- 75 - recognized that sexual violence has frequently been used as a tactic of war “in order to humiliate, dominate, instill fear in, disperse and/or forcibly relocate civilian members of a community or ethnic group.”300 This Court has referred to the use of sexual violence in armed conflicts as a symbolic means of humiliating the other party or as a means of punishment or repression. In this regard, it has underscored how the use of the State’s power to violate the rights of women in an internal conflict, in addition to affecting them directly, may be designed to have an effect on society and give a message or lesson, because the consequences of sexual violence usually transcend the victim.301 201. The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights has also emphasized how sexual violence is used in contexts where there is no armed conflict, when referring to sexual assaults committed against women during the 2005 protests in Egypt. It considered that the insults, violence, intimidation and sexual harassment of the women, because they were women, were designed to silence them and deter their activism in political affairs. 302 202. Similarly, in this case, sexual violence was used by State agents as a tactic or strategy of control, domination and imposing authority. Indeed, as in the cases referred to previously, sexual violence was used in public, with numerous witnesses, as a macabre and intimidating spectacle in which the other detainees were forced to listen and, in some cases, to witness what was being done to the women’s’ bodies. 203. In this regard, the Court stresses that: (i) Norma Aidé Jiménez Osorio recounted that during the transfer she could hear the cries of men and women pleading with the police not to rape them (supra para. 93); (ii) María Patricia Romero Hernández, who was beaten and threatened by the police in front of her son and her father, recounted that she was sexually abused by several agents “a few meters away from [her] son and [her] father,” and they forced her “to be quiet [… because if not] they would be able to hear [her] [and she could only think that she] did not want [her] family to find out” (supra para. 90); (iii) Suhelen Gabriela Cuevas Jaramillo recounted that she had been detained with her partner and that, when one of the police agents realized that she was accompanied, “he said to him, ‘this is how you fuck her, jerk?’” while slapping his face, and also that, during the journey to the prison, she could hear other women resisting sexual assaults (supra para. 97); (iv) Bárbara Italia Méndez Moreno recounted how she was raped by several agents, who incited and encouraged each other, while she was lying on top of two other people and, at the same time, she could hear another woman crying out for them to stop attacking her (supra para. 98 and 99), and (v) María Cristina Sánchez Hernández recounted how she witnessed a rape, during which the other woman was forced to perform oral sex (supra para. 89). All of United Nations Security Council. Resolution 1820 of June 19, 2008, S/RES/1820 (2008), Preamble. See, similarly, a 2018 Report of the Secretary-General on conflict-related sexual violence, which underscored that ten years after the adoption of that resolution, “[w]ars are still being fought on and over the bodies of women, to control their production and reproduction by force. Across regions, sexual violence has been perpetrated in public or witnessed by loved ones, to terrorize communities and fracture families through the violation of taboos, signifying that nothing is sacred and no one is safe.” “The recognition of the fact that such incidents are not random or isolated but integral to the operations, ideology and economic strategy of a range of State actors and non-State armed groups marked a shift in the classic security paradigm.” Report of the Secretary-General on conflict-related sexual violence, March 23, 2018, UN Doc. S/2018/250, para. 9. 300 Case of the Miguel Castro Castro Prison v. Peru. Merits, reparations and costs. Judgment of November 25, 2006. Series C No. 160, paras. 223 and 224; Case of the Massacres of El Mozote and neighboring places v. El Salvador. Merits, reparations and costs. Judgment of October 25, 2012. Series C No. 252, para. 165, and Case of Espinoza Gonzáles v. Peru. Preliminary objections, merits, reparations and costs. Judgment of November 20, 2014. Series C No. 289, para. 226. 301 Cf. African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, Case of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights and INTERIGHTS v. Arab Republic of Egypt. Decision of December 12, 2011, para. 166. 302