ShrungaShree T, Research Scholar, Department of PG Studies and Research in English
Kuvempu University
Abstract
From time immemorial all over the world women are always treated as second sex, second rate citizens and characterized as weak, gentle, shy, timid, fragile, submissive, soft, meek, emotional etc. Based on her sex and body she is always targeted and brutally oppressed. She is subjected to humiliation and domination by the male dominated society. All rights of women are curbed by the Patriarchal society.
In order to control all the actions of women, her body is used as a tool or weapon. Especially rape is the biggest crime of humanity and is used as a physical and psychological warfare in order to demean and frighten the enemy. Totally rape is a political tactic of war. The present article is an attempt to explore and analyze the journey of rape survivors and also aims to discover how literature acted as a tool of rebellion and how it helps in unmuting the mutilated voices. The analysis delves into how the fusion of personal story telling and their life becomes a transformative force, not only in the lives of survivors but also in shaping a more informed and compassionate societal response to sexual violence. The Present article aims to amplify the voices and lives of the rape survivors examining how their personal narratives contribute to larger conversations surrounding sexual assault, awareness, empowerment and social activism as portrayed in the selected autobiography “Fifty Years of Silence” by Jan Ruff O’ Herne.
Keywords: Rape, War, Weapon, Victims, Sexual Violence, Gang Rape, Atrocities, Genocide, Human Rights, Autobiographies, Transformative Force, Comfort Women.
In war we can see terrible death, pain, violence, the silence of the dead, the intense cry of the loved ones, the sufferings of the defeated and at the same time on other side we can see the victory of the victorious, the triumphant celebrations. But at the end of it all no matter what history you look at the most important victim for no reason is the woman. If we look at history of any war’s women are used as a weapon in order to win the war.
Innocent women are the only creature on earth who always ended up in pain without doing any harm and destruction to the society. Most importantly gang rape of women has been used as a war winning strategy. Woman's body is the battlefield here, woman is the enemy, the dice, the path, the victim, and the weapon. Even if we look at the most famous mythological epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, interpretations are made that these two great wars were fought because of Sita and Draupadi and it is depicted as women are the only cause of all tragedies on earth.
Not only in mythological stories. Women were victims of world wars like World War I and World War II. Thousands and millions of girls have been brutally raped, harassed, humiliated and killed. War time sexual violence is considered as one of the greatest most barbaric extreme atrocities. It destroys human rights of the women, destroys the individual peace, freedom, peace of mind, personal growth and also it affects their families and entire communities.
It not only destroys women physically, but it also put her in a long psychological and emotional trauma and pain. It affects her body as well as her brain/ memories. She was physically injured she was suffered from unwanted pregnancies, miscarriages, sexually transmitted infections or venereal diseases like HIV. It totally shatters her personally, socially and culturally.
Major General (ret.) Patrick Commaert, former UN division Commander for Eastern DRC (MONUC) said that 'It is perhaps more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in an armed conflict'.
The data available reflect levels of rape during wartime and its aftermath between 2,50,000 and 5,00,000 Tutsi women and girls were raped in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. The Rwandan Genocide of 1994 is also known as Genocide against Tutsi. It is estimated that between 2,15,000 and 2,57,000 victims were raped during the conflict between the Sierra Leone Civil War (1991-2002).
The Bosnian War was an international armed conflict that took place between 1992 and 1995 in Bosnia and Herzegovina. An estimated 12,000–50,000 women have been raped. At least 2,00,000 women were raped during the 1996 Democratic Republic of Congo war. The Nanjing Massacre or Rape of Nanjing involved the rape of 20,000 to 80,000 women were raped in the Nanjing Massacre or Rape of Nanjing.
According to historian Antony Beevor, Professor Oleg Rzheshevsky and some of the historians estimate. Rape during the occupation of Germany by soldiers from all advancing allied armies are likely in hundreds of thousands and possibly as many as two million.
But the world ignored these atrocities. Only very few rape survivors have told their sufferings, pain, their brutal experiences to the world through the genre of autobiographies. Autobiography places a vital and huge role in expressing an untold hidden stories and it helps to pour out all their sufferings and pain. It works as a transformative tool or weapon in order to fight against all the injustices in the world through words.
Autobiography is nothing but a voyage of discovery. It is an important literary form of personal prose writing in which the author writes the story of his or her own life and achievements. But writing about oneself is not as easy as it is thought to be. According to Aristotle: ‘Writing about oneself is as difficult as 'Knowing Oneself' is the most difficulty in the world.
Fifty Years of Silence is the autobiography of a brutal life of a woman who burned herself without swallowing the fire of one such rape. It is the greatest autobiography of Jan Ruff O' Herne. She was a Dutch Australian of Irish ancestry and human rights activist who campaigning internationally against war rape. She was a war rape survivor.
Jan Ruff O’ Herne was 19 years old when Japanese soldiers invaded Java. They have kidnapped thousands of women and children and interned in a Japanese prison camp for three and a half years.
It is an autobiographical story about the most inhumane incidents of Japanese soldiers in the Dutch colony of Indonesia in Ambarawa Prison Camps during the Second World War.
Despite crossing all the boundaries of all time, the condition of women is very miserable. It is very common for women and women's bodies always be used as dice. Similarly, during the Second World War, Japanese soldiers kidnapped thousands of innocent girls from the Dutch part of Indonesia, treated them like slaves in prison camps, separated the children from their mothers and imprisoned them in a damp barracks full of bugs, lice, rats, and cockroaches with rotten wood- work and a leaking roof. It is a story of inhumane acts that where women were treated as animals.
They were brutally harassed, humiliated, oppressed by the Japanese troops. Thousands of women and children died due to starvation. Many of the young virgin women were forcibly seized against their will to provide sexual services for the Japanese Imperial Army.
This was against their will, and they destroyed the human rights of Dutch women and forcibly made them as ‘Comfort Women’. Comfort Women are nothing but Prostitutes who were made by Japanese soldiers. The duty of Comfort Women is to give sexual pleasure to Japanese army.
There is an unspeakable suffering behind the incident where a Dutch camp prisoner who was starving in a prison camp because of not being given water, rice and food. There are incidents of cooking snails, weeds and testicles which is a part of the body of bulls and preparing soups out of them for hunger.
All the girls there have to clean the very smelly sewerage pits one by one every day. In spite of all the violence of being beaten to death, left in the sun and tortured when they do not listen to the Japanese authorities, somehow some girls continue to teach the children of the camp to read and write. Indeed, the courage of all those women is to be admired and appreciated.
Seven girls are brought from Ambarawa camp to Semarang camps, the central capital of Java, after being imprisoned for several years. Even in different parts of the Dutch colonial city girls mainly virgins are arrested in prison camps and are called Comfort Women and subjected to continuous rape. The irony is that the names of all these Comfort Women are changed, and each one is named with the name of a flower. But it is a tragic situation that made their lives like thorns in the name of flowers.
Comfort Women were nothing more than sexual pleasure objects for Japanese soldiers. Among them was Jan Ruff O' Herne. Better to call it as Virgin Brothel than camp. But the Japanese soldiers called it 'The House of Seven Seas'.
We see the shocking facts that all these girls were raped by the Japanese soldiers every day, noon and night for an average of three months. It is a violence against women by curtailing all their rights.
It is a sad story of those seven girls who hides in every corner to save themselves from rape and beaten and tortured for it. The motive behind John Ruff O' Herne's plan to shave off all her hair and to protect herself from rape is to portray herself as very ugly and it shows her helpless state.
Another tragic story is described by John Ruff. Gynecological equipment is used in Virgin brothels to examine those susceptible to venereal disease. The doctor who comes to examine them rapes Jan every time. Also, there is no door to the examination room and the doctor, and the Japanese soldiers stand and watch and enjoy the perverted sensuality behind it.
When rape victims became pregnant, they were forced to swallow pills and have an abortion, and Jan was no exception. Even in all this dark life, Jan’s life was given courage by the God she believed in Jesus.
From Semarang Camp they will all be transferred back to Bogor Camp. Even there they struggle for water and food. Happily, Jan Ruff joins his mother and sisters in another camp. She will be despised, hurted and called as Prostitute by other women.
Tom Ruff a handsome soldier in the British troops, eventually marries Jan Ruff on 14 August 1946, knowing all her dark history. They lived in a house that called ‘Zonnehoek’, meaning ‘Sunny Corner’. After living in England for fourteen years in 1960 they migrated to Australia and settled in their new country.
Fifty years later, a Korean so-called ‘Comfort Woman’ named Mrs Kim Hak Sun after all her family had died, and no longer feeling ashamed, she decided to demand compensation from the Japanese Government. She asks compensation for all the cruel injustices done by the Japanese Government. She asks the Japanese soldiers to apologize. Seeing her courage, including Jan Ruff and other ‘Comfort Women’ came forward and joined her in legal action against Japan. Jan Ruff exposed her almost fifty years of pain, suffering, despair, helplessness, misery, injustice and tragedy to the whole world.
Up to that time the Japanese government had not even apologised to the ‘comfort women’. They had shown a total indifference to the problem and even denied the fact that Japan had forced thousands of women into prostitution in brothels for the Japanese army
Jan chooses not to become a bitter angry woman she chooses to become a woman of reconciliation. Jan Ruff called her fifty years of journey as journey of faith, a terrible shame, a feeling of being different of being dirty, of being solid. The world ignored these atrocities almost fifty years.
Women are always the innocent victims in war. Rape is part of war. Rape in war is a power game. It is used as a reward for the soldiers in countries like Bosnia and Rwanda Kosovo and more recently in East Timor. Rape was also used as a weapon and a means to genocide rape can never be regarded as an unfortunate by-product of war it is indeed a major violation of human rights.
John Ruff O' Herne was a brave heroine who kept the story of the burning truth hidden inside of her for almost fifty years and finally revealed it to the world. She is indeed a great power and a great Warrior.
The extraordinary life journey of the protagonist really influenced us. Book like Fifty Years of Silence if made popular among the younger generation will definitely give a true idea of women’s liberty, identity and her real struggle for existence. Such literature will go a long way in motivating youngsters to give at least a fraction of their time and energy for the betterment of the society.
References
Bacan, Chandace. “The Genre of Autobiography: Definitions and Characteristics”. Owlcation, May 11, 2016.
De Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. Translated by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany Chevallier. New York: Vintage Books, 2010.Print.
Millett, Kate, Sexual Politics, NY: Doubleday, 1970.
O’Herne, Jan Ruff. Fifty Years of Silence: The Extraordinary Memoir of a War Rape Survivor. Sydney: Editions Tom Thomson, 1994.
O’Herne, Jan Ruff. Statement. Friends of “Comfort Women” in Australia. Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, and the Global Environment. Committee on Foreign Affairs. U.S. House of Representatives. Hearing on Protecting the Human Rights of “Comfort Women,” 15 Feb. 2007, http://www.internationalrelations.house.gov/110/ohe021507.htm
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