Prevention of Sexual Violence in Conflict
Debate between Gregory Campbell and Sharon Hodgson(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. On issues not being fully reported, does she agree that one of the advantages that we have in the west is that where there is a free press, these issues are highlighted, as they are being today? In some of the more repressive regimes, we hear very little, if anything, about the types of sexual violence that she is rightly alluding to.
Mrs Hodgson
That is a very important point, and I did not include it in my opening remarks, so I thank the hon. Gentleman for that.
What happened on 7 October was a well-documented case of mass sexual violence, in part because the terrorist perpetrators proudly filmed and advertised their crimes. A first responder at kibbutz Be’eri reported finding “piles and piles” of dead women “completely naked” from the waist down, and there have been horrifying reports of sexual mutilation. A survivor of the Supernova music festival massacre, Yoni Saadon, recalled:
“I saw this beautiful woman with the face of an angel and eight or ten of the fighters beating and raping her…When they finished they were laughing and the last one shot her in the head.”
Tragically, Hamas’s use of rape as a weapon of war may not be over yet. Reports indicate that female and male hostages have been sexually assaulted and abused during their incarceration. The fact that sexual violence was committed at multiple locations suggests that it was part of a systematic effort. As the Israeli women’s rights campaigner Professor Ruth Halperin-Kaddari told the BBC, such a concentration of cases in a relatively short span of time left her in “no doubt” that there was a
“premeditated plan to use sexual violence as a weapon of war”.