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Adventurer
Joined: 28 Jan 2006
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 Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 6:49 am Post subject: India's acid victims demand justice |
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Page last updated at 06:18 GMT, Wednesday, 9 April 2008 07:18 UK
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India's acid victims demand justice
By Sunita Thakur
Delhi
Renu has been blinded by the attack
A day in February 2006 is imprinted as vividly on Renu's mind as her body.
In the quiet, narrow lane outside her east Delhi home, she had been bathing the family buffaloes when her father's tenant, a mug in hand, came towards her.
She thought he wanted water but he greeted her instead with threats and a shower of acid.
Her sister Rajni, who came rushing out when she heard the screams, remembers how Renu's "clothes were melting off her body as though they were plastic".
The acid attack was so lethal that it killed the half-bathed buffaloes and has left Renu blind and disfigured for the rest of her life.
In an ironic role reversal, Renu who had been the mother to her four younger brothers and sisters since their mother died 11 years ago, has now become entirely dependent on them.
HOWUNFORTUNATE |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 5:31 pm Post subject: |
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The most horrible thing about this story is that it is wide spread, becoming more common, and treated trivially by society and the legal system:
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All too often cases are seen as non-criminal offences and the offenders are let off with a lighter sentence.
Many offenders seek bail and delay cases for decades.
According to Anubha Rastogi of the Human Rights Network, which has joined hands with the Karnataka Campaign, stiffer punishments and a change in mind-set even with the legal fraternity are urgent needs.
"Where a case of acid attacks is being heard and the judge turns around and says - if she had agreed to him [the attacker's request] this would not have happened - I do not expect any justice."
The group is also demanding a ban on sale of acid at shops.
But some say the real problem lies somewhere else.
When will men in Indian society begin to accept that women are individuals with rights and choices, they ask?
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This is one case I would really like to see an eye for an eye. All the men who do this should be rounded up and baptised in the stuff. |
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Adventurer
Joined: 28 Jan 2006
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| Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 7:25 pm Post subject: |
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| Unfortunately, in India there is also a lot of murders of baby girls, because they often prefer boys over girls. The US Government never brings up these things as a concern. Actually, we should be concerned about the treatment of females in Africa, India or wherever, but we focus just on one part of the world. Also, in Latin America abuse of women is serious. I heard in India women are sometimes killed if the husband wants more money, and didn't like the dowry payment. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 10:10 pm Post subject: |
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| Adventurer wrote: |
| Unfortunately, in India there is also a lot of murders of baby girls, because they often prefer boys over girls. The US Government never brings up these things as a concern. Actually, we should be concerned about the treatment of females in Africa, India or wherever, but we focus just on one part of the world. Also, in Latin America abuse of women is serious. I heard in India women are sometimes killed if the husband wants more money, and didn't like the dowry payment. |
Yes, this is why I find the focus on muslims, as if they were the only offenders, absurd, quite frankly. The treatment of women in so many parts of the world is absolutely barbaric, and actually, India is often one of the first places that comes to mind when I think of this issue. And you are right about the dire situation of many women in Latin America and certainly Africa (including Christian Africa) - but they are Christians, not muslims, so we don't seem to hear so much on the matter. |
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yawarakaijin
Joined: 08 Aug 2006
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| Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 10:36 pm Post subject: |
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Move along, nothing to see here. Gather up your Korans for a good old fashion bonfire. Get your M-16's. Nothing to see here folks, move along, move along now please.
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While rape has always been a weapon of war, researchers say they fear that Congo�s problem has metastasized into a wider social phenomenon.
�It�s gone beyond the conflict,� said Alexandra Bilak, who has studied various armed groups around Bukavu, on the shores of Lake Kivu. She said that the number of women abused and even killed by their husbands seemed to be going up and that brutality toward women had become �almost normal.� |
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/world/africa/07congo.html |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 10:59 pm Post subject: |
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The stuff going on in the Congo is absolutely horrific. So much so, I try not to read about it. Every now and then it gets a little mention in the media, but for the most part it is ignored - I doubt the average person in the street has ever heard of it. I don't know what outsiders can do to help stop it, though.  |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 11:18 pm Post subject: Urgh |
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And from the West (today's news):
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The raids were sparked by a telephone call from a 16-year-old girl inside the Yearn for Zion compound to a local family violence shelter on March 29. She said she had been forced to become the seventh "spiritual wife" of a man aged 50, who made her pregnant with a child, now aged eight months, and then made her pregnant for a second time. The girl said other girls, some as young as 13, had been forced to have sex with older men for procreation. She said she had been beaten by her "husband" so badly that on one occasion several of her ribs were broken. The beatings included hitting her on the chest and choking her, the affidavit says, while another woman held her baby.
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Sect members were only allowed out of the compound for emergencies. The 16-year-old who sounded the alarm told the shelter that she had been warned that if she left the ranch, "outsiders will hurt her, force her to cut her hair, to wear makeup and to have sex with lots of men", the documents say.
Several of the teenage girls were found to have children or are pregnant. Many could not spell their last names or state their birth date.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/10/usa
At least it is illegal, and roundly condemned in our societies. But a hell of a lot of foul stuff seems to fall through the cracks. In Britain for example there is some revolting sexual slavery going on, and not much being done about it really. Not enough people give a bugger. |
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yawarakaijin
Joined: 08 Aug 2006
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| Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 11:25 pm Post subject: |
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| People don't give a bugger when the person in question is of another colour. Sad but true. Change the setting to Greece, Poland, France, Canada or the UK and estimate how long international intervention would take. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 11:30 pm Post subject: |
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| yawarakaijin wrote: |
| People don't give a bugger when the person in question is of another colour. Sad but true. |
Yes, that seems veery true, unfortunately.
| yawarakaijin wrote: |
| Change the setting to Greece, Poland, France, Canada or the UK and estimate how long international intervention would take. |
Well, a lot of the sex slaves in the UK are from Eastern Europe, and they are still not getting much attention. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 11:46 pm Post subject: |
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| Adventurer wrote: |
| Unfortunately, in India there is also a lot of murders of baby girls, because they often prefer boys over girls. The US Government never brings up these things as a concern. Actually, we should be concerned about the treatment of females in Africa, India or wherever, but we focus just on one part of the world. Also, in Latin America abuse of women is serious. I heard in India women are sometimes killed if the husband wants more money, and didn't like the dowry payment. |
When i was traveling through Bangladesh and India last summer, I read those stories way too many times. In Bangladesh, it was generally some loser beating the crap out of his wife, demanding her family give him a higher dowry a few months after they got married. Of course the man was usually some alcoholic unemployed bum.
One news story I still remember reading in Kolkata is this couple that eloped. They were in the same clan, which I guess is forbidden by local custom. It made sense centuries ago when clans didn't comprise of tens of thousands of people. Now though? A bit silly...
Anyhoo, they decided to go to the closest city to get married, figuring when they came back to their village, they'd say "We're married, tough shit!" Alas, the townsfolk figured out what they did, and somehow knew what bus they were on. Some men from the village stopped the bus before it got to the village, pulled out the couple, and then drowned them in a nearby river.
When the reporter asked the people in the village how they felt about it, they felt the men were doing what was right, and shouldn't be punished. |
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Adventurer
Joined: 28 Jan 2006
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| Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 2:41 am Post subject: |
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| Well, in some countries like in India, there are many enlightened people, of course, but in the midst of that there are horrors committed against women that Ghandi would not have ever approved of, and Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs are committing crimes against females. Infanticide is still a serious problem in India. People need to fight against this problem. India does have other problems also with the discrimination against untouchables, or panchamans, which involves a false interpretation of Hinduism. There are so many crimes world-wide against women including in the Congo with the massive rapes. Women are not safe in so many locales. I was touched when I read the story of a lion saving a girl was being beaten. |
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