It's more than disturbing - it's deranged. Young girls and women are continuously violated and abused under the guise of religion and archaic, misogynist laws. News of another extreme case is sweeping social media and people are reacting. Amnesty International has created
PETITION to stop the rape sentence of two sisters in India's Baghpat District.
An unelected all-male village council in India has ordered that 23-year-old Meenakshi Kumari and her 15-year-old sister be raped and paraded naked.
The ‘sentence’ was handed down as punishment after their brother eloped with a married woman.
Nothing could justify this punishment. It’s not fair. It’s not right. And it’s against the law. Demand that the local authorities intervene immediately.
Unelected village councils such as this are widespread in parts of India. More often than not they are made up of older men from dominant castes, who prescribe rules for social behaviour in villages.
The supreme court of India has branded their decrees illegal, yet in some states they continue to operate – and their punishments are carried out.
The whole family, including the eloped woman, are at risk of reprisals. A brother of the sisters, Sumit Kumar, said, “In the panchayat [village council], the Jat decision is final. They don’t listen to us. The police don’t listen to us. The police said anyone can be murdered now.”
Act now. Demand the Director General of Police, Jagmohan Yadav, ensures the safety of Meenakshi Kumari, her sister and family.
Please sign and share the Amnesty International
petition in hopes of stopping this atrocity, as well as sending a message to the world that these horrific abuses against women will not be tolerated.
Update #1
Unless there is a technical problem, Amnesty International has removed the petition and the links above no longer work. (I have removed several of them, as they are directed 505 error messages).
Update #2 The links are once again working.
Update #3
BBC reports:
More than 100,000 people have signed a petition by Amnesty International after allegations that a village council in India ordered that two women be raped as punishment because their brother eloped with an upper caste woman. It has even led to calls by British MPs for action. But local police and officials say no such order was given. The BBC's Sanjoy Majumder travelled to Baghpat in northern India to investigate… http://www.bbc.com/...
Update #4 The petition is now over 120k.
We still don't know, but if this particular sentence was never ordered, it is sad for Amnesty International, an trusted organization that helps many worldwide. Most of us reading know there are worse punishments and penalties placed upon women worldwide. Perhaps this story will bring light to those proven atrocities below:
Facts and Figures: Ending Violence against Women
A pandemic in diverse forms
According to a 2013 global review of available data, 35 per cent of women worldwide have experienced either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence. However, some national violence studies show that up to 70 per cent of women have experienced physical and/or sexual violence in their lifetime from an intimate partner [1].
It is estimated that of all women killed in 2012, almost half were killed by intimate partners or family members [2].
More often than not, cases of violence against women go unreported. For instance, a study based on interviews with 42,000 women across the 28 Member States of the European Union revealed that only 14 per cent of women reported their most serious incident of intimate partner violence to the police, and 13 per cent reported their most serious incident of non-partner violence to the police [3].
Worldwide, more than 700 million women alive today were married as children (below 18 years of age). More than one in three—or some 250 million—were married before 15. Child brides are often unable to effectively negotiate safer sex, leaving themselves vulnerable to sexually transmitted infections, including HIV, along with early pregnancy. The fact that girls are not physically mature enough to give birth, places both mothers and their babies at risk. Poor girls are also 2.5 times more likely to marry in childhood than those living in the wealthiest quintile [4].
Among ever-married girls, current and/or former intimate partners are the most commonly reported perpetrators of physical violence in all the countries with available data [5].
Around 120 million girls worldwide (slightly more than 1 in 10) have experienced forced intercourse or other forced sexual acts at some point in their lives [6].
More than 133 million girls and women have experienced some form of female genital mutilation (FGM) in the 29 countries in Africa and the Middle East where the harmful practice is most common. Beyond extreme physical and psychological pain, girls who undergo FGM are at risk of prolonged bleeding, infection (including HIV), infertility, complications during pregnancy and death [7].
Trafficking ensnares millions of women and girls in modern-day slavery. Women and girls represent 55 per cent of the estimated 20.9 million victims of forced labour worldwide, and 98 per cent of the estimated 4.5 million forced into sexual exploitation [8].
Between 40 and 50 per cent of women in European Union countries experience unwanted sexual advances, physical contact or other forms of sexual harassment at work [9].
In the United States, 83 per cent of girls in grades 8 through 11 (aged 12 to 16)have experienced some form of sexual harassment in public schools [10].
Extra vulnerabilities
Women in urban areas are twice as likely as men to experience violence, particularly in developing countries [11].
In New Delhi, a 2010 study found that 66 per cent of women reported experiencing sexual harassment between two and five times during the past year [12].
Research conducted in different countries has documented associations between HIV and physical and/or sexual violence, both as a risk factor for HIV infection and as a potential consequence of being identified as living with HIV [13]. A decade of cross-sectional research from African countries, including Rwanda, Tanzania, South Africa and more recently, India, has consistently found women who have experienced partner violence to be more likely to be infected with HIV [14].
In the United States, 11.8 per cent of new HIV infections among women more than 20 years old during the previous year were attributed to intimate partner violence [15].
The high cost of violence
Annual costs of intimate partner violence have been calculated at USD 5.8 billion in the United States in 2003 [16] and GBP 22.9 billion in England and Wales in 2004 [17].
A 2009 study in Australia estimated the cost of violence against women and children at AUD 13.6 billion per year [18].
A recent estimation of the costs of domestic violence against women at the household level to the economy in Viet Nam suggests that both out-of-pocket expenditures and lost earnings represent nearly 1.4 per cent of GDP in that country. An estimate of overall productivity loss however, comes to 1.8 per cent of GDP [19]
.
Source: UN Women
- See more at: http://www.unwomen.org/...
Also, Wikipedia: Violence Against Women has an extensive source of information on the subject.
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter continues to speak out against the abuses of women worldwide. Here is an excerpt from: Jimmy Carter: 'Losing My Religion For Equality'
This discrimination, unjustifiably attributed to a Higher Authority, has provided a reason or excuse for the deprivation of women's equal rights across the world for centuries.
At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.
The same discriminatory thinking lies behind the continuing gender gap in pay and why there are still so few women in office in the West. The root of this prejudice lies deep in our histories, but its impact is felt every day. It is not women and girls alone who suffer. It damages all of us.
-Jimmy Carter
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