In march a Swiss tourist was gang raped by the four men in India again. They had tied her husband and then was forced him to watch the heinous sexual crime that took in front of his eyes. When I read this news it was hard to shake my head off from the thought, who will be traumatized more ? Will it be the husband, who was forced to watch helplessly or the wife who was gang raped when her husband was watching all this ?
This fueled more ongoing protest world wide, the protesters demanded death penalty for rapist to curb this crime. When the world was gripped in the news of rape and sexual violence, we also could see the effect of it in our homeland, which saw protest in front of the prime minister’s office for more than two months. More rape news saw the light of day as before women would have remained silent on this matter or it would have not found its place in newspaper, definitely not on front page News. But, I noticed, it was more of a selling point of newspaper rather than fighting the fight we as a collective society has to fight, taking it as a ugly face of society.
There was no follow up news on rape or violence here and people wont even care was the guilty punished or not. What shocked me more was when a man in his forty made a girl in her eleven year old pregnant and she even gave birth to her baby who died next day. The news died in next week. Why public don't care ? because media don't report what happened next ! If media cares, then they would report the punishment or the follow up news also, not just the news of rape or baby girl giving birth of a baby.
But this wasn't the case in India, they protested in the streets of Delhi took the brutal lathi charge by police took the dirty water thrown at them but girls could not be stopped by those brute force that was used to silence them and persisted until the four rapist got punished. Every civil citizen around the world is sick and tired of sexual violence and rape, going on in our society. Statistics reveal, in south Africa one girl is being raped in every four minutes, its a lot high number than one in 20 minutes in India. What is so scary about this ratio is, in south Africa population is about 55 millions, compared to 1.2 billion in India, making it world's second most populated country only after China. Here in Nepal, survey says it happens once in every 54 minutes.
After protesting and demanding for harsher punishment to the rapist for long, this month saw the four men being sentenced to death penalty, one minor was punished maximum for his crime as he was the one who was most brutal in this and the main culprit the driver hanged himself in jail cell.
Now, human right activist are slamming the decision by the Delhi court, questioning will this curb the future rape cases ? The answer is No ! but somebody has to tell rapists, it is not tolerated anymore and some justice has to be there to tell them, that no more sexual violence ! Sure enough, this decision does manifest the collective conscience of collective anger, which has been gripping India. In general, one case won't punish the combined mentality of sexual assaulter or violence against women.
One in four female is being raped in South Africa according to studies, from month old babies to 94 year old grandmothers. Perhaps this is the reason the opposition politicians Lindiwe Mazibuko described it, “a silent war” against the children and women of this country.
Recent survey report by UN, which covered a group of more than 10,000 men, says another side of the story, only this time; they had done the survey in many countries of the Asia-pacific continent. One in every four men admitted raping including their partner. Participants were asked why do you do this ? The three answer they responded absentmindedly - they got fished in the tricky question - gave us the clear answer and the reason, why do they do it ?
I want her [or wanted to have sex with her] : 75% of responded said they wanted to have sex with her. This reminded me a crime case that happened in India. A college boy, who got too obsessed in his feelings for a girl who studied in same college, but she felt it from the very beginning, it was not love. Both were studying law. More she avoided him, more he got obsessed with her, and he wanted to have her as wife. In due course of time, the obsession got worse and worse with each passing day. One day, he entered in her apartment to tell her how much he loved her and she had to change her mind on this but he ended up killing her, before that, he had ‘raped her’ opps sorry, I mean to say 'had sex' with her, even though she was provided guards at her home by police force to protect her ! The above incident is the classic case of a guy, who is suffering from narcissistic disorder and the death of the girl is result of audacity to challenge that mentality. When he was punished after about 8 years of the incident, he was a lawyer and his father was second in row of a Delhi police force.
Rape as entertainment : More than 59% responded, they raped for an entertainment, making this reason number two for rape. Being a woman myself, I found it so hard to believe, some men found entertainment in rape. Perhaps the case of a teenage schoolgirl in US, who was raped, when she was so drunk helps us to understand this kind of mentality men carries with them. She did not even know what was going around her in her drunken state and she could not even oppose what was happening to her. It was done by her friends, who were present at the party and as if, that is not enough; they also made mobile video of it, which went viral on YouTube. The boys who did it, did not even feel guilty for what they did. Oh yes, until this news made headlines including on CNN and they sure were found guilty of charge and they punished by the court for their meaningless entertainment and shameless act.
Rape to punish her : over 38 % of focus group responded they raped [including their partner] to punish her, making this the reason number three for rape. In February this year, a 17 year old girl was brutally killed in South Africa, with her body carved open from her stomach to her genitals; it was done by none other than but her ex-boyfriend with the help of two of his friends. The guy was nabbed in the same month and then was sentenced to 21 year life imprisonment.
