(Trigger warning.) Last week, Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow, a 13-year-old Somali girl was stoned to death by insurgents because she was raped. They called it adultery.
"Reports indicate that she had been raped by three men while traveling on foot to visit her grandmother in the war-torn capital, Mogadishu," Unicef, the United Nations children's agency, said in a statement."Following the assault, she sought protection from the authorities, who then accused her of adultery and sentenced her to death," Unicef added. "A child was victimized twice -- first by the perpetrators of the rape and then by those responsible for administering justice."
As if that wasn't terrible enough, she was killed by 50 men who buried her up to her neck and pelted her with rocks until she died. In a stadium in front of 1,000 spectators. The details of this crime are just wrenching. At least some in the crowd tried to stop it:
Inside the stadium, militia members opened fire when some of the witnesses to the killing attempted to save her life, and shot dead a boy who was a bystander.
Cara at the Curvature and Tracy at Broadsheet have more. Cara writes,
But in the end, whether she was killed because of a rape, because of consensual sex, or because of sexual contact neither consensual or non-consensual because it was entirely imagined, it's not the point. To emphasize that Asha was murdered because she was raped, and that's why her death is a tragedy is to suggest that it would be less tragic if she actually had committed consensual adultery.Asha's life was taken from her, quite simply, because she was a woman.
The Global Campaign to Stop Killing and Stoning Women has a letter-writing action:
You can write a letter to the representatives of Somalia, the African Union, and various UN human rights offices to encourage them to take action by investigating this murder, bringing the perpetrators to justice, and denouncing the actions of these insurgents.
None of Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow's killers have been arrested.
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This is misogyny at its purest: What brings this mania to kill a woman that goes as far as manipulating the already skewed rules to get around the few loopholes in them that could have spared her? They wanted to kill her, and they wouldn't have had it any other way: opinion, rape, and rules concerning age be damned.
I wonder if it's somehow possible to tie U.S. aid to Somalia to official changes to this policy. There's nothing we can do about the initial rapes and other havoc, but it seems like we shouldn't have to ignore *official government responses* like this.
They only problem with aid restrictions is it often harms the most vulnerable members of a community. So this decision could cause even greater harm to the women and children in this country. However if the aid money is being funneled straight into the pockets of corrupt officials and militia then canceling it might sound like a could idea although there is no way to predict what these people would resort to in an effort to replace the cash, for example human/drug trafficking.
Cutting aid seems like a good idea however it often only punishes the most vulnerable members of a nation, i.e. women and children. If the aid money is not actually benefiting the people who need it and is instead being used to line the pockets of corrupt officials etc., then cutting it off could provoke these people into seeking alternative sources of revenue most commonly drug/ human/ arms trafficking which can obviously spill across borders creating a regional rather than nationally isolated issue. It's very hard from a policy angle to create a solution that does not have negative unintended consequences.
Just want to clarify that I wrote my post back before it was known that Asha was only 13-years-old -- she was at that point being referred to as a woman. Which explains why I didn't mention this fact in my post, and why I speculated on the idea that she may have had consensual sex with a presumably adult male. Now that we know her age, that's clearly impossible.
Also, it's a relatively small detail, just one letter, but it it looks like her name might actually be Aisha. I say this because it's an easy mistake, but misnaming her might send a message we don't mean.
Gimme that old time religion
Gimme that old time religion
Gimme that old time religion
It's good enough for me.
It was good for the Hebrew children
It was good for the Hebrew children
It was good for the Hebrew children
It's good enough for me.
Gimme that old time religion
Gimme that old time religion
Gimme that old time religion
It's good enough for me.
It was good for dad and mother
It was good for dad and mother
It was good for dad and mother
And it's good enough for me.
Gimme that old time religion
Gimme that old time religion
Gimme that old time religion
It's good enough for me.
It will do when I am dyin'
It will do when I am dyin'
It will do when I am dyin'
It's good enough for me.
(Everybody now!)
Gimme that old time religion
Gimme that old time religion
Gimme that old time religion
It's good enough for me...
I don't even know what to say. That's the saddest fucking thing I've ever heard.
I'm at a loss for words here. I keep thinking about the 13 girls I volunteer with, and imagining one of them being stoned to death and tearing up, getting angry and anxious just thinking about it.
But that's not to say it's only a tragedy because Asha was 13. It's a tragedy that she murdered--for any reason, at any age--just for being a woman.
Jeez-I'm crying at work here. Thank you so much for the link for the Global Campaign. I'm glad to have something to do.
I am hopeful to hear that there were witnesses who risked their lives to try and save this girl. If there are people in the community willing to stand up against this inhumanity, then there is a chance for an uprising against the "authorities" for women's rights.
Other than that glimpse of hope, this story leaves me heartbroken.
This is awful. And the saddest thing is that there isn't a whole lot anybody can do about it.
Why not? Because Somalia doesn't have a functioning government of any kind, that's why. The militias can basically do what they want, and are only stopped when a bigger and more powerful one comes along.
How did this happen? Well, a lot of it dates back to decisions made in the cold war. If you're not old enough to remember, back in the 80s when Ethiopia was going through a famine, Ethiopia was a government supported by the Soviets and Somalia was on our side (the Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party, ironically enough). Enter a military dictatorship. Cold War ends, Ethiopia fragments a bit, and nobody cares about Somalia. There are now no less than three recognizable governments in the country. Hello civil war, as people got fed up with the dictators.
There is a direct responsibility we in the West have for creating the conditions under which these African states have failed. And that's an issue for women, because who bears the worst of it whenever that happens? Again and again, in Zaire, in Liberia, in Angola and Namibia, to name a few.
We all have to demand that our government, and its allies, engage in countries like this. And not with guns (that never helps) but with aid and a willingness to help develop economies that don't depend on cash crops. That's the only way this kind of stuff is going to stop.
And it also means cutting off the gun supply to those states that are still operating. No more guns to Africa, period -- let some other nation sell them there, but it won't be us. There is no sane reason to send weapons to an already shaky region of the world.
Our friends the Ethiopians have already made forays into Somalia. That needs to stop as well.
It's connected, and there's things we can do to get on the road to making sure this stuff is harder to do in the future. The women of the world deserve no less.
Thank you for adding all this extra information. I wasn't old enough (perhaps not even born?) to have known about the conflicts in Ethiopia and Somalia. It is disgraceful.
I have no words to describe how disgusted and enraged I am.
Just terrible. Wretched. Vile.
That poor girl. I wonder how many other murders take place which are similar to this one that don't make the news. :(
"To emphasize that Asha was murdered because she was raped, and that's why her death is a tragedy is to suggest that it would be less tragic if she actually had committed consensual adultery"
Well, ignoring the fact that she is 13, as Cara stated above, I actually think that while both would be unspeakably tragic, it is more horrible that she was stoned for being raped rather than for consensual adultery. That's like saying, well, getting raped and killed for doing nothing wrong is equal to getting killed for doing nothing wrong. The girl was forced to suffer twice and in a sexual way, too. While that doesn't make punishing people for adultery okay, it does mean that this is a worse, more heinous crime because she suffered so much more.