iraq

The following are excerpts from a paper by Rev. Dorothy Mackey, former US Air Force Captain and Commander who herself suffered rape and sexual assault while a serving officer, at the hands of her colonel and lieutenant colonel. Neither was ever prosecuted. The US Justice Department attorney on appeal stated that they “could not bring this case to trial for national security reasons; to do so would be contrary to good order, morale and discipline in the military.”

May 11, 2004
SUBJECT: US Government and Pentagon Sanctioning of Abuses; Rapes and Abuses; Physical, Psychological, Mental, Emotional, Sexual Abuses and revictimization.

To Whom It May Concern:

12 May 2004

Coming clean on rape and other sexual torture of women and girls at the hands of US and UK armed forces or their agents in Iraq and Afghanistan
By Black Women’s Rape Action Project and Women Against Rape
LINKS AND PUTTING UP Arabic Castellano Catalan Croatian French Hindi (pdf) Italian Serbian

We are writing to you, women legislators in both the UK and the US. That there are now many more women in Congress and in Parliament is due to a massive women’s movement over decades in every area of this planet. In the name of all the women whose movement helped get you there, we ask for your accountability in the present crisis of war, occupation, war crimes and torture, including rape, in which both your governments are complicit.

1. The rape and other torture of women and girls has been largely hidden

Rape in Iraq

It was neither the Red Cross nor the Amnesty report that propelled the torture of Iraqi prisoners on to the front pages. It was the photos. The torture carried on until the ocular proof made political embarrassment unavoidable. Yet the photos of rape and other sexual torture of women at Abu Ghraib prison have still not been released to the public (The other prisoners, G2, May 20). Evidence of the widespread rape of women soldiers within the US military has similarly been ignored. Yet US National Public Radio mentioned 10 days ago that 100 US women soldiers claim to have been raped by their colleagues in Iraq. Why is this not pursued and reported here? We wrote to all women MPs and peers asking them to press for full disclosure of what is happening to women in Iraq at the hands of both US and UK troops. We have not received a single reply.

Cristel Amiss Black Women's Rape Action Project