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Serenasailor
Veteran Poster
Username: Serenasailor
Post Number: 853
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, November 30, 2006 - 03:42 pm: | 
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“WE WANT LIGHT-SKINNED BABIES”
Arab Militianmen in Sudan Using Rape as Weapon of Ethnic Cleansing
By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
(EDITOR’S NOTE: Given whatever paradigm or explanation you happen to be using for such atrocities as these, you have to ask yourself where does eradicating the black races fit into the “big picture” of messianic deliverance. If the Messiah was and is a man of color, as many scholars believe he very likely may have been, of what benefit to the enemies of God is ridding East Africa of black people … especially those of Semitic origins?)
GENEINA, Sudan, June 29 — At first light on Sunday, three young women walked into a scrubby field just outside their refugee camp in West Darfur. They had gone out to collect straw for their family’s donkeys. They recalled thinking that the Arab militiamen who were attacking African tribes at night would still be asleep. But six men grabbed them, yelling Arabic slurs such as “zurga” and “abid,” meaning “black” and “slave.” Then the men raped them, beat them and left them on the ground, they said.
“They grabbed my donkey and my straw and said, ‘Black girl, you are too dark. You are like a dog. We want to make a light baby,’ ” said Sawela Suliman, 22, showing slashes from where a whip had struck her thighs as her father held up a police and health report with details of the attack. “They said, ‘You get out of this area and leave the child when it’s made.’ “
A mother in a village in Darfur warns her daughter not to leave the schoolhouse where other women are hiding from the militiamen.
CRISIS IN SUDAN
Suliman’s father, a tall, proud man dressed in a flowing white robe, cried as she described the rape. It was not an isolated incident, according to human rights officials and aid workers in this region of western Sudan, where 1.2 million Africans have been driven from their lands by government-backed Arab militias, tribal fighters known as Janjaweed.
Interviews with two dozen women at camps, schools and health centers in two provincial capitals in Darfur yielded consistent reports that the Janjaweed were carrying out waves of attacks targeting African women. The victims and others said the rapes seemed to be a systematic campaign to humiliate the women, their husbands and fathers, and to weaken tribal ethnic lines. In Sudan, as in many Arab cultures, a child’s ethnicity is attached to the ethnicity of the father.
“The pattern is so clear because they are doing it in such a massive way and always saying the same thing,” said an international aid worker who is involved in health care. She and other international aid officials spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they feared reprisals or delays of permits that might hamper their operations.
She showed a list of victims from Rokero, a town outside of Jebel Marra in central Darfur where 400 women said they were raped by the Janjaweed. “It’s systematic,” the aid worker said. “Everyone knows how the father carries the lineage in the culture. They want more Arab babies to take the land. The scary thing is that I don’t think we realize the extent of how widespread this is yet.”
Another international aid worker, a high-ranking official, said: “These rapes are built on tribal tensions and orchestrated to create a dynamic where the African tribal groups are destroyed. It’s hard to believe that they tell them they want to make Arab babies, but it’s true. It’s systematic, and these cases are what made me believe that it is part of ethnic cleansing and that they are doing it in a massive way.”
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell flew to the capital, Khartoum, on Tuesday to pressure the government to take steps to ease the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. U.S. officials said Powell may threaten to seek action by the United Nations if the Sudanese government blocks aid and continues supporting the Janjaweed. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan is due to arrive on Khartoum this week.
The crisis in Darfur is a result of long-simmering ethnic tensions between nomadic cattle and camel herders, who view themselves as Arabs, and the more sedentary farmers, who see their ancestry as African. In February 2003, activists from three of Darfur’s African tribes started a rebellion against the government, which is dominated by an Arab elite.
Riding on horseback and camel, the Janjaweed, many of them teenagers or young adults, burned villages, stole and destroyed grain supplies and animals and raped women, according to refugees and U.N. and human rights investigators. The government used helicopter gunships and aging Russian planes to bomb the area, the U.N. and human rights representatives said. The U.S. government has said it is investigating the killings of an estimated 30,000 people in Darfur and the displacement of the more than 1 million people from their tribal lands to determine whether the violence should be classified as genocide.
The New York-based organization Human Rights Watch said in a June 22 report that it investigated “the use of rape by both Janjaweed and Sudanese soldiers against women from the three African ethnic groups targeted in the ‘ethnic cleansing’ campaign in Darfur.” It added, “The rapes are often accompanied by dehumanizing epithets, stressing the ethnic nature of the joint government-Janjaweed campaign. The rapists use the terms ‘slaves’ and ‘black slaves’ to refer to the women, who are mostly from the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups.”
Despite a stigma among tribal groups in Sudan against talking about rape, Darfur elders have been allowing and even encouraging their daughters to speak out because of the frequency of the attacks. The women consented to be named in this article.
In El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, about 200 miles east of Geneina, Aisha Arzak Mohammad Adam, 22, described a rape by militiamen. “They said, ‘Dog, you have sex with me,’ ” she said. Adam, who was receiving medical treatment at the Abu Shouk camp, said through a female interpreter that she was raped 10 days ago and has been suffering from stomach cramps and bleeding. “They said, ‘The government gave me permission to rape you. This is not your land anymore, abid, go.’ “
Nearby, Ramadan Adam Ali, 18, a frail woman, was being examined at the health clinic. She was pregnant from a rape she said took place four months ago. She is a member of the Fur tribe and has African features.
(… let me at ‘em … S.O.S.)
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Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 6846
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, November 30, 2006 - 03:44 pm: |
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Where are the fathers, husbands, kin and friend of these women and girls while they're being raped? |
Serenasailor
Veteran Poster
Username: Serenasailor
Post Number: 854
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, November 30, 2006 - 06:39 pm: |
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Alot of these men were either killed off or they were captured, or busy taking up arms and fighting the Arab soldiers. If you ever get the time grab the book "Slave". It is a really good book written by a slave girl who was captured in the Arab north of Sudan. |
Fortified
Regular Poster
Username: Fortified
Post Number: 394
Registered: 04-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, November 30, 2006 - 08:46 pm: |
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Don't forget, a lot of these husbands abandon their wives and daughters once they are raped. That is more common than you think. |
Lil_ze
Veteran Poster
Username: Lil_ze
Post Number: 595
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, November 30, 2006 - 08:49 pm: |
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are we just supposed to BLINDLY accept the CLAIMS of these "southern sudanese"?
other than these fantastic CLAIMS made by these people who would love to overthrow the islamic government in the north, is there ANY PROOF of these ALLEGED "racial rapes"?
do we believe every word that somone says, just because they say it?
also this is clearly an old article or story. colin powell is not the secretary of state.
more lies spread by the media and southern sudanese, in an effort to gain U.N. intervention in order to weaken and eventually overthrow the islamic government in the north. |
Latina_wi
Regular Poster
Username: Latina_wi
Post Number: 65
Registered: 08-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, November 30, 2006 - 09:51 pm: |
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FORTIFIED said: Don't forget, a lot of these husbands abandon their wives and daughters once they are raped. That is more common than you think.
Latina_WI: Very true. Being raped is seen as a shameful act taken out on a woman. The man is given little punishment (if at all) whilst the woman is blamed. So sad. |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 6848
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, December 01, 2006 - 11:35 am: |
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If these women are being raped by outsiders and then abandoned by their own men who are so ignorant that they blame these hapless women for being victims and are too weak to protect the women, what hope is there for these people and their culture to survive? |
Enchanted
Regular Poster
Username: Enchanted
Post Number: 150
Registered: 11-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, December 01, 2006 - 03:33 pm: |
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Sexism must be a key part of their culture. The same thing happened to black women in America during slavery days too Abm. Black men still call us bedwenche and blame black women because we supposedly always had a love affair going on with white men. It doesn't matter that we were slaves. We wanted it. Remember? |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 6850
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, December 01, 2006 - 04:17 pm: |
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Enchanted,
I've heard tale of some Black male slaves blaming female slaves for being raped by massah. But I don't recall hearing or reading of sistahs being wholly abandoned and shunned to the degree that apparently is occurring in the Sudan. |
Enchanted
Regular Poster
Username: Enchanted
Post Number: 151
Registered: 11-2005
Rating: 
Votes: 2 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, December 01, 2006 - 07:18 pm: |
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The only race of men I ever saw protect their women from rape is peckerwoods. Sorry to be blunt. You just got done saying how can their culture survive after the men let this happen? Well look at our culture. Has our relationship survived slaveyr and the rape by white men? Black men was locked on a plantation so he couldn't run right away, but they claimed black women was always "Free" because we were raped. You heard that lie for generations right? Black man abandoned shunned black women look all around you. Were in a plot with the white man agains the black man they say so black men do blame us for being raped by white men. It seem too similar the situation of black people anywhere on earth to me. That's how I see it.
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Misty
Regular Poster
Username: Misty
Post Number: 369
Registered: 02-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, December 03, 2006 - 03:15 am: |
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enchanted,
you are right on 99% of what you say except for the part about white men protecting their women...they only seemed to care to protact their women when it was another race raping them...but let it be another white man going around raping white women and you will see who gets the blame. |
Yvettep
Veteran Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 1443
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: 
Votes: 2 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, December 03, 2006 - 11:38 am: |
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Most Black women and girls are raped by Black men and boys. When will Black men (the majority of whom are not rapists) speak out about that? Or other Black women, for that matter? |
Ntfs_encryption
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Ntfs_encryption
Post Number: 1185
Registered: 10-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, December 04, 2006 - 03:43 am: |
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"When will Black men (the majority of whom are not rapists) speak out about that?"
What makes you think they don't? All my black male friends have wives and daughters so the idea of them being raped (or any other black woman) is not taken lightly. I certainly speak out about violence against black women (and women in general). Why do you believe black men are indifferent to sexual violence against black women? Just curious........
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Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 2239
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, December 04, 2006 - 04:31 am: |
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And what exactly are Black men supposed to say? |
Yvettep
Veteran Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 1444
Registered: 01-2005
Rating:
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, December 04, 2006 - 09:58 am: |
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Have you been following the reactions to the documentary "No!" by Aishah Shahidah Simmons? Have you followed any reactions regarding allegations of rape at Spellman in which students at Morehouse have been accused? Do you remember the reactions to the Mike Tyson rape trial? Has anyone ever talked to incarcerated sisters at any women's prison in this country?
Perhaps most Black men (and women) privately mourn for rape victims and are against rape. But publicly, at least, most Black women making such accusations are demonized and not believed. The *default* seems to be that these women are lying or are gold-diggers, etc.
If I am misreading public response, or have missed some important counter examples, then I am happy to be shown otherwise. But in general I think the message that most Black women (and girls and boys) get is that if they make accusations against a Black man, they will be seen as betraying the Black race.
And what exactly are Black men supposed to say?
I guess I would pose that question to the Black men on this board who find themselves speaking out against sexual violence in our communities. I have no doubt that men on this board are likely not the norm, and are probably a lot more vocal about this kind of injustice. But a lot of that kind of "speaking out" work has to happen between men--in the locker rooms, in the recording studio, at the barbershop, at the family reunion, etc.
If the question is "What are Black women supposed to say?" then I think we first need to be able to find ways to talk honestly about this topic. I am always surprised to find out how many Black women have been molested or raped. Few have ever handled the situation through the courts and you would be surprised how many are counseled to not say anything--by mothers, friends--even, in one case, a clergy member!
My larger point, if I had taken the time to express it, is that it is easy for Black Americans to decry the foulness of rape on the African continent (and that reaction is due, because the situation is terrible). But it is much harder for us to confront our own issues with this in our own communities, today (as opposed to back in slavery times or whatever).
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Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 6855
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, December 04, 2006 - 10:53 am: |
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Enchanted,
The cultures and humanity of those who were enslaved WERE destroyed via their capture; enslavement; rape; dissolution and abolishment of families, languages, customs, religions, etc.
And how much do we know, can we know about what Black slaves thought and did about what was happening to them?
It's NOT like there were very many literate slaves who could and did keep diaries of what was happening. And there certainly were very FEW if ANY literate Whites who wrote about the authentic thoughts and experiences of slaves.
You and others assume Black men did not attempt to defend Black women. I imagine to a material extent that was true. But I also imagine because Whites had great technological and logistical advantage, those men who tried to defend the women were roundly thwarted, tortured and killed.
Yvettep,
A LOT of the debate and consternation over rape involves situations where there is no evidence (e.g., vaginal trauma) or third party witnesses that a crime has occurred. This is compounded when the alleged victim and offender have previously consented to personal and/or intimate relations. In these situations, all you really have to work with are the often greatly contradictory words of the accusers versus those of the accused. And unless the accused has some serious credibility issues, the judicial criteria that requires a person be convicted beyond a reasonable doubt must be considered. |
Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 2240
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, December 04, 2006 - 10:56 am: |
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As someone who has raised a Black man from infancy, I think it's wrong to believe that our men should get their "home training" from locker rooms, recording studios, and barbershops. Did I discuss with my son that he shouldn't go and rape a woman? Of course not. And I don't think his father did either, although I was not privy to all of their man-to-man conversations. We raised our son with love and discipline and tried to instill in him respect for us, his elders, himself and other people, to be a decent human being. And as far as I know that's what he is.
Other than working with victims at a rape crisis center, I don't understand what it is that you expect people to do or what you expect people to say when they supposedly speak out against rape. Rapists don't reform themselves simply because someone told them not to be a rapist. |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 6856
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, December 04, 2006 - 10:56 am: |
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Enchanted,
And I've yet to witness any evidence of American Black slave men wholly abandoning and shunning slave women. Did SOME of that occur? I'm sure it did. But I am not aware that those men wholly, as some prevailing social or cultural reproof, forsook those women. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 5903
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, December 04, 2006 - 11:37 am: |
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The burden of proof always seems to be on the female in rape cases and if it's a matter of one person's word against anothers, the male gets the benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately, it is the nature of the beast to think that an inordinate amount of attention from a female means she wants to "give him some". To a woman "no" means "no." To a man "no" seems to mean that you "no" you really want me to take you. That being the case, women have to be careful about putting themselves in a position to be attacked. Dressing provocatively and flirting shamelessly, and consenting to be alone in the company of a man puts things on his mind and at some point he may start to think with his penis. It has been said that rape is about control, not about sex, but it was probably a man who came up with this definition. LOL. |
Enchanted
Regular Poster
Username: Enchanted
Post Number: 152
Registered: 11-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, December 04, 2006 - 12:06 pm: |
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Abm ditto for the Sudanese men. There are many unreported who die protecting their wives and daughters in these situations in Africa just like it was here. Go to the charity web site and you will see pictures and stories of boys and men who protected their women but some other men don't. There is even a story of a Sudan guy who married his fiance after she was gang raped. The news reports neagtive about black men no matter where they are. There is only "bad" ones. That was my point is that we are witnessing what happened to us now happen to some other black people. Anyway I don't like to post so I'm going back to lurking but I cant you believe you buy that oneside reporting, especially with the many years of war the Southern Sudanese men have put up against the Arab one reason being "rape" of Southern women.
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Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 6857
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, December 04, 2006 - 12:40 pm: |
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Enchanted,
Re-read my initial posts on this thread. I simply asked where were the men to defend their women and I asked if the men are abandoning the women, what hope do they have?
But I would agree it's entirely possible that we're NOT getting the whole, unadulterated truth about what's happening there. |
Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 2243
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, December 04, 2006 - 01:12 pm: |
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Agree with what Cynique says. Not to place the blame on the victim, but some females willingly put themselves in harm's way. Men produce this crazy hormone called testosterone and it causes them to behave irrationally. And most of them are not gonna stop fucking you in the middle of an encounter because you changed your mind or whatever. Once you start it up with them, it's pretty much gonna be on. I'd say that 80% of these rapes could be prevented by women not putting themselves into compromising situations. Again, I'm not condoning men's conduct, but that's just the way it is. And another thing to consider - some women really do LIE about having been raped. |
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