After Regina McKnight delivered a stillborn baby in 2001, prosecutors speciously linked the baby’s death with McKnight’s cocaine use and promptly convicted her of homicide – a conviction that American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorneys are seeking to overturn. McKnight now faces 12 years in prison. This unprecedented conviction means that women must be the guarantors of pregnancy outcomes, the National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW) reports. “The pregnant woman who Ôallows’ herself to be battered and the woman who misses prenatal care appointments are both now vulnerable to prosecution,” the NAPW press release reports. The case is expected to be appealed to the South Carolina Supreme Court. The Chief Prosecutor for Horry County explicitly stated that “the fact that it happened to be an illegal substance” did not determine McKnight’s conviction; rather, “Even if a legal substance is used, if we determine you are medically responsible for a child’s demise, we will file [homicide] charges,” reports The Sun News. McKnight’s ACLU lawyer argued that this interpretation of the law means that pregnant women can be convicted of homicide if they deliver a stillbirth and had smoked a cigarette, had a drink, engaged in strenuous physical activity, or taken prescription medicine, reports KaiserNetwork.org. Furthermore, doctors and nurses are now being encouraged to report pregnant patients to the police if the medical staff suspects that the woman is engaging in potentially harmful behavior, the Drug Policy Alliance reports. Twenty-two-year-old McKnight turned to drug use after falling into depression when her mother was killed by a hit-and-run driver in 1998. Lacking access to grief services, substance abuse intervention, and adequate pre-natal education, McKnight could not have known that “having a drug dependency co-occurring with pregnancy would be treated as murder,” according to NAPW. Had McKnight sought an illegal third-trimester abortion, her sentence would have been two years instead of 12. LEARN MORE Click here to read women’s narratives about barriers or successes in accessing reproductive health and family planning services.
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Report: Afghanistan Could Implode With Terrible Consequences
A recent British Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs report asserts that the improvement of security in Afghanistan is one of the highest priorities in the world. The report concludes that more resources for the current International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) are desperately needed. According to the report, “There is a real danger if these resources are not provided soon that Afghanistan Ð a fragile state in one of the most sensitive and volatile regions of the world Ð could implode, with terrible consequences.”
According to the report, attacks and assassinations of aid workers, including women working to register women to vote, have been undermining the reconstruction process in Afghanistan. Over 30 aid workers have been killed in Afghanistan since last March, reports BBC News. At least two people were killed, including a member of the Afghan election coordinating body, by an explosion at a polling center last week. In June, three female election workers were killed in Jalalabad, and 16 Afghans were shot dead because they had voter registration cards.
Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch issued a statement urging for the immediate expansion of NATO forces in Afghanistan to provide security for the elections scheduled to take place in October. According to Sam Zarifi of Human Rights Watch, “Recent experience in Afghanistan shows that the warlords will take power when there is a security vacuum É For the elections scheduled later this year to come off, NATO will need both to provide additional security for vulnerable candidates and voting sites, and to help disarm militia.”
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Spain’s New Prime Minister Prioritizes Protection for Women
The new Prime Minister of Spain, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, is making protection against domestic violence a top priority in his government. Zapatero called violence against women his country’s “worst shame” according to the New York Times. Following through on his campaign platform to fight violence against women, his first bill introduced to Parliament since he assumed power in April proposes harsher punishment for male abusers. The New York Times reported that the bill would criminalize violent threats against women, provide more money to protect women, and create work-training programs for battered women. In addition, this legislation lays the foundation for a national prevention and education program.
This proposed legislation comes after a wave of publicity about high rates of domestic violence in Spain. According to The New York Times, however, there has been powerful opposition to the Prime Minister’s pro-woman stance, particularly from the Catholic Church in Spain, which is claiming that women’s advances are the cause of the abuse, issuing a manifesto saying the “bitter fruits” of women’s increased power are “domestic violence, sexual abuse, and homeless children.”
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Afghan Elections Postponed; Female Election Worker Killed
The first post-Taliban elections that were scheduled to take place in September have been delayed due to slow voter registration and insecurity created by Taliban-like militia and so-called warlords. According to the Associated Press, Afghan officials have said that they are looking at the end of September or October to hold the elections, though no date has been set. The Afghan Ambassador to the United States, Said Tayeb Jawad, stated he is “hoping to be able to have both elections on time as scheduled. But if there will be any delays, that delay will most likely affect the parliamentary election,” reports Voice of America.
This is the second time the elections have been delayed in Afghanistan. The elections were originally set to take place in June. According to Voice of America, over 20 Afghan and three foreign election workers have been killed during the current voter registration process. Another school being used to register voters near Kandahar was attacked by over thirty Taliban fighters earlier this week, reports the Pakistan Tribune and earlier today a female Afghan worker registering voters for the election was killed when her car hit a landmine in Eastern Afghanistan, reports Reuters. In June, three other female election workers were killed when Taliban fighters attacked their bus with a bomb.
Meanwhile, the US Army News Service has reported that women make up fifty percent of the registered voters in the central highland region of Afghanistan. However, in areas where the militants are most active, such as the southern and eastern parts of the country, women are registering in very low numbers. Afghan women make up approximately only one-third of those registered to vote.
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Florida Abortion Clinic Firebombed
A suspicious fire broke out a women’s health clinic in Palm Beach County, Florida late Friday night. Dale Armstrong, resident agent investigating the fire with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, said that the fire was started purposefully. “It’s a common method: break a window, throw in an accelerant,” Armstrong told the Associated Press. The fire has damaged the roof of the Women’s Care Centers of Florida clinic and blew out all of the windows. “It’s burnt pretty bad,” said city police detective Donna Murphy, according to the Palm Beach Post. One neighborhood resident has reported that he saw a man walking away from the building shortly before the fire trucks arrived, the Post reports. The clinic, which has been open for two-and-a-half years, has been the target of protests for the past three weeks. Although severe clinic violence is down from its peak in 1994, “our national clinic violence survey reveals that violence is still threatening our nation’s clinics at an intolerable level,” said Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation. FMF’s most recent clinic violence survey found that levels of severe violence have slightly increased in the past two years, from 20 percent of clinics experiencing severe violence in 2000 to 23 percent in 2002. FMF’s National Clinic Access Project is the largest of its kind in the US, leading efforts to keep women’s health clinics open in the face of a war of attrition waged by abortion opponents. LEARN MORE Click here to read women’s narratives about barriers or successes in accessing reproductive health and family planning services. DONATE to support FMF’s work to curb violence by anti-abortion extremists against women’s health clinics
Afghan Women Killed For Registering Women to Vote
Two Afghan women were killed and 13 more were wounded by a bomb that exploded on a bus filled with female election workers. According to the New York Times, a Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the attacks and warned Afghans to stop working on the election process. The women on the bus were registration officials who were traveling to Rodat, Afghanistan to register women to vote, reports the New York Times. As a result of the attack, the United Nations has reported that all female registration teams in the eastern, southeastern, and southern regions of Afghanistan were suspended.
In another Taliban-led attack aimed to derail the upcoming Afghan elections, as many as 16 Afghan men were killed in Uruzgan in the southern Afghanistan after Taliban fighters had learned that they had registered to vote. According to the Associated Press, 4.5 million Afghan voters are currently registered, of which only one-third are women. In areas where the militants are most active, such as the southern and eastern parts of the country, women are registering in very low numbers.
Despite the rise of attacks against women in Afghanistan, a recent State Department report says the current “security situation in Afghanistan is better than it has been for 30 years.” Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission, led by Dr. Sima Samar, issued a statement to NATO urging an increase and expansion in the size and scope of peacekeeping troops because the “deteriorating situation and increasing insecurity around the country over the past six months have jeopardized the peace process and protection of human rights in Afghanistan.”
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Trial of Alleged Clinic Bomber Delayed Until 2005
The trial of alleged abortion clinic bomber Eric Robert Rudolph will be delayed until 2005. Rudolph is facing charges of the 1998 bombing of a Birmingham, Alabama women’s health clinic, which killed an off-duty police officer and severely maimed a nurse. US District Court Judge C. Lynwood Smith delayed the trial, which was scheduled to begin on August 2, to allow Rudolph’s defense team more time to prepare, according to the Birmingham News. Rudolph’s lawyers failed in their attempt to move the trial to a venue other than Birmingham, but Judge Smith will allow jurors to be drawn from a wider 31-county pool instead of just from the three counties surrounding the city, according to the Associated Press. Rudolph is also accused of bombing an Atlanta-area abortion clinic in 1997, a lesbian and gay nightclub in Atlanta, and the Atlanta Olympic Park in 1996, which killed one person and injured 111 others. Rudolph was captured last May in North Carolina after eluding authorities for five years. He was placed on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list in 1998 after the Birmingham clinic bombing. LEARN MORE Read in-depth coverage of the anti-abortion extremist movement in Ms. magazine JOIN the Ms. community and receive 1 year of Ms. magazine home delivery
European Police Meet to End Honor Killings
European police met in The Hague earlier this week to discuss ways to eradicate honor killings. According to UN Wire, honor killings are on the rise in Europe within Turkish, Asian, Arabic, and Eastern European communities.
More than 100 murders suspected of being honor killings are being investigated by police in England and Wales, reports BBC News. In England, police believe that several of the murders were conducted by contract killers that were hired by the family. In addition, the metropolitan police in England report that two women a week are seeking protection from the police because they felt they were in danger of being killed in the name of “honor.”
Some specific examples of honor killings brought up at the conference included the case of a 16-year-old girl was stabbed to death by her father two years ago because she was dating a boy of Christian faith, according to the Guardian. In Sweden, a 26-year-old Kurdish woman was killed by her father because of her relationship with a Swedish man, reports BBC News.
Attendees of the conference reported that there is a secret refuge in Berlin for Turkish women and girls seeking protection from honor killings, reports UN Wire.
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Catholics Priests Accused of Sex Abuse Hide Abroad
Catholic priests accused of sexually abusing children are hiding from authorities abroad, often with the assistance of church officials, according to an extensive newspaper investigation. The Dallas Morning News has conducted a yearlong investigation of priests who are accused of sexually abusing minors, finding that they avoid law enforcement, often with the help of church officials, by moving from country to country. In some cases, the church leaders who participated in moving accused priests were also accused of molesting children themselves. Police and prosecutors in many cases failed to take basic steps to thwart them. Furthermore, “dozens” of priests accused of sexual abuse of minors in the United States have moved on to positions in ministries abroad.
The News has focused so far on the Salesians of Don Bosco, one of the largest Catholic orders, which concentrates on helping poor children. The Salesians are one of the most outspoken orders when it comes to not cooperating with authorities in pedophilia cases. “For me it would be a tragedy to reduce the role of a pastor to that of a cop É I’d be prepared to go to jail rather than harm one of my priests,” said Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez, a possible successor to Pope John Paul II, according to the News. Rodriguez himself recently sheltered a priest accused of child molestation, and he has been an ardent defender of Cardinal Bernard Law in Boston, who resigned from his position in 2002 for mishandling sexual abuse allegations in his archdiocese, according to the News.
In one case involving a priest of the Salesian order, the Dallas Morning News reports that Rev. Frank Klep of Australia, who is accused of molesting at least six young boys at a boarding school near Melbourne in the 1970s, was sent to Rome in the early 1980s shortly after some of the victims’ parents threatened to sue. He then moved to the United States, where he helped at Masses in New York City while pursuing his Masters’ degree. When he returned to Australia, he was accused of sexual abuse by more former students, and after being questioned by police he was transferred by his order to Samoa, where he remains today.
Australian police inaction also aided Klep in his escape to Samoa. Though Klep was questioned and fingerprinted by police officers in 1996 when he was accused of molesting yet another former student, he was not arrested at that time. He was reassigned to Samoa in 1998, shortly before police sought to question him further. One of the investigators assigned to Klep’s case could not explain why it took more than two years for authorities to file charges. Law enforcement officials in Australia were supposed to contact the Samoan government about Klep, even though Australia has no extradition treaty with Samoa, according to the Associated Press. However, Samoan officials told the News they were never contacted.
The Dallas Morning News will continue to publish the results of their investigation over the next few months.
Kofi Annan Opposes Allowing US Troops Exemption from International Court
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan is urging the Security Council to oppose the United States’ attempt to obtain another exemption for US troops from prosecution under the International Criminal Court (ICC). According to the Washington Post, Annan said, “It would be unwise to press for an exemption, and it would be even more unwise on the part of the Security Council to grant it.”
According to Reuters, China has been criticizing the resolution for sending wrong signals to the world, stating that the resolution could be used as political cover for abuses committed by troops serving in UN-approved peacekeeping missions.
The ICC has widespread support in the US from groups such as the Feminist Majority because it identifies gender crimes and the crime of apartheid as crimes against humanity. Article 7 of the Rome Statute, which created the court, presents clear language that defines rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity as gender crimes. Ninety four countries have fully ratified the treaty establishing the ICC. The United States is currently the only industrialized country that has not signed the treaty.
Security Situation Continues to Worsen in Afghanistan
Four Afghan civilians, including two children, were killed by a roadside bomb aimed at the international peacekeeping force (ISAF) in Afghanistan this week.
According to IRIN News, the security situation is not improving as Afghanistan moves closer to the elections that are scheduled to occur in September. According to the acting chief of public information for the NATO-led peacekeeping force, “the security situation is far from being stable. It is deteriorating,” reports IRIN News. Earlier this week the head of Afghanistan refugee department was shot dead in Kandahar outside of his home. Since the beginning of June, 11 Chinese construction road workers were shot dead and five medical relief workers with Doctors Without Borders (three European and two Afghan) were killed. Doctors Without Borders, which has been working in Afghanistan since 1979, has since pulled all of its staff out of the country because of the lack of security.
These murders are the latest in a string of deadly attacks on relief workers, government employees and private contractors in a Taliban-led crusade to derail democratic elections. ISAF asserts that the attacks were conducted by “those who do not like this country to be stable,” reports IRIN News. According to Reuters, while NATO is planning on expanding its force into the northern provinces of Balkh and Faryab, it is not planning on going to the southern and eastern areas where the militants are the most active.
Already the elections that were to take place in June have been postponed until September due to the lack of security. Earlier this week, President Karzai called on NATO to expand its peacekeeping presence in Afghanistan before the elections in September. Despite the dire security situation, peacekeeping forces in Afghanistan remain a small contingent of some 6,500 soldiers.
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Army Report Finds Increase in Sexual Assault
An internal Army report released yesterday acknowledged the alarming increase in numbers of rapes and sexual assaults within its ranks and indicated that these crimes may have been facilitated by faults and oversights within the system. According to The New York Times, the Army found that reported cases of sexual assault within the Army rose from 658 to 822 between 1999 and 2003. During the same period, the number of reported rapes increased from 356 to 469 cases.
The Army’s internal study follows the release of a Department of Defense (DoD) report, commissioned in response to feminist groups and lawmakers who have expressed concerns about the hike in numbers of reported assaults against servicewomen abroad in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to The Washington Post. The DoD report as well as the Army internal investigation found that the military’s existing policies lacked basic medical care procedures for rape and assault victims. The Army’s internal report also acknowledged the often-stigmatizing environment victims experience when reporting a peer or even a superior. Former Army Captain Jennifer Machmer, a three-time assault and rape victim, told Salon, “The aftermath of reporting has been terrifying.”
In response to these findings, the Army plans to assign a “unit victim advocate” to help victims through the reporting process and to provide counseling and support, said the Army News Service. The Army also anticipates incorporating a more explicitly outlined sexual assault policy in their handbook, developing training programs for the prevention of sexual assault and installing a standardized system of reporting crimes and tracking punishments, according to the Army News Service. Currently, about 20 percent of offenders do not even have their crimes on permanent record. There is also no systematic way of tracking what aid victims received, if any at all.
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Aid Workers Killed and Women Threatened in Afghanistan
Five humanitarian aid workers were killed a few months before the first elections in Afghanistan are to take place. The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the murders. According to Reuters, three foreign and two Afghan staff members of Doctors Without Borders were killed in the northwestern province of Badghis on Wednesday. The attacks bring the number of aid workers killed in Afghanistan since the beginning of this year to 21, reports Reuters.
Recently, a group of armed men broke into a home of a female teacher in Afghanistan and threatened to kill her if she didn’t stop promoting women’s rights, according to the Washington Post. A leaflet was also found at a mosque in Khost, Afghanistan stating that all good Muslims should stay away from government buildings, foreign troops, and official funerals or else “your bodies will join theirs,” reports the Washington Post.
Only 2.8 million of the 10.5 million estimated eligible Afghan voters are currently registered, of which approximately one-third are women. The first post-Taliban elections that were to take place in June were postponed until September due to the lack of security. Despite the dire security situation in Afghanistan, peacekeeping forces in Afghanistan remain a small contingent of some 6,500 soldiers.
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Representatives Raise Concerns About Lack of Security in Afghanistan
At yesterday’s House International Relations Committee hearing on US policy in Afghanistan, several Representatives pressed for more security and reconstruction funding in Afghanistan. Representative Tom Lantos (D-CA), ranking Democrat on the committee, fears that “we may be on the verge of losing the battle for a peaceful and democratic Afghanistan due to the lack of security and reconstruction funding.” Lantos stressed that the size of the international peacekeeping forces (ISAF) run by NATO should be doubled in size and should expand its effort to more insecure areas of Afghanistan.
The Deputy Assistant Secretary for Counternarcotics, MaryBeth Long, testified that the increase in poppy cultivation is benefiting extremist groups including the Taliban. According to Long, the “substantial benefits” extremist groups are receiving from the poppy trade “may undermine [US] efforts to provide long-term security in Afghanistan.”
Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) stated that he is “struck by the disparity between what we are doing in Iraq and what we are not doing in Afghanistan.” The spending for Iraq’s reconstruction is 20 times more than Afghanistan’s despite the fact that the two countries are the same size and Afghanistan has suffered more destruction over 23 years of war.
Only 2.8 million of the 10.5 million estimated eligible Afghan voters are currently registered, of which approximately one-third are women. Poor security has not only delayed voter registration, but the Afghan election itself. The first post-Taliban elections that were to take place in June were postponed until September due to the lack of security. Despite the dire security situation in Afghanistan, peacekeeping forces in Afghanistan remain a small contingent of some 6,500 soldiers.
The Feminist Majority and other leading women’s rights and human rights advocates argue that without security, women in Afghanistan will never be able to obtain their rights and the country will never have sustained peace and democracy.
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UN Peacekeepers Allegedly Sexually Abuse Teenage Girls in Refugee Camp
Young female refugees in the Congo who were raped by militiamen are now allegedly being sexually exploited by United Nations peace troops. According to the Independent, UN peacekeepers are giving girls as young as 13 food in exchange for sex.
Testimonies from both aid workers and teenage girls say that young girls in the Internally Displaced People (IDP) camp in northeastern Congo are climbing through a wire fence every night to sell their bodies for food to UN soldiers from Morocco and Uruguay, reports that Independent.
According to UN Wire, some members of the staff that manages the camp stated that they were aware of the sexual exploitation but were afraid to say anything. The United Nations had pledged a zero-tolerance attitude against sexual misconduct in refugee and IDP camps; however, there is concern about how effective the investigations will be.
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Trafficked Victim Allowed to Remain in US
A Mexican woman who served 22 years in prison for the murder of the man who bought and raped her in 1976 was released and allowed to remain in the United States after pressure from various human rights group and members of Congress. According to the Associated Press, Maria Suarez was sold into sex slavery for $200 to a 68-year-old man, Anselmo Covarrubias, when she was 16 years old.
Suarez endured years of being beaten and raped until 1981 when she found her neighbor bludgeoning Covarrubias to death. Suarez helped her neighbor hide the weapon and as a result was convicted of first-degree murder and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
Suarez was granted parole last year with the law stating that she would have to be deported back to Mexico after her release. Representative Hilda Solis (D-CA) mobilized other members of Congress to grant Suarez a visa and to send letters to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, reports the Associated Press.
Suarez was granted a T-visa that was created in 2000 for victims of severe forms of human trafficking.
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Protest in Pakistan Condemns Honor Killings
Pakistani civil society organizations, members of Parliament, and members of political parties recently staged a protest in Peshawar, Pakistan against the rise of violence against women in the province. According to the Associated Press, the Aurat Foundation (a non-governmental organization) worked with other local partners calling for strict legislation to punish the perpetrators of honor killings and other forms of violence against women.
The vice president of the Awami National Party, Haji Mohammad Adeel, stated at the protest that honor killings have become routine in Peshawar and that the current government has failed to end the violence against women, according to the Associated Press.
Meanwhile, during an address to the human rights convention in Islamabad, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said, “Though honor killing is illegal, the passage of a law banning it would lend more strength to Pakistan’s efforts to do away with this intolerable practice” reports IRIN News. While human rights and women’s rights groups praised Musharraf’s call for a law to ban honor killings, they are urging for more action rather than rhetoric to eradicate honor killings that took the lives of over 600 women in 2003.
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Convicted Child Molester to be Released on Bond
John Burt, an anti-abortion extremist and convicted child molester, will be released on a $10,000 bond pending appeal of his conviction. Burt, 66, was sentenced this month to more than 18 years for molesting a 15-year-old girl who was in his care at his so-called home for “unwed” mothers, Our Father’s House. Under the terms of his bond, Burt must remain in Santa Rosa County, Florida, he must register as a sex offender, and he is not allowed to be alone with children, according to WEAR-TV in Pensacola, Florida. In the early 1980s, John Burt, who was the Regional Director of Rescue America at the time, was at the center of disruptions at the Pensacola, Florida clinics. In 1986, Burt led an invasion into the Ladies Center Clinic in Pensacola, which led to his arrest and conviction along with Joan Andrews Bell, an associate of James Kopp, who was convicted of assassinating Dr. Barnett Slepian. Joseph Scheidler was touring at the time on his book, “99 Ways to Close an Abortion Clinic.” Scheidler was on the lawn in front of the clinic at the time of the invasion. This incident was the impetus for the NOW v. Scheidler case that went to the Supreme Court twice and is still in litigation. In 1993, Burt was leading a Rescue America protest outside the second Pensacola clinic when an Our Father’s House volunteer, Michael Griffin, shot and killed Dr. David Gunn in the rear of the clinic. Burt was also an associate of Paul Hill, who murdered Dr. Bayard Britton and volunteer escort James Barrett outside the Ladies Center Clinic in Pensacola in 1994. Burt was videotaped helping Paul Hill identify Dr. Britton outside the clinic in the weeks before Hill shot and killed Dr. Britton and his clinic escort. In the past, Our Father’s House had the support of even national organizations; for example, Judie Brown, president of the American Life League, wrote a letter praising both Burt and Our Father’s House. DONATE to the Feminist Majority Foundation to support our National Clinic Access Project, which is dedicated to curbing clinic violence
Report: Sexual Assault of Women in US Military Major Problem
The Department of Defense (DOD) released a report last week that found 112 cases of sexual assault of women in the military by their male counterparts over the past 18 months in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kuwait.
The report stated that military authorities investigated nearly 2,120 alleged cases of sexual assault within the general military population in 2002 and 2003. David Chu, the Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel, concurred with the report that these figures are a small fraction of the number of assaults that actually occur, because soldiers are often afraid or unwilling to come forward, according to the Associated Press.
The DOD-commissioned report was completed in late April by the Sexual Assault Task Force. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered the investigation in February after a series of reports were issued regarding the sexual assault of female soldiers by their male counterparts, according to the New York Times. Female soldiers also allege they were often confronted with insensitive and unsupportive commanders after reporting the assaults, reports the Times.
The eight-member task-force panel found that the military’s existing policies don’t provide basic medical care, such as testing for HIV, rape evidence kits, and counseling for victims, according to Salon. The report also faults military policy for failing to create an environment that encourages victims to report the crime confidentially, effectively prevent and respond to allegations of sexual assault, and investigate and prosecute cases in a timely and effective manner. Members of Congress, women’s rights groups, and victims’ advocacy groups have criticized the report’s failure to propose concrete recommendations to remedy the problems, according to the Times.
Calling the report “as clear-cut about the seriousness of the problem as its 18 predecessors over the past 16 years,” Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) said, “Unfortunately, the recommendations to combat sex abuse were mostly vague and not entirely immediate É I’m hoping that the Pentagon will not only undertake an immediate plan to act on this report, but it will go above and beyond these recommendations to implement some of the solutions that have been proposed in the past.”
Representatives Maloney, Louise Slaughter (D-NY), Hilda Solis (D-CA), and 83 of their colleagues have requested a meeting with Rumsfeld to discuss the military’s plan to combat the sexual assault of female service members.
LEARN MORE Read the full text of the DOD report
Iraqi Women and Governing Council President Killed
The president of Iraq’s Governing Council was killed this morning in a suicide bombing near the coalition headquarters, marking the second member of the Iraqi Governing Council to be assassinated. The first member was one of only three women on Iraq’s Governing Council, who was assassinated this past September.
In another deadly attack, two Iraqi women working for the Coalition Provincial Authority were killed by gunmen over the weekend while driving in a minibus in Baghdad. On the same day, an Iraqi woman working as a translator for US troops was killed in her house when gunmen broke in.
Threats against Iraqi women leaders and women working for the United States have been escalating in Iraq. Last month a leading women’s rights activist Fern Holland, who worked tirelessly in Iraq to help Iraqi women achieve their rights, became one of the first American civilian employees of the Coalition Provisional Authority to be killed in Iraq. In addition, Iraq’s only female interim minister, Nasreen Barwari, escaped an assassination attempt near Mosul just last month.
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