Is it out of the question to ask the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council to sit and discuss sanctions against India, or at least demand a plan to end the scourge of atrocities against India’s women and children?
In the alternative, and at the very least, we ask the United Nations Secretary GeneralBan Ki-moono, with all due respect, to appoint an investigation mission to India without delay.
Is there evidence of an incipient holocaust in India?
Most certainly there is clear and unmitigated evidence of a rampage of atrocities against women and children in India.
In the age of the internet where people, not governments so much, but people live in a virtually borderless environment, some form of international accountability for human rights atrocities must be available as an intervener to which large communities can escalate their complaints.
The latest example of human atrocities stem from a pervasive rape culture in India and the evidence suggests a putrid moral rot at the core of this nation’s society so much so that the probability of escalation is high without any sign of gevernment leadership to mitigate the crisis. (In fact the government may be partly responsible.)
As an example of the common belief within India’s society that it is OK to commit atrocities against women and children in India:
1) it is alleged in Gulgulia, India that a drunk teen wandered into the wrong home and armed with a knife tried to have sex with the woman inhabitant in her own bed;
2) the woman pushed him away, scared him off and brought the tale to townspeople next morning in a local gathering place / “kangaroo court” ;
3) locals say “eye for an eye”… let the husband of the complainant go rape the teen sister of the drunken teen perpetrator; (Why is she to blame? Do they see this woman as the ‘property’ of her brother?)
4) complainant’s hubby drags the struggling 13 year-old-sister into the woods and forcible rapes the her; and
5) after much hullabaloo, days later the police arrest and charge husband and a local leader for the rape of the 13-year-old.
This happened Monday 7 July in the village of Gulgulia, in coal-rich Bokaro, located in eastern Jharkhand state near one of India’s biggest iron-and-steel plants. The village is home to Indians classified as Dalits.
It is not unlike a recent event in January, in West Bengal, where village elders approved the gang rape of a 20-year-old woman in love with a man from another town.
It is also not unlike a recent event in Uttar Pradesh where two girls were raped and hung from a mango tree by a group of citizens.
Some of our musings within The RINJ Foundation included the suggestion there should be dozens of arrests and the whole town should be made to give half their salary every year for a couple decades to the 13-year-old they all raped by proxy.
Rape culture? It’s India. They hate, abuse, torment, flog and rape their women. This is a country that has over 60 million girl children missing. Human atrocity has become so commonplace it is overlooked. That must change.
The full U.N. Security Counsel could sit and discuss sanctions against India once an investigation mission has completed its first reports. In the alternative as a first step, demand on the grounds of human atrocities, the requirement to hear submissions from India’s leadership on how it will effect change and make an effort to clean up the brutality that is taking place.
This patriarchal Indian system of government is comprised of corrupt, arrogant, patriarchal misogynists who collectively have encouraged the problem and not prevented it. The people like thee local leaders who while maybe headed for hell in some people’s book, must be in the meantime kept in prison to protect society. But the Indian justice system continuously fails to deliver a good result. Is there no end to the disgust?
Discussion? People in power with authority over citizens may not conduct themselves like this–as in ordering adults to rape 13 year old girls. The death penalty must be on top of the table for cases where community leaders begin to commit Hitlerian atrocities. Wait., There is. War crimes tribunals. The Nuremberg trials. The Yugoslav hearings. Rape is a war crime. The death penalty needs to be sought.
Why?
Violence toward women and children is a prolific crime in India constituting a violation of the basic inalienable human right of safety of the person.
What is more prolific in India is the belief that it is OK to treat women this way. Since the Nuremberg tribunals there have been several examples of serious inhumane atrocities all around the world. The rape crisis in India is one of them.
There has to be accountability for human rights atrocities in international law and the closest thing to global governance is the United Nations, hence our suggestion that:
- Secretary General Ban Ki-moon must appoint an investigation mission to India without delay; and
- that following that report serious action must be initiated.
We should not let this rest.
Micheal O’Brien is The Executive Director of The RINJ Foundation
India Human Rights Crisis
