Even before the scandal at Abu Ghraib many Iraqis viewed imprisonment of women as tantamount to rape

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0528/p01s02-woiq.html

For Iraqi women, Abu Ghraib's taint

<snip>Even before the scandal at Abu Ghraib, many Iraqis viewed imprisonment of women as tantamount to rape. "In our culture, if a woman has been to prison, it's as though she has been violated," says Yanar Mohammed, a woman's rights activist and editor of the newspaper Equality. "It is assumed that men have put their hands on her, that she has been touched in improper ways."

In Iraq, even a whisper of rape is enough to dishonor a woman - and her family. Sometimes families will even kill women who have been raped to "wash" the stain from the family name.

That may be what happened to one girl, rumored to have been pregnant when she was released. "Her father and brother wanted to kill her," says Huda al-Nuaimi, a professor at Baghdad University who is interviewing female prisoners as a volunteer for Amnesty International. "The sheikh of the mosque and the neighbors stopped them, because she was raped, and it wasn't her fault."

But when Dr. Nuaimi went to visit the girl, her family had moved away. The neighbors told her they didn't know where they went - unusual in Aadhimiyah, the girl's tight-knit Baghdad neighborhood. "I wonder whether this girl is still alive," says Ms. Nuaimi, a professor who wears a tiny silver outline of Iraq around her neck. "I think, given this local custom, it would be very difficult for her to stay alive."

Azzawi hasn't seen her mother since Dec. 24th, the day she was arrested with her sister, Azzawi's aunt. She goes to Abu Ghraib and spends hours standing in the dusty parking lot, hoping to be allowed to see her mother. But the guards on duty, she says, tell her, "there are no women here."

In fact, there are three women at Abu Ghraib. Kept separately from the men, with female guards, the women are inside cellblock 1A, the infamous ward where most of the military pictures were taken. "They are living together," says Colonel Johnson, "separated from the male detainees, for their own well being and to ensure their privacy is fully respected."

Declining to discuss specific cases, Johnson could not confirm whether Azzawi's mother and aunt were among those three women. But Azzawi got a letter two months ago from the International Committee of the Red Cross, which monitors prison conditions, telling her that her mother was being held at Abu Ghraib. Like most families of detainees, she still doesn't know whether her mother has been charged with any crime.

[shenmue]

1. Blaming the victim?

Nice people they are... :sarcasm: :puke:

[BlooInBloo]

2. I thought it was just that they viewed a woman with an American soldier as a raped woman.