By Pat Brewer
"There is an increase in organised violence against women, internationally and nationally, carried out by political and religious groups for political gain." Marie-Jose Ragab, director of the international division of the National Organisation of Women (NOW), explained why demonstrations and rallies are being prepared for February 21 in major cities in the United States to protest against organised anti-women violence.
The immediate trigger to the day of protest has been the accumulation of women speaking out about the hidden side of "ethnic cleansing" in former Yugoslavia, predominantly against Muslim women by Serbian forces. Systematic rape and forced pregnancy are occurring on a massive scale. The Bosnian government commission on war crimes in Sarajevo puts the figure at 30,000. The Ministry for International Affairs estimates it as high as 50,000.
These rapes aren't just "events that take place in the heat of the moment" or isolated acts carried out by "many armed madmen and psychopaths", as a UN spokesperson stated from Geneva. Women are confined in rape camps as part of the systematic terrorism and shaming of the population.
While many atrocities, such as the infamous concentration camps, have been revealed, similar reportage of incidents of sexual violence against women have not been acted on. Many women have just disappeared altogether or been released after their pregnancies are too advanced to seek abortion.
NOW seeks to highlight the fact that crimes against women are not seen as political. They are viewed with outrage but with a certain acceptance that violence against women is an incidental and inevitable aspect of war — in some way less serious than crimes against men.
The politics of terror, rape and violence need to be considered as part of foreign as well as domestic policy. This is the intention of the February 21 day of action.
Violence can also be denial of access to rights. Many raped women who fall pregnant want to abort. Where such pregnancies are part of "ethnic cleansing", repulsion for the pregnancy is even more pronounced. Denial of abortion access validates the policy of terror and rape.
The Catholic Church in Bosnia is lobbying hard to have abortion
outlawed, a procedure now legal through to the 12th week of pregnancy. Meanwhile, Caritas, the Catholic adoption agency, circulates freely within the camps where young Muslim women are confined until they bear the Serbian troops' babies. These are then immediately processed into the international adoption markets.
The role of the Catholic Church is increasing in other eastern European countries involved in re-establishing capitalism. Poland is a prime example of Catholic politics against women. An anti-
abortion law is currently being pushed through by the church which will forbid abortion even in the case of rape and will sentence doctors and women involved to two years in jail. This in a country where abortion is the major birth control practice and where sex education and contraception lag behind the West.
NOW is trying to reflect many such examples on February 21. Besides the plight of the Bosnian women, NOW wants to focus attention on the terrorist attacks taking place in the USA against abortion clinics by religious groups like Operation Rescue.
The organisers of the action want to overcome the hidden nature of political violence against women and its impact of individual shame borne by the victim. An example of this is the length of time it took Korean women to speak out against their forced prostitution by the Japanese in World War II. Women continue to be victimised for being victims.
NOW wants to pressure the US State Department to recognise that victimisation of women is political rather than some quaint cultural heritage. In this context it is eager to have a Middle Eastern feminist speak out on the anti-women political regimes of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and on the violence against women during that war.