Violence Against Women - What we in the US take for granted

[femmeInterrupted]

Originally Posted by Kobi

Ok these look like more than rape culture. These look like Law and Order - SUV photos.

Exactly!! These are mainstream images that depict women ( and parts of women, that's the other thing: how often women are portrayed in pieces/parts, disconnected from the whole) in varying states of victimization. They are either unconscious or prone, suggesting ( and reinforcing the norm of) total passivity or victimization.

i've been feeling really isolated in my "is it just me, or is that FUCKED up?!?!" moments.

[Kobi]

Originally Posted by femmeInterrupted

Exactly!! These are mainstream images that depict women ( and parts of women, that's the other thing: how often women are portrayed in pieces/parts, disconnected from the whole) in varying states of victimization. They are either unconscious or prone, suggesting ( and reinforcing the norm of) total passivity or victimization.

i've been feeling really isolated in my "is it just me, or is that FUCKED up?!?!" moments.

It is not you. It is FUCKED up.

What is sad is our socialization as women, the sexism and misogyny, is so internalized and so institutionalized we dont always see it for what it is. Thus, we play into it, we unknowingly (I hope) encourage it, and yet we seem flabbergasted when women are raped, battered and killed. Hello?

The discussions we are having about the multitude of ways in which women are victimized are the same exact discussions women were having back in the 1800's. That is pretty freakin disgusting.

[Kobi]

HYDERABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) - When Veero Kolhi made the asset declaration required of candidates for Pakistan's May elections, she listed the following items: two beds, five mattresses, cooking pots and a bank account with life savings of 2,800 rupees ($28).

While she may lack the fortune that is the customary entry ticket to Pakistani politics, Kolhi can make a claim that may resonate more powerfully with poor voters than the wearily familiar promises of her rivals.

For Kolhi embodies a new phenomenon on the campaign trail - she is the first contestant to have escaped the thrall of a feudal-style land owner who forced his workers to toil in conditions akin to modern-day slavery.

"The landlords are sucking our blood," Kolhi told Reuters at her one-room home of mud and bamboo on the outskirts of the southern city of Hyderabad.

"Their managers behave like pimps - they take our daughters and give them to the landlords."

To her supporters, Kolhi's stand embodies a wider hope that the elections - Pakistan's first transition between elected civilian governments - will be a step towards a more progressive future for a country plagued by Islamic militancy, frequent political gridlock and the worsening persecution of minorities.

To skeptics, the fact that Kolhi has no realistic chance of victory is merely further evidence that even the landmark May 11 vote will offer only a mirage of change to a millions-strong but largely invisible rural underclass.

Yet there is no doubt that hers is a remarkable journey.

A sturdy matriarch in her mid-50s who has 20 grandchildren, Kolhi -- a member of Pakistan's tiny Hindu minority -- is the ultimate outsider in an electoral landscape dominated by wealthy male candidates fluent in the art of back room deals.

Possessed of a ready, raucous laugh, but unable to write more than her name, Kolhi was once a "bonded laborer," the term used in Pakistan for an illegal but widely prevalent form of contemporary serfdom in which entire families toil for years to pay often spurious debts.

Since making her escape in the mid-1990s, Kolhi has lobbied the police and courts to release thousands of others from the pool of indebted workers in her native Sindh province, the vast majority of whom are fellow Hindus.

On April 5, Kolhi crossed a new threshold in her own odyssey when she stood on the steps of a colonial-era courthouse in Hyderabad and brandished a document officials had just issued, authorizing her to run for the provincial assembly.

With no rival party to back her, Kolhi's independent run may make barely a dent at the ballot box in Sindh, a stronghold of President Asif Ali Zardari's ruling Pakistan People's Party (PPP).

But her beat-the-odds bravado has lit a flame for those who adore her the most: families she has helped liberate from lives as vassals.

"Once I only drank black tea, but now I am free I can afford tea with milk," said Thakaro Bheel, who escaped from his landlord a decade ago and now lives in Azad Nagar, a community of former bonded laborers on the edge of Hyderabad. "These days I make my own decisions. All that is thanks to Veero."

BAREFOOT IN THE NIGHT

Like millions of the landless, Kolhi's ordeal began a generation ago when drought struck her home in the Thar desert bordering India, forcing her parents to move to a lusher belt of Sindh in search of work harvesting sunflowers or chilies.

Kolhi was married as a teenager but her husband fell into debt and she was forced to work 10-hour days picking cotton, gripped by a fear that their landlord might choose a husband for Ganga, her daughter, who would soon be ten years old.

One night Kolhi crept past armed guards and walked barefoot to a village to seek help. Her husband was beaten as punishment for her escape, Kolhi said, but she managed to contact human rights activists who wrote to police on her behalf.

Officers were reluctant to confront the landlord but they relented after Kolhi staged a three-day hunger strike at their station. More than 40 people were freed.

"I was very scared, but I hoped that I could win freedom for myself and my family," said Kolhi. "That's why I kept on running."

Now Kolhi spends her days careering along dirt roads in a battered Suzuki minivan decorated with stickers of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, the Latin American revolutionary, on her quest for votes. Her only luxury: Gold Leaf, a brand of cigarette. Her only campaign equipment: an old megaphone.

While Kolhi clearly enjoys meeting supporters - greeting women by placing two palms on their bowed heads in a traditional gesture of protection - she has still only reached a fraction of her constituency's 133,000 voters.

The favorite remains Sharjeel Memon, an influential businessman and PPP stalwart. Memon was not available for comment.

DAUGHTERS FOR SALE

Despite the struggle Kolhi faces, the fact she is able to run at all has emboldened campaigners for workers' rights in Sindh.

Even remote areas of the province have not been immune to the influence of a more assertive media and judiciary that have reshaped national politics during tumultuous years following a 1999 army coup and a transition to democracy in 2008.

"The landlords are afraid of court cases so they do not abuse and torture people as much as before," said Lalee Kolhi, another former bonded laborer turned activist, who is no relation to Veero Kolhi.

Yet in some areas, land owners can still exploit a symbiotic relationship with the bureaucracy, police and courts to deprive workers of rights and attempt to sway their votes.

Although Veero Kolhi works with a local organization that says it has helped rescue some 26,000 indebted workers in the last 12 years, several estimates put the total figure of bonded laborers in Pakistan at roughly eight million.

Not all landlords are tyrants, but the arrival last month of an extended family of 63 share-croppers at Azad Nagar, the village for freed workers, provided a glimpse of the timeworn tricks they use to ensure debts keep on growing.

Lakhi Bheel produced a scrap torn from an exercise book that declared he had accumulated obligations of 99,405 rupees after toiling for three years.

Bheel said he had decided to make a break for freedom after the land owner threatened to sell the family's daughters in return for bride prices.

"I didn't eat meat once in three years," Bheel said, adding that shotgun-toting guards had sometimes roughed up workers. "We had to pay half the salaries of the men who were beating us."

Kolhi's supporters say the only way to end the oppression in Sindh would be to give destitute workers their own plots of land. But as long as the feudal class retains political influence, talk of land reform remains taboo.

Undaunted, Kolhi -- bedecked in a garland of red roses and jasmine -- launched her shot at office with an ultimatum.

"First we will ask the landlords to obey the law, and if they refuse we will take them to court," she said, her voice rising with emotion. "We will continue our struggle until the last bonded laborer is freed."

http://news.yahoo.com/insight-once-l...034349719.html

[Kobi]

As news of the beastly attack on the girl came out, a "deeply disturbed" Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the "shameful incident" has "once again reiterated the need for society to look deep within and work to root out the evil of rape and other such crimes from our midst".

The news once again bought angry protesters out of their homes. Many massed at the hospital where the girl was warded since Wednesday after her family rescued her from the house of her abductor in Gandhi Nagar in East Delhi.

When the traumatised girl was on Friday evening shifted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) from Swami Dayanand Hospital for better medical attention, demonstrators gathered there too and shouted slogans against police and demanded death for the accused.

Delhi, described as India's "rape capital" has seen over 390 rapes cases in three months as compared to 152 cases in the corresponding period last year.

A doctor said he and his colleagues had never seen such a brutal rape. They said a bottle and pieces of candle were found thrust into the private parts of the girl.

Anger against Delhi Police mounted after the girl's father, a mason, said they failed to even register his complaint when his daughter went missing.

"We went to police to register a FIR (First Information Report) but they refused. They never tried to find her, and instead drove us away," said the distraught man.

He said when the family finally found the girl Wednesday morning after hearing her screams, a policeman offered the family Rs 2,000 to keep mum.

Meanwhile, two Delhi Police officials were suspended for "misbehaving" with the family of the five-year-old rape victim, while an assistant commissioner of police (ACP) was suspended for slapping a girl protestor, said police on Friday.

http://zeenews.india.com/news/nation...ed_843193.html

[Kobi]

*trigger warning*


NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian police arrested a second man on Monday in connection with the rape and torture of a five-year-old girl in New Delhi and parliament was adjourned twice amid an uproar about the crime which has rekindled popular fury at widespread sexual violence.

Media reported several other attacks on children over the weekend, including that of a nine-year old girl in the north-eastern state of Assam, who had her throat slit after being gang-raped, TV channels said.

Brutal sex crimes are common in India, which has a population of 1.2 billion. New Delhi has the highest number of sex crimes among major cities, with a rape reported on average every 18 hours, according to police figures.

But most such crimes go unreported and justice is slow, according to social activists, who say successive governments have done little to ensure the safety of women and children.

Activists planned a fourth day of street action amid heavy security in Delhi after protesters tussled with police and tried to reach the homes of India's leaders at the weekend. The protesters are calling for Delhi's police chief to resign.

The lower house of parliament was adjourned twice after opposition politicians rushed into the building, some demanding discussion on the rape case. Others were protesting against corruption and other issues.

"Though parliament has recently passed tougher legislation to prevent rapes, the evil has not abated and such incidents are still on the rise throughout the country," House Speaker Meira Kumar said before the house was adjourned.

The upper house of parliament was due to hold a debate on violence against women in the afternoon.

http://news.yahoo.com/second-man-arr...074552630.html

[girl_dee]

i wish i had not read that.

[Kobi]

NEW DELHI (AP) — A child disappears. Police are called. Nothing happens.

Child rights activists say the rape last week of a 5-year-old girl is just the latest case in which Indian police failed to take urgent action on a report of a missing child.

More than 90,000 children go missing in India each year; more than 34,000 are never found. Some parents say they lost crucial time because police wrongly dismissed their missing children as runaways, refused to file reports or treated the cases as nuisances.

Formal police complaints were registered in only one-sixth of missing child cases in 2011, said Bhuwan Ribhu, a lawyer with Bachpan Bachao Andolan, or the Save the Childhood Movement. He said police resist registering cases because they want to keep crime figures low, and that parents are often too poor to bribe them to reconsider.

Ribhu said the first few hours after a child goes missing are the most crucial. "The police can cordon off nearby areas, issue alerts at railway and bus stations, and step up vigilance to catch the kidnappers," he said.

Activists say delays let traffickers move children to neighboring states, where the police don't have jurisdiction. There is no national database of missing children that state police can reference.

Police have insisted that most of missing children are runways fleeing grinding poverty.

"It's easy enough to blame the police for not finding the children. Some of the parents do not even possess a photograph of the child. Or they will come up with a years-old picture. It becomes difficult when there's not even a photograph to work with," Delhi police spokesman Rajan Bhagat said last month when asked about complaints on police inaction in investigating case of missing children.

Many cases involved poor migrant construction workers who move from site to site around the city, Bhagat said.

India's Women and Child Development Minister Krishna Tirath told Parliament last month that the problem of missing children had assumed "alarming" proportions. The National Crime Records Bureau reported that 34,406 missing children were never found in 2011, up from 18,166 in 2009.

Activists say some children are trafficked and forced to beg on the streets. Some work on farms or factories as forced labor and others have their organs harvested and sold. The activists say young girls are pushed into the sex trade or sold for marriage.

"The government is just not ready to confront the issue of trafficking or missing children. And this gets reflected in the apathy of the police in dealing with cases of missing children," said Ribhu, the lawyer.

In 2006, the Central Bureau of Investigation said at least 815 criminal gangs were kidnapping children for begging, prostitution or ransom.

The Save the Childhood Movement said police have not cracked a single one of those syndicates.

Shantha Sinha, who heads the government's National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, acknowledged that much remained to be done to make police take cases of missing children seriously.

http://news.yahoo.com/indian-girls-r...103156990.html

[Kobi]

* Trigger Warning*

5-year-old girl has died after being raped in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, an official said Tuesday, in the latest in a series of brutal attacks that have sparked outrage in the country.

The girl suffered cardiac arrest and died late Monday at a hospital in Nagpur city in neighbouring Maharashtra state where she was being treated for injuries from the April 18 assault, said Bharat Yadav, collector for Seoni district, where the attack occurred.

Two men have been arrested in connection with the attack, he said.

The girl was lured by one of the men to a farm, where she was then raped by the other man, who was a friend of her parents, Yadav said. The parents, poor construction workers, were at work when the attack occurred, he said.

Ravi Manadiar, an administrator at the hospital, said the girl suffered a brain injury when the men tried to smother her cries and was in a coma from April 20 until she died.

In Nagpur, the mother of the girl was inconsolable.

“The court should give them the strictest punishment ever,” she sobbed Tuesday.

“These men should be burned alive so that the whole world will see how such criminals ought to be punished,” she said, wiping her tears with the corner of her sari.

About 40 supporters of the opposition Congress party held a rally in Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh, to protest what they said was a rise in violence against women in the state.

They burned an effigy of the state’s top elected official, Chief Minister Shivraj SIngh Chouhan, who belongs to the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Earlier this month, another 5-year-old girl was kidnapped, raped and tortured by two men who then abandoned her in a locked room in New Delhi. She is still recovering at a hospital in the city.

Police refused to register a case when the girl’s parents reported that their daughter was missing. Hundreds of people protested outside police headquarters in New Delhi for three days, angry over allegations of police inaction and indifference to the parents’ complaints.

Indian media have begun to report sexual assaults more aggressively since the fatal gang rape of a 23-year-old student on a moving bus in New Delhi in December. That attack triggered outrage across India about the treatment of women in the country, and spurred the government to pass tougher laws for crimes against women, including the death penalty for repeat offenders or for rapes that lead to the victim’s death.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...ticle11628161/

[Kobi]

NEW DELHI (AP) — The phones were ringing nonstop in the tiny, windowless office in downtown New Delhi, with urgent appeals from desperate women.

Indian Rape Law Offers Desperate Last Resort The Wall Street Journal
Indian magazine editor arrested on sexual assault charges Reuters

One caller, speaking in whispers, said her husband beat her regularly because she failed to bring in enough dowry. Another woman said her teenage daughter was being stalked by a neighbor and needed legal advice.

Established in the wake of last year's gang rape and murder of a young New Delhi woman, the government hotline is part of a wave of change since the case forced the country to confront its appalling treatment of women.

The victim, a 23-year-old physiotherapy student, was heading home with a male friend after an evening showing of the movie "Life of Pi" when six men lured them onto a private bus. With no one else in sight, they beat the man with a metal bar, raped the woman and used the bar to inflict massive internal injuries.

The pair were dumped naked on the roadside, and the woman died two weeks later.

Indian media named her "Nirbhaya," or "fearless," as rape victims cannot be identified under Indian law. She became a rallying cry for tens of thousands protesting the treatment of women.

New laws have made stalking, voyeurism and sexual harassment a crime. There is now a fast-track court for rape cases. In some ways, the case cracked a cultural taboo surrounding discussion of sexual violence in a country where rape is often viewed as a woman's personal shame to bear.

But for so many women in India's urban centers like New Delhi and Mumbai, the new laws have not made the streets any safer. And in such a conservative country with patriarchal traditions, it will take more than a year to erode generations of devastating sexism.

"Out on the streets, I find men staring at me, passing lewd comments," said Barnali Barman, a 23-year-old business executive in New Delhi. "I find people following me as I get down from the train and walk to my office."

Nirbhaya's father told The Associated Press he takes comfort in the changes his daughter's suffering have brought.

But, he said, "not a day passes when we don't shed tears."

"Our tears are not for her death, but for what she suffered," he said in an interview from the family's three-room apartment in the outer suburbs of New Delhi.

"We just can't forget how she suffered at the hands of these men," he added, his voice thickening. On the wall hung a faded piece of cloth — an award for bravery given posthumously to his daughter.

His wife, a pale shadow, backs out of the room at any mention of her daughter.

The assailants were tried relatively quickly in a country where sexual assault cases often languish for years. Four defendants were sentenced to death. Another hanged himself in prison, though his family insists he was killed. And an 18-year-old who was a juvenile at the time of the attack was sentenced to three years in a reform home.

In India, the arrival of a daughter is a tragic event in many families. Illegal sex-selective abortions over decades have left the country with a ratio of 914 girls under age 6 for every 1,000 boys. Girls get less medical care and less education.

Still, in the last two decades as the Indian economy boomed, rising education levels and inflation have led to larger numbers of women joining the work force. But the deep-rooted social attitudes toward women have remained largely unchanged.

The result is that women's complaints of rape and sexual abuse remain drastically underreported. Families often do not make a police complaint to avoid the stigma that befalls the victim and her family.

"The criminals know that the Indian police and courts will take 10 years or more to prosecute them," said Tanpreet Singh, a 26-year-old New Delhi businessman. "The system is corrupt and many succeed in bribing their way out."

For all the attention given to Nirbhaya's case, daily indignities and abuse continue unabated for many women, particularly the poor.

"Indian society has to change its mindset about women," said Chaitali, a field worker with Jagori, a women's rights group, who goes by one name. "That is something that will take more than a year. If we are lucky it will take a couple of generations."

The women's hotline aims to speed things up. On a recent evening, six women wearing headsets sat at computer terminals, speaking in gentle tones to agitated callers.

"Most of the calls are from women who are suffering some kind of abuse — sexual harassment, domestic violence, stalking, or obscene phone calls," said Khadijah Faruqui, a veteran women's rights activist who heads the helpline project.

In cases of domestic violence, or where there is imminent danger to the caller's life, the helpline informs the police, or women's groups nearby, so that they can reach the scene and intervene. The helpline also offers legal advice and follow-up calls.

In a little less than a year, the helpline has handled more than half a million distress calls from women in trouble, Faruqui said.

Activists say one outcome of the public debate is that women are coming forward to register complaints against sexual abuse.

There has been a surge in the number of rapes being reported: Between January and October this year, there have been 1,330 rapes reported in Delhi and its suburbs, compared with the 706 for the whole of 2012, according to government figures.

Several recent, high-profile cases also suggest women feel more comfortable going public with reports of sexual assaults — an important breakthrough in a country where men feel emboldened to commit crimes because they know women face the stigma.

Last month, the high-profile editor of an Indian magazine known for exposing abuses of power was arrested after a young female colleague accused him of sexually assaulting her in a hotel elevator during a conference.

The allegations against Tehelka Editor Tarun Tejpal have touched a nerve in part because he is the face of a publication that has pushed Indian society to vanquish corruption and confront the scourge of sexual violence.

Women's rights also took on unprecedented significance in India's state elections last week, with the three main parties adopting a "womanifesto" — a list of six priority actions to protect the freedom and safety of women in the capital.

"Today, every political party is promising safety and security as the first commitment to women in the country," said Ranjana Kumari, a women's rights activist with New Delhi's Centre for Social Research. "This was something which they never thought was necessary."

Kumari said there are glimmers of hope as women become aware that they no longer have to put up with sexual harassment.

"Instead of a fearful silence," she said, "there is an openness without the inhibitions of social shame."

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http://news.yahoo.com/since-delhi-ra...074424448.html