The award-winning documentary “Fly So Far” looks at the criminalization of abortion in El Salvador through the incredible story of Teodora Vásquez, a woman who in 2008 was sentenced to 30 years in prison after she had a stillbirth at nine months pregnant. Vásquez was released in 2018 after more than a decade behind bars. El Salvador has enforced a total ban on abortions since 1998, and dozens of people have been convicted and imprisoned after having miscarriages, stillbirths and other obstetric emergencies in the Central American country. The film highlights the stories of women convicted of aggravated homicide for having a miscarriage or an obstetric emergency, as well as the ongoing resistance of women and the LGBTQ+ community in El Salvador. Filmmaker Celina Escher, director of “Fly So Far,” says women and girls in El Salvador face high rates of violence, rape and femicide, as well as hostility from the right-wing government. “Women have to live this violence every day,” she says.

Watch Highlights by clicking on the link below;

“Fly So Far”: New Film Tells Stories of Women in El Salvador Jailed for Decades Under Abortion Ban | Democracy Now!

We do not typically name victims of Rape & Abuse, but this story is already in the public domain.

War Rape 20 June 2021

Women migrants reduced to sex slaves in Libya 'hell'.

For Aisha, sexual slavery was something you only heard about happening to others in television reports, until she found herself locked in a living "hell" in Libya.

"I had left a nightmare only to fall into hell," said the migrant from Guinea, lured to the North African country that criminal gangs have turned into a den of racketeering.

Aisha fled her home country after five miscarriages: for her in-laws and the neighbourhood, she was either sterile or a witch.

But the young woman was simply diabetic.

"I just wanted to disappear from my country," said Aisha, a graduate in hotel management.

She contacted a former classmate who appeared to have made a life for herself in neighbouring Libya and who lent Aisha money to join her.

"I didn't even see the country. As soon as I arrived, I was locked up, I was a slave. She brought men to me and she got the money."

Locked in a room with a toilet, she only saw the "friend" who had duped her when she was brought in food, "like a dog".

"The men came drunk. I'd rather not remember it," said Aisha, still trembling. "I thought my life was over."

- 'Wouldn't wish that on worst enemy' -

After three months, a Libyan man took pity on her, threatened her captor and put Aisha on a bus to Tunisia with 300 Libyan dinars ($65) in her pocket.

After her diabetes was treated, she even gave birth to a baby girl late last year.

She now dreams of Europe, but returning to Libya is out of the question.

"I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy."

For the past two years, she has lived with other migrant women in Medenine, southern Tunisia.

Most of the others who'd experienced Libya had also been forced into prostitution, raped or sexually assaulted, said Mongi Slim, head of the local Red Crescent.

"Some of them, if they had the protection of a man, they fared better. But for single women, it's almost systematic," said Slim.

Some migrants said they had been advised to take a three-month contraception jab before departure, and some travel with morning-after pills, according to UN reports.

Mariam, an Ivorian orphan, left with 1,000 euros ($1,200) to pay for the crossing from Abidjan to Libya via Mali and Algeria.

She hoped to earn enough in Libya to reach Europe.

But she ended up spending most of her year there in prison, where she was sexually exploited, before fleeing to Tunisia in 2018.

"I worked for six months with a family, then I set off by sea from Zuwara," a port in western Libya, said Mariam, 35.

"Armed men caught us, took us to prison and abused us," she said.

Mariam said she had fallen into the hands of militiamen who run illegal migrant camps where extortion, rape and forced labour are common.

Official centres under Libyan government control, and where the European Union-funded coastguard transfers would-be exiles it intercepts, are also riddled with corruption and violence, including sexual assault, according to the United Nations.

- 'Impunity' -

"Every morning, a chief would make his choices and send the chosen girls to Libyans who had rented special rooms," said Mariam.

"They fed me bread, sardines and salad. I stayed there a month until they moved me to another place," she recalled, her voice spiked with anger.

"They were armed, they smoked drugs, they paid the chief but not me."

According to rights groups, men and boys are also sexually abused.

"Sexual violence continues to be perpetrated with impunity by traffickers and smugglers along migration routes, in detention centres, judicial police prisons, and against urban migrants by militants and armed groups", the United Nations said in a 2019 report.

Such criminality increased with the intensification of the Libyan conflict from 2014.

Three migrant detention centres in Libya were closed in mid-2019 and the establishment in March of a new UN-sponsored transitional government has raised hope of a decline in impunity and violence.

The UN decided last year to deploy protection officers to combat sexual crimes.

But they have yet to even be recruited, and intercepted migrants are still turned back to Libya, to the dismay of international organisations.

On June 12, a record of more than 1,000 people caught at sea were sent back to Libyan jails, according to the UNHCR.

We do not typically name victims of Rape & Abuse, but this story is already in the public domain.

Eritrea is where i lived most of my life. The country is run by corrupt government officials. They have squads of soldiers that can just come and take you at any time, and you won’t be heard of again. My sister and i are 17 , and 19. Soldiers came and took our parents a year ago and we don’t know if they are alive or dead. Then soldiers came and took my sister, i haven’t heard from her. They took me but only for a short period i don’t know why. I was taken to an army captains barracks. We had a one to one discussion where he made it clear to me that he is looking for obedient girls who understand they are property.

He had 2 older women wash and prepare me for the evening. I had dinner with him then he showed me to a private room where he took pleasure in raping me several times. He did it in a matter of fact way, he didn’t care and this happens routinely. The outside world doesn’t care. Even though united nations accused the govt of war crimes and rape, they simply deny it. After he let me go saying i was too westernised i met some international reporters who helped me learn English and gave me access to internet whenever they were in Eritrea.

This is how i am getting this message out. Women are routinely raped daily, men are taken for national service that never ends. My fathers friend has been doing national service for over 20 years. The only hope is to try and escape across the border. It is difficult without money or supplies. Please pray for the average person in our country who are slaves. Please make the world take notice and help us.

UN documents prisoners' torture, abuse in Ukrainian conflict

2 July 2021 War Rape;

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) - Prisoners taken by the warring parties in the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine have endured systematic torture, sexual violence and other abuses, the United Nations human rights agency said in a report released Friday.

The report issued by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said that prisoners' abuse was particularly rampant in the initial stage of the seven-year conflict, but noted that it continues to this day.

"Seven years since the outbreak of the conflict, it is unacceptable that such egregious human rights violation remain largely unaddressed," said Matilda Bogner, Head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine. "The prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment is absolute. Torture can never be justified."

The conflict in Ukraine's eastern industrial heartland called the Donbas erupted in April 2014 weeks after Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula that followed the ouster of the country's former Moscow-leaning president. Russia-backed separatists took control of large areas in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, established the so-called `people´s republics' and fought the government forces attempting to reclaim control. More than 14,000 people have been killed.

The OHCHR estimated the total number of conflict-related detentions from April 14, 2014 until April 30, 2021 at 7,900-8,700 , including 3,600-4,000 by the government side and 4,300-4,700 by separatists.

It said in the report that both sides used secret detention facilities immune from any prosecutorial oversight or access by rights monitors. The government side stopped using them in 2017 but the separatists continue to hold prisoners incommunicado, denying access to their relatives and monitors to that moment, the OHCHR said.

he OHCHR analyzed more than 1,300 individual cases of conflict-related detention. It said that in cases that occurred only between 2014-2015, 74% of detainees held by government forces and 82.2% to 85.7% of those held by the rebels in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions respectively were frequently subjected to torture and ill-treatment.

It estimated the total number of conflict-related detainees subjected to torture and ill-treatment in 2014-2021 at around 4,000 - 1,500 at the hands of government agents and about 2,500 by separatists. They included an estimated 340 victims of sexual violence.

The OHCHR said that both in the government-controlled and separatist-held territories "torture and ill-treatment, including conflict-related sexual violence, were used to extract confessions or information, or to otherwise force detainees to cooperate, as well as for punitive purposes, to humiliate and intimidate, and to extort money and property."

Methods of torture and ill-treatment used by both sides included beatings, dry and wet asphyxiation, electrocution, rape, forced nudity, water, food, sleep or toilet deprivation, mock executions, hooding, and threats of death or further torture or sexual violence, or harm to family members.

Stanislav Aseyev, a journalist who worked for the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and spent 28 months in the Izoliatsia (Isolation) separatist prison in Donetsk, said the facility had an elaborate system of torture that put emphasis on electric shock.

"They would strip a person naked tied to a metal chair with a band and then apply electric shock to different body parts," Aseyev, who was released in a 2019 prisoner swap, told The Associated Press.

Aseyev, who was also subjected to torture, said that hearing others screaming in pain under torture in a nearby cell has added to the trauma. "It's unbearable to hear a person crying from torture in a neighboring room," he told the AP.

OHCHR pointed to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) as the most common perpetrator of arbitrary detention, torture and ill-treatment on the government side, adding that volunteer battalions were also responsible at the initial stages of the conflict.

On the rebel side, the report said that various armed groups and later members of separatist `ministries of state security´ were responsible for prisoner torture and abuse.

The report noted that most of the abuses have remained unpunished.

"We have observed a lack of political will and motivation to investigate the cases allegedly perpetrated by government actors, as well as misuse of procedures to avoid proper investigation of such cases," Bogner said. "While we can count victims in the thousands, perpetrators brought to account only number in the dozens."