For too long rape and sexual violence during war was considered a byproduct of conflict. It is more and more finally being seen as weapon of war, not byproduct.
In 2016, my friend & journalist @AhNidzara took me to Vilna Vlas, a hotel & spa in Višegrad which was used as a rape concentration camp in 1992 during Bosnian war. Women & girls were raped individually & en masses in empty swimming pool. It is still being used as a hotel and spa.
In 2017, I went with France-based anti-racist activists from @EGAMofficial to Rwanda to take part in the commemoration of the genocide against the Tutsis. Rape was used as a weapon of war systematically against women who were also mitigated, and many killed.
Rape and sexual violence have AlWAYS been used - deliberately, systematically, intentionally - in conflict and war to terrorize women, emasculate men. Women’s bodies are considered proxy battlegrounds in a teminder of patriarchy’s insistence that it and it alone owns our bodies.
It is imperative that the world acknowledge that rape and sexual violence are used as weapons in war and conflict everywhere - by “our troops” and “their troops.” And in doing so connect it to the daily threat and use of sexual violence against women and girls.
Because when we connect that wartime systematic use of rape and sexual violence to its use against women in non-war zones, we connect the ways that patriarchy protects and enables misogyny via sexual violence as a weapon; a weapon of war and it’s more “quotidian” uses as a weapon
A weapon to terrorize and to keep us in our place; a weapon to control where and when we can go and behave; a weapon that patriarchy wants us to think will damage & destroy us forever. The world finally sees how that weapon works during war. Let’s recognize it in the everyday too
Today, we read about rape as a weapon of war being used against Rohingya women, in Syria, in Democratic Republic of Congo. Know that whether you read about it in headlines or not, it is happening. And women are often silenced by shame, stigma and trauma.
Congratulations Nadia Murad & Dr. Denis Mukwege!Thank you for your courage,resilience & insistence on speaking. Love & solidarity to all who break the silence around rape in war & who push to break the silence around it every day as our way of breaking patriarchy’s power over us 
And as we celebrate Nadia Murad and Dr. Denis Mukwege, let’s remember that in the most powerful country in the world a man accused of sexual assault by 20 women was elected President & he nominated to the Supreme Court a man accused of sexual assault. #MakePatriarchyFearYou
