to survive.

2.23 The Abkhazian War (1992–1993)

The Abkhazian War (1992–1993) was a bloody armed conflict between Georgian government forces and Abkhazian separatists, who received military support from Russia and fighters from the North Caucasus, including Chechen militias. The war broke out in August 1992, after Georgia sent its army to the region to regain control of the territory and secure transportation routes and railways. In response, the separatists launched an armed struggle to secede from Georgia. The fighting was characterized by severe violence against the civilian population and widespread massacres. The turning point of the conflict occurred in September 1993, when separatist forces captured the city of Sukhumi, the region’s capital. The capture of the city led to the complete withdrawal of Georgian forces and the mass expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Georgian civilians from their homes, in an event now knownas the ethnic cleansing of Georgians in Abkhazia. The war ended with a military victory for the separatists, who declared the region’s de facto independence, although the international community still considers it a sovereign part of Georgia. The conflict left deep wounds in local society and reshaped the political map of the Caucasus region.

During the war, women and young girls were brutally raped by Abkhazian soldiers, separatists, and their allies. In October 1992, after the town of Gagra fell to Shamil Basayev’s battalion, all the women and girls who had not managed to flee in time were captured, dragged from their homes, and raped by soldiers before being slaughtered. The Abkhaz commander Arshava himself raped a 14-year-old girl and only then ordered her execution. Soldiers were eager to rape young girls. An elderly Georgian woman who survived testified: They brought a blind man and his brother. They began beating the blind man, his brother, and his wife with the butt of a pistol and kicking him. He fell. One soldier said, We won’t kill you, but where are the young girls? In another instance, a woman testified that a man was forced to rape his daughter, a teenage girl. Soldiers also raped corpses. On July 5, the village of Kamani fell to the separatists and their allies from the North Caucasus. The village was inhabited mainly by Svans (an ethnic subgroup of the Georgian people) and Orthodox nuns who lived in the Church of St. George in the center of the village. The villagers (including women and children) were massacred, and the church became a scene of bloodshed. The nuns were first raped in front of the Orthodox priests, Father Yuri Anoa and Father Andria, and only then were they slaughtered.

Following the Abkhaz attack on the town of Ochamchira, the residents were expelled to the municipal soccer stadium in the town of Akhaldaba, where the women and girls were separated from the men. The men were taken to be immediately executed, while the women and girls were first taken to be raped. For several hours, while the men were being massacred, the women and girls were raped. Afterward, they too were slaughtered. Between February 8 and 13, 1994, the Abkhaz separatist militia and their allies attacked villages and populated areas in the Gali region. Residents were massacred, homes were destroyed, and women were raped. In addition, Abkhaz separatists set up detention camps where they held women and girls for 25 days, during which time they systematically raped them. An elderly Georgian refugee who survived the war testified: They captured a young girl who was hiding in the bushes near the house where her parents had been massacred. She was raped several times. One of the soldiers killed her and mutilated her body. She was cut in half. Next to her body, they left a note: Just as this body will never be whole again, Abkhazia and Georgia will never be united.

Lila Gultiani, a former resident of the Ochamchira District who was taken captive by Abkhaz separatists, testified: I lived in Abkhazia 15 years ago, in the small town of Akhaldaba, in the Ochamchira District. Abkhazians attacked our town on September 16, 1993. It was impossible to hide anywhere from the bullets that rained down on us. The Russian Cossacks approached me and began beating me. One of the Russian Cossacks approached me and asked if I had ever had sex with a Cossack. He grabbed me and tried to tear off my clothes. I then began to resist, but they slammed my head against the ground and the butts of their AK-47s. Afterward, they took me to an Abkhazian school where Georgian civilian prisoners were being held. There were several pregnant women and children of various ages there. The Cossack battalion continued to arrive there regularly. They took young girls and boys and systematically raped them. They were 10, 12, 13, and 14 years old. They specifically targeted children. One of the girls was 8 years old. She was abducted by various groups of Cossacks and raped many times. I don’t know how she managed to survive after so many rapes. They also took women, but later they began taking older women. They raped these older women in ways I don’t want to describe—it was horrific.

2.24 The Bosnian War (1992–1995)

The Bosnian War took place between 1992 and 1995 and was one of the bloodiest conflicts that erupted following the breakup of Yugoslavia. The war broke out following Bosnia and Herzegovina’s declaration of independence, which led to an uprising by Bosnian Serbs supported by Serbia, as well as fighting by other ethnic groups, including the Croats. The fighting was characterized by extreme cruelty toward civilians, large-scale ethnic cleansing, mass extermination, and the establishment of detention camps. One of the most notable and tragic events of the conflict was the prolonged siege of the capital, Sarajevo, as well as the Srebrenica massacre, which was officially recognized by the international communityas genocide. The conflict was so complex and devastating that researchers have called it the most serious crisis in Europe since the end of World War II. The war came to an end in late 1995 following military intervention by NATO forces and international diplomatic pressure, which led to the signing of the Dayton Agreement. This agreement reshaped the country’s political structure and divided it into autonomous entities along ethnic lines. Although the agreement officially brought an end to hostilities, the conflict left behind a divided society and tens of thousands of victims, refugees, and displaced persons whose homes had been destroyed.

During the war, between 20,000 and 50,000 women and girls were systematically and brutally raped by men from all sides and ethnic groups in Bosnia and Croatia. Most of them were Bosniaks, and some were Croats who were raped by Serbian forces (officers and soldiers) of the Army of the Republika Srpska, the police, the Yugoslav Army, and members of the irregular units known as Chetniks. They raped them with the support of local authorities and commanders, and even on their orders, as part of a well-organized, planned, systematic, official, and targeted military policy—and as a strategic objective in itself—aimed at the destruction of the ethnic group. Women were gang-raped in public on the streets and in their homes, in full view of their family members, villagers, and neighbors. Women were also raped using objects such as broken glass bottles, pistols, and clubs. In addition, women were forced into sexual slavery and prostitution. Bosnian society is patrilineal, in which children are considered to inherit their ethnic origin from their fathers. Therefore, the attackers mocked the victims they raped, saying that as a result, the women would bear children of their own ethnic origin.

Women were raped most systematically in eastern Bosnia, for example in the Grbavica neighborhood during the siege of Sarajevo, and during the massacres in the towns of Poča and Višegrad. In the town of Poča, during the attack on the non-Serb population, non-combatant men were massacred, while women and girls (most of them Bosniaks) were taken captive and raped en masse, repeatedly, by members of the Serbian armed forces, including those under the command of Gojko Janković. The commander of the Serbian Višegrad Brigade, Momir Savić, personally raped a Bosniak woman repeatedly. On May 23, 1992, around noon, approximately 1,000 Serbian soldiers from the Yugoslav People’s Army invaded the village of Hambrina, massacred the residents, and set houses on fire. Women were raped by them. On July 24, Serbian forces from the 5th Kozara Brigade from the city of Prijedor and the 6th Krajina Brigade from the town of Sanski Most invaded the village of Brisbo on foot and launched a massacre that lasted two days. They slaughtered Croatian residents wherever they were found and burned houses and property. Many women were raped first and then slaughtered. Conversely, Serbian women were also raped by Croatian and Bosniak forces during the war. After Croatian Defense Council forces invaded the town of Orašje in April 1992, Serbian women were raped by them.

In the area around the town of Višegrad, many women were systematically raped by soldiers of the Army of the Republika Srpska and members of a local paramilitary group called the Avengers, the Wolves, and the White Eagles, under the command of Milan Lukić. The group had ties to the local police and Serbian army units. On June 14, 1992, a group of 70 Bosniak residents, mainly from the village of Koritnik, were confined to a house on Pionirska Street in the town of Višegrad. Before they were massacred, some of the women were first taken out and raped. They were then returned to the house, and a grenade was thrown inside, killing some of them. Finally, the house was set on fire, and 59 of them were burned to death. In July 1995, Serbian forces invaded the town of Srebrenica and its surroundings, where tens of thousands of Bosniak refugees had gathered. Men and boys were taken away to be exterminated, while thousands of women and girls were raped by soldiers in the streets. Refugees saw them being dragged away and raped and heard them screaming, but they could do nothing because soldiers were standing nearby.

Survivor Zomera Homrovich testified: At some point, the Serbs began taking young women and girls out of the refugee group. They were raped. The rapes often took place in front of others and sometimes even in front of the mothers’ own children. A Dutch soldier stood nearby and just looked around with a Walkman on his head. He didn’t react at all to what was happening. The Dutch soldiers were everywhere. It’s impossible that they didn’t see it. It didn’t just happen in front of my eyes, but in front of everyone’s eyes. I saw horrifying things. For example, there was a girl who was probably about seven years old. At one point, some Četniks [Serbian fighters] urged her brother to rape her. He didn’t do it, and I also think he couldn’t have because he was still a child. Afterward, they murdered that young boy. Survivor Kada Hutić testified about one of the incidents: I heard a woman begging , ‘Leave her alone, she’s only nine…’ The screams suddenly stopped. The rumor spread quickly later that a nine -year-old girl had been raped.

That same night, a medic from the Dutch battalion saw two soldiers raping a girl: We saw two Serbian soldiers; one of them was standing guard while the other was lying on top of the girl, without his pants on. And we saw a girl lying on the ground, on some kind of mattress. There was blood on the mattress, and she was covered in blood. She had bruises on her legs, and blood was running down her legs. She was in a state of complete shock. Survivor Zrka Turković testified about a woman who was raped right before her eyes: Two men held her legs and lifted them into the air, while a third began to rape her. Four of them raped her, each in turn. People remained silent, and no one moved. She screamed, cried out, and begged them to stop. They stuffed a rag into her mouth, and then we could only hear muffled whimpers.

During the war, many women and girls became pregnant after being raped. A study conducted among 68 Croatian and Bosniak survivors found that 44 of them were raped more than once, 21 were raped daily throughout their captivity, and 29 became pregnant. Women and girls who were raped contracted sexually transmitted diseases. During the war, approximately 3,000 men and boys were also raped anally and orally in detention camps and elsewhere. Male prisoners were forced to brutally rape one another. These acts included mutilation of their bodies and the infliction of blunt force trauma to their genitals. It is estimated that the stories of hundreds, if not thousands, of male victims will never be heard, either because they died afterward or out of shame. Due to Bosnia’s male-dominated culture, many of them were ostracized from their communities, often considered unmanly, and even accused of being homosexual. After the war, children born to women who had been raped suffered an identity crisis in adulthood because society required them to identify as Bosniaks, Serbs, or Croats.

2.24.1 Serbian Rape Camps (1992–1995)

During the war, Serbian authorities established rape camps where more than 35,000 Bosniak and Croatian women and girls were held for the use of Serbian forces, under unbearable conditions of filth. In some of the camps, they were forced into prostitution and raped for money. Women’s wings in regular detention camps also functioned as rape camps. Bosnian society was patrilineal, with the belief that children inherited their ethnic origin from their fathers; therefore, one of the stated goals of these facilities was to forcibly impregnate Muslim and Croatian women to compel them to give birth to a new generation of Serbian children. These facilities were established, among other places, in the camps of Katerem, Maniaca, Omarska, Tarnopolia, Ozamnica, Vino, Vilina, and Las. In fact, 80% of all women and girls who were raped during the war were raped in these facilities over extended periods. They were brutally raped repeatedly for years and were released only after they had become pregnant and were in the late stages of their pregnancies, to ensure that they could no longer have abortions. Serbian soldiers and police officers regularly visited the facilities, selected one or more women they wished to rape, took them out, and raped them in full view of everyone, with the full knowledge and often direct involvement of local authorities, particularly the police. In other cases, girls were taken from the facilities and held in various locations for extended periods or trafficked and sold as slaves.

Throughout the town of Poča after its capture in April 1992, Serbian authorities established numerous rape facilities where hundreds of women and girls were systematically gang-raped by soldiers, police officers, and members of Serbian paramilitary groups. The local police were involved, and the head of the police force, Dragan Gagović, even used to visit these facilities himself to select women to rape according to his own preferences. Those selected were taken from the facilities and raped by him. A commander in the Army of the Republic of Srpska, Dragoljub Konarac, and his men also routinely visited these facilities to select women and girls to rape according to their preferences. The women and girls who were selected—some as young as 14—were taken from the facilities and transported to the soldiers’ base (a house at 16 Osman Džikić Street), where they were repeatedly raped by them. One of the houses, known as Karman’s House, was converted into a rape facility run by Commander Radovan Stanković. Bosniak women, including girls as young as 12, were held there and brutally raped time and again by Serbian forces who regularly visited the site in exchange for payment. The facility was derisively called a brothel. Girls held in various detention centers were regularly taken out by soldiers and held as sex slaves. Many of the women held in these facilities were never heard from again.

A commander in the Army of the Republic of Srpska, Radomir Kovač, personally held four girls in his apartment and raped three of them numerous times, one of whom was 12 years old. He also invited friends to his apartment and allowed them to rape the girls. He later lent two of them to soldiers, who gang-raped them for more than three weeks. After they were returned to him, he immediately sold one of them as a sex slave and gave the other as a gift to a friend. He later sold the remaining girls.

In the city of Duboj, non-Serbian women who were not immediately slaughtered were taken captive at various locations throughout the city under inhumane conditions and raped. The factory operated by the Bosanka company in the city, which produced jams and juices, and a school in the village of Grapska in the area were also converted into rape facilities. Four types of forces were present at these facilities: the local Serbian militia, the Yugoslav Army, police forces of the Serbian Republic of Krajina based in the city of Knin—known as the Martićevići—under the command of Milan Martić, and members of the White Eagles group. A former housing complex at the Olympic Stadium in the city was also converted into a rape camp. Thousands of Bosniak and Croatian women were imprisoned there and systematically raped en masse. The various Serbian paramilitary groups operating in the area, which were an offshoot of the Yugoslav People’s Army, also used this resource for financial gain, calling on Serbian men in the area to come to the facility and systematically rape the women in exchange for payment. Due to the high demand for raping them, buses were organized to transport men from Belgrade and its surroundings to the facility. Many women died at the facility as a result of the brutal rapes they endured. In the detention camps in the city, Serbian forces kept women separate from men, but they would arrange meetings between women and their family members, during which they forced the men to rape them. Women were interrogated about the whereabouts of their relatives, and the meetings were then arranged. In one case, a 14-year-old boy was forced to rape his mother.

At the Klinovik camp, approximately 100 women and girls aged 60 to 12 were held captive and routinely subjected to gang rape. A survivor testified that her rapists told them repeatedly: You will give birth to our children. You will give birth to our little Četniks [Serbian nationalist fighters], and that they were raping them to implant [within them] the seed of the Serbs. Whenever the Serbian men felt like raping them, the Serbian national anthem, March on the Drina (transliterated: Marš na Drinu), was played over the camp loudspeaker, signaling to them that they were about to be raped again and that they should be prepared. Often, women from the same family were selected. Many women were beaten while being raped, sometimes brutally, and some were forced to carry their pregnancies to term and give birth.

At the Omarska camp between the spring and summer of 1992 (over a period of five months), between 5,000 and 7,000 Bosniaks and Croats were held in inhumane conditions. Women in the camp were brutally raped, beaten, mutilated, and slaughtered as a matter of routine. In May 1992, Serbs from the village of Snagovo surrounded the village of Liplja, captured it, and turned it into a concentration camp where they imprisoned 400 people in several houses. Houses where women were held were converted into rape chambers, and they were brutally raped by the Serbs on a regular basis. At the Ozamnica camp, in one instance, the captive men were forced to rape captive women. In the city of Sarajevo, Bosniak and Croatian women were forced into prostitution and confined in a facility derisively called a brothel. United Nations forces stationed in the area also regularly visited the facility.

On May 24, 1992, the Tarnopolja camp was established by the military and police authorities of the Republika Srpska in the village of Tarnopolja. Between 4,000 and 7,000 men, women, and children were held there at any given time (most of them Bosniaks and some of them Croats), and between May and November 1992, approximately 30,000 prisoners were held there. Food and water were insufficient, and the prisoners often suffered from hunger and thirst. Sanitary facilities were also inadequate. Most of the prisoners slept outdoors. The camp was guarded on all sides by the Serbian army. Machine-gun nests and well-armed positions were set up, with their weapons aimed at the camp. The soldiers used baseball bats, iron bars, rifle butts, their hands, their feet, and anything else they had at their disposal to beat the prisoners. Women and girls were raped by soldiers, police officers, and camp guards. They were usually raped at night. Many women were taken out of the camp at these hours by soldiers and raped by them. Consequently, at night there was great terror among the women and girls over the possibility that they would be taken away to be raped.

In the Visegrád area, the Vilina and Las Hotel was converted by the Ujica Brigade into one of the main and most exclusive rape facilities. Only women and girls considered beautiful and carefully selected were held there—so that, among other things, they would bear Chetniks, as the soldiers put it—while older women were taken to be raped elsewhere, such as in occupied or abandoned houses. About 200 non-Serbian women and girls from the area, mainly Bosniaks (many of them under the age of 14), were brought to the facility by police officers, members of the White Eagles paramilitary groups, and the men of commanders Željko Žentović Arkan and Vislav Ššel. The facility was derisively referred to as a brothel. The victims were brutally raped by visitors on numerous occasions and beaten with clubs. Milan Lukić, the leader of a local group of military fighters known as the Avengers, the Wolves,and the White Eagles, who had set up his headquarters in the hotel, personally raped one of the women several times and executed female captives held there. The hotel manager, Duško Andrić, also raped women held at the facility. Police Commander Risto Prisić assisted in their rape, torture, and execution. Most of them died or took their own lives, and fewer than ten survived. Their bodies were never found because they were buried in hidden locations and later reburied. Another rape camp was also established at the Visegrád Hotel.

2.24.2 Croatian and Bosniak Rape Facilities (1992–1995)

During the war, Croatian and Bosniak forces also established rape centers. At the detention camp in the village of Čelvići, which was under Bosniak and Croatian control and commanded by Zdrabko Močić, Serbian women were brutally and routinely raped. His deputy, Hazim Delić, personally raped two women. In another case, a woman was interrogated by the local Croatian commander of the Jokers militia, Anto Porondžija, who participated in the ethnic cleansing in the Ljušava Valley and was under the command of the Croatian Defense Council. During the interrogation, she was attacked by Porondžija, beaten, and raped in her mouth and anus by another soldier. At the Derteli camp, where most of the prisoners were Serbian civilians held in inhumane conditions, women were raped and told they would be held until they gave birth to an Ostaša (a Croatian child who would become a fighter in their militia). In the city of Sarajevo, Serbian women and girls were brutally raped in facilities run by Bosniaks and derisively referred to as brothels. In 1993, at a detention camp in the municipality of Vitez, the commander of the military police of the Croatian Defense Council, Ante Kovač, personally raped a Bosniak woman. At the Helidrom camp in the town of Rodoc, Serbian and Bosniak women were held together and subjected to sexual assault.

2.24.3 The Croatian-Bosnian War (1992–1994)

During the war, a sub-conflict also broke out between Croatia and Bosnia, during which Bosniak women were raped by Croatian forces. In the Ljuba Valley, Bosniak residents were massacred and women were raped. On June 19, the town of Novi Trevnik was attacked by Croatian forces. Bosniaks living in the lower part of the town were massacred, and women were raped. Units of the Croatian Defense Council, under the command of Ivica Raić, including the Matorića and Ban Josip Jelačić Brigades, invaded Bosniak villages in the municipality of Kisljak, massacred residents, and raped women. On October 23, 1993, Croatian forces from the Croatian Defense Council units known as Apostoli and Matriča, under the command of Raić, took control of the Bosniak village of Stopni do. Commanders and soldiers forced residents to leave their homes and hiding places and robbed them of their valuables. Most of the residents who fell into their hands (between 37 and 44 people) were massacred, while the women were raped beforehand. All the houses were looted before being set on fire. By the following day, most of the village had been destroyed. Between October 23 and November 3, in the town of Varaš, the property of Bosniaks was looted by commanders and soldiers of the Croatian Defense Council, under the command and supervision of Raić, and women were sexually abused.

2.25 The Genocide in Rwanda (1994)

The Rwandan Civil War was an armed conflict that took place between 1990 and 1994 between the Rwandan government, which was controlled by the Hutu, and the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a rebel organization composed mainly of Tutsi exiles. The war broke out in October 1990 when rebel forces invaded Rwanda from Uganda to overthrow President Juvénal Habyarimana and ensure the return of Tutsi refugees to their homeland. Although the Arusha Accords were signed in 1993 to end the conflict and establish a joint transitional government, political and ethnic tensions persisted. The tragic breaking point came in April 1994, when the president’s plane was shot down and he was killed. This assassination served as the immediate triggerfor the genocide in Rwanda, in which hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and moderate Hutus were brutally massacred in just about 100 days. In the wake of this, the Patriotic Front, under the command of Paul Kagame, resumed fighting, and in July 1994 succeeded in capturing the capital, Kigali, and taking control of the entire country. This military victory put an end to the civil warand the genocide, but it immediately led to a massive refugee crisis, as millions of Hutus fled to neighboring countries—an event with dramatic consequences that reshaped the entire region.

Even before the genocide began, Tutsi women were raped during the civil war. In early October 1990, Zaire sent hundreds of soldiers from the Special Presidential Division to the city of Kigali. They went straight to the front lines and began fighting the Rwandan Patriotic Front militia. Women were raped by soldiers in the north of the country, and their homes were looted. During the genocide itself, between 250,000 and 500,000 Tutsi women and girls throughout the country and of all ages, including pregnant women, were systematically and brutally raped by Hutu men from the Interahamwe militia, the Rwandan Defense Forces, members of the Presidential Guard, and civilians, as an integral and deliberate part of the genocide against the Tutsi people. Many were gang-raped by them. Hutu leaders (both military and political) encouraged and even ordered, at both the national and local levels, the mass rape of these women. Government forces also recruited Hutu civilians and ordered them to rape their Tutsi neighbors. One of the goals was to force them to convert, as Rwandan society is patriarchal and patrilineal, with children inheriting their lineage from their fathers. Furthermore, Hutu women who were considered moderate, politically identified with the Tutsis, were married to Tutsi men, or dared to hide Tutsis were also raped by Hutu men.

In preparation for and during the genocide, organized propaganda was widely used, both in the print media and on the radio, to encourage Hutu men to rape Tutsi women, as on the Radio des Mille Collines, which portrayed their bodies as objects of desire. The propaganda played an important role and contributed significantly to their widespread, brutal, and highly publicized rape. Cartoons in the print media depicted them as sexual objects. One of the cartoons published in the magazine Kangura even depicted the head of the United Nations peacekeeping forces in Rwanda himself, Romeo Daladier, enjoying the bodies of two Tutsi women, with a caption in Kinyarwanda stating that he, his men, and his army were, in fact, powerless against their seductive bodies. Another cartoon depicted three Belgian paratroopers having sex with Tutsi women. Agathe Evelingaymana, who served as prime minister and was slaughtered early in the genocide, was herself portrayed in political literature and propaganda as sexually promiscuous.

Combatants mocked their victims and taunted them: You Tutsi women think you’re too good for us,so let’s [rape them and thus] see what a Tutsi woman tastes like. Victims were often raped in public, in places such as schools, churches, roadblocks, government buildings, and among bushes. Residents were forced, through violence and threats, to stand nearby and watch as they were raped. While some were being raped, their bodies were mutilated, particularly their breasts, vaginas, and buttocks. Some were also raped using objects such as sticks and weapons—which often led to their deaths. Women and girls were also forced to become the collective sex slaves of Hutu men for several weeks, and some were forcibly married. Even pregnant women were raped. One of the survivors, Mary Louise Nyobohongiro, testified that she was raped about five times a day, and each time she saw local people, generals, and Hutu men watching her being raped. Between rapes, she was forced to work the land.

In addition, Hutu men released hundreds of men with AIDS from hospitals and organized theminto rape squads so that they would infect the victims and condemn them to a slow and inevitable death. Survivors testified that the men who raped them mocked them, saying that after they had satisfied themselves, they would not kill them so that they would experience a slow death from the disease. Many of them contracted the virus. One survivor testified: For 60 days, my body served as a playground for all the thugs, militiamen, and soldiers in the district. These men completely destroyed me. They caused me so much pain. They raped me in front of my six children. Three years ago, I found out I had AIDS. Between April 19 and the end of June 1994, the Minister of Family Welfare herself, Pauline Nirmasohoko, along with her son Arsen Shalom Ntaehubali, members of the Intrahamwe militia, and soldiers, arrived at the prefectural office in the city of Butara to take hundreds of refugees captive. The women were first raped by them, and then all were massacred at various locations throughout the Ngoma commune.

After the victims were raped by them, in many cases they were slaughtered while the fatal blows were aimed at their reproductive organs. The genitals and buttocks of others were sometimes cut off and mutilated with machetes, knives, sharpened sticks, boiling water, and acid, among other things, in order to destroy their reproductive capabilities. The deputy force commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda, Major Brent Birdsley, testified that he saw the bodies of six- and seven-year-old girls who had been raped by them with such brutality that their vaginas were torn and swollen, leaving no doubt that they had been gang-raped. He testified: There was a lot of rape. It seemed that everywhere we went from April 19 until the moment we left, there was rape everywhere near these killing sites.

Almost all the women who survived the massacre were raped, sexually abused, or deeply traumatized by such acts, and among them, almost all the Tutsi women were raped. It is estimated that as a result, they gave birth to between 2,000 and 10,000 babies, and possibly even more. In an attempt to prevent this, women tried to perform abortions on their own. Many of them suffered from sexually transmitted diseases, including syphilis, gonorrhea, and AIDS, and discovered that they were HIV-positive, including thousands of widows. A study of 1,200 widows found that two-thirds of them were HIV-positive, and infection rates in rural areas had more than doubled. Access to antiretroviral drugs was limited. Survivors also suffered from long-term stigma and social isolation, and their rapists were not held accountable. Survivors were considered unfit for marriage, and some of those who were married were abandoned by their husbands. They were denied their rights to property and inheritance, their employment opportunities were often limited, and they were pressured not to reveal that they had been raped. As a result, some dared to speak about it only years later, if at all. The children born to women who had been raped also suffered from stigma and were referred to as children of bad memories (in French: les enfants mauvais souvenir)and unwanted children (in French: enfants indésirés). Meanwhile, other women continued to be held as personal sex slaves for several years and were even forced to move to neighboring countries with their captors.

2.26 The Congo Wars (1996–2020)

The Second Congo War, also knownas the African World War, was a bloody conflict that took place in the Democratic Republic of the Congo between 1998 and 2003. The war broke out following a severe crisis of confidence between the Congolese president, Laurent Désiré Kabila, and his former allies, Rwanda and Uganda, who supported a rebellion against him. In response, Kabila received military support from other African countries, including Angola, Zimbabwe, and Namibia. The conflict drew in nine countries and dozens of armed groups, becoming the deadliest conflict since World War II. Millions of people lost their lives during the war, the vast majority as a result of disease and mass starvation, and millions more were displaced. In 2001, President Kabila was assassinated, and his son Joseph took his place and began promoting the peace process. Despite the signing of peace agreements in 2002 and the establishment of a transitional government in 2003, local violence continued to pose a threat in various regions of the country. Researchers describe the conflict as an unprecedented humanitarian disaster that left deep scars on the social and economic fabric of Central Africa, accompanied by the systematic plundering and exploitation of the country’s natural resources by all warring parties.

During and in the aftermath of the wars, more than 2,000,000 women, girls, and infants ranging in age from one year to 90 were raped by military and police forces, by other authorities, and by militia members from all armed factions, such as the Lord’s Resistance Army, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, the Alliance of Patriots for a Free and Sovereign Congo, the Congolese Patriotic Opposition, the Patriotic Resistance Front of Ituri, the Nationalist and Integrationist Front, the Patriotic Forces for the Liberation of Congo, the Mai-Mai, the National Congress for the Defense of the People, the March 23 Movement, the Twa people living in the Tanganyika region, and other local and foreign militias, including armed groups from Burundi and Rwanda (among them Hutu militiamen), as well as by civilians. Army forces were the primary perpetrators, and the rapes occurred mainly in the eastern part of the country, in North Kivu Province, South Kivu Province, and the provinces of Maniema and Katanga. It is estimated that approximately 48 women were raped every hour. The victims were raped by them systematically and with exceptional brutality. Women and girls were sometimes forced to become sex slaves and prostitutes and were even subjected to forced marriage.

Commanders often allowed their fighters to raid villages and rape the women and girls as a prize. Some even ordered them to rape the women. In many cases, the women were gang-raped in public, even in front of their family members and community members, who were forced to watch. These public rapes became so common that they were even given the name la reigne, a corruption of the word Le Règne (rule in French). During these incidents, the women were stripped, tied upside down in the middle of the village, and gang-raped by the men. More than half of the victims were raped while working in the fields, usually by groups of armed men. Women were beaten and raped by them and then left lying on the ground. Others were raped during raids on their villages. Many women were raped in the thickets where they tried to hide after fleeing their homes. Women were also captured and raped while trying to flee to refugee camps. In North Kivu and South Kivu provinces, violence against women involved unimaginable cruelty. Women and girls were raped by armed groups and forced into sexual slavery. The attacks by the anti-government Kamoyina Nsapo militia and the pro-government Bana Mora militia on civilians led to an increase in sexual violence. Women were raped in front of their relatives. In one case, a man was forced to perform sexual acts on a female relative before he was executed.

Boys serving in the armed groups also raped women and girls. Sixteen-year-old Noel Ruabirinebe, for example, who had been a militiaman for two years, proudly declared: If we see girls, it’s our right; we can rape them. Women were also routinely raped by officials in detention facilities. Men were sometimes even forced to rape their own female relatives. After raping women and girls (including five-year-old girls and 80-year-old women), they inserted rifle barrels into their vaginas and opened fire. The genitals of others were mutilated with knives and razor blades. Objects such as tree branches and bottles were shoved into the body cavities of some. Chemicals were poured onto the genitals of others, and molten rubber was poured into women’s vaginas.

On October 12, 2002, forces of the Congolese Liberation Movement and the Congolese National Movement, under the command of Colonel Freddy Ngalimu, captured the town of Mambasa and raped women en masse. In 2003, sexual assaults by soldiers from armed groups and the army continued in the eastern provinces. In 2006, approximately 12,000 women and girls were raped over a six-month period. In 2007, 54% of the cases of sexual abuse documented in the first six months were committed by army soldiers. As of 2008, up to 200,000 women had been sexually abused. Since 2009, there has been an increase in the number of women raped by the country’s armed forces. In 2009, approximately 1,100 women and girls were raped each month, and 72% of them reported being tortured while being raped. From January 2010 through December 2013, 3,635 women and girls were reported to have been raped (some in gang rapes) by state forces (nearly half), including the military (35.2%), and by armed groups. Of all victims, 73% were women and a quarter were girls. A study conducted in the North Kivu province found that 22% of women had been victims of sexual violence.

After the war, up to 200,000 rape survivors lived in the country, and 13% of them were under the age of 14. One of the survivors, for example, a 14-year-old girl, had already given birth twice after being raped and impregnated by force. Between January and July 2010, 66 children under the age of three and 50 women over the age of 65 were admitted to Fanzi Hospital in Bukavu after being sexually abused. The brutality with which the victims were raped led to serious health problems. Fistulas were common, and access to reconstructive surgery in the country was limited. Eighty-seven percent reported discharge from their vaginas (in 41% of cases, the discharge consisted of feces and urine), and 79% reported lower abdominal pain. A review of medical records among 658 survivors at the St. Paul Health Center in Obira revealed that 9% were infected with HIV, 13% with syphilis, and 31% with gonorrhea. Few survivors sought medical care due to the associated costs and because, if it became publicly known that they had been raped, they would face social stigma and be ostracized by their families and communities. In addition, 77% reported suffering from trauma that led to nightmares and insomnia, and 91% reported living in fear and feeling ashamed. Men who were raped and dared to admit it risked being ostracized by their families and communities and even facing criminal prosecution because they might be perceived as homosexual, which is considered a crime in the country.

2.26.1 The Kivu Crisis (2004–2020)

After the war, all warring parties continued to rape women and girls in North Kivu and South Kivu provinces on a massive scale. Thousands of women and children were raped by them every week. Many women were gang-raped by them while being beaten. Many armed groups also took boys and girls captive to recruit them into their ranks. In February 2004, forces of the Congolese Assembly led by Goma laid siege to the city of Bukavu for ten days. During this period, they massacred residents and raped women and children, some as young as three. A study conducted between 2005 and 2006 among 2,465 female patients at a medical center in the city of Bunia in Ituri Province found that 73% of them had been raped by armed men. In August 2007, it was reported that 181 women were raped in the village of Mutenda in Rutshuru District. That same month, fighters from the National Congress for the Defense of the People militia, under the command of Laurent Nkunda, raided ten high schools and four elementary schools and forcibly abducted the children to recruit them into their ranks. In a recurring pattern, boys were forced to become soldiers, while girls were forced into sexual slavery.

On October 31, 2008, Nkunda announced alleged plans to create a no-fire zone where displaced persons could return to their homes, while the militia actually used the zone to recruit residents into its ranks. Men and boys were forced to become soldiers, while women and girls were sexually abused and forced into sexual slavery. Residents who refused were executed without trial. After militia fighters captured the towns of Kiwanja and Rutshuru, they raped at least 16 women and girls over a period of weeks. Between January and September 2009, more than 1,400 residents were massacred, mainly women, children, and the elderly. Women were previously raped by them on a massive scale. In the first nine months of this year, more than 7,500 women were reported to have been sexually abused—and that is based solely on reports from health centers in North Kivu and South Kivu provinces. In 2010, for example, the leader of the Mai-Mai Shaka militia, Netabo Netabri Shaka, ordered his soldiers to rape women and girls in the town of Walikala for three days to punish its residents for cooperating with government forces. At least 387 women, children, and even men were gang-raped by them. In August 2010, more than 500 women were raped in the east. In a 2010 study, 30% of women in the east reported having been sexually abused. By 2011, approximately 2,000,000 women and girls had been raped in connection with the conflict, while 400,000 women and girls were raped in that year alone.

In 2012, 72 women were raped by members of the March 23 militia in the town of Minova. In November 2012, Congolese army forces, having lost a battle, retreated from the front lines to the town of Minova. Having been accustomed to facing male combatants, they suddenly found themselves confronting defenseless women and girls, who were easy prey for them as they sought to regain their lost sense of superiority. All the women and girls in the town (more than 1,000) were systematically raped by them over the course of three days. In 2013, members of the March 23 militia executed residents without trial in populated areas, after first raping the women. At least 61 women were raped by members of the March 23 movement near the city of Goma. In November 2013, dozens of women from the village of Pinga were taken captive by members of the Mai-Mai Shaka militia and forced into sexual slavery. On May 1, 2015, during an attack on the Kikamba area in southern Kivu, 100 women were raped. In 2017, there was an increase in the number of cases of sexual violence committed by the military and police, and 41% of the sexual violence committed by the military and 42% of that committed by the police was directed at children. By 2024, the number of women raped had doubled. In addition, Sudanese and Central African women were taken captive and forcibly transported to the country by the Lord’s Resistance Army militia, where they were forced into sexual slavery.

While women were the primary victims of rape, the rape of men and children was also common: a study conducted in 2005–2006 among 100 male patients at a medical center in the city of Bunia in Ituri Province found that 95.2% of them had been raped by armed men. In 2009, the rape of men and boys was systematic and on the rise. In 2020, a young man from Tanganyika Province was stripped of all his clothes by members of the Tewa militia, raped, and then forced to rape his own mother.

2.27 The Darfur War (2003–2020)

The Darfur War is an ongoing armed conflict taking place in the Darfur region of western Sudan, which officially broke out in February 2003. The fighting began when rebel groups, including the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement, rose up against the Sudanese government, citing ongoing discrimination and oppression of the non-Arab African population. In response, the Sudanese government launched a brutal military campaign, deploying armed militias known as the Janjaweed. These forces, backed by the government, carried out a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the region’s inhabitants, which included the destruction of villages, looting, and mass killings. The conflict led to one of the most severe humanitarian crises of the 21st century, with hundreds of thousands killed and millions of refugees and displaced persons forced to flee to camps in Sudan and neighboring countries such as Chad. Violence and instability continue to be part of daily life in the Darfur region even in the years that followed.

After the Janjaweed forces surrounded a village and invaded it, they went from house to house and massacred the men and boys, while raping the women and girls; or they herded everyone to a central location, where they killed the men and boys, and then raped the women and girls. In the second phase, the forces moved out to nearby villages and towns, to internal displacement camps, or to the border crossing with Chad, in order to rape the women and girls who were trying to flee them. In a remote area of Darfur, more than 400 women and girls were raped. Some of the women were raped in front of their husbands. Women and girls were raped in particular while leaving the displacement camp or their settlement to search for firewood. Survivors testified that the men who raped them called them derogatory names in Arabic, such as slaves (transliterated: abid)and black women (transliterated: zurga). Survivor Suela Suleiman testified that her attacker mocked her about why he was raping her, saying: Black girl, you’re too dark. You’re like a dog. We [are raping you because we] want to father a light-skinned baby [with you]. After women were raped by Janjaweed militiamen, their bodies were branded. The victims’ genitals were routinely mutilated. Women were also taken captive and sold as sex slaves.

On August 24, 2006, it was reported that hundreds of women had been raped around the Kalma refugee camp during the preceding weeks. In another incident, seven women who had left the camp to gather firewood were gang-raped by Janjaweed forces while being beaten by them. They then stripped them of all their clothes, released them, and watched as they tried to flee naked while the soldiers laughed. In November 2014, the town of Tabit, whose residents are mostly Fur, was attacked by government soldiers in three waves of assaults that lasted a day and a half. Men were taken captive, while 221 women and girls were raped. In addition, residents were beaten and their property looted. Through 2015, Rapid Support Forces continued to rape women. In this society, a woman who had been raped was considered a disgrace to her entire family; consequently, the women and girls who were eventually released suffered from ostracism, fear, and intimidation by many government officials. They did not return to their families and remained silent. Furthermore, they were unable to access the affected areas.

2.28 The Boko Haram Insurgency (2009–2025)

Boko Haram is a radical Islamist terrorist organization operating primarily in northeastern Nigeria and in neighboring countries such as Chad, Niger, and Cameroon. The organization was founded in 2002 to enforce Sharia law in the region and to combat foreign cultural influences, as implied by its name, which is commonly interpreted to mean that Western education is a sin. In 2009, the organization launched a violent armed insurgency against the Nigerian government, which has escalated significantly over the years. Boko Haram’s struggle is characterized by extreme brutality directed largely at the civilian population and includes suicide bombings, widespread massacres, the destruction of entire villages, and mass abductions of women and children. The most well-known incident in this context is the abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls in the town of Chibok in 2014, a crime that sparked deep shock and condemnation around the world. In 2015, the group pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS), a move that subsequently led to ideological and organizational splits within its ranks. The bloody conflict with Nigerian security forces and the regional military coalition became one of the deadliest conflicts on the African continent, leading to a severe humanitarian crisis in the Lake Chad Basin region, which claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people and left millions of refugees and displaced persons whose homes had been destroyed.

The militia held a rigid ideology toward women and girls. According to its view, they were not meant to attend school and receive an education, but rather to serve as sex slaves for men and to cook for them. Therefore, during their raids, its members took them captive and turned them into their sex slaves or forcibly married them. Since 2014, at least 2,000 women and girls have been taken captive by the militia, and many of them have been forced into sexual slavery. On the night of April 14, 2014, militia members raided the government-run high school for girls aged 16–18 in the town of Chibok, which had a Christian majority, to take them captive and rape them repeatedly. The students were forced to leave the school, and some were immediately loaded onto trucks waiting outside. The rest were forced to walk several kilometers and were then also loaded onto militia trucks that had arrived in the area. A total of 276 girls were transported in the vehicles, all or most of them apparently to fortified militia camps in the Konduga area of the Sambisa Forest, a nature reserve spanning 60,000 square kilometers.

The girls were converted to Islam and forcibly married off to militia members. The price for each girl was 2,000 naira ($6). Many girls were also transported with fighters to neighboring Cameroon and Chad to be sold into forced marriages for less than a dollar each. On May 5, shortly after 1:00 p.m., the militia released a video in which Shekau claimed responsibility and stated that the girls should not have been in school but rather married, because girls as young as nine are already suitable for marriage, and therefore they had been forcibly married off by the militia . He added: Allah ordered me to sell them. I will carry out his orders, because the use of women and girls as slaves is permitted under Islam. A week later, the militia released another video showing about 130 of the girls dressed in chadors and long Islamic hijabs. Shako stated in the video that many of the girls were not Muslim and that they would treat them as the Prophet Muhammad had treated the infidels he had taken captive. He threatened that if the militia members detained in prisons were not released, the girls would remain in captivity and they would, in effect, continue to rape them on a regular basis.

On May 30, 2014, two of the girls were found raped, dying, and tied to a tree. Villagers testified that the militia had left them in that condition and had slaughtered four other defiant girls, whom they then buried. Later that year, four girls managed to escape and walked for three weeks until they reached safety on October 12. They testified that they had been held in a camp in Cameroon and raped every day. In April 2015, the militia filmed the girls being raped and distributed the video, setting conditions for their release. It declared that it was willing to release 18 of the girls because they were already terminally ill and some were HIV-positive. However, in the end, they were not released. They were taken by another militia that believed their bodies could still be exploited for profit. In August 2016, the militia released another video on Shekau’s orders, featuring about 50 of the girls, some of whom were holding babies they had given birth to after being raped. A masked, armed spokesman standing beside them demanded the release of imprisoned fighters in exchange for their freedom. He stated that 40 of them had been forcibly married. In April 2023, two girls were rescued along with a baby that one of them had given birth to after being raped. Both had been forcibly married three times while in captivity. Women and girls released from the militia’s captivity were considered a disgrace because they had been raped, and therefore often faced rejection from their communities and families.

On February 19, 2018, at 5:30 p.m., the militia raided the government-run College of Science and Technology for Girls in the town of Dapchi, kidnapping 110 girls and young women aged 11–19 and slaughtering five. The militia agreed to release the rest in exchange for a huge ransom only after they agreed to convert to Islam, with the exception of 14-year-old Leah Sheribo, who was kept captive because she refused. Militia fighters warned the parents of the released girls not to dare send them back to school. As for Leah Sharibo, the militia decided to show her what fate awaits an infidel, as they put it, who refuses to convert to Islam. She was forcibly converted and married off to a militia commander. He raped her repeatedly, and as a result, she first gave birth to his son. At the end of 2020, she gave birth to his second child, and in 2023, to his third. As of 2025, she was still being held captive.

2.29 The Syrian Civil War (2011–2024)

The Syrian Civil War is a complex and ongoing armed conflict that erupted in March 2011 against the backdrop of the wave of popular uprisings known as the Arab Spring. What began as peaceful civilian protests calling for democratic reforms and an end to President Bashar al-Assad’s rule quickly escalated into a brutal war. The conflict involves the Syrian Army, various rebel groups, Kurdish militias, and jihadist terrorist organizations. Over time, the war became a battleground for regional and international rivalry, with Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah intervening militarily to shore up Assad’s rule, while the United States and Turkey supported opposition factions. The fighting was marked by exceptional brutality toward the civilian population and included serious war crimes such as the use of chemical weapons, deliberate attacks on infrastructure, and indiscriminate bombings. The war triggered one of the most severe humanitarian crises since World War II. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed, and more than half of Syria’s population was forced to flee their homes, creating millions of internally displaced persons and refugees. Although the intensity of the fighting decreased significantly in the decade that followed and the Assad regime managed to regain control over most of the country’s territory, the conflict has not yet officially ended, and Syria remains a fractured and devastated country, often describedas a historical tragedy.

During the war, tens of thousands of women and girls were raped by Syrian security forces, pro-government forces, government officials, Islamic State forces, Free Syrian Army forces, members of the Shabiha militia, and other pro-government militias, as part of a planned strategy. Women were raped by government security forces, rebels, and militia members at high rates. The fear of rape was the main reason 600,000 women fled the war zone. At the outbreak of the war, government forces organized the rape of women in the city of Daraa. When they began suppressing protesters in the city of Jisr al-Shughur, one tactic employed was raiding homes where women were sleeping in order to rape them. On August 13, 2012, Alawite officers ordered their soldiers first to rape teenage girls in the city of Homs and then to execute them by firing squad. Soldiers who refused to rape them were shot by the army. In 2013, it was reported that boys and girls as young as 12 were raped and tortured in their genital areas. From the start of the war through the end of November 2013, approximately 6,000 women were raped, some in group rapes; however, the numbers are likely much higher given that most cases went unreported. Most were raped by government forces, particularly during attacks on rebel positions, at checkpoints, and in detention facilities.

In 2013, women were raped at a detention facility run by the Syrian Political Security Branch, and other women were sexually abused at a detention facility run by the Military Security Branch in the city of Latakia. In April and August 2014, it was reported that government forces and forces supporting them continued to systematically rape women. Many of them became pregnant. In 2015, it was reported that throughout the war, women and girls were also raped in government detention facilities, particularly in the interrogation facilities of the Military Intelligence Directorate and in detention facilities run by the General Security Directorate in Damascus. In August 2018, a woman in the city of Hama was raped by the leader of the Suleiman-Sha Brigade himself, Muhammad al-Jassim, known as Abu Amsha. Women who were raped were considered a disgrace by their families and communities and were slaughtered by them. Those who were allowed to live were deemed unfit for marriage, and thus many survivors remained silent. Men held in detention facilities were repeatedly threatened that their wives and daughters would be raped. Boys and young boys were also raped. In one instance, a 15-year-old boy was raped in front of his father, and in another, an 11-year-old boy was raped by three security service officers. Men were raped with batons. At the Saydnaya military detention facility on the outskirts of Damascus, women were raped, while men were forced to undress and rape one another repeatedly.

2.29.1 The Islamic State (2014–2017)

In 2014, the Islamic State announced the revival of the institution permitting the use of non-Muslim women and girls as sex slaves and their transfer from one owner to another. It declared that not only are Muslim men permitted to rape non-Muslim women, but that it is even a religious duty, and encouraged them to do so. It asserted that the permission to rape them actually yields two results: first, it motivates men to convert to Islam; and second, it forces them to give birth to Muslim children who will in turn become the fighters needed to expand its control. According to the prevailing view, every non-Muslim woman must be raped by at least ten different Islamic State fighters to atone for her apostasy. Senior Islamic State officials were the main drivers of the systematic trafficking of these women. In October, it explicitly stated in its online magazine *Dabiq* that there is religious justification, based on the Hadith and the Quran, to turn the wives and daughters of non-Muslims into sex slaves and to rape them—including young girls—because they are spoils of war, spoils of jihad, such as the Yazidi women who, in its words, belongto the religion of disbelief. It further stated that these acts are permitted against non-believing women who have refused to convert to Islam. It was stated that the use of their wives as sex slaves is a well-established aspect of Sharia law; if anyone denies or mocks it, they are denying or mocking the verses of the Quran and the words of the Prophet, and thereby apostatizing from Islam. Therefore, as an organizational entity, it has adopted and codified this practice.

At the end of the year, the Islamic State published an online booklet focusing on guidelines for treating female slaves. The booklet states that the Quran permits fighters to rape them and explicitly states that it is permissible to rape even young girls once their bodies are ready for penetration, even if they have not yet reached puberty. It also states that fighters are permitted to abuse them or trade them as sex slaves. Furthermore, it is permitted to beat them in order to make them submissive. In January 2015, additional rules regarding sex slaves were announced. An article in the journal stated that Muslim men who have turned non-Muslim women and girls into their sex slaves and rape them should not deny it, but rather take public pride in it, becausetheir sexual enslavement (transliteration: Tasarri) is permitted under the grand Sharia ruling and the pure Prophetic Sunnah titled Enslavement (transliteration: Saby). The right granted to Muslim men to rape non-believers was considered the highest honor they could receive. For example, in June 2015, at a Quran recitation competition held in the city of Mosul, the three winning men received sex slaves as prizes. Since many fighters did not want them to give birth to offspring as inferior as themselves as a result of the rape, they were explicitly permitted to ejaculate outside their bodies every time they raped them. In addition, the Islamic State ruled that it was permissible to forcibly marry off young girls.

Tens of thousands of Yazidi, Christian, Shia, Turkmen, Shabak, and others—including girls as young as nine—were systematically raped by Islamic State fighters, fighters from other armed groups, and other Muslim men in areas occupied by the Islamic State, solely because they were non-Sunni Muslims, or infidels in their terminology. At times, all the women and girls in a family were taken captive and forced to become sex slaves. Many were given away, sold, or trafficked as sex slaves to fighters and other Muslim men on a large scale, or were forcibly married to them. Many captives were given two options: convert to Islam or be raped by Muslim men. Yazidi women were systematically raped by them and forced to become their sex slaves. The systematic rape of Yazidi women and girls was deeply embedded in the Islamic State’s radical theology. Many Yazidi women were gang-raped in a pattern that became standard practice. The command gave fighters free rein to rape Yazidi women as often as they wished.

The Islamic State recruited tens of thousands of foreign fighters from around the world, and by mid-2018, their number had grown exponentially to more than 40,000. As a result, deep linguistic and cultural divides emerged within its ranks, and integrating them was critical. Therefore, Islamic State leaders directly used the rape of female captives to solidify relationships and loyalty between local and foreign fighters by passing them from one to another, a tactic that proved effective. Both foreign and local fighters routinely raped female captives and even became key participants in their rape. After Islamic State fighters conquered an area, the men were often separated from the women and usually massacred, while the women, teenage girls, and young girls were divided among the fighters, raped by them, and forced to become their sex slaves or were forcibly married to them. After being raped, the captives were transferred to other fighters, while one-fifth of them were collectedas a tax and traded in sex slave markets to raise funds, as in the cities of Mosul and Raqqa. Captives were sold repeatedly and raped each time by different men. This was based on a practice known as temporary marriage. Older women who did not meet their preferences were often taken to a makeshift sex slave market in an attempt to sell them as well.

Yazidi women and girls who were already pregnant before they were taken captive were subjected to forced abortions. Women held captive were often beaten by their captors to condition them to submit to rape. Yazidi captives were subjected to forced pregnancy, while other captors would inject the Yazidi women and girls they raped with pharmacological substances to prevent pregnancy. Those who nevertheless became pregnant were forced to undergo abortions. Women and girls were raped not only by their captors but often also by their captors’ associates. The Islamic State executed women who dared to refuse to submit to rape by its fighters. On December 17, 2014, it was reported that at least 150 women from the al-Bu Nimr tribe in the city of Fallujah, some of whom were pregnant, were slaughtered because they dared to refuse to be raped upon surrender by fighters. In August 2015, 19 more women were slaughtered for the same reason.

Yazidi women who were taken captive and transported to markets to be sold as sex slaves were immediately examined by gynecologists to determine whether they were virgins or pregnant before being sold. Women found to be pregnant underwent forced abortions. The women and girls were displayed in the markets while wearing price tags. The younger they were, the more expensive they were. On November 3, 2014, the Islamic State published an online price list for Yazidi and Christian women, and in 2015 established an official price list: girls aged 1–9: 200,000 dinars ($169). Women, teenage girls, and girls aged 10–20: 150,000 dinars ($127). Women aged 20–30: 100,000 dinars ($85). Women aged 30–40: 75,000 dinars ($63). Women aged 40–50: 50,000 dinars ($42). However, some captives were also sold for a pack of cigarettes and were even given as gifts. Captives were sold as sex slaves to men in Saudi Arabia, other countries in the Persian Gulf, and Turkey.

Women and girls were also sold online via photos shared through encrypted messaging apps, primarily Telegram and Facebook, and to a lesser extent WhatsApp. All the captives photographed were under the age of 30, and some were girls who had not yet finished elementary school. All were photographed in a shabby room with overly upholstered chairs or brocade curtains placed behind them. They were ordered to look at the camera, many of them heavily made up so that their faces would entice potential buyers to rape them. The Islamic State registered each slave under her owner’s name and used apps like Telegram so that if she dared to try to escape her owner, any security force, checkpoint, or control point could identify her. In mid-2016, even as it lost territory to Iraqi forces, the Islamic State tightened its control over 3,000 women and girls held as sex slaves to ensure they could not escape.

Survivors testified that their captors proudly explained to them that Allah was pleased whennon-believers were raped by Muslim men. A 15-year-old girl testified: [While my captor was raping me] he kept telling me that it was ibada [worship in Arabic]. Another 12-year-old girl testified: [My captor told me that] by raping me, he was drawing closer to Allah. An adult woman who was held captive alongside a 12-year-old girl testified that when she begged her captor to at least stop raping the girl, he replied that she was a slave, and that it pleased Allah for him to rape her. Captors used to dispose of the male infants born to their sex slaves before they were taken captive, because the infants’ bodies were considered useless to them. In June 2017, for example, it was reported that a woman was separated from her one-year-old son and forced to become a sex slave. She was starved for three days in a basement until her captors finally brought her a meal. After she finished eating, they told her: We cooked your one-year-old son whom we took from you, and that is what you just ate. Fighters used to boast about the number of women they had raped. One of them, Ammar Hussein, boasted that he alone had raped more than 200 women from minority groups in Iraq. Many captives attempted to take their own lives. Yazidi girls in Iraq who were raped by fighters, for example, took their own lives by jumping to their deaths from Mount Sinjar.

In June 2014, during the occupation of Iraqi cities, women were taken captive and raped by Islamic State fighters. Between July 6 and September 10, women and girls were taken captive and systematically and extensively raped by Islamic State fighters and allied rebel groups. In August, between 5,000 and 7,000 Yazidi women and girls were taken captive and sold as sex slaves or forcibly married in northern Iraq. That same month, 450–500 women and girls were taken captive and transported to the Nineveh area. Of these, 150 unmarried women and girls—mostly from the Yazidi and Christian communities—were selected. They were transported to Syria, where they were given to fighters as prizes or sold as sex slaves to other Muslim men. On August 3, the entire village of Kocho, with a population of approximately 1,826, was captured. The men and boys over the age of 14 were separated, and most of them were massacred; more than 1,000 women and children were taken captive: the male children were transferred to military camps, where they were trained and forced to become fighters as well, while the women and girls were given to fighters and sold as sex slaves. On the same day, Yazidi women and girls from the Al-Khatania area were taken captive and forced into sexual slavery; of these, 450–500 were transported to the city of Tal Afar. Hundreds more were transported to the village of Siba Sheikh Khader and from there to the town of Baaj. Between August 3 and 6, 500 Yazidi women and children were taken captive in the town of Baaj, and more than 200 from the village of Tal Banat. The women and girls were forced into sexual slavery.

On August 4, after the Sinjar Mountains were captured, women and girls were taken captive in the Yazidi village of Hardan and forced into sexual slavery. Other Yazidi women were taken captive in other villages in the area. On August 6, 400 Yazidi women were taken captive in the town of Sinjar to be sold as sex slaves. On August 7, it was reported that dozens of Yazidi men in the town of Sinjar were massacred, and their wives were given to unmarried jihadist fighters. On August 10, approximately 7,000 women and girls were taken captive and forced into sexual slavery in northern Iraq. On August 12, it was reported that approximately 1,500 Yazidi and Christian captives were forced into sexual slavery. On August 15, up to 1,000 women and children were taken captive in the Yazidi village of Kocho. The women and girls were forced into sexual slavery. By the end of August, up to 2,500 Yazidis had been taken captive, most of whom were women and girls forced into sexual slavery. In August 2015, it was reported that a 26-year-old American woman named Kayla Mueller, a humanitarian aid worker, was taken captive and presented to the leader of the Islamic State himself, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. She was forcibly married to him, held captive by him personally, and brutally raped by him repeatedly until she died.

In 2014, it was reported that Islamic State fighters also informed Muslim families among the occupied populations that they must hand over their daughters to them for sexual relations, in a practice known as sexual jihadand marriage jihad (transliterated: Jihad al-Nikah). Leaflets distributed in the occupied cities of Mosul and Tikrit stated that women, whether virgins or not, must sexually satisfy fighters in order to purify themselves, and that those who refuse will be tortured or killed for violating God’s will. In June 2014, it was reported that the Islamic State had posted posters calling on the residents of Mosul to hand over their unmarried daughters so they could be forcibly married to fighters.

In November 2015, it was reported that approximately 2,000 women and girls were still being bought and sold in areas controlled by the Islamic State. In October 2016, many Yazidi women and girls were still being held captive as sex slaves. In 2017, 1,882 Yazidi women and girls were still being held captive as sex slaves in Iraq and Syria. The bodies of sex slaves in Mosul were also used by the fighters as human shields during the battle for the city. Some were forcibly transported to Raqqa due to high demand. In 2018, it was reported that approximately 6,300 Yazidis were taken captive in the Sinjar district, while women were raped and forced into sexual slavery as part of a systematic rape campaign. Many women and girls were held captive as sex slaves for long periods of time. A Yazidi woman who had been held captive in the home of an Islamic State commander in Ankara, Turkey, was rescued only in July 2020. A seven-year-old Yazidi girl was rescued from the home of two commanders in the city as recently as February 2021. Another Yazidi woman, 21-year-old Fawzia Amin Sido, who was sold to a Palestinian man who supported the Islamic State, was rescued as recently as October 2024. She was an 11-year-old girl when she was taken captive.

2.30 The Conflict in Myanmar (1948–present)

The conflict in Myanmar (Burma) is the world’s longest-running civil war, which began immediately after the country gained independence from Britain in 1948. The roots of the conflict lie in the struggle of many ethnic groups demanding autonomy and political rights from the central government. For decades, the Myanmar military has waged brutal military campaigns against various rebel groups in border regions. The conflict took a dramatic turn and escalated significantly in February 2021, when the military staged a coup, overthrew the elected civilian government, and violently suppressed civilian protests. In response, People’s Defense Forces emerged and joined forces with ethnic militias to wage an all-out armed struggle against the junta. The fighting is characterized by widespread aerial bombardments, the burning of villages, massacres, and the deliberate targeting of the civilian population. These events have led to strong condemnation and exacerbated a devastating humanitarian crisis. Tens of thousands of people have been killed, and millions of refugees and displaced persons have been forced to flee their homes. The situation in Myanmar is now described as an unprecedented humanitarian disaster, while the country remains torn apart by a cycle of violence with no end in sight.

For decades, the Tatmadaw has employed a military strategy of raping the women and girls of minority groups, such as Rohingya and Karen women and girls. Some were forced to become their sex slaves or were forcibly married to them. Between 2016 and 2017, Rohingya women and girls were raped en masse by Tatmadaw forces, including army soldiers and border guards, members of Buddhist militias, rebel groups in Rakhine, Kachin, and Shan states, as well as local residents in Rakhine State, because of their ethnic and religious identity. They were raped by these perpetrators on a massive, widespread, and systematic scale as part of a key military strategy during the ethnic cleansing. Many of them were gang-raped by these perpetrators. In Rakhine State alone, hundreds and perhaps even thousands of Rohingya women and girls were raped by Tatmadaw forces; some were gang-raped, side by side, in mass rapes.

In 2017, in one instance, a 15-year-old girl whom soldiers had decided to rape was brutally dragged along the ground for more than 15 meters, where she was gang-raped by ten soldiers. Some of the women and girls were raped to death, while others, after being raped, were found suffering from trauma and with open wounds upon their arrival at refugee camps in Bangladesh. Women were taken captive and forced to become sex slaves in military camps, such as at the 551st Light Infantry Battalion base. Women were also stripped naked and forced to walk around in public as part of the humiliation. On February 3, a study based on testimonies from more than 200 Rohingya refugees revealed that half of the women had been raped or systematically sexually abused, some of them in gang rapes.

On August 25, army forces and armed locals from the Rakhine ethnic group invaded the village of Chut Pin. Men were massacred while women were raped by members of the security forces. On August 30, army forces invaded the village of Tula Tuli. At first, the women were separated and ordered to sit by the river and wait while the forces slaughtered the men. Women who entered the river in a desperate attempt to escape their inevitable fate were ordered to get out and return to sit along the riverbank. After a while, the soldiers ordered them to stand up and try to flee from them. It amused them to watch the helpless women desperately trying to flee from men, like prey desperately trying to escape its hunters, even though it was clear they had no chance and their fate was sealed. When they began to flee for their lives, the soldiers opened fire on them. Some entered the river to escape the bullets and drowned in the current. At least 200 women were slaughtered by them. The soldiers spared about 30 women whom they had decided to rape first and then slaughter. They were ordered to line up again along the river and wait there until they were taken to be raped. Later, they were divided into six groups, taken to nearby huts, and gang-raped by the soldiers. After raping them, the soldiers beat them, looted their jewelry, and set the huts on fire.

Between August 25, 2017, and August 2018, more than 18,000 women and girls were raped. Since the coup in the country in 2021, the military has even intensified the systematic rape of women. On March 1, 2023, at approximately 3:00 a.m., army forces crossed the Mo River, raided the village of Tading, and massacred the residents. The residents were unable to flee due to the mistaken assumption that the soldiers would not cross the river. That evening, the forces rounded up between 70 and 100 residents and took them hostage to a local monastery. The next morning, soldiers used them as human shields as they marched to the village of Nyung-Yin, located four kilometers to the west. Later that day, all the hostages were massacred by the soldiers, while at least three women were raped by them beforehand.

2.31 The Tigray War (2020–2022)

The Tigray War was a deadly armed conflict that took place in northern Ethiopia between November 2020 and November 2022. The conflict erupted between the federal government of Ethiopia, led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which controlled the region. The war began after months of political tension, when the government accused the rebels of attacking a military base and launched a large-scale military operation. Military forces from neighboring Eritrea and militias from the Amhara region soon joined the fighting, assisting government forces. The conflict was marked by particularly brutal violence against the civilian population, including widespread massacres, destruction of infrastructure, and the imposition of a siege that led to mass starvation and severe shortages of medicine and basic supplies. The international community has repeatedly described the situation in the region as a humanitarian disaster of historic proportions. Hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives as a result of the fighting, starvation, and disease, and millions more were displaced from their homes and became refugees. After two years of intense bloodshed and shifting control over the territory, the region’s reconstruction and the healing of the deep scars left by the conflict are expected to take many years.

During the war, between 10,000 and 120,000 women and girls (including young girls as young as 8, pregnant women, and elderly women as old as 72) were raped en masse every day by soldiers and militia members from both sides, most of whom wore uniforms, from the Ethiopian and Eritrean defense forces, the Ethiopian and Amhara regional security forces, the Tigray Defense Forces, the regional militia of the Tigray region, and special forces, such as in the cities of Mekelle and Adigrat and the towns of Rawian and Wokro. Some were gang-raped, sometimes for several days. Mothers and their daughters were raped side by side. Victims were often raped in front of their family members. Some were forced to become sex slaves. In addition, men were forced to rape their own female family members.

The rape of women and girls in the Tigray region was deliberate and systematic under the well-organized command structure of the Ethiopian Defense Forces and the strict command structure of the Eritrean Defense Forces. Soldiers who refused to rape them were punished. During the 21st century, several political and military leaders have publicly stated that in wartime, it is amusing to know that the wives and daughters of the defeated are being raped by the victors, and that this is a legitimate act and that their suffering is meaningless. In January 2019, even before the war broke out, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, a member of the Oromo tribe, joked in front of an audience: So, if you’re wondering what percentage of the population in Tigray is Oromo, leave it to DNA to find out, mocking the fact that members of his tribe had already raped Tigrayan women in previous wars. The audience reacted enthusiastically to his remarks , and he added: Those [fighters] who went to Adwa [a town in Tigray] to fight didn’t just go and come back. Each of them had about ten children [after raping Tigrayan women there]. The audience responded with loud laughter and applause. On March 21, 2021, Avi declared: The women in Tigray? Those women were only penetrated by men, while our soldiers were penetrated by a knife—meaning, in his view, the suffering of women raped in wars is insignificant. In early 2021, an Ethiopian general stated that it is, in fact, a given that soldiers rape women during wartime and that they are permitted to rape women in the state of Tigray.

The Ethiopian and Eritrean defense forces and Amharic soldiers told the Tigrayan women they raped that the Tigrayans have no history or culture, and therefore they were raping them to ethnically cleanse Tigray, to Amharize them—that is, to turn them into Amharas—or to eradicate their Tigrayan identity and bloodline. The women were told that if they wanted to receive basic supplies to survive, they must submit to being raped by them. Soldiers of the Ethiopian Defense Forces have declared that it is justified to rape Tigrayan girls because they are not human like them—since their father is the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed, while the girls’ father is the defeated leader of the State of Tigray, Debre-Zion Gebre-Michael. Parents shaved their daughters’ heads and dressed them in boys’ clothes in a desperate hope that the soldiers would not recognize them as girls and rape them. Soldiers also frequently mutilated the victims’ genitals, stubbed out cigarettes on their bodies, burned them with hot irons, forcibly inserted nails, metal rods, screws, plastic debris, and other objects into their reproductive organs, and hurled insults and ethnic slurs at them. Women and girls who were raped begged for emergency contraception pills. Many women contracted sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV and faced difficulties in receiving treatment because they were considered a disgrace and due to the collapse of the medical infrastructure during the war.

By 2021, approximately 10% of all women in the Tigray region had experienced sexual abuse during the war, about 80% of whom had been raped, and about 70% of whom had been gang-raped. By the end of March 2021, between 512 and 516 rape victims had been admitted to five medical facilities in the cities of Mekele, Adigrat, and Shira, and in the towns of Wokro and Axum; however, the actual number of rape cases was much higher because most medical facilities were not functioning and due to social stigma. A doctor at a hospital in Mekele said that every woman who had been raped usually reported 20 other women who had been raped with her but who did not dare to go to any hospital. By mid-April, at least 829 women who had been sexually assaulted had been admitted to five hospitals that had been operational since the start of the war, and the reported cases were only the tip of the iceberg. In July 2021, it was reported that 26,000 women and girls aged 15–49 had been sexually assaulted since the start of the war. In August 2021, it was reported that between 512 and 514 rape victims had been admitted to hospitals in Ethiopia, though the actual number of rape victims was much higher. Between November and December 2022, 852 women were raped and sexually assaulted, mostly by Eritrean forces.

On November 19, 2020, soldiers of the Eritrean Defense Forces invaded the Chitaz refugee camp, massacred Eritrean refugees whom they considered traitors, and raped women. Between December 2020 and January 2021, more than 136 women who had been raped were admitted to hospitals in the cities of Mekele and Adigrat and in the town of Wokro, while many other cases went unreported. On January 4, 2021, it was reported that many women had been raped, some by a single man and others in group rapes. In the city of Mekele, women were taken captive by security forces and held in unknown locations. Women begged for emergency contraception pills. On January 23, a refugee testified that she had fallen into the hands of a soldier wearing the uniform of the Ethiopian security forces, who decided to rape her at gunpoint. When she realized she had no chance of escaping him, she begged him to at least use a condom. The soldier, amused, replied that he would rape her without a condom.

On February 1, 2021, it was reported that six young girls were raped by Ethiopian Defense Forces in the city of Mekele and were subsequently threatened not to seek medical treatment. In the town of Axum, women were raped by Ethiopian and Eritrean Defense Forces. Men who dared to try to help them or even just witnessed the rapes were shot by soldiers. As a result, residents stopped responding to the cries and screams for help from the women who were being raped. In the city of Mekele, Ethiopian Defense Forces soldiers also entered a flour mill in the Kabala 17 neighborhood, removed the men, and then raped the women. In the Aider area of the city, two women, aged 18 and 20, were raped. On February 15, 200 teenage girls and girls under the age of 18 who had been raped were admitted to health centers and hospitals in the city of Mekele. On February 28, 11 women studying at the Aider Hospital in Mekele were raped by Ethiopian Defense Forces while on their way from the library to their dormitories.

In early March, a 15-year-old girl was raped by Eritrean Defense Forces in the city of Shira in front of witnesses who were forced to watch, including her brother. In the town of Kersber, a woman was raped twice and was unable to walk when she arrived at the hospital. Women on the outskirts of Mekele were taken captive by soldiers and forced to become their sex slaves for several weeks. Between rapes, they were forced to work as domestic servants. One of the women was raped every night by Eritrean Defense Forces for a week. In another case, six women were raped by Eritrean Defense Forces over a period of ten days. One of them testified that the soldiers joked around and took pictures of her. They tied her to a rock, stripped her, stabbed her, and then raped her repeatedly. Another woman’s vagina was filled with nails, stones, and plastic.

2.31.1 Rape Camps (2020–2022)

During the war, the Ethiopian and Eritrean defense forces established three known rape camps for soldiers: The main hospital in the town of Hawazen was destroyed and converted into a rape camp by the Ethiopian defense forces. Women and girls who were taken captive were transported to the camp and imprisoned there. The beds intended for patients were used as surfaces on which they were raped, and some were even tied to them to ensure they could not escape. They were raped by soldiers from the Ethiopian and Eritrean defense forces. A second rape camp was set up at a construction site for the Ethiopian and Eritrean defense forces. One of the women was held in the camp along with her infant, and many soldiers came to rape her. The baby was held at any given time by soldiers who waited while his mother was raped by the soldier whose turn it was, and was thus passed from hand to hand as they took turns. This left her no choice but to submit to being raped by them so that they would let him live. A third rape camp was set up near a river.

2.31.2 Tigray Defense Forces (2020–2022)

Dozens of Amharic women and girls were also raped by soldiers from the Tigray Defense Forces in the Amhara region, while being subjected to ethnic slurs. Some were girls as young as 14, who were subsequently slaughtered by them. Between August 12 and 21, 2021, during the capture of the town of Nafas Mocha, 71 or 73 women were raped, 16 of them by fighters from the Tigray Defense Forces. A commander named Hamlamal, who raped an Amharic woman, described the rape as an act of revenge. He declared: The Amharas are donkeys; the Amharas massacred our people [the Tigrayans]; the Federal Defense Forces raped my wife; now we can rape you [the Amharic women] as we please. In late August and early September, dozens of women and girls were raped in quick succession by soldiers in several villages. A 12-year-old girl in the town of Pilakit Gergir was raped by four soldiers for hours in front of her father. A 14-year-old girl was raped by five or six soldiers in uniform.

Between August 31 and September 4, the Tigray Defense Forces captured the village of Chena Taklaheymant and the surrounding areas in the Debat district, and massacred the residents. At least 30 women and girls were raped and sexually abused by soldiers. Some were as young as 14 and were raped in the village of Chena Taklaheymant and the town of Kobo. The soldiers also beat them, hurled ethnic slurs at them, and threatened them with death. After some of them were raped by combatants, they were also forced to cook for them to satisfy their hunger. In late 2021, during the joint offensive by the Tigray Defense Forces and the Oromo Liberation Army, women and girls were widely and systematically raped by civilian security forces in the Afar and Amhara regions. In January 2022, it was reported that women were raped by the Tigray Defense Forces during the occupation of the Amhara region as part of a systematic attack against the Amharic civilian population.

2.32 The Arab–Jewish Conflict (1834–present)

The Arab–Jewish conflict is an ongoing geopolitical and armed conflict between the State of Israel and several Arab countries and Palestinian factions, which has been at the center of the Middle East throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Its roots lie in the struggle between the Zionist movement and Arab nationalism for control of the Land of Israel. The conflict erupted into full-scale war in 1948 with the establishment of the State of Israel, and since then has seen several major wars, including the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War, alongside long periods of fighting, hostile acts, and popular uprisings. Although Israel has signed historic peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, as well as various agreements with the Palestinians, the core issues of the conflict have not yet been fully resolved. The long-standing fighting has taken a heavy toll on both sides and led to displacement and refugee flows, affecting both Palestinian Arabs and Jews from Arab countries. The conflict frequently draws extensive international involvement and is often described by scholars as one of the most complex and protracted conflicts of the modern era, one that continues to shape and profoundly influence the entire region.

During massacres and pogroms in the Land of Israel and beyond, many Jewish women and girls were raped by armed Arabs. In Baghdad, Iraq, for example, between June 1 and 2, 1941, many Jewish girls were gang-raped by Arab rioters during a pogrom (the Farhud) against the Jewish population, in which 135 Jews were massacred. Arab participants in anti-Israeli demonstrations and armed individuals during terrorist attacks around the world often chant the following slogan in Arabic: Khaybar, Khaybar, O Jews, the Army of Muhammad will return (in Hebrew: Remember Khaybar, Jews; the Army of Muhammad will return, and in Arabic: خيبر خيبر يا يهود جيش محمد سوف يعود). The slogan is intended to remind Jews that in 628, the Prophet Muhammad marched with a large Muslim army, besieged the oasis of Khaybar—home to a well-established Jewish community—conquered it, defeated its inhabitants, and forced their women and daughters to become sex slaves for his warriors and followers, including the Jewish girl Tzfiya, whom the Prophet himself raped that very night and even took as a wife by force.

Arab leaders in the past explicitly stated what would become of Jewish women after they conquered Israel, as reflected in broadcasts by the Egyptian radio station Sawt al-Arab (Voice of the Arab), which operated under the auspices and guidance of the regime headed by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. It was considered the most important radio station in the Arab world and served as a central means of spreading propaganda. From 1953 to 1967, Ahmad Sa’id served as its director and chief broadcaster. Said was close to the president and was known as a beloved, prominent, central, and influential broadcaster in the Arab media and throughout the Arab world; he had a profound impact on the development of Arab media in the second half of the 20th century. Before and during the Six-Day War, the station played a central role in shaping public opinion against Israel. Said stirred up his listeners regarding their plans following the conquest of Israel by coining the famous phrase Men to the sea and women to us, meaning that the fate of Jewish men was annihilation, while the fate of Jewish women was to be raped by them.

Israel has never been defeated in war because it possesses great military strength. Its well-equipped army maintains ground control over the borders and the territories of Judea and Samaria, preventing invasion attempts and thereby thwarting the enemy’s plans either in the planning stages or, at most, within a few minutes of an attack—with the exception of the October 7 massacre, which will be discussed in a dedicated chapter. If in the future it is defeated—even in a single war—genocide on a massive scale will ensue. The writer and poet Mordechai Horowitz put it well: The Arabs love their murder to be hot, wet, and steamy, and if they ever have the freedom to fulfill themselves, we will long for the Germans’ sterile gas [with which millions of Jews were exterminated during World War II]. The extermination will be accompanied, as with any extermination, by the mass rape of Jewish women and girls.

2.32.1 The Sacking of Safed (1834)

The looting of Safed in 1834 was a series of violent attacks directed against the city’s Jewish community, which took place against the backdrop of the fellahin revolt in the Land of Israel against the rule of Ibrahim Pasha. Beginning in mid-June, crowds of villagers raided the Jewish quarter and, for over three weeks, carried out acts of looting, destruction, and severe violence. During the pogrom, many Jews were massacred, synagogues were set ablaze, and much property was looted or completely destroyed. Many families were forced to flee and hide in caves and the nearby mountains, having lost everything. The violent events came to an end in July, after the Egyptian government ordered Amir Bashir II of Lebanon to intervene. The arrival of his forces in Safed led to the rioters’ retreat, the restoration of order, and an attempt to return some of the looted property. The attack dealt a devastating blow to the community, which was considered one of the most prominent in the country at the time, and it struggled to slowly rebuild in the years that followed. The event is regarded as a major tragedy in the history of the Old Yishuv in the nineteenth century and illustrates theutter devastation that befell the city’s residents during those days.

During the pogroms, many Jewish women were raped by Muslim and Druze rioters, as attested, for example, by cantor Yitzhak Perachi. In one of the synagogues, women were raped on the shreds of Torah scrolls, as attested by Rabbi Yisrael of Mashklov. In one of the houses where a group of Jews attempted to barricade themselves and protect the women, two of the defenders were shot, and subsequently all the women hiding there were raped. Jews were stripped of their clothes and expelled from their homes naked, and those who remained (women, men, and children) were raped by the rioters. Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kamnitz wrote in his memoirs, using euphemistic language, that those who remained were tortured in bed [raped], both males and females—that is, the rioters raped the women and children who had not managed to escape them. During the pogroms against the Jewish community that also broke out in the city of Hebron, women were raped by the rioters. When the army of the Egyptian officer, Ibrahim Pasha, captured the city, even his soldiers raped Jewish women.

2.32.2 The Nabi Musa Riots (1920)

The Events of 5680 (1920) were a series of violent incidents that took place in Jerusalem in April 1920, during the celebrations of the Prophet Musa. The riots broke out against a backdrop of mounting national tensions, Arab opposition to Zionism and the Balfour Declaration, and incitement by local leaders. The Arab mob, which had gathered in the Old City, began violently attacking Jewish residents, looting stores, and setting fire to property and religious institutions. British military forces tasked with maintaining order were slow to intervene, allowing the rioters to continue their actions for several days. During the events, five Jews and four Arabs were killed, and hundreds of people were injured. In the wake of the authorities’ inaction, Ze’ev Jabotinsky and Pinchas Rutenberg organized a Jewish defense force, but the British arrested its members. The riots marked a significant turning point in relations between the two peoples and highlighted the urgent need to establish an independent force, which later led to the founding of theHaganah. Historians view these events as the beginning of the violent phase in the national conflict over control of the Land of Israel, which left deep scars and serious fears among the Jewish community at the time.

During the riots, Jewish women were raped by Arab rioters. On the morning of April 6, 1920, thugs attacked the courtyard of Chana Yaffe, nearthe Gate of Sin on the Temple Mount in the Muslim Quarter, where three Jewish families lived and had been under siege since the riots began. The attackers broke down the courtyard doors, and the residents fled to the top floor. The rioters smashed furniture and looted the house, then went up to the second floor and beat the remaining residents, including the children. On that floor, they spotted Moshe Lipschitz’s two sisters—a 25-year-old woman and a 15-year-old girl—and decided to rape them; however, to ensure they could carry out their plan undisturbed, they first struck their brother on the head with an iron bar. The two sisters were then gang-raped by the rioters, one after the other. On the second day, the pogroms escalated, and the British authorities declared martial law, imposed a siege on the Old City, and prohibited anyone from leaving the area; however, these measures did not prevent the rioters from continuing to massacre Jews and rape their wives and daughters.

2.32.3 The Jaffa Riots (1921)

The events of May 1921 were a series of violent pogroms that began in Jaffa on May 1 and spread to other Jewish settlements. The riots broke out following a clash between two Jewish workers’ processions celebrating May Day. In the wake of the clash, Arab mobs began violently attacking the Jewish residents of Jaffa and looting their property. One of the most horrific incidents was the deadly attack on the city’s immigrant hostel, where new immigrants were massacred, as well as the murder of the renowned writer Yosef Chaim Brenner along with his friends. The local police did little to intervene and at times even participated in the riots, until reinforcements from the British army arrived and succeeded in quelling the unrest after several days. Dozens of Jews and Arabs were killed in the events, and hundreds were wounded. These riots had fateful consequences for the Jewish community. They led to the acceleration of Tel Aviv’s separation from Jaffa and its transformation into an independent city, to a significant strengthening of theHaganah, and to the establishment of a British commission of inquiry that led to the publication of the first White Paper, which restricted Jewish immigration. Historians note that the events highlighted the deepening rift and constituted a painful milestone in the development of the national conflict in the country.

During the riots, Jewish women and girls were raped by Arab men. On the first day, at 1:30 p.m., a hostel for new immigrants housing 100 Jews was attacked by the mob; although the residents tried to block the gate, it was broken down and attackers poured inside. The Jews tried to hide in various rooms. When the police arrived, not only did they fail to disperse the rioters, but they even directed them toward the building. Those who were trapped were stabbed and beaten. An Arab police officer who was at the scene decided to take advantage of the situation and capture a Jewish woman in order to rape her. He went inside, spotted five women, and began firing at them with his pistol. Three of them managed to escape from him, while the other two were captured by him. He tried to rape them, but in the end they too managed to escape from him, even though they had been shot.

2.32.4 The 1929 Riots

The 1929 Riots were a series of bloody pogroms that took place in the Land of Israel in August 1929. The riots broke out following a religious and national dispute over prayer rights at the Western Wall in Jerusalem and were incited by Arab leaders. During the events, Arab mobs violently attacked Jewish communities. The most severe incidents occurred in Hebron and Safed, where brutal massacres took place, including the slaughter of Jews and the looting of property. The Old City of Hebron was completely destroyed, and its residents were forced to leave the city. British forces struggled to bring the situation under control, and by the time the riots were quelled, more than 130 Jews had been massacred. A similar number of Arabs were killed, the vast majority by the British police and army. These riots had far-reaching historical consequences. They deepened the national rift, highlighted the British authorities’ inability to protect civilians, and led the Jewish community to the realization that it must rely solely on its own defensive forces. As a result, the development of theHaganah was accelerated, and investigative committees were established, leading to the publication of the White Paper. These events are still regarded today asa majorturning point in the escalation of the conflict in the country.

During the riots, Jewish women and girls were raped by Arab men. On August 24, the riots spread to the Jewish quarter in the city of Hebron. Men and boys were massacred by Muslim Arab residents of the city, after the women and girls had been raped by them. After raping them, the rioters looted their homes and personal belongings. Rioters also broke into the home of Ben-Zion Gershon, who was the pharmacist at the Beit Hadassah clinic and was lame, unable to move from his spot. They decided that before he died, he would have to watch as they raped his daughter. She was gang-raped before his eyes by dozens of rioters, each in turn, and after they had satisfied themselves, they slaughtered her before his eyes; only then did they also slaughter him under torture. His wife’s hands were severed, and she died in agony. Between 65 and 68 Jews were massacred and 58 were wounded in the city.

That same day, in the afternoon, Arabs from the neighboring village of Kalonia infiltrated the Motza settlement and broke into the home of Aryeh Leib Maklef, one of the founders of the Metula settlement. Two rabbis were also present in his home, including Shlomo Zalman Shech. The intruders noticed the two daughters of the family and decided to rape them; however, in order to carry out their plan undisturbed, they first slaughtered Aryeh, his son, and the two rabbis, and hanged his wife, Batya, on a fence after torturing her. They then raped the two daughters before slaughtering them as well and setting the house on fire. On August 19, Arab rioters from the valley suddenly invaded the Jewish quarter of the city of Safed and immediately began systematically massacring Jews. They cut off the women’s breasts, as testified by a Scottish missionary who worked in the city.

2.32.5 The October 7 Attack (2023)

The October 7, 2023, attack was a large-scale surprise terrorist attack led by Hamas from the Gaza Strip against Israel. The attack began on the morning of Simchat Torah, accompanied by heavy rocket fire—thousands of rockets—aimed at cities across the country. At the same time, thousands of armed terrorists breached the security fence and infiltrated Israeli territory by land, sea, and air. They raided dozens of communities and kibbutzim, military outposts, and a music festival, carrying out brutal massacres, kidnappings, and looting. During the attack, more than 1,100 people were slaughtered—the vast majority of them civilians—and over 250 people were abducted into the Gaza Strip. Israeli security forces waged fierce defensive battles that lasted several days until they regained control and cleared the communities of terrorists. The event, which became the deadliest day in the country’s history, deeply shocked Israeli society and the international community, and is definedas botha national tragedy anda historic event that shook the entire Middle East. In the wake of the attack, Israel declared a state of war and launched a large-scale military campaign in the Gaza Strip to dismantle Hamas’s capabilities and bring the hostages home.

During the invasion, many Jewish women and girls of all ages were stripped naked and raped by Hamas fighters from the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, fighters from the Nukhba (its special forces unit), Islamic Jihad fighters from the Al-Quds Brigades, and militants from other militant groups. They were raped by these men brutally, with great cruelty, and in a systematic, targeted, and widespread manner as part of the invasion’s planning. The rapes took place in all the areas where Hamas fighters operated (in at least seven locations and four different regions): at the Nova open-air music festival near Kibbutz Re’im; in the surrounding area where festivalgoers fled and on nearby Route 232; in the kibbutzim of Be’eri, Re’im, and others; at Israel Defense Forces bases near the border, where female soldiers were raped, such as at the Nahal Oz military base; and in captivity in the Gaza Strip. Many of them were gang-raped by armed men acting in concert. They were often raped in front of others, including their partners, family members, and friends. Hamas fighters photographed naked and bleeding women after raping them, documenting the outcome with gleeful expressions. Most of the women who were raped were subsequently slaughtered, and their bodies were systematically mutilated and burned, particularly their genitals. Their naked bodies were publicly displayed in the streets of the Gaza Strip, and photos of them were posted online. Militants also raped the corpses of women.

A survivor of the festival who had been hiding testified that he heard the screams of women being raped. A woman who had been hiding near the festival area testified that she saw a gunman bend a woman over and rape her. He then handed her over to another armed man. After they had their way with her, they cut off parts of her body, including one of her breasts, threw them into the street, and played with them. She was still alive and bleeding. Later, another armed man began raping her, and at the height of his pleasure while raping her, he shot her in the head and then ejaculated. Survivor Yoni Sa’adon testified that a young woman standing near a car was captured by armed men who began undressing her in order to rape her. She desperately tried to escape from them. In response, they decided to show her what the fate of a Jewish woman is when she refuses to submit to rape by Muslim men. They threw her to the ground, and one of them took a shovel and beheaded her. Sa’adon added that after her head was severed, it rolled across the ground. He also testified that while hiding beneath the festival stage, he saw a woman being gang-raped by ten armed men as they beat her, after which she was shot in the head.

Survivor Ron Perger testified that he heard a woman screaming, They’re raping me, they’re raping me, followed by several gunshots, after which she fell silent. Another survivor saw men in civilian clothing dragging a woman out of a van on nearby Route 232 to a spot where they decided to rape her. They gathered around her and gang-raped her while she screamed. She was then slaughtered with a knife by one of the men. Three other survivors testified that they saw women being raped and then slaughtered there and at another location along Route 232. Survivor Raz Cohen hid in a large bush for several hours. He testified that he saw armed men raping women and then slaughtering them, and saw armed men who first slaughtered them and then raped their corpses, all while laughing. Survivors Raz Cohen and Shoham Gueta, who were hiding in a stream bed, saw a white pickup truck from which 4–5 men emerged. They dragged a young, naked woman across the ground to a spot where they decided to rape her. She was raped by them and then slaughtered with a knife.

Survivor Sapir testified that she saw at least five women being gang-raped by groups of heavily armed men (about 100 armed men) before they were slaughtered by them. She added that she saw them cut off one of a woman’s breasts and then toss her severed breast from hand to hand, while holding the severed heads of three other women. Survivor Yora Karol testified that he hid behind Sapir and saw a woman being raped before she was slaughtered. Another survivor testified that he also saw armed men gang-rape a woman, mutilating her body, until they finally slaughtered her while they were raping her. Ten additional survivors at various locations near the party site watched from their hiding places as women were raped—some in groups—but due to their mental state, they were unable to testify. At the bend in the road known as the Miflasim Bend, near Kibbutz Miflasim—through which festivalgoers primarily attempted to flee—armed men set up a roadblock with vehicles, laid an ambush, and fired submachine guns at approaching vehicles. They immediately executed the men, while the women found in the vehicles were first raped and only then burned alive. In one of the captured settlements, a survivor testified that he saw armed men in military uniforms gang-rape a young woman, mutilating her body, until finally, while they were raping her, they slaughtered her.

After the occupied territories were liberated by Israeli security forces, it was discovered that many women and girls had been raped during the massacre. An apocalyptic scene was found: naked bodies (or bodies naked to the waist) smeared with semen, their legs spread apart, and some with their hands bound with rope and handcuffs. The bodies were mutilated, and their genitals were torn apart. Some had broken pelvises and were bleeding heavily as a result of the brutal rape they had endured. In the festival area, producer Yonon Rivlin testified that he saw the body of a young woman lying on her stomach without pants or underwear. Her legs were spread apart, and her vagina had been slashed. Another producer, Rami Shmuel, testified that he saw the bodies of naked women in a state that left no doubt they had been sexually abused. Jamal Waraki, a member of the Disaster Victim Identification Organization, testified that he saw the body of a woman bent over with her underwear pulled down to her knees. In a video filmed after the festival by Eden Wasseli and shared on social media, a woman was seen lying on her back in a torn dress after being raped, burned, and slaughtered. Her legs were spread apart and her vagina was exposed. She was raped in front of her husband and others before being shot. A cut remained on her leg, likely caused by her underwear being torn. Her face was completely charred, and her right hand covered her eyes. She was later identified as Gal Abedush.

In the kibbutzim of Be’eri and Kfar Aza, at least 24 bodies of naked or semi-naked women were found, showing signs of sexual abuse. Some had been mutilated, and some were bound. At Kibbutz Be’eri, the naked and bound bodies of women and girls were found, all of whom had been raped in a recurring pattern; most were in their pajamas in their bedrooms. A paramedic from Special Rescue Unit 669, Sergeant G., found the bodies of two girls, aged 13 and 16, in a bedroom. One was wearing torn boxer shorts with bruises on her groin. The other was in pajama pants that had been pulled down to her knees. Her buttocks were exposed, and semen was smeared on her back. He testified that, based on the condition of her body, he had no doubt she had been raped before or after she was slaughtered. Elsewhere, the bodies of two women were found tied by their legs and hands to their beds. Internal organs had been removed from one of the bodies, and her genitals had been stabbed with a knife. At Kibbutz Kfar Aza, survivor Nira Shefek testified that she saw several bodies with exposed genitals, some of them in torn clothing. At Kibbutz Re’im, Noam Mark, a member of the emergency security team, testified that he found three naked bodies of women from the festival in a house, bearing clear signs of severe sexual violence.

At one of the kibbutzim, Haim Otmazgin, a commander with the Disaster Victim Identification Organization, testified that he saw the bodies of two naked women with objects inside them. The organization’s spokesperson, Simcha Greenman, testified that he saw the body of a woman with sharp objects inside her vagina, including nails. Also found were the body of a woman with a knife lodged inside her vagina, the body of a woman with dozens of nails driven into her groin and thighs, the body of a naked woman with clear signs of severe sexual violence, and the body of a woman naked from the waist down, shot in the head.

The bodies of victims—ranging from young girls to elderly women—who were brought to the Shura military camp to be prepared for burial were mutilated, with broken limbs and fractured pelvises, and in a condition that left no doubt they had been raped. A reserve soldier stationed at the camp, Shari Mendez, testified that bodies were brought to them—naked or wearing only minimal clothing and bearing signs of sexual violence—some wearing only blood-soaked underwear in the pelvic area, including bodies without heads or limbs and with mutilated faces. After death, some of their faces were shot several times to completely disfigure their human form. She testified that her team received the bodies of female soldiers who had been shot in their genitals and breasts, adding: They were all young women. Most were in skimpy clothing or torn garments, and their bodies were covered in blood, particularly around their underwear; some of the women had been shot multiple times in the face to disfigure them. Their faces were contorted in agony, and often their fingers were clenched as they died. We saw women whose pelvises were broken. Broken legs. There were women who had been shot in the groin, in the breasts… there seems to be no doubt as to what happened to them. An officer on the identification team stationed at the base, Captain Maayan, testified: I can say that I saw many signs of abuse in the genital area. We saw broken legs, a broken pelvis, and underwear soaked in blood. She added that she had seen at least ten bodies of female soldiers with signs of sexual violence, including cuts to their vaginas, blood-soaked underwear, and one body whose fingernails had been torn out. The video showed the bodies of two female soldiers who had been shot in their vaginas.

The Israel Defense Forces released a video known as the horror video, containing a collection of raw footage from the Gaza border area during the time of the massacre, specifically clips filmed by body cameras worn by Hamas fighters. Although the video contains graphic footage of people being slaughtered by armed men, segments showing women being raped were removed, leaving only footage of the moments that followed, in order to slightly mitigate the humiliation inflicted on their families. However, it was clear from their physical appearance that they had just been raped. Hamas fighters stated in the video that they had received explicit orders to rape women, that this was one of their tasks, and they even described how they raped them. Another militant stated that he had been ordered to rape even the corpses of women. On March 28, 2024, an Islamic Jihad operative, Manar Mahmoud Muhammad Qassem, stated in a video that he had raped a woman at Kibbutz Nir Oz. In the video, he described her clothes, her bra, and her underwear, and recounted that after he raped her, she was taken away along with her mother by two other armed men. In May 2024, two Hamas operatives—a father and son—claimed that they had raped women at Kibbutz Nir Oz at gunpoint and only then slaughtered some of them.

Women and girls who were transported to the Gaza Strip and held captive were raped by their captors and subjected to sexual abuse, including in front of other female captives. Some were even threatened with forced marriage. An Israeli military official stated that we know hostages were raped during their captivity under Hamas control. A doctor who treated the released captives testified that many of the 30 women, aged 12–48, were sexually abused during their captivity. Former captive Ilana Gritsovsky, 31, testified that while armed men were transporting her on a motorcycle to captivity in the Gaza Strip, they groped her. After losing consciousness, she awoke to find her shirt pulled up, her breasts exposed, her pants pulled down, and seven armed men standing over her. One of the captors told her that he intended to keep her in the Gaza Strip and force her to marry him.

On March 26, 2024, former captive Amit Susana, 40, testified about the sexual abuse she endured while in captivity. On or around October 24, her captor, Muhammad, dragged her at gunpoint into a children’s room, where , with the gun pointed at me, he forced me to perform a sexual act on him. Former captives Chen Goldstein-Almog and her 17-year-old daughter, Agam, testified that they saw three women who told them they had been sexually abused while in captivity. Agam described a captive who was sexually assaulted by a guard while she was washing herself at the sink. Former captive Aviva Sigal testified that she saw a woman who had just been sexually assaulted by her captors as they took her to the restroom. In December 2025, former captive Romi Gonen testified that she had been sexually assaulted numerous times by her captors. The first incident occurred on her fourth day in captivity and was carried out by a doctor who was examining the gunshot wounds she had sustained during her abduction. The second incident was carried out by a photographer who was taking pictures of her for propaganda purposes. In another instance, she was sexually assaulted while trying to go to the bathroom. Afterward, her captor held a gun to her head and threatened to kill her.

Many survivors who were raped remained silent out of shame. A doctor testified that many of the women who witnessed sexual assaults experienced post-traumatic stress disorder. The United Nations and other international organizations responsible for women’s rights and affiliated with the UN, including the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women and the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, as well as other international women’s organizations and prominent feminist women in the West, refused to condemn the rape of women and girls. It was not until November 29 that United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres addressed the issue, and it was not until December 2 that the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) published a brief post with a weak and half-hearted condemnation merely to fulfill a formality—which it deleted shortly thereafter. Their silence stemmed not only from their desire to whitewash the perpetrators, but also from their unspoken worldview that Jewish, white, and —in their view— colonialist women deserve to be raped by oppressed Arab men—in their eyes, this is their punishment.

2.32.6 Independent Actions (1946–2019)

Since the outbreak of the Arab–Jewish conflict, many Jewish women and girls have been raped by Arab men in independent acts, simply because they were Jewish. Most cases were documented as criminal offenses because, under Israeli law, it is nearly impossible to prove a nationalist rape as long as the perpetrators themselves do not publicly declare it as such. However, the distinction is simple: In criminal rape, the perpetrators will rape any woman who falls into their hands at the first opportunity without screening her based on anything other than her physical appearance, as opposed to nationalistic rape, in which they specifically target only women from an opposing group, because their goal is not only to humiliate them but also the entire group to which they belong. The cases cited in this chapter are just the tip of the iceberg, and they are known only because the victims were murdered by the perpetrators after being raped.

In 1946, for example, a Jewish girl was gang-raped by three Arab men from the village of Sheikh Munis. In February 1951, a Jewish girl in the Katamon neighborhood of Jerusalem was gang-raped by armed Arabs who had invaded from Jordan, led by Muhammad Mansi and Jamil Muhammad Mugrabi. On December 4, a Jewish girl named Leah Festinger, who was on her way home from a bus stop in the Beit Vagan neighborhood of Jerusalem, was gang-raped by armed Arabs who had invaded Israel from the town of Beit Jala in Jordan, led by Muhammad Mansi. They then mutilated her body, particularly her face, slaughtered her, and dumped her body in a cave on Israeli territory about one and a half kilometers from the border with the territories of Judea and Samaria, which were then part of Jordan. On December 6, a Jewish woman was taken captive and gang-raped by armed Arabs who had infiltrated from Jordan, near the city of Jerusalem. She was subsequently slaughtered by them.

On March 17, 1954, a bus carrying 15 passengers was traveling from Eilat to Tel Aviv. As it drove along the Ma’ale Akravim Road, 12 armed Arabs, led by Sa’id Abu Bandak, opened fire on it. As a result of the gunfire, the bus crashed into the mountainside and came to a stop. Passengers who tried to flee the bus were shot to death by the gunmen. The gunmen then boarded the bus and shot the remaining passengers at close range, after first raping one of the female passengers outside the bus. After they had their way with her, they also executed her and cut off her finger to steal the ring she was wearing. Before leaving, they spat on the bodies and desecrated them. Her body was found lying in the sand with her skirt pulled down.

On June 11, 1982, the fifth day of the First Lebanon War, shortly before midnight, a 21-year-old former soldier, Dafna Carmon, left the home of a friend’s parents—whose son had been drafted into the war—on Shimshon Street in Haifa. She was walking toward her home on Moriah Street. On the way, she was abducted by Ahmad Kuzli, the brothers Kamal and Muhammad Sabihi, and their cousin Atef Sabihi. She was raped by them and then slaughtered, and her naked body was dumped in a clearing near the Beit Oren Road. In May 2006, a 35-year-old Arab resident of the village of Zurif, Anwar Ahadush, who worked odd jobs at the municipal market in Beit Shemesh, noticed a Jewish girl, 9-year-old Lipaz Himi, who used to hang out there. He decided to kill her, but not before raping her, and planned it meticulously. On May 4, he lured her to accompany him in exchange for ten shekels, led her to a flight of stairs near the market where he and his friends used to sleep, and raped her there. After he had his way with her, he took the belt from her pants and a shoelace from one of her shoes, and together with a string he found, he strangled her to death. He then left the scene. Upon his arrest, he stated that he did it because she was Jewish.

On February 7, 2019, a 19-year-old Jewish girl from the settlement of Tekoa, Ori Ansbacher, left her workplaceat the Ya’elim Center, where she volunteered to care for people with special needs, and went to be alone in nature. That same day, a 29-year-old Arab man from the city of Hebron in the Palestinian Authority territories, Arafat Arfa’aya—who is affiliated with Hamas—entered Jerusalem on foot through a breach in the separation barrier near the town of Beit Jala, armed with a knife with the intent to slaughter Jews. Arfa’aya spotted Ansbacher in the woods near the spring. He pounced on her and stabbed her with the knife. She fought back and screamed, but to no avail. At that point, he realized she was alone and that he had enough time, so he decided to rape her first. He dragged her about 150 meters to a place where he could rape her undisturbed; there, he stabbed her again, gagged her with a scarf, and tied her hands with a belt so she could no longer resist him, and then raped her to death. He then returned to the Palestinian Authority territories and later even proudly declared: I did everything an Arab dreams of [raping a Jewish woman to death].

2.32.7 Israel Defense Forces (1947–1949)

Between 1947 and 1949, during Israel’s War of Independence and other conflicts of that period, soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces raped Arab women and girls, as occurred during the Safsaf massacre, the Deir Yassin incident, the Nirim incident, and the Al-Dawima incident; some of these cases remained classified for years. On October 29, 1948, for example, military forces invaded the Arab village of Safsaf, and its residents raised a white flag. The soldiers separated the men from the women and ordered them to line up in the northern part of the village. While they were lined up, several soldiers chose to rape four teenage girls, one of whom was 14, and ordered them to accompany the soldiers, ostensibly to fetch water. Instead, they led them to empty houses and raped them, while some 70 villagers were massacred.

However, the leaders and generals did not condone this behavior, and it was curbed through effective punishment and enforcement; no further acts of rape are known to have been committed in subsequent wars. In 2006, Tal Nitzan, a graduate student at the Hebrew University, argued in her research that soldiers in the Israeli army refrain from raping Arab women not for moral reasons, but for racist ones, because in the national consciousness their bodies are perceived as dirty and unattractive. She framed the claim in the requisite sociological language, but presented it most effectively in simple terms to the interviewee, who explained in less scholarly terms why it would never occur to him to rape an Arab woman: Yuck. How disgusting—I wouldn’t touch an Arab woman with the tip of a toilet brush. Nitzan was accused of implying in her thesis an absurd criticism of the army, suggesting that its soldiers are so racist that they do not rape Arab women. Anyone who wishes could use this criticism to justify the Torah, which is not racist, since it permits soldiers to rape non-Jewish women during wartime.

2.32.7.1 The Nirim Incident (1949)

On August 8, 1949, after the end of the War of Independence, Company 3, under the command of Second Lieutenant Moshe, was sent to man the Nirim outpost near the border with Egypt. On the eve of their departure south, Company Commander Captain Uri Rosenblum briefed his soldiers, saying: You must shoot to kill any Arab found within your sector. On Friday, August 12, at approximately 9:00 a.m., the platoon commander set out on a patrol in the southwestern part of the sector. He was traveling in a command car accompanied by two squad leaders, Corporal David and Corporal Gideon, and three other soldiers: Private Moshe, Private Yehuda, and Private Aziz. The driver was Corporal Shaul. They encountered two Bedouin men and a young Bedouin girl. The officer ordered the soldiers to put the girl in the vehicle. She began screaming and wailing, but to no avail. They then drove the two men away by firing several shots into the air. On the way to the outpost, the soldiers exchanged a few words with her—especially Corporal David—and at the same time discussed among themselves their desire to screw her, as they put it, meaning to rape her.

Around noon, the patrol arrived at the outpost, and the soldiers took the girl out of the command car. The officer ordered them to lock her in an unused barrack and post a guard over her. Private Avraham was sent to stand by the doorway. After about two hours, the officer left on another patrol. Meanwhile, the platoon sergeant took the girl out of the barracks, stripped her of her traditional black dress, stood her completely naked outside, and, like an animal, washed her in a humiliating manner in full view of everyone under a hose, with no walls to hide her, as he scrubbed her body with water and soap. He then burned her dress, dressed her in a purple T-shirt and khaki shorts, and locked her back in the barracks under the guard of Private Avraham. Soon, soldiers gathered near the barracks and demanded that the guard let them in so they could each take turns raping her. The guard agreed, but on the condition that he rape her first. Once this was agreed upon, he entered the shack and raped her. After about five minutes, he came out, apparently buttoning his pants. The second soldier entered after him, followed by the third, and they, too, raped her one after the other for about five minutes. As they left the hut, they, too, were seen buttoning their pants.

Upon returning from his patrol, the officer realized that the girl had been raped by his soldiers. He conducted a brief investigation and then declared in the mess hall that three soldiers had raped the Arab girl, in his own words. He ordered her to be brought to the headquarters barracks and placed before him. The two squad leaders, Corporal David and Corporal Gideon, were present in the barracks. The officer examined her new clothes. She told him in Arabic that his soldiers had played with her—that is, raped her. He ignored her words, believing it was their right, and even turned to his soldiers, telling them that they must first wash her body so she would be clean for another round, as he put it. At approximately 5:00 p.m., the commander ordered one of the privates to cut her hair in front of him and the sergeant. Her hair, which had previously reached her shoulders, was cut significantly short and doused with kerosene. She was then stripped, made to stand completely naked, washed again under a hose in front of their scrutinizing eyes, dressed in the same T-shirt and pants, and locked back in the barracks.

That evening, a particularly festive atmosphere prevailed at the outpost, and the officer ordered his soldiers to make preparations for a party. The tables in the large tent, which served as a dining hall, were arranged in rows; sweets were laid out on them, and a little wine was poured into glasses. At exactly 8:00 p.m., the soldiers took their seats. The commander addressed them with words of Zionism, emphasizing the importance of the role they fulfilled and their contribution to the country. At the instruction of his deputy, Sergeant Michael, Private Yehuda read a passage from the Bible. When he finished, the soldiers broke into song, told jokes, ate, and drank. At approximately 9:30 p.m., shortly before the party ended, the officer asked the soldiers for silence. He stood up, and with a smile on his face, reminded them of the Bedouin girl imprisoned in one of the barracks at the outpost. He declared that he was presenting them with two options to vote on. The first: she would henceforth be enslaved as a kitchen worker at the outpost. The second: she would become the outpost’s sex slave, and the soldiers would screw her, as he put it, each in turn. There was a great commotion. Dozens of soldiers present voted by a show of hands, and the second proposal was accepted by a majority vote. The soldiers began shouting enthusiastically: We want to screw [her]!

The officer announced that it had been decided by a majority vote to rape the Arab woman, as he put it. He set the schedule as follows: That very night, the soldiers of the company headquarters squad would rape her. On Sunday, the soldiers of Squad A would rape her. On Monday, the soldiers of Squad B would rape her, and on Tuesday, the soldiers of Squad C would rape her. Corporal Shaul, the driver, asked him jokingly: What about the drivers? Are they bastards? The officer replied that they were included in the headquarters squad, along with the sergeant, the squad leaders, the cooks, the medic, and himself, of course—and that they would rape her that very night. He added a threat to these words: if any of the soldiers raped the girl out of turn and broke the order he had established, the Tommy [Tommy Gun, submachine gun] would speak. After the party ended, the officer ordered the platoon sergeant to bring a folding bed into their shared tent and lay the girl on it so that her body would be readyfor use. The sergeant did as he was told, entered the tent, closed the entrance, and turned off the flashlight. About an hour and a half later, the officer ordered the girl to be taken out of the tent because, in his words, she was already emitting a foul odor as a result of the repeated rapes she had endured. The sergeant called one of the corporals, and the two of them carried the torn cot out of the tent, with the girl lying on it in a state of unconsciousness. They carried the bed to the entrance of her barracks, and just before entering, the sergeant laid her on the floor; accompanied by Corporal David, he then carried her in his arms and brought her back into the barracks.

The next day, at approximately 6:00 a.m., Private Eliyahu, who was on guard duty, saw the girl coming out of the barracks. He asked her where she was going, and she replied through tears that she was begging to see the officer. Private Eliyahu showed her the way to his tent. The girl begged the officer to stop them from raping her. In response, he threatened to execute her and ordered her to return to the barracks. A short while later, while shaving by the water hose, the sergeant asked what to do with her. The officer ordered him to execute her, since she had already been raped anyway. The sergeant ordered Corporal David to take two soldiers equipped with shovels to dig her grave. The girl was brought from the barracks and loaded onto the command vehicle. Just before the vehicle left the outpost, one of the soldiers shouted that he wanted the khaki pants the girl was wearing returned to him. The officer ordered her to be stripped and the pants returned to the soldier, since she wouldn’t need them in the grave anyway. She remained in the vehicle wearing only a T-shirt, her lower body completely exposed.

The vehicle set off. Corporal Shaul was driving, accompanied by Sergeant Michael, Corporal David, the medic, and those designated to be the gravediggers—Private Elijah and Private Shimon—who were equipped with shovels. They drove about 500 meters away from the outpost. The driver, Shaul, remained in the vehicle, while the other soldiers, along with the girl, moved a short distance away into the sand dunes. Corporals Eliyahu and Shimon began digging her grave, about 30 centimeters deep, right before her eyes. When the girl saw what they were doing, she began screaming and crying and tried to flee. She managed to run about six meters before the sergeant aimed his Tommy gun and fired a single shot at her. The bullet struck her right temple; blood gushed from the wound, and she fell where she stood and did not move again. The two soldiers continued digging her grave. The driver said she might still be dying and asked the sergeant to shoot her a few more times to ensure she was dead. Before the sergeant could reply, Corporal David approached him, took the Tommy gun, and fired several more shots into the girl’s body. They then placed her body in the dug-out pit, covered it with sand, and buried her there. Finally, they returned to the outpost.

In the afternoon, the officer arrived in the city of Be’er Sheva and went to the movie theater to watch a film, where he met the battalion commander, Major Yehuda Drachsler. Drachsler asked him if they had already released the girl and driven her back to where they had found her. The officer replied, We killed her, and added humorously, It would have been a waste of gas. On August 15, the officer ordered Sergeant Michael to draft a telegram in his own handwriting summarizing the incident; he signed it and sent it to the company commander in the following words: During a patrol on August 12, I encountered Arabs in my area of command, one of whom was armed. I killed the armed Arab on the spot and took his weapon. I took the Arab woman captive. On the first night, the soldiers abused her [raped her], and the next day I saw fit to eliminate her. Signed: Moshe, Second Lieutenant. The next day, the officer met again in the city of Be’er Sheva with Battalion Commander Draxler. During the conversation, Draxler told him: I’ve heard rumors about the chaos surrounding the Arab woman. The officer replied: What can I do? That’s just how the guys are. Later, the officer claimed that he himself did not ultimately rape the girl, because, in his words, you can’t rape a girl that dirty. The incident was hushed up for many years. Her body remained buried in the sands of the western Negev.