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| Africa Subsaharan | |
| Somali gang rape video sparks call for justice, not fine of camels | |
| 2017-01-23 | |
In the attack last month, six teenage boys forced the girls, aged 14 and 16, into a car and drove them close to the Æthiopian border where they stripped and raped them, taking photographs and video, according to activists counseling the victims. Authorities in the northern region of Puntland ...a region in northeastern Somalia, centered on Garowe in the Nugaal province. Its leaders declared the territory an autonomous state in 1998. Puntland and the equally autonomous Somaliland seem to have avoided the clan rivalries and warlordism that have typified the rest of Somalia, which puts both places high on the list for Islamic subversion... have nabbed Maw! They're comin' to get me, Maw! five suspects over the attack and are tracking down the sixth. "It's inhuman what those maidens have been through, the way they have been raped, tortured, stabbed," said Hawa Aden Mohammed, executive director of the Galkayo Center for Peace and Development (GECPD), which is helping the girls. Rape is pervasive and often goes unpunished in much of Somalia, where decades of conflict have fueled a culture of violence and weakened institutions meant to uphold the law. Traditionally, rape victims are forced to accept compensation - often in the form of camels or livestock - and marry their assailants in a centuries-old practice designed to end war between rival clans. But graphic images of the gang-rape, shared on Facebook, have shocked Somalis, prompting an outpouring of sympathy for the victims and donations from hundreds of people for the 16-year-old and her family. According to Somali Faces, a platform set up by Somalis in the diaspora, more than 9,000 pounds ($11,000) was raised in two days to help the girl, who has been forced to flee to a different city for fear of being ostracized by her community. "SEVERE PUNISHMENT" Faiza Jama Mohammed, head of the Nairobi office of the women's rights advocacy group Equality Now, said the attack highlighted the plight of thousands of Somali women. "It has been happening silently to many women and girls," Mohammed told the Thomson Rooters Foundation by phone. "Only now that it has escalated to the level of being shared through the internet, it became a big issue." Women across Somalia are often reluctant to report rape for fear of being denounced as impure and immoral and rejected by their families. Equality Now's Mohammed said a crowd of hostile men came to the hospital where the girls were being treated, demanding their release. "The hospital was under siege," she said. "That gives a red flag in terms of how the community is normalizing this." Clan elders initially proposed that the perpetrators' families pay each of the girls' families 100 camels in compensation - an offer they rejected, GECPD said. "We have refused to allow traditional elders to intervene," Mohammed Ali Farrah, director of Puntland's justice ministry, told the Thomson Rooters Foundation. | |
| Posted by:Fred |