With the burning villages, rape and devastation of Darfur behind her, survivor and author Halima Bashir faced a new challenge in London; how to make people care. It was like ‘talking to deaf ears,’ said Halima as she remembered her reasons for writing her book, Tears of the Desert.
‘Illiterate, uneducated women cannot express themselves. I speak on their behalf.’
When government-sponsored militia raided a local school and she had to treat young girls for injuries inflicted by sexual violence, she broke her terrified silence. ‘I spoke to journalists about what had been happening and how people were suffering.’
Once the article went to print, the militiamen returned for Halima. ‘You’ve been talking about rape but you don’t know what it is,’ they taunted. ‘We’ll show you what rape is.’ It was a brutal weapon used to terrify her into silence.
‘Women feel guilty after they have been raped. It is shameful.’ Many are not accepted back into their community, she explained.
Rape is not a simply atrocity of war in Darfur. It forces persecuted communities into disarray by forcing women’s’ male protectors to reject them.
‘People in the UK can help to make life a little easier for these women,’ Halima explained. Fund4Darfur’s Stoves Project provides slow-burning, fuel-efficient stoves for women in refugee camps, removing the need to leave the camps in search of fuel and risk being sexually abused.
‘When a women reads about the suffering in Darfur today, she should not forget about us but to try and put herself in their position. Women in Darfur cannot stand-alone.’