Suzuyo Takazato (高里鈴代 Takazato Suzuyo, born 1940) is a Japanese politician, feminist and peace activist. She helps female victims of sexual violence. [1]
From 1989 to 2004, she was a member of the Naha city council. [2]
Takazato founded the organization Okinawa Women Act Against Military Violence in 1995 two months after the high profile rape incident by three US servicemen which would inspire it. [3] She campaigns and protests against American military presence in Okinawa and sexual violence committed by American soldiers to Okinawa women and children. She contributed to the establishment of a rape crisis center in Okinawa for the victims of sexual assaults. She raised her voice against American military bases stationing in Okinawa. [4] She questions the concept of militarized security and peace forced by military intervention. Takazato sees the link between violence against women and military violence. Her activism contributed to vast protests of inhabitants of Okinawa against American military presence in 1995. [5]
“Fifty-three years is long enough. We have really suffered“. “Prostitution and rape are the military system’s outlets for pent up aggression and methods of maintaining control and discipline – the target being local community women.” [5]
She was among 1000 women who were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. [2]
The United States Forces Japan (USFJ) is a subordinate unified command of the United States Indo-Pacific Command. It was activated at Fuchū Air Station in Tokyo, Japan, on 1 July 1957 to replace the Far East Command. USFJ is headquartered at Yokota Air Base in Tokyo and is commanded by the Commander, US Forces Japan who is also commander of the Fifth Air Force.
Sexual violence is any harmful or unwanted sexual act or attempt to obtain a sexual act by violence or coercion, act to traffic a person, regardless of the relationship to the victim. This includes forced engagement in sexual acts, attempted or completed acts and occurs without the consent of the victim. It occurs in times of peace and armed conflict situations, is widespread, and is considered to be one of the most traumatic, pervasive, and most common human rights violations.
In scholarly literature and criminology, gang rape, also called serial gang rape, party rape, group rape, or multiple perpetrator rape, is the rape of a single victim by two or more violators. Gang rapes are forged on shared identity, religion, ethnic group, or race. There are multiple motives for serial gang rapes, such as for sexual entitlement, asserting sexual prowess, war, punishment, and, in up to 30% of cases, for targeting racial minorities, religious minorities, or ethnic groups.
Statistics on rape and other sexual assaults are commonly available in industrialized countries, and have become better documented throughout the world. Inconsistent definitions of rape, different rates of reporting, recording, prosecution and conviction for rape can create controversial statistical disparities, and lead to accusations that many rape statistics are unreliable or misleading.
Rape is a type of sexual assault involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration carried out against a person without their consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority, or against a person who is incapable of giving valid consent, such as one who is unconscious, incapacitated, has an intellectual disability, or is below the legal age of consent. The term rape is sometimes used interchangeably with the term sexual assault.
Sarathambal Saravanbavananthatkurukal or better known as Sarathambal was a minority Sri Lankan Tamil woman who was gang raped and killed on 28 December 1999. This became an internationally known incident of the Sri Lankan Civil War.
Wartime sexual violence is rape or other forms of sexual violence committed by combatants during an armed conflict, war, or military occupation often as spoils of war, but sometimes, particularly in ethnic conflict, the phenomenon has broader sociological motives. Wartime sexual violence may also include gang rape and rape with objects. It is distinguished from sexual harassment, sexual assaults and rape committed amongst troops in military service.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the east of the country in particular, has been described as the "Rape Capital of the World", and the prevalence and intensity of all forms of sexual violence has been described as the worst in the world. Human Rights Watch defines sexual violence as "an act of a sexual nature by force, or by threat of force or coercion", and rape as "a form of sexual violence during which the body of a person is invaded, resulting in penetration, however slight, of any part of the body of the victim, with a sexual organ, or of the anal or genital opening of the victim with any object or other part of the body."
Allied troops committed a number of rapes during the Battle of Okinawa during the last months of the Pacific War and the subsequent Allied occupation of Japan. The Allies occupied Japan until 1952 following the end of World War II and Okinawa Prefecture remained under US governance for two decades after. Estimates of the incidence of sexual violence by Allied occupation personnel differ considerably.
Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM) is an annual campaign to raise public awareness about sexual assault and educate communities and individuals on how to prevent sexual violence in the United States. It is observed in April.
Violence against women in Guatemala reached severe levels during the long-running Guatemalan Civil War (1960-1996), and the continuing impact of that conflict has contributed to the present high levels of violence against women in that nation. During the armed conflict, rape was used as a weapon of war.
The Yumiko-chan incident was the rape and murder of five-year-old Japanese girl Yumiko Nagayama, sometimes reported as Yumiko Arakaki, by American soldier Sergeant Isaac J. Hurt in Kadena, Okinawa on September 4, 1955. Nagayama's body was found near Kadena Air Base during the U.S. occupation of Okinawa. An investigation led to the conviction of 31-year-old Sergeant Hurt on charges of murder, rape, and kidnapping. The Yumiko-chan Incident caused anti-American outrage in Okinawa and contributed to the first major Okinawan protests against the U.S. occupation and military presence.
Genocidal rape, a form of wartime sexual violence, is the action of a group which has carried out acts of mass rape and gang rapes, against its enemy during wartime as part of a genocidal campaign. During the Armenian Genocide, the Greek genocide, the Assyrian genocide, the second Sino-Japanese war, the Holocaust, the Bangladesh Liberation War, the Bosnian War, the Rwandan genocide, the Congolese conflicts, the South Sudanese Civil War, the Yazidi Genocide, Rohingya genocide, and the Uyghur genocide, the mass rapes that had been an integral part of those conflicts brought the concept of genocidal rape to international prominence. Although war rape has been a recurrent feature in conflicts throughout human history, it has usually been looked upon as a by-product of conflict and not an integral part of military policy.
Rape in Egypt is a criminal offense with penalties ranging from 15 to 25 years and a lifetime sentence if the rape included abduction. Marital rape is legal. By 2008, the U.N. quoted Egypt's Interior Ministry's figure that 20,000 rapes take place every year, although according to the activist Engy Ghozlan (ECWR), rapes are 10 times higher than the stats given by Interior Ministry, making it 200,000 per year. Mona Eltahawy has also noted the same figure (200,000), and added that this was before the revolution.
The Kashmir conflict has been beset by large scale usage of sexual violence by multiple belligerents since its inception.
The Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict (OSRSG-SVC) is an office of the United Nations Secretariat tasked with serving the United Nations' spokesperson and political advocate on conflict-related sexual violence, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict (SRSG-SVC). The Special Representative holds the rank of Under-Secretary-General of the UN and chairs the UN Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict. The mandate of the SRSG-SVC was established by Security Council Resolution 1888, introduced by Hillary Clinton, and the first Special Representative, Margot Wallström, took office in 2010. The current Special Representative is Pramila Patten of Mauritius, who was appointed by UN Secretary General António Guterres in 2017. The work of the SRSG-SVC is supported by the UN Team of Experts on the Rule of Law/Sexual Violence in Conflict, co-led by the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPO), Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the UN Development Programme (UNDP), also established under Security Council Resolution 1888.
The Khartoum massacre occurred on 3 June 2019, when the armed forces of the Sudanese Transitional Military Council, headed by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the immediate successor organisation to the Janjaweed militia, used heavy gunfire and tear gas to disperse a sit-in by protestors in Khartoum, killing over 100 people, with difficulties in estimating the actual numbers. At least forty of the bodies had been thrown in the River Nile. Hundreds of unarmed civilians were injured, hundreds of unarmed citizens were arrested, many families were terrorised in their home estates across Sudan, and the RSF raped more than 70 women and men. The Internet was almost completely blocked in Sudan in the days following the massacre, making it difficult to estimate the number of victims.
Patricia Occhiuzzo Giggans, also known as Patti Giggans, is a Los Angeles–based feminist activist and advocate for supporting victims of domestic violence.
Sexual violence against Tamils in Sri Lanka has occurred repeatedly during the island's long ethnic conflict. The first instances of rape of Tamil women by Sinhalese mobs were documented during the 1958 anti-Tamil pogrom. This continued in the 1960s with the deployment of the Sri Lankan Army in Jaffna, who were reported to have molested and occasionally raped Tamil women.
Sexual violence in the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been committed by Armed Forces of Russia, including the use of mass rape as a weapon of war. According to the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, the victims of sexual assault by Russian soldiers ranged from 4 years old to over 80 years old.