Wednesday, November 27, 2013

It couldn't get any worse than this!

Assam: 4 men gangrape woman, gouge her eyes out, kill her 

Four men allegedly raped a woman inside a tempo, gouged out her eyes and beat her before throwing the victim out of the vehicle leading to her death in upper Assam's Lakhimpur district, sparking outrage from locals. 

The incident took place on Friday when the woman had boarded a shared tempo to pick up her six-year-old daughter from school at Boginadi area, about 14 km from the district headquarters town Lakhimpur, police sources said.

The woman was allegedly raped by the four men inside the tempo before they gouged out her eyes, injured her on the head and neck, they said.
Assam: 4 men gangrape woman, gouge her eyes out, kill her

Assam: 4 men gangrape woman, gorge her eyes, kill her

The locals saw the accused throwing the injured woman out of the tempo, about 50 metres away from Boginadi police station on the National Highway following which they informed the police which admitted her to a local hospital. The woman was later taken to the Gauhati Medical College Hospital where she succumbed to her wounds on Sunday.
Women's organisations and locals blocked the National Highway 52 on Monday with her body and condemned the incident, demanding justice for the woman and arrest of the culprits.
On the district administration officials assuring them to nab the culprits, the protesters withdrew their blockade on the road, which had disrupted traffic movement to and from Arunachal Pradesh for about two hours.
Meanwhile, police has picked up two persons for questioning in this connection.

 Source: Press Trust of India - http://ibnlive.in.com/news/assam-4-men-gangrape-woman-gouge-her-eyes-out-kill-her/436045-3-251.html

Friday, November 15, 2013

NIRBHAYA/FEARLESS

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."  Margaret Mead

An appeal to all of you out there who watch this theatrical form of the 'NIRBHAYA' story - No young girl, women, children should go through such heart wrenching violence in India and through all the corners of this very world.
I salute Purna Jagannathan, Yael Farber and their entire theater group for putting up this story before us.

To ensure that it reaches all of us, to know, to feel the pain, to understand and mobilse a larger audience to combat violence against women. To not let go off the perpetrators of this heinous crime committed against women across the world.

"NIRBHAYA" - Inspirational theater empowering the survivors of gender-based violence to speak out worldwide. Directed by Yael Farber.

Please do watch and share: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nirbhaya/nirbhaya-award-winning-human-rights-theatre-india


Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Through the eyes of moral values and the mock of intellectual relationships - Sexual Harassment by Jurists gives a new perspective!

"Through my looking Glass" -  by Stella James

Sometimes the most difficult things to write about are also the most essential. I feel this is especially true when many people, much more scholarly than oneself, have already said and written a lot around the issue, and yet your own experience does not seem to fit into the wide net that they’ve cast. Gandhi once said “I have something far more powerful than arguments, namely, experience”. And it is from these words that I derive what I consider the ‘value’ of this piece – not my experience per se, but from what I feel that my experience can tell us about much discussed issues in the country today.


Last December was momentous for the feminist movement in the country – almost an entire population seemed to rise up spontaneously against the violence on women, and the injustices of a seemingly apathetic government. In the strange irony of situations that our world is replete with, the protests were the backdrop of my own experience. In Delhi at that time, interning during the winter vacations of my final year in University, I dodged police barricades and fatigue to go to the assistance of a highly reputed, recently retired Supreme Court judge whom I was working under during my penultimate semester. For my supposed diligence, I was rewarded with sexual assault (not physically injurious, but nevertheless violating) from a man old enough to be my grandfather. I won’t go into the gory details, but suffice it to say that long after I’d left the room, the memory remained, in fact, still remains, with me.
So what bothered me about this incident? As a conditioned member of the society, I had quickly “gotten over” the incident. But was that what worried me: that I had accepted what was essentially an ‘unacceptable’ situation. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the crux of my unease lay in my inability to find a frame in which to talk, or even think, about my experience. While the incident affected me deeply, I felt little anger and almost no rancour towards the man; instead I was shocked and hurt that someone I respected so much would do something like this. My strongest reaction really, was overwhelming sadness. But this sort of response was new to me. That I could understand his actions and forgive him for them, or that I could continue to think of him as an essentially ‘good’ person, seemed a naïve position that were completely at odds with what I had come to accept was the “right” reaction to such incidents.
This emotional response was also completely at odds with the powerful feelings of righteous anger that the protestors in Delhi displayed. I am not trying to say that anger at the violence that women face is not a just or true response, but the polarization of women’s rights debates in India along with their intense emotionality, left me feeling that my only options were to either strongly condemn the judge or to betray my feminist principles. Perhaps this confusion came out of an inadequate understanding of feminist literature, but if so, isn’t then my skewed perception a failing of feminism itself? If the shared experiences of women cannot be easily understood through a feminist lens, then clearly there is a cognitive vacuum that feminism fails to fill. Feminists talk of the guilt a woman faces when sexually harassed, like it is her fault. I felt a similar guilt, except, my guilt wasn’t at being assaulted, but at not reacting more strongly than I did. The very perspective that was meant to help me make sense of my experiences as a woman was the one that obscured the resolution of the problem in my own mind, presumably an effect that feminism does not desire. And if not a result of feminist theory itself, the form that it has taken in India, especially after recent incidents of sexual assault, strengthened the feeling of “If you’re not with us, you’re against us” in a fight that I feel I can no longer take sides in.
All the talk during that time was of stricter punishment, of baying for the blood of “creepy” men. Five years of law school had taught me to look to the law for all solutions – even where I knew that the law was hopelessly inadequate – and my reluctance to wage a legal battle against the judge left me feeling cowardly. On reflection though, I cannot help but wonder why I should have felt that way. As mentioned earlier, I bore, and still bear, no real ill-will towards the man, and had no desire to put his life’s work and reputation in question. On the other hand, I felt I had a responsibility to ensure that other young girls were not put in a similar situation. But I have been unable to find a solution that allows that. Despite the heated public debates, despite a vast army of feminist vigilantes, despite new criminal laws and sexual harassment laws, I have not found closure. The lack of such an alternative led to my facing a crippling sense of intellectual and moral helplessness.

The incident is now a while behind me, and they say time heals all wounds. But during the most difficult emotional times, what helped me most was the ‘insensitivity’ of a close friend whose light-hearted mocking allowed me to laugh at an incident (and a man) that had caused me so much pain. Allowing myself to feel more than just anger at a man who violated me, something that I had never done before, is liberating! So, I want to ask you to think of one thing alone – when dealing with sexual violence, can we allow ourselves to embrace feelings beyond or besides anger, and to accept the complexity of emotions that we face when dealing with any traumatic experience?
Source: http://jilsblognujs.wordpress.com/2013/11/06/through-my-looking-glass/

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Incest was considered sinful many moons back, now rape gets a new name- 'revenge'. All in the name of honor!

Dad, friend rape and kill teen for eloping with boy



http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Dad-friend-rape-and-kill-teen-for-eloping-with-boy/articleshow/25277528.cms