Introduction: Eritrean Women in the National Liberation Struggle

During the war of independence against Ethiopia (1961–1991), Eritrean women volunteered to participate, along with men, in the liberation struggle, and they played a key role. Women represented 30–35 percent of the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) (Burgess Reference Burgess1989; National Union of Eritrean Women 1980) and most observers, including the leadership of the EPLF, state that independence would have been unachievable without their participation (see Afewerki Reference Afwerki1999). ^{Footnote 1} A vital question, however, is whether women’s participation in the liberation struggle led to their postindependence emancipation. This cannot be examined without a consideration of the roles they played during the war, how they experienced the war, the positions they held, and the extent of their freedom to set their own agenda against sexism.

It is important, from the outset, to guard against overstating the transformative effect of nationalism and wars of liberation. Eritrean women were mobilized ostensibly in the name of social change and gender equality, but the main purpose was to boost the fighting capability of the liberation army against Ethiopia. Thus, although in the conservative and patriarchal Eritrean polity mobilization was liberating for most female combatants, women’s gains during the liberation struggle were not translated automatically into progressive public policy after the shooting stopped. Cynthia Enloe, among other feminist theorists, has argued that when women are used in the military, it is only “for the duration” of the conflict and in roles defined as auxiliary (1988:91); in countries such as Algeria (see Seferdjeli 2004) and Zimbabwe (see Nhongo-Simbanegavi Reference Nhongo-Simbanegavi1997), “changes in relations between women and men necessitated by the exigencies of nationalist warfare did not survive once the new nation-state was established” (1989:55). Linda Grant De Pauw observes further that “during wars, women are ubiquitous and highly visible; when wars are over and the war songs are sung, women disappear” (1998:59). This has been true of all revolutions and liberation struggles since the eighteenth century, including the French and American and Revolutions (see Kerber Reference Kerber1980; Dietz 1987; Reynolds Reference Reynolds and Reynolds1987).

According to its stated goals, a central aim of the Eritrean National Service (ENS) is to preserve and transmit the core national values that were fostered during the war of liberation, including the commitment to gender equality (see Art. 8, Proc. No. 82/1995 on National Service). Ostensibly, by including women in the ENS, its architects wished for women to be agents of social change, carrying forward the values of the liberation struggle. However, the postindependence government’s well-publicized commitment to gender equality is challenged by the conspicuous exclusion of women from the service’s command structure. It is also challenged by the existence of sexual violence on the part of commanding officers and trainers throughout the national service, particularly at the Sawa military camp. Based on in-depth interviews with systematically selected key informants (former conscripts), as well as the results of 190 questionnaires, this article discusses the risks of sexual violence and harassment in the ENS, women’s resistance and submission to such violence, the mechanisms used by commanders to terrify female conscripts into acquiescence, and the dearth of state protection.

The National Service and Women’s Conscription

According to Article 8, Proc. No. 82/1995 on National Service, “all Eritrean citizens from the age of 18 to 40 years have the compulsory duty of performing Active National Service.” The universality of the service is reflected in the absence of exemptions, except for “fighters and armed peasants who prove to have spent all their time in the liberation struggle” (Art. 12) and “citizens who suffer from disability, such as invalidity, blindness and psychological derangement” (Art. 14 [5]). These are the only categories that are legally exempted from the duty of performing national service. Even conscientious objectors such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses—and, at least according to official policy, Muslim women—are forcibly conscripted or risk indefinite detention (Amnesty International 2004; UNHCR 2005). The first proclamation on the ENS was enacted in 1991, but military training commenced in July 1994 (Gide Reference Gide2004). Officially, the ENS consists of six months of military training and twelve months “of active military service and development tasks in military forces for a total of 18 months” (Art. 8, Proc. No. 82/1995). However, in practice the duration of service became open ended after the 1998–2000 border war and when the government introduced the Warsai-Yikealo Development Campaign (WYDC) in May 2002 under the pretext that war against Ethiopia may break out at any time in the future. ^{Footnote 2} Since then there has been no demobilization, and on average the former conscripts interviewed for this study had served for 5.8 years before deserting from the ENS.

After six months of training, conscripts are assigned to the Ministry of Defence or to other ministries and departments. Of the 190 respondents who completed the questionnaire, 122 were assigned to the Ministry of Defence and subsequently joined the armed forces, with some of them remaining at Sawa. Twenty-three were assigned to ministries and regional governments within the national service framework without remuneration, save for the rations and pittance of pocket money they receive from the ministry. Originally, those who passed the higher education entrance exams (25 individuals) were transferred to the University of Asmara, the only university in the country. However, in 2006 the government closed the university, and today those who pass the matriculation examinations are transferred to military colleges around the country. The rest of the conscripts are assigned to work for various companies owned by the ruling party, the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), and elsewhere within the national service framework. Since 2003 all final-year secondary school students are transferred to the Sawa military training camp in western Eritrea. Thus there has been a marked militarization of education in the country (see Muller Reference Muller2008; Tronvoll & Mekonnen Reference Tronvoll and Mekonnen2014). At Sawa twelfth-grade students become part of the military establishment and receive military and academic training simultaneously.

The most contentious aspect of the ENS has always been women’s participation. Although ethnolinguistic groups differed in the level of resistance, all deeply resented this aspect of the program, and many communities actively resisted female recruitment (Last Reference Last2002). When the first conscripts were about to be sent to the Sawa training camp, President Isaias Afwerki held a public meeting with two thousand residents of Asmara and was told by elders that “some women do not want to leave their homes. . . .” His answer was that “whether they like it or not, they will have to do so when they are called up.” The policy applied to all women, he insisted, including Muslim women who asked for an exemption on the basis of their faith: “There cannot be different laws for different people in one country,” he said (Eritrea Profile 1994). The Minister of Local Government, Mahmoud Sherifo, also dismissed their appeal as a parochial idea espoused by people with other motives. “These people,” he said “do not want women to be educated, work and be equal to men” (Eritrea Profile 1995). The Minister of Defence, Sebhat Ephrem, also dismissed the concerns about women as a petty matter, saying “We should not overstate secondary issues of women . . . which are practically insignificant when compared with our big national challenges” (1995).

Popular resistance to women’s participation intensified. In July 2002 the army rounded up thousands of women on the streets of Asmara in a highly aggressive manner, including pregnant women and lactating mothers, before sending them for screening at Adi Abeito village (fieldnotes, July 2002). In response, a large group of mothers took part in a spontaneous protest—a remarkable act of defiance in a country where any form of protest is labeled as treason. The women raised a number of issues, such as the endless postponement of demobilization resulting in wastage of badly needed manpower; the government’s failure to inform parents of the whereabouts of their children after the carnage of the border war; and the inappropriateness of the national service when the country was at peace with its neighbours, notwithstanding the government’s claim of impending threat to national security. Clearly these women thought that the government’s claims of threat to national security was a pretext used to justify its policy of militarization and mobilization of unpaid labor—a point of view that was expressed by the majority of individuals I interviewed in Asamra at that time (fieldnotes, July 2002). However, they told the government representatives that what they resented the most was the manner in which the giffa (rounding up) was conducted, particularly the inclusion of women. Their most pressing worry was their vulnerability to sexual violence, unwanted pregnancies, and the risks of HIV/AIDS infection. The government, however, ignored the outcry.

The government’s argument for female conscription in the case of Muslim parents’ objections—on the grounds that there cannot be “two different laws in one country”—was in fact inconsistent with other government policies. The Eritrean government does have a policy of affirmative action; for example, 30 percent of the seats in the National Assembly are officially reserved for women (NUEW 2000), although this body is now defunct. ^{Footnote 3} Immediately after independence, the government also adopted a new Ethiopian Civil Code which repealed former sections that were manifestly discriminatory against women (Beyene Reference Beyene1994). However, such progressive changes devoted to gender equality did not apply to crucial matters regulated under Shari’a law, including betrothals, marriages, divorces, child custody, and succession. ^{Footnote 4} Clearly, if the government has accepted that Muslims can be treated differently according to Shari’a law, then it is contradictory for the president to reject Muslim cultural practices in relation to women serving in the ENS.

And in practice, although the law on national service ostensibly applies equally to all citizens, nearly all the former conscripts interviewed reported far fewer Muslim than Christian women in the ENS, especially in the conservative rural areas of the Gash Barka and southern Red Sea regions, among the Beni Amer and the Afar, respectively. This suggests that the government does not enforce mandatory participation of women as rigorously in these areas for fear of provoking violent reaction. According to Amnesty International (2004), there has been “considerable resistance to female recruitment from Muslim communities, especially among the Afar of Dankalia region on the Red Sea coast . . . on the grounds of religious belief, cultural traditions of family honor, or protecting women from sexual harassment and violence in the army. . . . The government appears to have subsequently stopped forcible recruitment of young Muslim women in these areas.”

Rape and Sexual Violence as a Human Rights Violation

In the most general sense, sexual violence signifies “sexual exploitation and sexual abuse. It refers to any act, attempt, or threat of a sexual nature that results, or is likely to result, in physical, psychological, and emotional harm. Sexual violence is a form of gender-based violence” (IRIN n.d.). Since the 1990s, rulings of international tribunals as well as United Nations conventions have contributed to a more precise legal definition of rape as a human rights violation, now conceived mostly as an abusive act that interferes with a person’s right to exercise sexual agency rather than exclusively as an act of violence. In the 1990s and 2000s the International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda (ICTR) and the International Criminal Tribunal of the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) used two different criteria—coercion and nonconsent—to establish culpability. In 1998, in the case of Prosecutor v. Jean-Paul Akayesu, the ICTR used coercion as the main criterion. In the same year the ICTY, in the case of Prosecutor v. Furundalja, deemed consent rather than coercion as necessary to establish culpability. It reaffirmed this position in Prosecutor v. Dragoljub Kunarac in 2001, ruling that “sexual penetration will constitute rape if it is not truly voluntary or consensual on the part of the victim.” However, this decision was reversed by the Appeals Chamber on the grounds that it is safer to “presume non-consent” in cases where rape is connected to war, crimes against humanity or genocide—thereby reaffirming the relevance of coercion. But then in 2003, in Laurent Semanza v. Prosecutor, the Appeals Chamber of the ICTY again defined rape as sexual penetration that occurs without the consent of the victim,” while in 2005 the ICTR, in Prosecutor v. Mikaeli Muhimana, emphasized coercion, stating that “coercion is an element that may obviate the relevance of consent as an evidentiary factor in the crime of rape.” ^{Footnote 5} Although the ICTY and ICTR have clearly vacillated in their choice of criteria in the establishment of culpability in rape cases, it is clear that explicit nonconsent (or virtual nonconsent in a situation of coercion) is the dispositive factor.

In 1992, at the 11th session of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the U.N. recognized gender-based violence as a “form of discrimination that seriously inhibits women’s ability to enjoy rights and freedoms on a basis of equality with men.” Rape and sexual violence are framed by the United Nations as violations of women’s agency and autonomy rather than as violations of morality, public decency, or family honor (U.N. 2010); sexual violence, as the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs observes, is a “violation of an individual’s bodily integrity” (2010:26). The U.N. calls for the elimination of any requirement that sexual assault be committed by force, and any requirement of proof of penetration, emphasizing “unequivocal and voluntary agreement” on the part of both parties and proof by the alleged perpetrator of steps taken to ascertain whether the victim has consented (see also Amnesty International 2011). In shifting the burden of proof from the victim to the perpetrator, the U.N. has tried to minimize the risk of secondary victimization of the woman in criminal proceedings. The European Court of Human Rights, in a ruling in 2003, stated unequivocally that

In 2013 [2005] the Rules of Procedure and Evidence promulgated by the International Criminal Court (ICC) stated, similarly, that “consent cannot be inferred by reason of the silence or lack of resistance by a victim to the alleged sexual violence” (Rule 70 [3]).

Of course, in institutions such as the military, which are permeated by fear and intimidation and where macho culture prevails, nonconsent and coercion are particularly intertwined, since consent cannot easily be refused without the risk of harm. In the military context, in fact, Michal Buchhandler’s (Reference Buchhandler-Raphael2011) emphasis on the element of power inequality that inevitably exists in the crime of rape has perhaps the most salience. Buchhandler argues that instead of enunciating what behavior constitutes force or coercion, one should focus on the circumstances that constitute exploitation of power. The best way to draw a clear boundary between legitimate sex and sexual abuse, he says, is by “focusing on the particular wrongdoing in rape—the exploitation element and by defining the types of sexual relationships in which submission is induced through abuse of power” (2011:199). Buchhandler further observes that “the essence of rape is sexual abuse of power, namely, a wrongdoer’s culpable exploitation of dominance, and conduct over a person in a subordinate position. . . . Accordingly, rather than defining rape as engaging in nonconsensual sex, it would be defined as engaging in an act of sexual abuse of power, dominance, and control” (2011: 200). ^{Footnote 6}

For many years, claims of sexual violence against female conscripts by military commanders have abounded in the Eritrean National Service. Although there have been no claims, for example, that women fighters in the EPLF were expected to provide sexual service to male fighters (as has been claimed in regard to other liberation movements in Africa; see, e.g., Nhogo-Simbanegavi Reference Nhongo-Simbanegavi1997 on Zimbabwe), the old story that sexual abuse was unheard of in the EPLF is a myth. In August 2002 in Asmara I discussed the alleged problem of sexual violence perpetrated by military commanders with a woman I will call Tsega, a veteran EPLF fighter. Not only did she confirm the allegation, but she extended her denunciation to the culture of the EPLF in general and to the status of women in the present.

The disquieting possibility suggested by this comment is that the ENS may function not only as a conduit of progressive values from the liberation struggle, but also as the perpetuator of corrupt practices from that time.

Sexual Violence and Resistance in the National Service

The existence of sexual violence in the military has been documented in many countries. According to the New York Times, in the U.S. “there were 3,553 sexual assault complaints reported to the Defense Department in the first three quarters of the fiscal year, from October 2012 through June, a nearly 50% increase over the same period a year earlier” (Steinhauer 2013). An eight-year female veteran of the U.S. National Guard named Abby Hiser stated, “I joined the military to defend my country, not my integrity and self-worth” (Alternet 2008). Sexual abuse seems equally rife in the British military (Chanel 4 2013; Glenton Reference Glenton2014).

If female soldiers can be assaulted in the context of liberal democracies, where there is media scrutiny as well as institutional constraints (even in the context of “national security” exigencies), how vulnerable to sexual violence are female soldiers and conscripts in the ENS, where there is an absolute dearth of accountability (see Amnesty International 2004; Human Rights Watch 2009)? In 2015 the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Eritrea (COI) documented a high level of sexual violence permeating the ENS.

Although the ENS was established in accordance with the 1995 proclamation, it has been implemented in an institutional vacuum. There are no regulations or guidelines that (1) define and limit the powers of military commanders; (2) forbid sexual misconduct of commanders against conscripts (i.e., no checks on such tendencies; (3) establish home or annual leave for conscripts; (4) prescribe punishment, such as how much can be inflicted and for what kinds of behavior; (5) establish appeal procedures and remedies against sexual and other abuses of power; (6) control allocation and use of conscripts’ labor time; (7) determine criteria for assignment of conscripts after the six months of military training; or (8) ban collusion for the sake of obscuring such practices. The behavior of the commanders and their treatment of recruits are mostly unregulated, and as we shall see, abuses that permeate the ENS, including sexual victimization of female conscripts, exploitation of conscripts’ labor power for personal gain, and infliction of inhumane punishments are the consequence of this absence of clearly defined and enforced constraints. The lack of regulation and monitoring gives the military commanders unlimited, unaccountable power and impunity.

Although all female conscripts within the ENS are exposed to a high risk of sexual violence, the extent of the risk appears to be far higher among those assigned to remain in the Sawa military camp after their six months of military training, mainly as megebti (cooks, cleaners, and launders), secretaries, personal assistants of commanders, and office workers. Nevertheless, it is important to bear in mind that the problem is by no means limited to the Sawa military camp and that female conscripts face high risk of sexual violence regardless of the location of their assignment within the framework of the ENS. Given the unlimited power and authority of the army commanders, and their unconstrained ability to harm victims under their command, the use of force may not be necessary to achieve “consent.” A threat of punishment or assignment to hardship locations or frontline combat are apparently sufficient to engender acquiescence.

Although none of the 190 respondents to the questionnaire denied the prevalence of sexual encounters between commanders and female conscripts, some claimed that these relationships were consensual. However, since the main reason offered for this consent was the shamefulness of rape, it is likely that their own answers were motivated by similar cultural factors: that is, their reluctance to expose individual women to shame and a preference, therefore, for providing an evasive explanation. In Eritrean tradition, female promiscuity and being the victim of rape are both shameful, and in fact, survivors of sexual violence tend to be more stigmatized than promiscuous women. Nevertheless, the reports of specific informants showed that sexual encounters between female conscripts and military commanders, rather than representing voluntary and mutually reached agreements, were unwanted by the woman and obtained by intimidation, coercive pressure, and abuse of power. The unaccountable power of commanders and the widespread practice of torture and sexual abuse in complete absence of state protection are enough to terrify young female conscripts who have never before lived outside of shielded familial environments. In some cases, the mere threat of violence and harsh punishment precipitates submission to sexual violence. Consent obtained under such circumstances is not genuine.

According to the key female informants who were interviewed in depth, abusive officers apply various methods to force and blackmail female conscripts to respond positively to sexual demands. Although few in number, those who refuse to comply—who, against all odds, insist on asserting their agency and individual choice—are assigned to dangerous tasks, or sent to dangerous locales and/or places of hardship, or face psychological bullying and physical punishment. Most interviewees reported that practices such as beating, detention in shipping containers or underground cells, exposure to extreme heat, or denial of home leave were also common. Human Rights Watch (2009) reported on the case of a female recruit who had served as a conscript for ten years and explained, “first you do your military training[,] then they hold you forever without your rights. The military leaders can ask you for anything and if you refuse their demands then you can be punished. Almost every woman in the military experiences this kind of problem.” The report continues,

Bisrat Habte Micael, a woman whose conscription began in 1996, said that

Zekarias, who worked as a prison guard until 2007 in Brigade Six Prison at Sawa military camp and deserted in 2013, said that his platoon leader in the prison had had sexual relations with female conscripts who had been transferred to his team from the frontline.

Zubeida, a female key informant, who was granted refugee status and later became naturalized in Sweden in the 1980s, recounted the story of a former conscript she had met in the country.

Nevertheless, in some instances female resistance was apparently successful. In an extensive interview, Asmeret, an educated female conscript who served in the ENS for more than ten years stated, “There were some tough city-girls who looked down upon the commanders whom they derogatorily labeled as hegereseb (“peasants”)—rough and lacking any semblance of modern values and sophistication” (interview, Khartoum, Nov. 2, 2010). When I asked her how such female conscripts would react to sexual advances, she said, “It depends. A few may compromise their honor for an easy life, but the majority would put stiff resistance regardless of the consequences. Most of these women seemed to have had rich experience in their pre-conscription lives and their defiance to some of us was beyond belief.” To demonstrate this, she recounted an incident that occurred in her platoon.

I asked her how the commander had reacted to the embarrassing situation. She said, “He never expected a conscript and a female one, as such, to confront him defiantly. Nothing could have prepared him for it, and suddenly he was shocked and froze like a mouse soaked in water” [ab may ziatewet antchwa—a Tigrinya saying]. Instead of punishing those who applauded her gallantry, he tried to defuse the situation by dismissing her reaction as being “excessive attention seeking.” Although she did not know the reason, the informant said, “that was the last time we saw him.” His position was filled by another commander who was equally vicious but less overtly a sexual predator.

These comments show, on the one hand, the dearth of state protection against sexual violence and the ability of some commanders to act with absolute impunity, and on the other, the indomitable agency and power of female conscripts who defy the danger of sexual slavery despite intimidation and punishment. Still, many female conscripts chose accommodation over defiance, resorting to unaffectionate marriages-of-convenience with male conscripts or with older men unaffected by the ENS, since married women are not always targeted and the fact of marriage may help a woman obtain a temporary release. Many also use pregnancy as an escape route from the ENS, since pregnancy, though not an official grounds for discharge, is usually a successful strategy, though not necessarily a permanent one. The decision about whether to recall married women and mothers back to service after an initial discharge is arbitrary and open to abuse.

The risk of being sexually molested in the army also has severe health implications. Although there is no scientific evidence that attributes the spread of HIV/AIDS specifically to militarization, many people who were interviewed saw the ENS, and the promiscuity and abuse that are widespread in the service, as the vehicle through which the transmission of the lethal virus is accelerated. Government statistics show that in 2002 4.6 percent of men and women in the army were HIV-positive in comparison with 3 percent in the general population. Whereas HIV/AIDS was the tenth highest killer in Eritrean hospitals in 1996, by 2001 it was the second most frequent cause of death among patients over five years of age (IRIN 2002). According to the World Health Organization document titled “Best Practices in HIV/AIDS Response in Eritrea,” “extrapolated from the results of the sentinel survey, close to 48,000 people are estimated to be living with HIV and AIDS in Eritrea. . . . The peak age for AIDS infection is 29 to 34 among males and 20–24 among females” (n.d.: 11). The most affected groups, therefore, are within the age of conscription.

Former Conscripts’ Perceptions of the Prevalence of Sexual Violence in the ENS/WYDC: Survey Results

In the extensive survey conducted between 2012 and 2014 of 190 former conscripts residing in the U.K., Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, South Africa, and Sudan who had deserted from the national service, the respondents were asked the following question: “There are rumors about rape and sexual abuse against women. Do you think that commanders sexually abuse women?” The large majority—167 individuals—acknowledged the prevalence of sexual violence throughout the ENS, within and outside the Sawa military camp. It is worth noting, however, that twenty-three out of the 190 respondents presented fervent denials, at least in regard to the six-month period of military training at Sawa.

Among the deniers was R#003 (female [F]), who said, “It [sexual abuse] is unheard of. Perhaps after they are assigned to the units, a few may befriend themselves and fall in love with some of the commanders and consequently go out with them. There is no possibility for abuse at Sawa.” Another female respondent said, “Sexual abuse is inconceivable at Sawa. There is rigorous discipline. At least this was the case when I was there” (R#068). Other women made similar claims: “Unless one consents, I don’t believe there is unwanted sexual relations” (R#79); “There is no sexual abuse” (R#81). Some male respondents agreed. Some referred only to their own subjective observations (“I saw no abuse at all,” said R#126), but some—including military trainers who later fled the country because of the indefinite time frame of service—made more categorical denials. “It is a lie,” said R#128. “There is no forcible sexual relationship. At the time I was in the ENS, sexual relations were based on mutual consent.” Another male respondent agreed. “There is no sexual abuse at all. No sexual relationship is possible unless the woman concerned wants to have such a relationship” (R#129). R#167 acknowledged that the accusations might have been true elsewhere, but certainly not in the Sawa training camp: “The rumors are confused. Outside Sawa, sexual abuse is possible but not in Sawa during the six months [of] military training. In our time, there was rigorous discipline and the measures against abuse would have been severe.” And R#169 said, even more definitively, “I don’t believe women can forcibly enter into sexual relationship against their will” (R#169).

Some respondents who denied the prevalence of sexual abuse in the national service, at least during the six months of military training at Sawa, also claimed such allegations are used by the enemies of the government as a means of discrediting the ENS. Even the most staunch deniers of sexual violence were not prepared to go as far as saying that it does not occur after the six-month training period. But they were more categorical about that initial period when, in their view, the degree of monitoring and supervision are most rigorous.

However, the overwhelming majority of the respondents said that female conscripts are subjected to sexual violence at the Sawa military camp and elsewhere within the ENS. One female conscript interviewed by an Italian journalist reported that “every day, at the sunset, the male officers used to enter bossily inside our tents to choose one of us in order to spend the night with him. These officers, although . . . married, considered it normal to go to bed every night with a different female soldier. Very soon I got pregnant and as a result I was immediately sent back home” (Rini Reference Rini2002). Some of the respondents to the questionnaires attributed the prevalence of sexual violence to unequal power relations between the commanders and conscripts in general—and female conscripts in particular—as well as the absence of any accountability. For example, R#49 (M) said, “The conscripts are forced to do whatever their commander orders them to do. The power of the commander is absolute and as a result, nothing can stop him from doing whatever he wants, including raping or sexually abusing female conscripts.” R#151 (M) said, “Yes women are subjected to sexual abuse because those who have power in Eritrea are able to do anything they want with impunity and without accountability.”

As we have seen, most women are unlikely to admit that they have been violated for fear of being stigmatized, bringing “shame” and “dishonor” to her family, and damaging her reputation in ways that may affect her prospects of finding a husband in the future. Fear of repercussions from the perpetrator and fear of forcibly being married to the abuser may also keep her quiet. Given the sexist attitudes of the police, fear of not being believed is also a major factor. The commanders are aware of this dark culture of silence and exploit it to their advantage. It is an irony, of course, that it is the abused rather than the abusers who are preoccupied with the potential loss of honor and reputation.

Many of those interviewed also dreaded the cruel and inhuman punishment regime pervading the ENS. Punishment is used in the national service mainly to instill obedience, discipline, and fear of authority, to break the will of conscripts, and most important, to deter “misbehavior” from others. Punishment is also used as a means of intimidating female conscripts to submit to sexual violence. In general, the rationale of the punishment regime in the ENS is similar to Friedrich von der Decken’s justification for the punishment regime of the French Revolution; punishment was necessary, he said, to “make the soldiers used to the rudest and most arduous labors, to break their will, to make them obey in a lavish manner, and to transform the unruly people into machines that come to life only through the voice of their officers” (quoted in Hippler 2006:137).

Some commanders blackmail women by denying them home leave, which is not regulated but rather given or denied arbitrarily. R#131 (M) said, “the reason a woman may be forced to have unwanted sex with her commander is due to pressure to go on home leave. . . . Women do not report such [sexual] violations.” Some of these punishments, as mentioned above, consist of assignment to potentially dangerous locales, such as being sent to the front.

As we have seen, some women are subjected to violent and even gruesome punishments such as beating, detention in shipping containers or underground cells, and exposure to extreme heat, and also various procedures of physical torture: the “helicopter” or the “otto” (in which the hands and the feet of the victim, or the hands alone, are tied behind the victim’s back and she is placed face down and left outside in the hot sun); the “goma” (in which the victim is forced to lie doubled up inside a tire for long periods of time); and the “Jesus Christ” (in which the victim is tied with rope to a tree—which conscripts refer to as a “cross”—and then left to hang there, and are sometimes beaten).

Of the twenty-three respondents who denied that sexual abuse occurs, seventeen were male and six were female. About half were in the age range of thirty-one to thirty-five; about one-quarter were younger (26–30), and about one-quarter were older (36–40). Of the fourteen respondents in the survey who were twenty-five years and under, none denied the prevalence of sexual abuse in the ENS, perhaps because this age group is the most vulnerable to the abuse. Among those who denied abuse, most (17) were from the Tigrinya ethnic group (the others were Saho, Tigre, or Bilen). On average, the members of this group had spent five years in the ENS—i.e., a year less than the general average—and twenty-one of the twenty-three had left Eritrea between 2004 and 2010. It is not surprising that they were the majority among the deniers since the Tigrinya speakers are the large majority in the ENS as well as among victims of sexual violence; among the 190 respondents to the questionnaire, 122 were Tigrinya-speakers.

As the comments above suggest, there also seemed to be a discernible pattern in the questionnaire answers of those who denied the existence of sexual abuse. Not only did they praise every aspect of the ENS and the government, but they also used identical terminology in their denial of sexual violence, referring to “enemy propaganda,” “defamation,” and lies used as “weapons to attack and criticize the government.” Many of them were members of the patriotic youth organization called the Young People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (YPFDJ), a diasporan branch of the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ).