Russia seems to use rape systematically as a tool of warfare, the researcher estimates.
– We probably won’t know if the order has come from above. In the light of the information, the action seems so systematic that it is a strategy at some level, he says Anitta Kynsilehto From the Research Center for Peace and Conflict at the University of Tampere.
Kynsilehto says that it means an approach approved and encouraged by the strategy among the attacking forces.
The rapes committed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine began to emerge soon after the war began.
On Wednesday, published an extensive article in which a person helping victims of sexual violence in Ukraine spoke about the rapes that took place during the war.
According to the story, Russian soldiers have raped young girls and forced family or loved ones to watch the brutal violence.
The information in the case is startling, but researchers are not surprised.
Sexual violence in wars is not a new phenomenon.
– Rape has always been part of the violent resolution of conflicts between states, Kynsilehto says.
For example, Red Army forces committed large-scale rapes in Germany during World War II. The violence perpetrated by the Soviet forces that conquered Berlin has been considered the biggest mass rape in the world.
Extremely brutal sexual violence became apparent earlier in the Nanjing massacre in Japan in the 1930s.
– This was for me where the rape first appeared, Professor, Forensic Dentist Helena Ranta says.
Both cases have only been dealt with decades after the acts.
It was not until the wars of the break-up of Yugoslavia and the civil war in Rwanda in the 1990s that real-time rapes brought international attention to the forefront.
The war in Yugoslavia in particular was monitored almost as closely as the war in Ukraine now.
– The 1990s have been a big turning point in the phenomenon becoming visible and recognized, both in politics and research, Kynsilehto says.
In both wars, rape was used as a tool of warfare.
During the break-up of Yugoslavia, Serb forces raped, particularly in Bosnia, where 30,000 to 50,000 victims of rape have been reported.
According to research, those who have experienced sexual violence in Rwanda are rising to over a hundred thousand.
Kynsilehto says rape was used as a tool of warfare in many ways. In Bosnia, it was an instrument of ethnic cleansing.
According to Kynsilhto, the aim of raping women was to deprive them of all desires for sexual intercourse in the future, to be unable to reproduce.
Efforts were also made to get women pregnant. Some of them were held captive for so long that it was no longer possible to have an abortion safely.
– Efforts were made to change the nation’s biological base, Kynsilehto says.
In Bosnia, carrying an enemy child led to suicide
Helena Ranta, who investigated war crimes in Yugoslavia, was also involved in investigating women who had experienced rape.
He says for many, carrying an enemy child was such a deep humiliation and threat of exclusion from the community that some ended up killing both themselves and their children.
She is reminded of a case where a pregnant woman blew herself up with a grenade she took in her arms.
Thousands of German women have also been reported to have committed suicide following rape by the Soviet army.
– But what remains is the collective powerlessness to prevent this part of the shocking warfare. It’s happening right now, Kynsilehto says.
He sees features of ethnic cleansing similar to the Yugoslav wars in the rapes of Russian soldiers, although more detailed information is not yet available.
– The very way in which Russia has questioned Ukraine’s right to exist gives indications of this, Kynsilehto says.
The beach keeps the setting different. Serbs are Orthodox and Bosnians are Muslims.
The Russians and the Ukrainians have the same religion, and the fraternal peoples have also been spoken of at times, although the common history is partly bloody.
Still, the beach does not rule out the possibility that Russian troops have even been specifically ordered to rape women.
Rape is a clear war crime, but getting convicted is not easy
Rape is defined as a war crime in the widely cited 1949 Geneva Conventions outlining the rules of war.
The first resolution on sexual violence in conflict was adopted by the UN Security Council in 2000.
The 2008 resolution, which sets out, among other things, how sexual violence in war should be investigated, is considered revolutionary.
However, there is a distance from agreements and rules to war crimes convictions.
According to Helena Ranta, Russia has “thrown it in the trash”.
Nor does it have a legal basis, ie a court, where infringements can be dealt with.
– These are the rules of war law that the parties to the war are supposed to follow. But Russia has not complied with them for a minute, Ranta says.
Acts of sexual violence during the war have been convicted in the post-World War II Nuremberg and Tokyo courts.
Convictions were also handed down at the Hague War Crimes Tribunal for the Yugoslav Wars.
According to Ranta, they were distributed to the soldiers who committed the rapes, not so much to the leadership.
Commander of the Serbian forces Ratko Mladic admittedly, he was convicted of genocide, which, according to Ranta, includes “all possible evil”.
Is war crimes seen in Ukraine rape?
However, both Ukraine and Russia have failed to ratify the ICC Charter of the International Criminal Court.
The charter defines the criminal offenses for which states relinquish power. The nomenclature includes rape.
– Russia cannot be prosecuted in the International Criminal Court, Ranta says.
Therefore, according to Ranta, it has been proposed that a separate court be established for the war in Ukraine, which would be limited in time in the same way as, for example, the Yugoslav court.
In any case, according to Ranta, there are already a lot of researchers in Ukraine, even though working in some places is dangerous. Ukraine has also allowed ICC representatives to investigate the events of the war.
According to Ranta, rape crimes could be tried in a national court, such as in Ukraine, if the state remains sovereign.
The beach cannot say whether the rapists will be brought to justice or not.
In the Yugoslav wars, rape was taken seriously
According to Kynsilhto, the good thing is that the rapes have already been documented and used as information that can be used later.
However, pregnancies in war are subject to the same problems as other rape offenses.
Victims must dare to speak, and knowledge must be received and carried forward.
– In any context of rape, this issue is problematic. How the person to whom it is reported receives the information, Kynsilehto says.
According to Kynsilhto, during the wars of the break-up of Yugoslavia, the process could be built in such a way that rape crimes were taken seriously.
He does not consider it impossible to see rape convictions for the war in Ukraine.
Helena Ranta says she has seen so much evil in her career that human cruelty rarely comes as a surprise.
In Ukraine, however, he says he was startled by the rape of children.
– I don’t remember that from Yugoslavia, Ranta says.