Women and girls continue to be raped by troops as part of a systematic campaign of sexual abuse that spans decades.
Hundreds of women have been raped, tortured, and beaten by Russian soldiers in the 10 months since Russia invaded Ukraine, frequently with their husbands and relatives forced to witness.
Horrific accounts, such as how Russian soldiers gang-raped a 22-year-old Ukrainian mother, sexually tortured her husband, and forced the pair to have sex in front of them before raping their 4-year-old daughter, demonstrate that Vladimir Putin’s troops have used rape as a weapon of war.
And this heinous practice has been widespread throughout warfare for millennia.
Hundreds of women have been raped, tortured, and beaten by Russian soldiers in the 10 months since Russia invaded Ukraine, frequently with their husbands and relatives forced to witness. Pictured: Woman and child strolling over anti-tank steel hedgehogs in Kyiv, Ukraine, on December 15, 2014, during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Millions of women have been systematically raped throughout conflict in the last century alone, including in Bosnia in 1992, Rwanda in 1994, and China in 1937, to name a few instances.
Systematic mass rape campaigns employ forced pregnancy as a means of racially purifying a nation and psychologically traumatizing generations of people.
As long as women fear stigmatization for speaking up about their rape experiences, the full scope of rape during warfare – and now in Ukraine – will stay unknown.
According to experts, the children born as a result of this wartime rape are frequently stigmatized since they become “living reminders of the struggle.”
This article examines the use of rape as a weapon of war in five conflicts.
Nanjing, China, 1937
In 1937, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, Japanese soldiers captured the Chinese city of Nanking. This event occurred 85 years ago.
During a six-week atrocity beginning on December 13, 1937, Japanese forces raped, tortured, and murdered hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians in what has become known as the “Rape of Nanking.”
At least 200,000 women and girls, many of whom were maimed and murdered, were raped by Japanese forces, who also murdered at least 300,000 people.
In the city alone, there were 40 military brothels where Japanese soldiers raped women as young as 12 years old.
In 1937, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, Japanese soldiers captured the Chinese city of Nanking. This event occurred 85 years ago. During a six-week atrocity beginning on December 13, 1937, Japanese forces raped, tortured, and murdered hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians in what has become known as the “Rape of Nanking.” Following the conquest of Nanking in December 1937, Japanese troops slaughtered Chinese soldiers who had surrendered.
During World War II, Chinese boys with their hands chained together board a vehicle in Nanjing, east China, under the armed protection of Japanese occupiers. They were taken to the outskirts of Nanjing and executed there.
As part of the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Second Sino-Japanese War’s atrocities included killing contests, mass rape, the bayoneting of toddlers and infants, and the plundering of homes.
The months-long rampage of murder and rape in Nanking, China’s capital at the time, has become a symbol for Chinese nationals of the brutality of the Japanese rule.
The established safety zone for the protection of civilians was disregarded, and decaying corpses covered the streets. The perimeter was roughly the size of Central Park.
Rwanda, 1994
In 1994, over one million Rwandans, or one-tenth of the country’s population, were brutally murdered and 500,000 were raped during the course of 100 days.
Hutu extremists, led by the Rwandan army and a militia known as the Interahamwe, murdered an estimated 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus who attempted to protect them during the genocide.
Rwanda’s genocide began on April 6, 1994, when a plane carrying President Juvénal Habyarimana was shot down and crashed in the city, Kigali, killing the Hutu-ethnic leader, like the majority of Rwandans.
The Tutsi minority of Rwanda was accused for the crash, sparking retaliatory attacks on Tutsis across the 12 million-person nation.
In 1994, over one million Rwandans, or one-tenth of the country’s population, were brutally murdered and 500,000 were raped during the course of 100 days. During the genocide, shown are Tutsi ladies hiding in a church on April 13, 1994 in Kigali, Rwanda.
During the genocide, governmental and military authorities promoted rape as a means of further annihilating the Tutsi ethnic minority, which currently comprises only 14% of the population.
An estimated 500,000 women were sexually molested in systematic ethnic cleansing policies.
In order to infect Tutsi women, Hutus also released AIDS patients from hospitals in order to establish “rape squads.” Consequently, thousands of wartime rape survivors and their children are infected with HIV/AIDS and suffer long-term consequences.
Many of the survivors of wartime rape suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the trauma they underwent.
In 1994, a Rwandan soldier fighting in the civil conflict clutches two big knives and stands atop a pile of other knives.
Bosnia, 1992 – 1995
As part of a military campaign of ethnic cleansing, up to 50,000 women and girls were subjected to sexual abuse during the three-year Bosnian war that began in 1992.
Paramilitary units and the Bosnian Serb army ejected the non-Serb populace, burned their homes, and separated their families, while forcing thousands into detention camps where many were tortured and subsequently executed.
As a tactic of war, Serbian soldiers killed an estimated 100,000 people and raped between 20,000 and 50,000 Bosnian women, many of them in specific rape camps.
As part of a military campaign of ethnic cleansing, up to 50,000 women and girls were subjected to sexual abuse during the three-year Bosnian war that began in 1992. Pictured: In 1994, during the Bosnian conflict, a family attends a burial in Sarajevo, Bosnia.
The women, who were predominantly Muslim Bosniaks, were held captive in gymnasiums, abandoned houses, and concentration camps, where they were raped with weapons and shattered glass bottles.
As part of their policy of ethnic cleansing, the Serbian commanders instructed their forces to rape Bosnian women. Several victims reported being informed by Serbian soldiers, ‘It is preferable to give birth to Chetniks [Serbs] than to Muslim trash,’ according to a report.
It is unknown how many children were born during the conflict, but due to the taboo surrounding their birth in a patriarchal society, they are now known in Bosnia as the “invisible” children.
The ethnic cleansing and genocide campaigns in Bosnia and Rwanda in the 1990s led to a recognition of ‘rape as genocidal,’ and the United Nations classified rape a ‘weapon of war.’
Paramilitary units and the Bosnian Serb army ejected the non-Serb populace, burned their homes, and separated their families, while forcing thousands into detention camps where many were tortured and subsequently executed. 1994 photograph of Bosnian ladies embracing in Sarajevo, Bosnia, during the conflict.
1945, Germany, Second World War
Two million German women were raped by Russian soldiers during their takeover of eastern Germany after the close of World War II, in 1945.
Hundreds of women at the women-only Nazi concentration camp of Ravensbruck were raped by Red Army soldiers upon their arrival to ‘liberate’ the camp.
Survivors of Ravensbruck have described how thousands of women were gassed by SS guards; 2,500 were killed over the course of one weekend as the Red Army advanced on the Nazis.
Two million German women were raped by Russian soldiers during their takeover of eastern Germany after the close of World War II, in 1945. Pictured: In 1945, a Russian soldier stops a woman riding a bicycle in Berlin after attempting to purchase it from her.
On April 30, 1945, when the surviving women heard Russian artillery, there were still hundreds of people in the camp.
The women, upon realizing that the SS guards had departed, hung a scarlet banner over the camp’s entrance for those they believed would be their saviors following years of brutal torment.
However, the Russian forces introduced a new horror by committing tens of thousands of rapes against women.
In 1945, when Russian forces neared the Ravensbruck detention camp in Germany, 2,500 women were executed over the course of a single weekend as the prisoners stand near barbed wire.
Since crossing the German border, the advancing Red Army had committed mass rapes against German women, but the soldiers also raped famished concentration camp inmates, many of whom were Russians.
In Sarah Helm’s book, “If This Is A Woman: Inside Ravensbruck, Hitler’s Concentration Camp For Women,” a nurse named Nadia Vasilyeva describes how the Russian soldiers “at first greeted us as sisters, but later turned into animals.”
Ilse Heinrich said, “I was little more than a corpse, and then I had to endure it!”
The prisoners at the camp were shot, hung, gassed, and positioned. Above, the malnourished bodies of captives at the Nazi concentration camp Ravensbruck in Germany lie on the ground.
Red Army soldiers raped pregnant women in the internment camp as well.
Another prisoner reported that the Russian soldiers requested cash for the prisoners’ release.
She stated, “Because we were Russian pigs, the Germans never raped us, but our own soldiers did.” Stalin had ordered that no soldiers be taken prisoner, so our captors believed they could treat us with contempt.
Current Tigray area in Ethiopia
In the Tigray region of Ethiopia, thousands of women and children, some as young as eight years old, are being raped by Ethiopian army and allied forces.
Sexual violence is being used as a weapon of war in the region to humiliate both the women and the Tigrayan ethnic group; some victims have reported being gang-raped over several days.
No one knows the true toll of the two-year fighting, as the majority of the 6 million-person region’s health institutions were plundered or destroyed.
Women have claimed being held captive for days or weeks while being repeatedly raped, typically by many males. Others informed Amnesty International that they were raped in front of their families.
In the Tigray region of Ethiopia, thousands of women and children, some as young as eight years old, are being raped by Ethiopian army and allied forces. On July 2, 2021, captured Ethiopian troops may be seen walking into the Mekele Rehabilitation Center in Mekele, the capital of Tigray province, Ethiopia.
Soldiers would also sexually assault pregnant women. The victims reported that nails, stones, and shrapnel were inserted into their genitalia. They reported being raped by Ethiopian soldiers and their Eritrean friends.
In September, investigators backed by the United Nations announced that they had discovered evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Ethiopian government forces, Tigray forces, and Eritrea’s military during the nearly two-year conflict centered on Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region.
Eritrean troops have battled with Ethiopia’s federal military against Tigray’s previous ruling party since August 24, 2022, when hostilities resumed in the region following a truce.
On May 17, 2022, women from the internally displaced persons (IDP) camp of Guyah, 100 kilometers from Semera, Afar region, Ethiopia, wait for their children to be checked by health staff.
Thousands of people have been killed and hundreds of thousands have been displaced in the roughly 5 million-person mountainous region.
The violence, which began over two years ago, has expanded from Tigray to the neighboring districts of Afar and Amhara as the leaders of Tigray attempt to break their region’s embargo.
»From Bosnia to Rwanda, sexual violence against women and girls has been used as a weapon of war«