PROSECUTING RAPE IN WARTIME

Providence Journal: For centuries, rape during wartime has inspired little more than shrugs. But that is now changing. In a milestone ruling for women last month, a U.N. war-crimes tribunal convicted three Bosnian Serbs of raping Muslim women and girls during the Bosnian conflict. Two were found guilty of sexual slavery. The men received jail terms ranging from 28 to 12 years.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, a three-judge panel sitting in The Hague, said that in 1992-93, the defendants had used rape as an instrument of terror. It further ruled that mass rape is a crime against humanity. In international law, only genocide ranks as a more serious offense.
The decision marked the first time that an international body had prosecuted anyone for war crimes on the sole basis of sexual assault. It was also the first time that sexual slavery was recognized as a war crime.
Justice: This elevation of the gravity of rape will almost certainly affect courts around the world. And it could have profound ramifications for regional and civil conflicts beyond Bosnia's. In East Timor, for example, investigators have evidence suggesting that hundreds of women were raped by political foes following that nation's 1999 bid for independence. Because of The Hague ruling, Indonesian soldiers and militia members involved in the abuse may find it harder to evade justice.
The catalogue of what an estimated 20,000 Muslim women and girls suffered during the Bosnian conflict is almost mind-numbing in its grimness. Of the three men convicted last month, Zoran Vukovic was considered the least culpable. He had repeatedly raped and tortured only one victim. She was 15.
It was largely thanks to women's groups that the extent of these crimes was exposed, and that they were pushed onto The Hague tribunal's docket at all. Had such organizations not been active, rape as an aspect of war might have stood just where it was: as a violation of the Geneva Conventions, and of the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but for all that, still tolerated.
The tribunal's landmark ruling must certainly be one to rejoice over, especially in this month honoring women's history. But many will grieve for how long such a decision was in coming.
FULL WOBBLE
Washington Post: Congressional Democrats -- not all, but perhaps enough to make a difference -- are having second thoughts about campaign finance reform. They were happy to support the principal bill -- and lambaste the Republicans for opposing it -- when it had no chance of passage. But now it does have a chance, and, as has happened before, a number of Democrats are in full wobble.
They have a problem, however: how to explain a change of heart that opens them to the charge of hypocrisy. It's not enough simply to say that on reflection they've changed their minds. Nor can they convincingly complain that the bill is too strong, partly because it isn't -- it's modest legislation -- and partly because they've spent the past several years bemoaning the fact that existing law is too weak.
But another line of argument remains open to them. Listen carefully as the Senate gears up to debate the bill this month, and you will begin to hear it said that the problem with this bill is that it is not strong enough . That allows the would-be switchers to sound consistent and wobble, both at the same time -- the perfect refuge.
Soft money: The bill, by Sens. John McCain and Russell Feingold, seeks to outlaw the so-called soft-money system, whereby the national parties are used as straws to raise and spend on behalf of candidates money that the candidates are ostensibly forbidden to raise and spend themselves. The fiction has made a mockery of existing finance law. But for good First Amendment reasons the bill imposes few new restrictions on the manifold activities of independent groups outside the parties. Wrong, some Democrats have begun to argue. "It's dangerous to control one part of the political system and leave the other unrestrained," Sen. Robert Torricelli, recent chairman of the party's Senate campaign finance committee, was quoted as saying the other day.
Republicans have used similar arguments in opposing the bill: They yield to none in their support for reform, but it ought to be complete, which they define as putting a tighter squeeze on organized labor. That poisons the bill for the Democrats, who then, the GOP hopes, would take the lead in voting no. Might the Democrats now sprinkle poison of their own?