The Enforced Culture of Fear and Silence

A case of gang rape of a 19-year old young British woman in Ayia Napa in southeastern Cyprus by 12 Israeli youth 15 to 18 years old in July 2019 has received international attention. Ayia Napa is a town described as the Sodom and Gomorrah of the Mediterranean and the sex, alcohol and drug abuse capital of Cyprus. Stay away, bad things happen to good people there.

The policing and justice system in Cyprus is far from just in this case, it seems. Somewhat corrupt, one can say. The young woman, after she reported the alleged rape to the police expecting help and protection instead was accused of lying. Medical examination showed evidence consistent with multiple rape. The place reeks of male domination and a near total absence of respect for the dignity and rights of women. It seems to be a cesspool of depravity and immorality where 15-year old teenagers allegedly rape women.

The Cyprus police immediately took the side of the 12 Israeli well-off youth and blamed the victim. The woman, they decided, was the criminal. The police pressured her during interrogation and finally forced her, without a lawyer being present, to sign a statement retracting the story of rape. She thought they would let her go home. Instead, they charged her with a crime- public mischief- and released the 12 suspected rapists. She was convicted in a Cyprus court of law recently and received a four-month suspended jail sentence.

Hundreds demonstrated in her support outside the courtroom. Her lawyers will appeal to clear her name. One lawyer said that the woman had been stripped of her dignity and human rights. They would take the case to the European Court of Human rights if necessary, he said.

This is a classic example of “blame the victim” practice that points to the woman as the culprit and a liar. It is this practice designed to inflict pain and suffering on the victim and exonerate the accused that is so unjust. In instills fear in women and children and prevents them from coming forward to report sexual abuse. It gives encouragement to child abusers and rapists to scare victims into silence and repeat their heinous crimes. Other sex abusers deny everything; some offer money to buy the total silence of the victim.

Abusive men demand and expect women and even children to satisfy their lusts and sexual fantasies as if it is their right. They have ascendency over children and intimidate them to be submissive and docile. That’s another reason the sexual abuse of children is so widespread.

In many cultures, children are taught to always respect and obey the adult and never go against the older person. When the child fights back, threats are used to scare the child into silence. “I will burn your house down if you tell anyone our secret,” the abuser warns the child, or “I will kill you and your mother if you tell.” Hundreds of thousands of children and women are subjected to this brutal treatment to silence them.

When children are abused by their biological father, stepfather, live-in partner of the mother, grandfather or brother or cousin, the child is silenced. They are the most common abusers of children. Incest is widespread but is kept a family secret. The child is warned not to tell. “Do you want to destroy our family’s honour and name?” the child is told. “Where will you live if you do that, who will believe you? No one, you are a liar, don’t speak of it.” The intimidation is complete. The child victims of sexual abuse face retaliation, punishment, rejection, degradation and exclusion. Some are sent far off to a remote province to suffer alone unaided. Women are sexually exploited and abused daily. A report by the Center for Women’s Resources says a woman is raped every hour in the Philippines.

Is it not extraordinary that after thousands of years of subjugation, women were only able to organize themselves to stand for their rights since 1848 in the USA and got the right to vote only in 1920? In Europe, women began to organize themselves in 1860. Such was the power of male domination of all aspects of human society they controlled women and considered them inferior to men.

Their rights movements continue to challenge that domination and have expanded around the world so that women’s rights are enshrined in the laws of many countries but are not always implemented. They still have to struggle and fight for their rights to political and economic equality, for pay and civil rights. The #MeToo Movement is another movement for the struggle for dignity, recognition and justice and freedom from the sexual exploitation by abusive men.

Millions of women and children are victims of human trading and trafficking. They are still treated as property to be sold and exploited in forms of modern slavery. Amazingly, society in general doesn’t seem to care or to be outraged very much by this grave worldwide injustice and human slavery and brutal treatment. The victims are transported to other provinces or countries and are forced to remain silent and suffer and endure as if slavery is their designated role in life. Thousands of refugees and migrants are exploited in the evil trade of poor vulnerable people.

The challenge for us is to uphold and fight for the dignity of women and children and men. We need to have a dedicated intolerance and a sense of anger ready to protest when there are violations of the dignity and rights of anyone. Men too must be part of this protest and action for justice and human rights. Together, we must speak out and act until one day true equality and respect is experienced by all people.

Crimes Against Humanity

 

It’s a grim gruesome record of murder, assassination and massacre that we must condemn, denounce and learn from. The man, a leader accused of giving orders to target and kill civilians with impunity, is legendary. He convinced them that they were doing a “good” thing killing any suspect to save their nation from being destroyed.

  

A majority approved without question or hesitation the terrible killings and human rights violations done in his name. Thousands of innocents were shot dead, knifed and beaten to death. He killed individuals personally including a Catholic priest. He was feared and known as the “Terminator.” Their belief was that killing is good and justified.

    

Last week, justice caught up with Bosco Ntaganda, 46. He was found guilty by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague of crimes against humanity, war crimes, murder, rape, sex slavery and using child soldiers. Ntaganda, a Rwandan Tutsi, joined rebel groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and also joined the Tutsi rebel army fighting against the Hutu government in Rwanda. Convicting the killer of thousands gives comfort and hope to the families of victims. Bosco Ntaganda will be sentenced in a few months time likely to a life in prison and remembered as a horrific mass murderer.

    

The Rwandan genocide was begun by fanatical groups of prominent Hutus in government that hated and feared the Tutsi. The Tutsi were of a different ethnic group and were more highly educated. They ruled Rwanda for years after the colonial period until the Hutu came to power through elections. Hutu and Tutsi had lived in peace for generations but there were always tensions. There were riots in 1959 during which as many as 20,000 Tutsis were killed. Many fled abroad to other African nations. There was a rebel army of exiles threatening to invade and remove the Hutus from power.

 

What brought about the dramatic change that led to a vicious genocide in 1994 when the Hutu population was provoked to rise up and slaughter as many as 800,000 Tutsi neighbors from April to June 1994? How could this happen and what can we learn from this terrible massacre?

 

A small group of extremist Hutu in government, business people and the military feared the rise of an opposition dominated by the Tutsi. They believed that the only way for them to stay in power was to create a culture of fear, loathing and hatred among the civilian Hutu and turn them against the “other” group and provoke them to slaughter every single Tutsi.

 

The use of media propaganda was central to this premeditated plan to which every Hutu had to belong. They worked to persuade, brainwash, convince every Hutu to hate and “belong,” “to fit in,” “to follow the crowd” and made hate of the Tutsi a popular and fashionable attitude. The reluctant Hutu was marked a sympathizer of the Tutsi, and if friendly to them, they would be accused of giving aid and comfort to “The Enemy.” 

 

Today we see similar attempts in the United States and elsewhere to brand Muslims, migrants, asylum seekers, addicts, black people, journalists, social activists and human rights workers as  “Enemies of the People.” 

 

The extremist elite group of Hutu that were behind the plan owned the influential popular radio station RTLN. It had pop music, talk shows, interviews and hate speech in almost every broadcast. They sought to create a following among the Hutu population and convince them that the Tutsi were undesirable, evil people worse than cockroaches and had to be eliminated.

 

Nazi propaganda prepared and conditioned the German people to see Jews as dangerous rats and evil schemers. When the holocaust began, most turned a blind eye to the extermination of the Jews. Some saw no harm in it.

  

The Hutu extremists marked the Tutsi as cockroaches to be stamped upon and eliminated. They acclimatized and conditioned the population to believe that mass murder could be a virtuous act of civic duty. Soon, the failing and corrupt Hutu-led government had high approval and popularity ratings just like the Nazi party had. Likewise, other regimes use demonization, fear and hatred of a specific group of people to gain popularity and justify strong-armed rule and mass killing. Today, the Hutu extremists would be trolls using social media to achieve the same ends.

   

The Hutu extremists did that successfully persuading many Hutu that killing and exterminating a group of people was an okay thing to do. They branded the Tutsi using black propaganda, fake news and false accusations. They told civilians they could kill with impunity and believe it was a righteous act. Then, tragedy struck in 1994. The Hutu president was killed when his plane was shot down near the capital Kigali. The government blamed the rebels and the rebels blamed the government. It was at that moment when the Hutu unleashed the terror of mass killing against the Tutsi and the moderate Hutu.

 

They promised payments for killing and told Hutu if they killed a Tutsi they could take their property. Their carefully nurtured culture of hate, envy and anger provoked thousands of Hutu civilians to kill their Tutsi neighbors without mercy on the streets and in the countryside. Death squads and militia 30,000 strong named Interahamwe, meaning “attack together,” led the massacre.

 

In a period of 100 days, as many as 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu were murdered. There were men, women, and children killed mostly with machetes and clubs. Hundreds of Tutsi were burnt to death in churches and buildings where they fled for safety. It was the world’s worst massacre in modern times built on a culture of hate that led to popular killing of a specific group. A majority of the people were persuaded it was right and they approved. It could happen here.

The Culture of Fear and Silence

Twenty young girls, some of them only 14 years of age, were finally rescued from the Victory Hotel that caters to foreign sex tourists in Mabacalat, Pampanga, a few kilometers north of Angeles City by the anti-trafficking police unit in Camp Crame, Quezon City. It was an open fact that child prostitution was the daily routine there. 

Apparently, few living in the area of the sex industry considers the commercial sexual exploitation of youngsters a crime. They don’t feel or believe that it is morally repugnant, that it is wrong, that it should be causing an outrage and should always be reported to the police. If they did know about it, then no one acted to end it. Finally, a non-government organization investigated and brought in the police from Camp Crame, the locals were not to be trusted it seems.

These trading posts of sex slavery that are peddling children and young women like chickens in the market operate in the public eye with the jarring arrogance of impunity. They exploit the children knowing that if caught they will have an understanding prosecutor who appreciates gifts and generosity.

Marabella and Beth are two young girls fourteen and fifteen years old. Their parents separated and went off with new partners. Their children were left in the care of an aunt who introduced them to a human trafficker. She introduced them to foreign sex tourists in Angeles City. The deals were made on the street. They were sold like animals in the market. The girls were brought to a nearby hotel, the manager and staff turned a blind eye as the sex tourists rented the room and the men sexually raped and abused the children. It happens daily.

When the pimps gave them a fraction of what the foreigners paid them, the teenagers got angry and they complained to a friend who went to the police. They arrested the pimp and human trafficker. If the children did not complain that they were cheated out of their money, no one would have cared. This was child sexual exploitation and street prostitution- open, blatant and tolerated if not encouraged by local authorities. It goes on today, day and night. No one seems to care. The Preda Foundation gave shelter and therapy to the children. They recovered, changed and became empowered to pursue their case in court. The pimp and trafficker were eventually convicted after a tough legal battle. The sex tourists as always were never caught.

Much of Philippine society is sleepwalking in a moral mess of ignorance, indifference and selfish living, ignoring the crimes against children since they are not their own.  Many street kids - boys and girls - are arrested and incarcerated in foul stinking jail cells for months without care, help, therapy, education, and forced to eat bad food. The older boys sexually and physically abuse the youngest children ten to fifteen years old day by day. When they are rescued, they then tell their horrible and traumatic experience. Yet, who really cares what they suffer? 

Many (not all) politicians live in a cocoon of ignorance and denial. Local government units are responsible for the child sexual exploitation on the streets of their towns and cities. They lock children in filthy, putrid and sub-human jails with steel bars and overcrowding and call it Bahay Pag-asa (House of Hope) and hope the children get “rehabilitated.” 

A proud Filipino nation ought not allow such abuse to continue. It is a denial of human dignity and children’s rights. The nation is judged by the way they treat the children. They must end the sex slavery and the trading in human beings. Unless the true Filipinos who seem to be conditioned by public tolerance and apathy awake and believe in the dignity of every child besides their own and care of others, the abuse will continue. This extreme form of social corruption and moral degradation of the nation is not even on the agenda of the politicians campaigning for election this May 13. 

Fr. Kenneth Pius Hendricks, 77, has been living in the Philippines for the past 37 years. He was arrested last  December 5, 2018 and has since been charged for the alleged multiple sexual abuse of minors in Bilaran, Philippines. The amazing thing is that the arrest warrant for Hendricks was issued by a US Judge in Ohio, District Court, Judge Stephanie Bowman, on Nov. 11, 2018 on charges of “engaging in illicit sex with a minor in a foreign country.”  Somebody had broken the silence that protected him and reported it to the US authorities afraid it would be quashed in Bilaran.

Such is the fear and reverence that holds the priest in awe as a representative of God and a false belief that he could do no harm. The same holds true for abusive biological fathers. The more than fifty child victims were threatened and warned by the priest never to tell anyone and that it is likely if they complained, their parents or other adults would not believe them.

  

The Philippines is trapped in a corrupt culture of cultivated silence that had protected this alleged serial child abuser for many of his 37 years. The most prolific child abusers are biological fathers and live-in partners or step-fathers. Incest is rampant. Blame the sex industry for corrupting Philippine family morals. They too are protected by the culture of silence.

It is also that same culture that allows the jailing of innocent children and the sexual abuse of minors. It is a silence and inaction that has to be broken. We need people of courage and bravery to speak out and expose the abusers and rescue the children. That’s how we can change the system.

When Authority is Perverse, Abuse is Rife

It’s all about power and fear. Several impoverished, abused, cheated and beaten Filipino female workers taking shelter in Middle Eastern Philippine embassies have been allegedly sexually assaulted and prostituted by some corrupt and depraved embassy officials of the Department of Foreign Affairs, according to Walden Bello, the sociologist turned congressman in a press conference in Manila recently. He named two of the officials and gave the nick-name of a third. Yet many more have been involved in this despicable and criminal activity and dozens of young women have been violated.

 

They are vulnerable, lonely, isolated in a foreign country, and victims of physical and sexual abuse by their foreign employers. They escaped and ran for help and shelter to the Philippine embassies in Jordan, Syria and Kuwait. These young women, Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), are totally dependent on the Embassy officials when they take them into the embassy shelter with promises that the Philippine Government would protect and repatriate them.

Instead of being helped, many of them were subjected to humiliating and shameful sexual exploitation by corrupt and depraved officials themselves. Not only were they forced to perform sexual acts with some officials, but they were sold into sexual slavery in the city from which the embassy officials earned a lot of money.

Representative Walden Bello told a news conference that his source is a high official of the Department of Foreign affairs and he named names. The young victims were too scared and helpless to resist the power of the government officials. Just imagine what most likely went on in the embassy shelters to coerce and threaten them into submission and docility. They likely received threats of dire punishment if they told anyone about it.

Imagine it might have happened like this to a fictional young woman named Rosa.

Embassy Official in a closed embassy room: "Rosa, I will help you get home to the Philippines, you can earn some money, just let’s have a little fun first.”

Rosa tries to resist: "No, no, please don't touch me, leave me alone, that's what the evil employer did to me; he raped me, don't, don't.”

Official, pulling an angry stern face: "You are here under my power, if you don't do as I say, I will send you back out to your employer and the authorities, you will be on the street without documents or passport, do you understand? You will be arrested and jailed."

Rosa: "Please Sir, don’t do that, I want to go home I have not seen my family for years, I have nothing, no money, no job, no food. I have been cheated, robbed and raped, please don’t cancel my air ticket".

She was by now crying and howling, tears streaming down her face but the official seemed to be aroused by her distress and moved to sexually exploit her.

Most of the Embassy employees had to know about it, but remained silent or worse, may have been involved too. Why did they not blow the whistle and come to the rescue of the women? Their silence can only be understood as approval, or they were silenced by threats and fear. A culture of fear of higher authority can overpower the moral values of even a strongest and most spiritual person. Courage and belief in human dignity and rights and know how to get help is what is needed.

The young women are silent also, fear has a paralyzing power to subjugate and render people unable to resist or speak against the exploiter or abuser. Some government authority figures have an arrogant sense of superiority; they tend to trivialize sexual crimes.

The worst part of all this is that the suffering victims are treated as if they are an enemy, a hostile ungrateful beneficiary out to hurt the man. We can imagine an arrogant rapist official scolding his abused victim.

"You are an ungrateful brat, no better than a prostitute, you should feel honored that I, an important official and your superior, would lower myself to have sex with the likes of you, an impoverished non-person. You should be grateful for the help we have for you here instead of protesting and complaining".

Such depravity and criminality leaves the normal person breathless, angry and bewildered. But for those in positions of power and ascendency whether it be government, Church or in the family, the abuse of power by threats of dire punishment against the weak and helpless creates deeply held fear.

The poor know the rich and powerful can murder and rape with impunity. For the powerful, it seems an entitlement, a privilege of power. The senior Philippine embassy officials in Jordan, Syria and Kuwait have been recalled to answer the complaints. Not before their time.