As soon as Russia invaded Ukraine, I subscribed online to Gazeta Wyborcza, a progressive Polish newspaper that my family reads in Warsaw. In addition to mobilizing its teams to cover this conflict at the gates of Poland and NATO, the journalists of Wyborcza quickly set up a supplement in Ukrainian for refugee women who, from the first day of the conflict, flooded into Poland. More than the military actions of the brave men left behind, it is their fate that challenges me as an immigrant, as a woman, as a mother.
I can’t stand this rule of agreement where the masculine eclipses the reality on the ground. Look at them, the refugees, children with arms and suitcases in hand, in search of new landmarks, walking towards the unknown. No more house, no more career, no more husband, solely responsible for their traumatized children, they will do what women have always done: look to the future, weave dreams. On two blankets spread out on the ground in an anonymous and crowded station, they are going to build, for one night, a new house. If it sounds like an escape, it is rather in my eyes the strongest embodiment of true courage.
Over the weeks, the conflict unfolded and the violence of the air strikes was dethroned by the cruelty on the ground, particularly in Boutcha. The duty relayed some of the images that went around the world: we had to watch the bodies of civilians, hands tied behind their backs, cover the streets of the gray and bereaved city. These images show part of the reality. In the shadows, however, other dramas are brewing which need to be made visible.
The same hate
For several days, humanitarian organizations have undertaken to evacuate from Irpin and Boutcha the Ukrainian women – young and old, teenagers or mothers – cruelly raped by Russian soldiers. In Irpin, reports journalist Natalja Waloch, the bodies of some of these victims were hanged; elsewhere, it has been abused for several days online. Testimonies attest to the fact that these women suffered a dissociation during the events, that others, again, lost their speech and muscle tone. What else can be said about the impacts of these acts of barbarism?
Some of the 420 Ukrainian women who have been raped recently are already in kyiv, where they are trying — I can’t imagine what that means, in this city plagued by bombardments and shortages — to treat them. Others managed to make their way to neighboring Poland. And there, denounce Gazeta Wyborczathese girls and these women come up against a wall: because in one of the European countries where the right to abortion is the most strictly framed, even almost inaccessible, these women risk not finding the help or the resources — or permission — to terminate any unwanted pregnancy resulting from one of these heinous rapes.
I read this news, and my heart turned in my chest. It’s the same hatred, I said to myself, it’s the same hatred in each camp. Its magnitude makes me nauseous. Here it is wild and messy; there, it is cold, and institutionalized. The woman’s body is perceived as an object, disposable, an outlet; here, there is a territory to be colonized, by force, by detestation. This body so proud, yet so beautiful, so powerful, which shelters, carries life, which nourishes and resists, this body that we desire, that we cherish, that we admire. Despised since the beginning of time.
Fortunately, nurses who are members of Lewica, a left-wing political party, but also other people and organizations are already rising up to remind the Polish government that it has signed international treaties guaranteeing access to all necessary care for victims of criminal acts. The money is there, the law authorizes it in principle, but the will is not there. As Natalja Waloch recalls in the April 5 edition of WyborczaPolish victims of rape already know the Way of the Cross, strewn with pitfalls, which often deprives them of having recourse to abortion.
In the same way, it is clear that complete regions have no hospitals practicing abortion in Poland. By prohibiting or complicating the use of abortion for these dozens of victims, the current Polish government is complicit in revolting Russian cruelty. It contributes to breaking lives, and to torturing survivors for nine months — or more — through, among other things, the fragmentation of identity that results from war rapes.
The organization Women for Women recalls that women and girls represent, on a planetary scale, more than half of the displaced people — from war or climate, from all the disasters sweeping our world. Their needs must imperatively be taken into account and their specific interests defended by the international community. The media must play a role in this fight: let’s not make these women invisible, let’s tell their story, let’s give them a voice. Too often, they run, mute, deprived of language and platform, under the weight of their responsibilities and their suffering. Let’s not abandon them. Because these women are all of us.