The witch hunt against Ukrainian researcher and writer Marta Havryshko after she began researching the rape and other forms of violence against women committed by OUN and UPA members during World War II, is unfortunately, as Havryshko said herself, not unique. She details it here
A similar high-profile situation happened in wartime Croatia in 1992, after five women, amongst them writers Dubravka Ugrešić and Slavenka Drakulić, were labelled “vještice (“witches”) raping Croatia” and worse for going against the binary discourse at the time by stating that rape as a weapon in war was not the sole domain of the Serbs but practised by all sides, including the Croats. What followed was a top-down, deliberately defamatory and highly misogynistic campaign to completely discredit and personally attack the women so intense that Ugrešić even fled the country.
Such is the environment cultivated in war societies: we are 100% the good side, the enemy is 100% evil and everyone who questions otherwise is a traitor who deserves extreme punishment and death.
More about the “Witches from Rio” here
Photo credit: KAi'S PHOTOGRAPHY on Unsplash
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