"Girls in the shelter, beware of sexual assault!"
After the earthquake in Japan, a lot of such posts appeared on social platforms.
Girls in earthquake shelters are being warned to be careful in case they are being sexually assaulted.
Source: Sankei Shimbun
Five days ago, a 7.6-magnitude earthquake struck the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan.
The Japan Meteorological Agency said more than 100 earthquakes have struck Japan since January 1.
The scene of the earthquake in Ishikawa Prefecture, photo: Associated Press
The death toll continues to rise, with 92 dead and 242 unaccounted for so far.
I didn't expect that in such a severe disaster situation, there was such a hidden concern spreading on Japanese social media.
Girls beware!
These posts can be roughly divided into two categories.
One is reminders and suggestions related to sexual assault prevention.
Judging from the content, we have formed a basic consensus:
Even in shelters, girls are never allowed to go alone.
Especially when going to the toilet and sleeping.
"Girls should be hugged when they sleep or go to the toilet. ”
"Women and people with disabilities are advised not to go to the toilet alone, but to go to the toilet in groups. ”
Source: Internet
The "Guidelines for Disaster Preparedness" issued after the earthquake also clearly advise "multiple people to act" and "avoid darkness and blind spots as much as possible".
Source: Disaster Prevention Action Guide
A crime prevention expert said that in addition to not going to the toilet alone and going to a dark place with few people, women must also pay attention to protecting their privacy when taking a bath and changing clothes.
Source: Internet
A number of "preventive" sexual assault measures were also proposed.
For example, let the girl buy a flower arm tattoo sleeve.
"Nobody would attack a gangster woman, would they?"
Source: Internet
Or offer girls to wear anti-rape condoms.
This is a latex sleeve for women with barbed fangs inside.
It was originally invented by a South African woman who had suffered from rape. If a woman feels at risk of being sexually assaulted, the device can be placed into the vagina. When a man's lower body is inserted, it is tightly clamped by the barbed fangs and cannot be untied on its own. You must go to the hospital to remove the device.
Source: Internet
Clearly, these recommendations invariably place the responsibility for preventing rape onto the victim.
In addition to reminding women in shelters to be careful, young women were also told not to volunteer in disaster areas.
"It's all well and good to volunteer, but young women should be careful. I want you to remember that the situation we are in is far from everyday life. ”
"Don't go to the disaster area, really. ”
"It's better not to go. ”
Source: Internet
Another type of post focuses on sexual violence against women during previous earthquakes.
For example, during the Great Hanshin Earthquake in 1995, children in evacuation centers were frequently molested.
There are mothers who sleep with their babies who are raped by outside intruders.
There were also volunteers who wanted to take a bath and were tricked into gang-raping abandoned buildings.
Source: Sina Weibo
There are also some witnesses who have come forward to tell the story.
A victim of the March 11 Japan Earthquake (also known as the Great East Japan Earthquake) posted a message reminding mothers who were still breastfeeding, saying that some men had secretly filmed them breastfeeding and changing diapers in shelters, or tried to harass them while they were breastfeeding.
Source: Internet
The sound of being buried
Unfortunately, these sexual assault cases in shelters were considered "rumors" for a long time.
As early as 29 years ago, after the Great Hanshin Earthquake, many women came forward to tell their stories.
But at that time, their voices were hard to hear.
Women's Weekly, a well-known Japanese magazine, wrote in an article reviewing sexual violence in evacuation centers that at the time the media dismissed the women's plight as a "hoax", saying that "there is no evidence of any damage" and that "everything was fabricated", and those who supported the victims were also attacked and remained silent for a while.
For decades, people avoided talking about it.
There is only one result - to watch the tragedy repeat itself.
In March 2021, on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the March 11 earthquake in Japan, Japan's NHK TV launched a special program - "Buried Voices: 25 Years of Truth - Sexual Violence in Disasters".
NHK "Buried Voices"
Many heartbreaking cases and victim testimonies are published in the film.
One woman who lost her husband in the earthquake recalled that the person in charge of the evacuation shelter once told her, "It's not easy for you to [lose your husband], give you towels and food, come and pick them up at night." When she went to get food, she was forced to have sex by the person in charge.
A young girl in her 20s said that the men living in the temporary shelter were gradually becoming strange, grabbing the woman and stripping her naked in a dark place. The people around me turned a blind eye to this and said, "You're still young, and there's nothing you can do."
Another woman was raped by several men who threatened her with throwing her into the sea if she didn't comply, leaving her swept away by the tsunami. So she could only endure in silence.
In the aftermath of the March 11, 2011 earthquake, Japan set up a toll-free hotline called the Yorisu Hotline to help earthquake victims with family, work, and mental health issues.
The phone rings 24 hours a day.
Sixty per cent of the clients were women.
The vast majority of women who come to counselling are victims of sexual violence and have experienced domestic violence, rape or sexual abuse.
NHK's program team and researchers summarized the consultations received on women's hotlines over the past five years from 2013 to 2018, and found that more than 50% of consultations from the three key disaster areas were about sexual violence, and more than 40% of young people in the 10-20 age group were victimized.
Source: NHK "Sexual Harm in Disaster"
The female victim was a few years old and the oldest was in her sixties.
The study also found that there was a form of "demand-for-return violence" in these sexual assaults.
Cases of women who have lost their homes, husbands, families, and jobs in the earthquake have been reported many times in exchange for having sex in exchange for food or other assistance.
In particular, young mothers with children are forced to trade their bodies for food, and similar tragedies have occurred in contemporary Japan.
Source: Tokyo Shimbun
Behind sexual violence are unequal power relations.
In major disaster events, women in vulnerable situations are more dependent on outside support, but in the shelters, it is often men who have the right to allocate resources and have a voice.
Miyoko Nagae, a professor at Japan University of Social Welfare, said: "Disasters bring stress and the desire to dominate the weak. People who usually have this desire to dominate are more likely to become perpetrators. If it is a middle-aged or elderly woman, she will not say it because she is embarrassed, and her child will not be believed if she says it...... and female volunteers have also been scammed. ”
Far fewer cases of sexual assault have been reported than they actually have occurred.
Most of the victims had to swallow their anger.
Source: Internet
Sometimes speaking out is the same as secondary injury.
A Japanese netizen said that she once heard a very uncomfortable story about a female friend who was taught when she told about being molested: "Men are under a lot of pressure in an emergency, you have to understand." ”
Dangerous shelters
In the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake in Japan, a spate of sexual assault cases in evacuation centers has led to calls for improving the environment in evacuation centers.
Five years later, a series of earthquakes struck Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan.
In the wake of this earthquake, the Japanese government added "it is necessary to consider measures to prevent sexual crimes" in the evacuation shelter management guidelines.
Support groups have put up posters at 700 shelters in the prefecture to remind people to be careful of sexual assault.
A poster against sexual violence during the Kumamoto earthquake reminding women not to act alone
But an environment that focuses only on educating victims clearly cannot end the violence.
That year, the Kumamoto Prefecture police had about 10 cases of sexual assault in shelters, including rape and clandestine photography.
A male volunteer raped a young girl in the shelter while everyone was asleep, and the girl froze in extreme fright and could not call for help at the time of the incident.
The girl's mother immediately called the police, but the man was not charged because "no obvious attacks or threats could be confirmed".
Source: Internet
Obviously, when natural disasters strike, both men and women are at risk of death, injury and exile, but for Japanese women, they are both natural and "man-made".
The "man-made disaster" here is male violence.
The place of refuge has become the most dangerous place.
This is not the only case for Japanese women.
After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti's capital, there were 20 times more sexual assault cases in the city's temporary settlements than in the rest of the country, according to The New York Times.
图源：纽约时报，Haiti’s Silenced Victims
Springs Rescue Mission, a non-profit organization in the United States, said that most homeless women in the United States do not choose to live in shelters.
They would rather live on the streets than go to shelters that they consider dangerous.
In the UK, homeless services are "often set up for men" and "can be frightening for vulnerable women who have experienced abuse and violence".
Ironically, in many shelters, a homeless person receives a free condom, but a homeless woman does not receive a sanitary napkin.
Invisible Women argues that the potential for male violence is ignored in the design of systems for female refugees, which is deeply ironic, as male violence is often the number one reason women become refugees.
In 2022, the United Nations called for a quick halt for single British men to be paired with Ukrainian refugees because of the "risk of sexual exploitation".
Source: Global Times
At that time, the British government launched a refugee support program called "Ukraine House", which allowed British people to provide accommodation for Ukrainian refugees.
However, in the absence of an official communication platform, refugees can only use social media to contact their UK hosts.
As a result, on social software, British lewd men flocked to hook up with Ukrainian female refugees everywhere.
On the one hand, there are too few necessary gender segregations in the social asylum system, and on the other hand, there are too many terrible gender segregations in the social culture.
"The study found that Indian men were more likely to survive earthquakes that occurred at night 'because they would sleep outside and on rooftops on warm nights, which is not possible for most women'. ”
"In Sri Lanka, swimming and tree climbing skills are 'basically' taught only to men and boys, so when the tsunami struck in December 2004 (women died four times as many as men), they were better equipped to survive the floods. ”
In Bangladesh, women running, climbing trees and swimming are also frowned upon, and their traditional sari may hinder their escape movements.
Picture: BBC, Bangladesh after the storm
As Maureen Fordham is quoted in "Invisible Women": It wasn't disaster that killed them, it was gender — and a society that didn't take into account how gender limits women's lives.
And for a long time, those tragedies were unspeakable.
No one listened, and no one believed.
Just like the tears and cries of Japanese women have been seen as hoaxes and lies for decades.
For this, they paid a huge price.
Use real tragedy to prove the truth of tragedy, again and again.
Until today.
I remember seeing a post where a Japanese woman told her husband about the fact of sexual assault during the earthquake in Japan.
The other party's first reaction was to question, how could there be such a thing?
She was sad, she said I can only believe, crying and believing.