RAPE: A WEAPON of WAR and GENOCIDE
Women often long for beauty, but sometimes beauty can be a curse. In a village of Punjab, the political partition of India caused one of the greatest human convulsions of history. There was widespread sexual savagery where approximately 80,000 women were abducted and raped by men of different religions. Many women had their breasts chopped off, while others suffered the abuse of their genitals -- often leading to death. For those who survived, rapists often mutilated their bodies, including tattooed phrases such as "Pakistan Zindabad" (Long live Pakistan) or "Jai Hind" (Long live India). To make situations worse, once a woman was raped, she lost her respect and place in society, and was often disowned by her family. In this case, the woman would marry her rapist and convert to his religion, never seeing her family again. Others, were sold into prostitution, and some just disappeared. In this way, rape became a weapon of war and a way for attackers to perpetuate women's social control as child-bearers and redraw ethic boundaries. The war only took two signatures to begin, but the leaders had no idea what they were setting themselves up for.