In Tigray, an Ethiopian province fighting against central power, women raped during the war (2020-2022) suffer double punishment. Having had their dignity stolen, they are ostracized by a traditionalist society governed by the customs of the Orthodox Church, within which their ordeal and suffering are taboo. The documentary focuses on the fate of these women. Tigray: rape, the silent weaponby Marianne Getti and Agnès Nabat, broadcast on Saturday, November 23 at 6:35 p.m. on Arte and from Friday on the channel’s website.
Between 2020 and 2022, in the opacity of war, far from television cameras, a tragedy unfolded behind closed doors: a fratricidal conflict (at least 600,000 dead, according to the African Union) and the torture of hundreds of thousands of women by the occupant. , Ethiopian troops and the historical enemy of neighboring Eritrea. Two years later, it is difficult to lift the veil on the crimes suffered by these invisible victims. At least 120,000 women were raped during the war, Tigray regional authorities estimate.
How can we rebuild these broken destinies, these lives and these tattered bodies, two, three, four years later? How can we reintegrate these shame-filled and excluded women from society? The directors introduce us to the path of two extraordinary beings: Meseret Hadush, former pianist and star of local reality shows, and Mulu Mesfin, a nurse at the public hospital.
Stations of the Cross
Both are in the line of Dr. Denis Mukwege, “the man who repairs women” in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2018. Their common mission: to prevent the enemy from obtaining a victory that, in addition to martyring their bodies, destroys the place of these women in society. .
“We are bathed in shame, our husbands hate us, politicians reject us! »a victim shouts. “We felt too dirty to kiss the cross”Another confesses that, considering herself impure, she no longer dares to venture into a church, the basis of Ethiopian Orthodox civilization. Not to mention the illegitimate children, the product of rape, rejected by the community. A mother who could not have an abortion watches her son play in a camp for displaced people: “He is my son now, what can I do?” I wonder what future it will have. I don’t care about mine anymore…”
For these women the path of the cross continues. Until when? Alone, excluded from their homes, hidden by a society that refuses to admit their terrible experience, abandoned by local authorities willing to sacrifice this painful past on the altar of political transition. Finally, they face denial from their nation, Ethiopia, and from its leader, former Nobel Peace Prize winner Abiy Ahmed, whose long work of dehumanizing the Tigrayans (6% of the population) served as a breeding ground for these massacres. violations.
