The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| Somalia gang rape victim accuses African Union force Posted: 20 Aug 2013 09:03 PM PDT Abducted, drugged and gang raped in Somalia: a young mother details the most brutal of allegations against African Union troops and Somali soldiers in a case causing widespread anger. "The soldiers raped me... I tried to defend myself but they beat me badly and I passed out," she said, speaking to the Somali Channel television about the attack earlier this month. She alleged she was stopped on the streets of Mogadishu by three soldiers from the national army, blindfolded and forced into a car, before being handed over to African Union troops, where she says she was repeatedly raped. She has needle marks on her arms from where she says drugs were injected during the several hours long assault in the Maslah compound, a Ugandan troop base on the outskirts of Mogadishu. "There were other women in the room... one of the them badly bleeding," she added, speaking from a hospital bed. The woman, in her late 20s with a young baby, was unconscious during the attack and says she does not know how many men raped her. She was later thrown back onto the streets. AMISOM, the 17,700-strong United Nations-mandated force that supports the government in its fight against Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab insurgents, said it has launched an investigation together with the Somali army. "Appropriate action will be taken once the facts of the case have been established," AMISOM said in a statement. Somalia's Prime Minister Abdi Farah Shirdon said in a statement that the government was "deeply troubled by the alleged rape... involving a number of personnel from AMISOM." AMISOM, fighting since 2007 in Somalia and funded by the UN and European Union, insists it "strongly condemns ... sexual abuse or exploitation". The force is mainly made up of troops from Uganda, Burundi and Kenya, with smaller numbers from Djibouti and Sierra Leone. The case threatens to badly dent the reputation of the force, and play into the hands of the Shebab. Shebab fighters are themselves accused of horrific attacks and rape, but the extremists' spokesman Ali Mohamed Rage gloated at the rape reports. "Somali soldiers first abduct the girls and rape them, they also share them with AMISOM troops," Rage said. "The Somali troops are the remnants of the former warlords, they are killing their people and raping our daughters and mothers... the African Union troops are brutal." The allegations come at the same time as the country reels from a surprise pullout by medical aid agency Doctors Without Borders (MSF), ending work in Somalia after more than two decades following a "barrage of attacks". On Tuesday, MSF president Unni Karunakara said the "painful decision" of pulling out "came at a moment when world leaders, for the first time in decades, began making positive noises about a country on the road to recovery and with a stable government." Rape is pervasive in Mogadishu, but the extreme nature of the woman's allegations and the accusations of AMISOM involvement have shocked many. In the first six months of 2012, some 800 cases of sexual violence were reported in Mogadishu alone, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which refers to the rapists as "unknown armed men and men wearing military uniform". Many more cases are believed to have gone unreported. "Sexual violence in Somalia is one of the most serious and urgent human rights challenges facing the government and people of Somalia," said Nicholas Kay, UN special representative for the country. Kay, who expressed his "grave concern" at the rape allegations, has demanded investigations be "rigorous and prompt". "If there is a case to answer, any perpetrator should be prosecuted," Kay said in a statement. But Maryan Qasim, Somalia's minister for human development, insisted there was "major exaggeration and inflation of the number of attacks". In an interview with Somali media, she claimed women were taking money to allege that they had been raped, and that it is "better for a girl to be shot instead of being photographed and publicised" while making such allegations. Somalia's army, an often rag-tag force incorporating militia fighters, has repeatedly been accused by rights groups of a string of abuses against women, including rape. Even reporting on rape in Mogadishu carries its own risks: a Somali journalist and a rape victim he interviewed were both sentenced to a year in prison in February, but they were released after two months in jail after the case sparked widespread international criticism. - AFP, August 21, 2013. |
| Egypt Brotherhood could go back underground to survive Posted: 20 Aug 2013 08:50 PM PDT A return to the underground could allow the group, which has seen its victorious presidential candidate ousted from office and its top leaders arrested, a chance to regroup and review strategy. But it could also divide its ranks, with the most radical among its supporters peeling away to become militants, experts say. For decades, the Islamist group thrived in the shadows in the Arab world's most populous nation. In the years leading up to the 2011 overthrow of president Hosni Mubarak, it stepped carefully into the limelight, fielding parliamentary candidates as independents. But it was only after the uprising that it took centre-stage, winning nearly 50 percent of seats in parliament and then Egypt's first free presidential vote, which brought Mohamed Morsi to office. Its fall from grace since has been spectacular, with its top leaders now in jail and hundreds of its supporters killed in clashes with security forces since Morsi's July 3 ouster by the army after a wave of mass protests. The group, which "has always been organised like a pyramid," is now facing "an organisational problem," said Karim Bitar of the Institute for International and Strategic Relations. One clear sign of the disarray is the sudden disappearance of the Brotherhood's media officials, who have gone from reachable at all hours to completely absent. Another is the dwindling response to calls for the group's supporters to attend protests calling for Morsi's reinstatement. As it faces calls for it to be banned, the Brotherhood has "familiar options... including going underground," said Francois Burgat, director of France's Institut Francais du Proche-Orient. "All evidence suggests that the army will succeed in paralysing the decision-making apparatus of the Brotherhood, but will not be able to erase a party that has a solid and longstanding base," he added. The Brotherhood has shown its ability to react quickly under tough circumstances, swiftly naming deputy Mahmoud Ezzat to replace supreme guide Mohamed Badie after his arrest on Tuesday. While it adjusts to its rapidly changing fate, it will eventually have to reconsider the strategy that led to its fall from power, Bitar said. The Brotherhood will need to undertake "a long phase of soul-searching during which they will need to learn the lessons of the Morsi fiasco," he said. Despite winning elections, the group proved "incapable of moving from a culture of secrecy to a culture of government," he added. Instead, it displayed sectarian behaviour and tried to "monopolise all the power for fear that it might lose power again." But before rethinks strategy, the group will have to reorganise its ranks and its hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of supporters. "Unless they reestablish order within their ranks, they could see violent acts by individuals or radical fringes... who will ask whether playing the democratic game wasn't a mistake," Bitar said. The spectre of a return to the Islamist violence that swept Egypt in the 1990s has been raised in recent days as the country faces unprecedented violence between Morsi loyalists and security forces. In the Sinai Peninsula, attacks against police and army facilities have become an almost daily event and 25 policemen were executed by militants on Monday. The interim government has likened those attacks to the clashes between Morsi supporters and security forces, and labelled its crackdown a "war against terror." But that approach could backfire, allowing the Brotherhood to benefit from a new "martyrology," particularly as several of its top leaders, including Badie, have lost children in the violence. "They will be able to benefit from being cast as victims even though they were in the process of discrediting themselves while they were in power," Bitar said. And despite the strength of the campaign against them, Burgat said there was little to suggest the Brotherhood would not survive. "They have survived a lot of persecution and always emerged stronger," he said. – AFP, August 21, 2013. |
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