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VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN in TIMES of CONFLICT a Textual Analysis of Media Representations of Yazidi Women During ISIS Conflict in Iraq and Syria

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VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN in TIMES of CONFLICT a Textual Analysis of Media Representations of Yazidi Women During ISIS Conflict in Iraq and Syria Umeå University VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN IN TIMES OF CONFLICT A textual analysis of media representations of Yazidi women during ISIS conflict in Iraq and Syria Garni Mansour Spring Semester 2020 Master program: Law, Gander & Society Master Thesis in Gender Studies Supervisor: Maria Carbin Table of Contents Abstract 2 1.Introduction 3 Previous research 5 2.Theoretical background 8 The notion of “otherness” 8 Who listen’s? 9 The rescue fantasy 9 Theorising media 10 Theorising “thingness” 11 3.Method 12 Western media 13 Arab media 15 Critical discourse analysis (CDA) 16 4.Background about Yazidis and Background about ISIS 17 Background about Yazidis 17 Background about ISIS 18 5.Analysis 19 Critical discourse in Western media 19 First, The questions about sexual violence experience 19 Second, questions about the way sexual violence held 23 Third, questions about the help Yazidi women got 26 Critical discourse in Arab media 29 6.Conclusion 33 Sources 37 Appendix: Media material 39 1 Abstract Sexual violence against women in the time of conflict is a problem that appeared in many cases during wartime. Despite that it is a common problem, media and especially Western media through its coverage of war and rape during war did not give this concept its focus but rather researcher argued that media focus’s in its coverage on its ideology and agendas. In this study, which focus on media coverage during ISIS war in Iraq and Syria, critical discourse analysis was carried out on Western media and Arab media in order to understand media representation for Yazidi women who been subject to sexual violence and the potential outcomes for their representation. The results of the analysis showed that Western media represented Yazidi women as victims, on the other hand Arab media represented them as survivors, Western media portray put Yazidi women in the box of being the “other”, while both Western and Arab media had specific ideologies in their coverage, Western media with a political agenda and Arab media in justifying Islam from ISIS actions. In both cases media did not took sexual violence against Yazidi women in the wartime rape discourse. Keywords: Media, Critical Discourse Analyse, Sexual violence, Yazidi 2 1-Introduction: It was early in the morning that day of August the third 2014, when Islamic State in Iraq and Syria fighters (ISIS) swept across mount Sinjar (HRC, 2016). Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq, far less than 15 kilometres from the Syrian border, where the Yazidi minority live (Ibid). In 2016 Human rights council recognized ISIS crimes against Yazidi community as genocide (Ibid). The decision was based on reports of crimes conducted by ISIS toward the Yazidi community. The reports began to emerge after days of the attack, of “men being killed or forced to convert; of women and girls, some as young as nine, sold at market and held in sexual slavery by ISIS fighters; and of boys ripped from their families and forced into ISIS training camps.” (Ibid, P3). Based on the announcement by the human rights council in 2016, ISIS committed the war crimes of rape, sexual violence, and sexual slavery toward more than 3,200 Yazidi women and girls (Ibid). In his article explaining rape during civil war, Cohen presents four scholarly theories about sexual violence during conflict: the first theory claims that sexual violence occurs in all or most conflicts; the second theory argues that it only appears in specific conflicts; the third theory puts forth that it appears in genocidal war; the fourth theory asserts that sexual violence is linked with gender inequality (Cohen, 2013). Baaz and Stern argue that in times of conflict, women from a specific ethnicity or religion face sexual violence (Baaz & Stern, 2013). This argument can be clearly demonstrated in the following cases⎯ former Yugoslavia and Rwanda when both countries were at war. According to Human rights watch (1996) in the Rwanda genocide, Tutsi women faced sexual violence because of their ethnical background as Tutsi (Human rights watch, 1996). Similarly, in former Yugoslavia, Muslim women also faced sexual violence due to their religious background (Allen, 1996). Similarly, Yazidi women who are an ethnical minority (De Vido, 2018) suffered rape during wartime (HRC, 2016). While researcher argues about sexual violence during wartime, the media as an entity directly impacts how the public perceives and interprets events, including sexual violence on women. Media coverage of war time receives high audience watching time (Kull, 2004). Stories of sexual violence also air during the war-related coverage. Which make us curios to know media 3 opinion about wartime rape, and if the media conduct the reporting in taking into account the discourse of wartime rape. Van Dijk argues that, “The media, are not a neutral, common- sense[d], or rational mediator of social events, but essentially help reproduce preformulated ideologies” (van Dijk, 1988, p 11). According to this I believe analysis of media coverage of sexual violence during a conflict can deepen our understanding of how the media deal with wartime rape, and understand the existing of structures of ideologies, and help us shed light on the impact that the media have on the public in its portrayal of women who face sexual violence in wartime in. In this thesis I will consider the media coverage of the ISIS conflict in Iraq and Syria, specifically the media coverage about Yazidi women who faced sexual violence during this conflict. The aim of this thesis is to gain an understanding of the way media portrayed Yazid women who faced sexual violence, and to explore the potential outcomes of this portrayal, by analysing televised and written interviews with Yazidi women who were captured by ISIS, carrying out this with critical discourse analysis of Western media and Arab media. The questions will be explored in this study are: How are Yazidi women represented by the media? Is there a difference between Western media representation and Arabic media representation? What conclusions can be drawn from these representations? Critical discourse analysis of different media material will be key in understanding the social practice of the media discourse. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) aims ultimately to make a change of the existing social reality in which discourse is related in particular ways to other social elements such as power relations, ideologies, and political strategies and policies (Fairclough, 2014). CDA has an overtly political agenda (Kress, 1990) which is very relevant to examine war coverage. I hope through this study to gain understanding of the specific images and patterns of representations in media coverage. I wish to explore the differing representations of Yazidi women and processes by identifying the representational processes used by Western and Arabic media in their reporting of sexual violence in ISIS conflict in Iraq and Syria. My goal is to unveil ideologies underlying the different practices in the representation and examine their reflections on the image of Yazidi women in the international press. 4 Images and patterns of representation in media coverage will be analysed using the framework of feminist theories in order to enhance our understanding of media representations through a feminist context. The feminist theories will be presented in the theoretical framework section. The analysis of the Western media coverage will be contrasted against Arabic media, both having different cultural backgrounds from each other, to explore how their differences affect their news coverages. Previous research: In their book Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War 2013, Maria Eriksson Baaz and Maria Stern, provide an overview of how war and war-related rapes have been represented in western media. According to coverages from the Guardian and the New York Times from 2003 to 2011, regarding sexual violence in the Congo war, researchers found that stories mostly include photos of female victims in a way to attract readers. Articles tend to contain sensitive and explicit material, showing images of physical injuries and suffering (Baaz & Stern, 2013). The western media’s portrayal of these women’s stories are intended to be consumed by a western audience⎯ treating the women as though they are available to tell their stories over and over again (Ibid). On the other hand, when western women are the one exposed to sexual violence, they are protected from the media and their privacy is guarded, but in the case of the Congo war, the Congolese women are treated as an object of entertainment (Ibid). Researchers also found that western media portrayed wars outside of the West as barbaric, in contrast to western wars, which are portrayed as more civilized, more acceptable “unlike the seemingly nonsensical sexual violence in the Congo” (Ibid, p91). Baaz and Stern used Spivak argument from her article (Can The Subaltern Speak 1988) that the subaltern is denied her voice and when she does speak, she is not listened ”the raped 5 Congolese women’s voices have appeared in numerous newspaper articles, documentaries, reports (and even art pieces), and some rape survivors have also been invited to Europe to retell their stories to large audiences. Yet the listening that occurs is habitually highly selective; often only one part of the Raped Woman’s multifaceted story is registered by the visitor/reader” (Ibid, p94). They argued that there was an attention to the general rape story, rather than the consequences of rape on the women. Partial listening of these stories will not provide the right help for the victims of sexual violence (Ibid). A good side effect of the wide spread of stories about sexual violence is that the overall shame about being a sexual violence victim has “decreased” (Ibid, p100). In her study Sexual violence in the Western Media’s coverage of the war in Libya, Julia Garraio focused on two hegemonic media channels (as she describes them), the CNN and BBC and the way these channels “represented the cases of sexual violence that were being denounced during the war in Libya” (Garraio, 2012, p112).
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