On the day of Sudan's military crackdown, I watched as young girls were raped: they kept screaming and crying

Sudan, based in Africa, has been engaged in a series of protests since December 2018. In April 2019, when Omar al-Bashir, the ruling leader, stepped down and the military took over, Sudanese took to the streets to demand that the junta cede power, but the death toll is now more than 100, according to statistics. The military crackdown has also led to a number of gender-based violence against women.

According to the BBC , a male witness who became Khalid and they stated that on the day of the military crackdown , he witnessed two young girls being raped by six soldiers in turn , and that he and friends tried to stop and asked the soldiers to leave , but the soldiers did not stop and shot at them . When the soldiers left, they ran to check on the condition of the two girls, only to see them crying and screaming in fear and emotion.

"The girls not't say anything. They were just and crying screaming, crying and screaming, crying and screaming. I was trying to calm them."
"They didn't say anything, they just kept crying and screaming, and I tried to calm them down. 」

Khalid and friends took them to the mosque so that they could be properly protected and cared for. After they left the mosque, Khalid was captured by the soldiers, who took Him to an office and even tried to rape him, but khalid escaped.

"They were tried to take off my clothes and were tried to rape me. I wassing all around to get anyone to come."
"They wanted to take off my clothes and rape me, and I had to shout as much as I could to find out." 」

An ambulance driver, who did not want to be named, also revealed to the BBC that as a girl was about to be taken to an ambulance by paramedics, he heard a group of soldiers discussing who had the chance to rape her. When the soldiers left, he and his colleagues rushed up to help the girl, only to find that she had died.

"We found out out the girl had had had dhead from the start. But they still still d't let her be."
"We found out that the girl died in the first place, but they didn't let her go. 」

Pictures . . . . . . . . .

Women who are sexually violent during the struggle

According to CNN, a few weeks after the protests that toppled the Sudanese dictator, the government realized one thing: the number of women fighting on the streets was far higher than men. As a result, those in power have issued a message calling on the military to threaten sexual violence against women during the crackdown. (Extended reading: Women's Arab Spring: Taking to the streets to fight for citizenship, but being ripped and raped by government mobilisation mobs)

"Break the girls, because if you break the girls, you break the men."
"Hitting those women, if you hit women, it's the same as hitting men." 」

So the soldiers began to arrest the women on the front lines of the struggle. Social activists say the military would take the women to secret places of detention, take nude photos of them and even rape them. Many female protesters have also been beaten in public by the police or raped in vehicles dragged into the army.

Pictures . . . . . . . . .

Women's rights in Sudan have always been low, but they have chosen to rise up against them. In March 2019, Sudanese courts, under pressure from a group of women's families, removed the flogging of nine female protesters, giving Sudanese women more courage to fight, according to COMMENT.

"Women are front, left and center of the revolution. Wha e-people started protesting, they were were like, 'Women day at home.' But we were lik - no."
"Women are on the front lines of this revolution. When people started to object to the idea that "women should stay at home," we decided to be brave and say no. 」
- Islam Elbeiti, bassist

My body, not your battlefield.

From this point of view, it will be found that when women take to the streets, they begin to speak for themselves or the rights of others, easy to become the target of arrows, forced to squeal. When some people want to suppress women's voices, the most direct and quick way for them is sexual violence and stigmatization of women.

Recently, in Hong Kong's anti-China Social Movement, a woman in the course of the protest was driven away by the police, after the incident, with its opposite position of the "anti-transmission" of the "anti-transmission" of the people, deliberately in her chest position after the system, maliciously create her not wearing underwear illusion. (Review: Support Hong Kong, also support gender equal rights!) The woman humiliated by the slut at the scene of the "reverse send-off" and the woman left the text afterwards:

"The simplest way to attack a woman is to insult it with sex. Ignore her will, ignore her vision, focus on her appearance and clothes, and then from the stigma. 」

Sexual or gender-based violence has long been not just a matter of lust, but of war and aggression. Women's sex and body, always lose autonomy, become a man's battlefield.

For example, according to The End Media, in war situations, Colombia has a variety of sexually related abuses, including sexual slavery, home-based slavery, rape, extermination, sexual abuse and the denial of reproductive rights (forced abortion and sterilization) to female military personnel.

Iris Marion Young, a feminist political philosopher, proposes five types of oppression, one of which is "incompetence": the exercise of power in a group of people who have never had power or authority.

When men regard women as a marker of success and women as objects of competition, ownership and exploitation, women have been oppressed and lose their subjectivity.

Rape is aggression, rape is war. In the Sudan's struggle, we have to face up to not only "violence" but bloody "gender-based violence", so when we face the subject of sexual violence, we have to take a very serious and serious attitude, after all, it is no less important than war.