Men in Puntland don’t Consider Rape A Crime
very morning, 28-year-old Officer Shamis Abdi Bile rises before dawn to make breakfast for her three young children. She bustles around the house, taking part in a few of the traditional tenets homemaking, something that is arguably still expected of Somali women. But once her family has eaten, Bile takes on an unexpected role.
Bile becomes a warrior; fighting for the prosecution of rape and sexual violence in Puntland, Somalia. She changes into her khaki police uniform, neatly pressed and spotless, and walks several miles through the dusty streets of Garowe — the small capital city of Somalia’s vast, barren Puntland state — to the local police station. Bile is the only female officer in her unit, and the only woman handling issues of sexual violence in the area.
Waiting for Bile in the hot, stuffy interview room is a terrified teenage girl. She grips the hands of her friend so tightly that her knuckles turn white. The girl’s angry sobs are barely audible over the sound of dozens of flies buzzing around the tiny space. It has no doors or windows to ensure privacy; any number of the men in the office will be able to overhear the girl’s testimony.
A young boy from her neighborhood held her down for the purpose of raping her, tearing at her clothes as she screamed. The girl has been once to the police station already, several days ago, but this is the first time she’s been given a proper hearing by a woman. This is why Bile gets up every morning and goes to a job that can barely offer her a basic living wage. She’s furious, and she’s the only one determined to help push through change.
‘I feel driven to help when a woman is being abused,’ Bile says passionately. ‘And do whatever I can do to catch those who are harassing her.’
The girl’s dark eyes glint as she keeps the rest of her face covered. She won’t give her name, afraid that being labeled a rape survivor in Somalia’s ultra-conservative society would ruin her and her family’s reputation.
Bile, a fierce and unconventional woman, is determined to be heard in the police department on the matter, stamping her neon orange sneakers and bellowing loudly.
She doesn’t care that she is mostly outranked in the unit. She may be the only female officer, but she commands the respect of the men around her. Arguably often, female victims in such circumstances are encouraged to go home and forget the incident ever happened. Rape is common here and many people don’t take sexual aggression seriously. Except, it seems, Officer Bile.
Brimming with frustration, Bile looks into the young woman’s case. ‘Some people say rape is not a big deal,’ Bile says. ‘They say it has been happening for ages and it’s nothing new.’
Welcome to Somalia, the place where rape is commonplace and many don’t even consider it a crime at all. Here, almost every woman has a #metoo story, but little means of fighting for justice. Here, violence against women makes up 30 per cent of reported crimes in Somalia, according to the United Nations.
But the real number is likely so much higher.
Decades of civil war and violence in Somalia have crippled the government institutions responsible for protecting citizens. There’s no money to pay the salaries of police officers, judges and lawyers, so corruption and inefficiency are rampant. Men and boys accused of rape often pay a small sum for police officers or judges to look the other way. It is extremely rare that a rape case will be granted a proper investigation. As a result, crimes involving sexual violence in Somalia are rarely reported because women have little faith in the government’s ability to get justice.
‘The men will say, ‘those women are problem seekers and [liars], saying that men have raped them when it is not the truth,’’ Bile says. Sometimes male officers accuse women of lying and demand proof that she doesn’t have, to validate her story. Other times, they blame the victim, asking what clothes she was wearing or what she said to the man to cause the rape. More often than not, though, they tell her that rape happens and she should get over it and move on. These stories are so common that most women decide they’d rather keep silent than face the humiliation and abuse of telling their stories to the police.
Officer Bile is a force of life and leads an astonishing charge for women in the region to take matters into their own hands, to protect other women around them. She is working to change things for women who have been raped, so that they can finally get the justice they deserve. ‘Policemen like to defend the men, just as I like to protect the women’s rights,’ Bile says with a cheeky smile.
She was born around 1989, two years before the start of the civil war. The daughter of a policeman, she dreamed of following her father’s footsteps and joining the force. But there were obstacles. Like many women in Somalia, Bile never finished school, dropping out to help her mother take care of the family.
Bile married a police officer when she was still a teenager, and the couple had three children. But when her husband took a second wife, Bile took her children and left him. She enrolled in the police academy, and — thanks to emerging and recent efforts by global organizations like the UN to increase women’s participation in security — she graduated.
During her training in the police academy, Bile was one of only 80 women in a class of 800. One female for every 10 male officers is a small percentage; in the UK, it’s closer to three females for every 10 male officers. Somalia’s conservative culture considers women unfit for the violence and rigors of police work. But Bile’s fierce, no-nonsense personality and talent has earned her the respect of her male colleagues, who often ask for her help on cases involving women.
Bile even knows how to shoot — she learned at the police academy — but the police station has limited weapons available and as a woman, Bile is the lowest priority. ‘She doesn’t need one,’ her superior officer jokes. ‘I’m her bodyguard.’ Bile rolls her eyes, smiling with practiced patience. ‘Those men cannot force me to do anything,’ she says. Bile became the first female officer in Garowe to join the police’s criminal investigation division when she was promoted to its newly-established women’s crimes desk late last year.
For women who have been raped, having a woman officer like Bile who treats them with compassion makes all the difference. She fights for women like Hawa Omer Shabelle, who fled from extremists terrorizing her home in southern Somalia. Her newborn baby died on the journey. When she arrived in Puntland, Shabelle remarried, but her new husband soon turned out to be violent and abusive. Officer Bile helped Shabelle escape her marriage and get a divorce.