(DPA) NAIROBI – Sexual violence against women in the Somali capital Mogadishu has reached an unprecedented level, with women raped at checkpoints and during the day in front of bystanders by all parties to the vicious conflict, the United Nations said Friday.
The UN children’s agency UNICEF said rape was becoming an “instrument” used by Ethiopian Woyanne- and Condoleezza-backed government troops and insurgents, a new trend in the 17-year conflict, which has worsened dramatically since the New Year.
“Sexual violence and rape are part of conflicts in most parts of the world but we have not seen it on the level as we are seeing it now in Mogadishu,” said Christian Balslev-Olesen, the UNICEF representative for Somalia.
“Sexual violence and rape is part of the game.”
An aid worker based in the bullet-scarred capital Ethiopian Woyanne troops, in Mogadishu since the New Year and so embroiled in the conflict they cannot withdraw, cordon off areas after an attack, loot whatever they can and rape women left behind.
Women attempting to flee the violent capital, part of the exodus of 400,000 since the start of the year, are being raped at checkpoints and roadblocks run by the government or pro-government militias.
“The lack of respect for basic humanitarian principles is alarming and horrific,” Balslev-Olesen said, adding that wounded women and children are often left to die in the streets.
Balslev-Olesen said gathering figures on the number of rapes in the capital was difficult, with few international staff based there and many local aid agencies fearing repercussions from the government should they report such numbers.
He said figures collated from different relief agencies showed at least 50 women were raped in the last month.
Children meanwhile are being recruited into militias, with 80 per cent of schools in Mogadishu closed down because of the violence. Some 31 children have been killed on their way to school this year.
Ethiopian Woyanne- and Condoleezza-backed government troops swooped into Mogadishu at the New Year, ousting a popular Islamist group and sparking a persistent insurgency that has killed thousands.
6 thoughts on “Rape is now “part of the game” in Mogadishu”
I think we should have a worldwide demonstration to show our solidarity to the innocent civilans in Ogaden and Somalia that are caught in cross fire in both regions. I think having this demonstration shows to the world that Ethiopians in general are against to what is going on in Ogaden and Somalia i.e. indiscriminate killing of civilians by weyane soldiers.
“An aid worker based in the bullet-scarred capital Ethiopian troops, in Mogadishu since the New Year and so embroiled in the conflict they cannot withdraw, cordon off areas after an attack, loot whatever they can and rape women left behind.”
This is a sobering reality Jendayi Frazer and Condoleeza Rice have embraced and fully participated in. Frazer was seen standing while young girls as young as 12-year olds were being gang raped by 18 Ethiopian soldiers in front of her as she stood idel. Some cases little girls died of massive force applied on them. She is asking all journalists to jkeep it quiet or else the American government will make sure they pay the price for exposing such drama taking place under the blessing of the State Department African affairs.
OMG i really feel sorry for the innocent people in ethiopia, thinking about all my amharic, oromo and even some tigrayan friends said this might be new in somalia but has been going on for quite sometime in ethiopia, may one day the people of somalia and ethiopia unite to get rid of such nasty dictator and live in peaces together
These crimes are not perpetrated by Ethiopians, who are victims themselves. we Somali’s now that. But, it is done in Ethiopias name. I agree with Chuchu that you should demonstatre and should solidarity with the people in Somalia and Ogaden. and remember the Ogaden’s are Ethiopians. what is happening to us is beyond imagination, in case you doubt.
License to rape Somali and Ogaden women!
To bring frustration, confusion, humiliation, and total submission upon his territorial, political, and psychological enemies, the ignoble Wayne régime may have intentionally given his troops in Somalia and in Ogaden the green light to violate the women, maim or kill the men, plunder them, and burn down their houses to the ground as a severe punishment for their welcoming of the Islamists and supporting them in their day-to-day struggles against the Wayne’s ill-equipped, immoral, and undisciplined fortune-seeking soldiers.
Of course, rape happens in all wars, in all religions, and in all cultures. We have seen it in the Bosnian war that the Serb Christian army raping the Bosnian Muslim women, and we have seen it in Pakistan that the Muslims kidnapping, raping, and forcing the Christian girls to be converted to Islam. We have seen it that the Sudan Muslim army raping the Darfur Muslim girls, and now we are witnessing that the Wayne Christian army raping the Somali Muslim girls and the Ogaden innocent women.
In the Holy Scriptures rapists are usually condemned to death by stoning; rape is against the Christian, the Muslim, and the Jewish principles in general, and we know that rape is a violation of the International law, and we also hear from time to time that American rapists during the Civil War had been thoroughly and severely persecuted and finally executed. What we hardly hear is that the Meles Zenawi’s régime has never attempted to investigate the rapists among his troops – those who committed sexual violence for their own sexual gratifications – into justice. Meles’ tacit agreement on the criminal conducts of his troop in Somalia and Ogaden tells us that he himself is an accomplice to his troops’ daily sexual violence against the innocent Somalia and Ogaden women.
The punishment for the Wayne’s troops who violated the Ogaden’s and the Somali’s women may be confinement in jail for a number of years, but what will be the punishment for the head of a state who gives his troops the green light to murder, to burn, to loot, and to rape innocent civilian women as part of a punishment for the conflict created by the two opposing parties? No one knows for sure! To my judgment, however, the punishment for the head of a state who permits his troops to rape married and unmarried, old and young women should be extremely severe than the punishment given to the ordinary soldier who committed the rape to satisfy his perverse sexual desire. In all these, the International Community must come up with a sweeping law that punishes severely the heads of states that allows their soldiers to commit such a heinous crime as ravishing innocent civilian women.
A woman who is forcefully violated by her attacker always feels humiliated because her dignity, her honor, has been taken away from her and may not feel comfortable to raise an illegitimate child whose father is unknown. Rape is a wicked thing that ever happens to an innocent woman wherever she is. Rape is a disgraceful act committed by criminal gangs like the Wayne army gangs in Somalia and in Ogaden.
The humiliation and the disgrace that come from a woman of rape are vividly manifested in the Holy Scriptures: “‘Don’t my brother?’ she (Tamar) said to him (her brother Amnon). ‘Don’t force me. Such a thing should not be done in Israel! Don’t do this wicked thing. What about me? Where could I get rid of my disgrace?” Any way, with all her pleas and anguish requests to let her go free, Tamar was forced by her brother Amnon and raped during day light and forcefully sent away home. After this shameful incident, “Tamar put ashes on her head and tore the ornamented robe she was wearing. She put her hand on her head and went away, weeping aloud as she went.” (2 Samuel 13:1-20) Of course, Tamar lived in her brother Absolom’s house, sad, degraded, disgraced, and unmarried through out her life.
How many Somali and Ogaden women have begged the invading Wayne’s army not to violate them, disgrace them, and humiliate them? Do the Wayne’s troops listen to the desperate requests from such poor Somali and Ogaden women who do not want to be raped, for they are married women and they have children and they are Muslims, or they are virgins, and they want to marry honorably and have legitimate children?
Burned by their uncontrollable lewdness and eroticism, for they have been in Somalia and Ogaden without women for a long time, the Wayne troops with their guns pointed at their victims compel the innocent civilian women and rape them repeatedly. When Tamar was raped, she vividly expressed her sadness by tearing her robes and by putting ashes on her head, but when the Somali and the Ogaden women are raped by the Wayne soldiers, only few of the raped victims of these women reveal what has happened to them for fear of discrimination or isolation by their societies because a raped woman has no full respect like the other un raped women in some societies.
A raped woman’s humiliation is not limited to her self alone; it includes her entire family. A raped woman may never marry again like that of the Biblical Tamar. One of the humiliations a Muslim woman of rape faces is to bear a Christian child, and the same is true for a Christian woman, too. Some Muslim or Christian women may never, in fact, want to have a child by a person outside of their faith so they abort the child. Or simply falsify the true history of the illegitimate child by telling that the child’s father is of the same faith, but they do not know what has happened to his/her father because of the conflict or war. In some cultures, to have a child outside of one’s own faith is considered “race defilement.” Thus, Wayne’s troops in Ogaden and especially those who are stationed in Somalia have created a complicated problem by raping the Somali’s women, and the illegitimate children the Somali Muslim women bear may be called Somali Muslim-Ethiopian Christian children. The advantage for the children of this type of birth will be that they will have dual citizenships, thanks to the Wayne’s rapist troops in Somalia and in Ogaden. The second advantage is that a child of Muslim blood and a Christian blood might be mightier than Gragn Ahmad and Tewodros II and smarter than the other child of the same blood. Who knows!
Mark out words. The Meles Zinawi and his crime family soon will be captured alive and be brought to Ethiopian’s court. Justice will be delivered tantamount to the gross crime that the woyannetplf mafia families committed against Ethiopians.
Celleberation,cellebration!! there will be no one says “who could have thought this?” all crime families will be exposed-naked- standing infront of all Ethiopians on a count of one, tow, three. Justice in its bitter and sour tast shall be fed into the mouthes of all those criminal tplfwoyanne robbers.
There will never be funeral nor chest bitting or sort that thing, there won’t be burial for the enemies; there will be one and only one thing: ship them back to nakfa cave their ash sealed in garbage can.
Let their demons have burial them satanic burial.