Questions to Our Hermeneutical Approach or: Who Defines, What Is Cruel?

Extract

When it comes to human rights violations, the cruelty of the action seems obvious, the enemy seems clear. That is often true, no doubt. But what makes me sure that it is what the victim sees? What if I consider something as cruel, but the victim does not regard it as such? What if I don't see something as being as painful as the victim does?

I am thinking of a story I was told in the Philippines. The Filipina who told it to me had joined the Resistance Movement and had been arrested by the military together with some others, including her husband. When she told me the story of her arrest, the fear of being raped was mentioned again and again. The fear was there—when she got caught in the mountains, when the soldiers brought her down, while she was being interrogated, in detention, even when she was already released while she was making love to her husband. She told me: “Sometimes, during our sex life, sometimes in the middle of it I would say: what if the military was doing it to me?” She described her time in detention, how the group of political prisoners developed a “project.” She said, “The project is, you have to be pregnant.” During Marcos' time, being pregnant was considered a humanitarian reason to be released.