Powerful and Distrubing

Every so often a good story comes along that touches your spirit; this story went above and beyond touching. The article In a Guinea Seized by Violence, Women as Prey, by Adam Nossiter, is captivating, disturbing, infuriating, and a whole mess of other descriptive verbs.

The article is a follow-up story on another one of Nossiter's articles that was published September 29- Guinea's Capital Fades into Ghost Town after Soldier's Rampage. The article was focused on a opposition rally that went bad in the city of Conakry. The rally was held to oppose the government's authoritarian regime under Capt. Moussa Padis Camara. However, soldier's broke up the rally using extreme violence that left many dead and many more injured and traumatized by the experience. Among the traumatized were the women who attended the rally. Many women became victims of rape and harassment by the soldiers who broke-up the rally.

Right from the start, Nossiter pulled his audience in with a very disturbing opening paragraph that cut right to the truth of the matter. Nossiter continued to pull his audience in by then reinforcing his story by including the statement of one of the rape victims. Nossiter continued to bombard us with very...detailed imagery of the events; it actually became difficult to read. Nossiter used these multiple stories to emphasize how large-scale the assaults were. However detailed Nossiter may have been, he failed to mention the 'why' of the story. Why were Guinean soldiers doing this, especially in a predominantly Muslim country where these acts are (if it even can be) considered very disgraceful. Nossiter mentioned that it was to humiliate the women, but there were so many rapes in such a short period of time (during the day) that it seems like there may have been some other unseen motive.