Western peacekeeper violence shows a recurring pattern of collective, recorded, sexualized abuse

Evidence

Canadians had seen similar photos of grinning soldiers posing behind the tortured bodies of Somalis more than a decade earlier in incidents of peacekeeper violence. The racial and sexualized dimensions of the ‘Somalia Affair,’ although evident in the photos and videotapes of the soldiers themselves, were nevertheless transformed (in military tribunals and in the press) into the story of war: stressed troops and unscrupulous leaders resorted to violence when confronted by savage, ungrateful Somalis bent on the destruction of those whose civilization they did not appreciate or understand. Peacekeeper violence by Western troops towards the populations they assist shares four characteristics: the violence is collective (many participate, watch, and know of these practices), recorded in photos, videos, and diaries, sexualized (with rape and sodomy occurring), and often committed against defenceless populations, including women and children and prisoners. Notwithstanding these telling features, there is always an attempt to transform military violence into something the troops could not help but commit. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 144

As a Canadian, my own response to the violence at Abu Ghraib was one of recognition. Canadians had seen similar photos of grinning soldiers posing behind the tortured bodies of Somalis more than a decade earlier in incidents of peacekeeper violence. The racial and sexualized dimensions of the ‘Somalia Affair,’ although evident in the photos and videotapes of the soldiers themselves, were nevertheless transformed (in military tribunals and in the press) into the story of war: stressed troops and unscrupulous leaders resorted to violence when confronted by savage, ungrateful Somalis bent on the destruction of those whose civilization they did not appreciate or understand. Peacekeeper violence by Western troops towards the populations they assist shares four characteristics: the violence is collective (many participate, watch, and know of these practices), recorded in photos, videos, and diaries, sexualized (with rape and sodomy occurring), and often committed against defenceless populations, including women and children and prisoners. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 144

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels the Abu Ghraib coverage in the previous paragraph — the Somalia Affair is recursive historical evidence of the same colonial script.
• DEFINE: Provides a four-part operational definition of peacekeeper violence: collective, recorded, sexualized, against defenceless populations.
• ADDENDUM: Parallel to the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ or ‘On Sacrifice’ threads only loosely; stronger fit is the reader’s policing/camps thread.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Sherene Razack, Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims…, 144