Flattened cities, destroyed villages, bombed schools and hospitals, minefields, more than three million refugees, tens of thousands deported to Russia against their will, and many others trapped in cities without electricity or water are the most evident balances so far of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. To these damages and destruction are added, at ground level, the atrocities spread by the media and social networks this weekend. The discovery in streets, highways and mass graves of the bodies of handcuffed people, with signs of torture and shots of grace or direct shots, in Bucha and other outskirts of Kyiv, has given greater prominence to the bloody violence inflicted on the civilian population by the occupation troops. Added to this brutality, visible to international eyes, is sexual violence against women and girls, less evident but equally criminal.
According to international media and a Human Rights Watch report, women from towns and cities that have lived under Russian occupation have denounced aberrations such as gang rapes, including of girls and adolescents, rapes of women in front of their children, some with their ears cut off, as well as such as torture and physical attacks. HRW has documented at least one repeated rape by a Russian soldier; Guardian has published fragments of testimonies of Ukrainian women who have suffered or have witnessed these crimes, reported to the local police or organizations that support victims of sexual violence. As the occupying troops withdraw, it will be possible to better understand the extent of this violence, which can constitute war crimes and which, in any case, adds to the horror of war the terror of misogyny unleashed against girls and women.
Saying that in war women are seen and used as booty is not a mere cliché: sexual violence hurts, leaves deep marks on the body and psyche and can destroy body and spirit. It is a brutal form of torture. Since the Balkan war and the civil war in Rwanda, where thousands of women were systematically raped, it has been shown that systematic sexual violence is used as a weapon of war, first against women and, indirectly, against the community, the one who seeks to humiliate. Depending on how these violations occur, which, moreover, cannot only be attributed to individual motivations in the war context (and even in others they have to do with the sexist structure and misogyny of society), “rape and other forms of violence may constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity or constitute acts related to genocide” (as a weapon of ethnic cleansing), according to a 2008 UN Security Council resolution.
Both the massacres and the torture and rapes are acts of barbarism against the civilian population, which threaten the rickety “laws of war” that are not respected today in Ukraine, nor have they been respected in Syria, Yemen or Iraq, for only mention some conflicts of the 21st century.
Forty days after the start of the Russian invasion, the Ukrainian authorities continue to call for more effective support from the “West”. President Zelensky has seen in the recent barbaric acts the arrival of the “bad concentrate” in his country. Indications of “a deliberate massacre” in Bucha have led the European Union to speak of “atrocities” and “possible genocide”. Michele Bachelet, UN Human Rights Commissioner, has spoken of possible “war crimes” that need to be investigated.
Avoiding a dangerous escalation for humanity cannot justify inaction before the precipice of barbaric war. What else is the “international community” willing to tolerate? What more evidence of brutality is needed for the Mexican government to pronounce itself against the Russian invasion?
culture criticism
transmutations
She is a professor of literature and gender and cultural criticism. She has a doctorate in Latin American literature from the University of Chicago (1996), a master’s degree in history from the same university (1988) and a bachelor’s degree in social sciences (ITAM, 1986).