A helpline for victims has been inundated with callers. Jerome Taylor was given exclusive access to their harrowing stories. From The Independent:
The home Baljit Kaur Howard has made for herself in a quiet Ipswich cul-de-sac is a world away from what she calls her “previous life”. In her sitting room, a mug of tea in hand, she rests her head on her new husband, Phil. “It’s taken me a long time to learn to love Phil,” she says. “Before we met I’d never known what it was like to be loved unconditionally.”
Bal, as she likes to be known, was 17 when her father announced that she was going to be married to a family friend she had met only once before. She then spent eight years trapped in an oppressive, loveless marriage. “I had always expected to have an arranged marriage, but I did not expect a forced marriage,” she says. “I told my father that I didn’t want to marry him. He just said, ‘You’d better get used to the idea. If you run away I will find you’.”
Now aged 39, Bal considers herself lucky. She escaped, but in doing so has been disowned by her family.
In Babakot, Pakistan, three teenage girls aged 16-18 are buried alive by their male relatives for daring to choose their own husbands. Shahid Qazi and Carol Grisanti have that story in MSNBC.
In a tangle of bushes and trees outside a remote village in southwest Pakistan, six close male relatives of three teenage girls dug a 4-foot wide by 6-foot deep ditch, on a sweltering night in mid-July, and allegedly buried the girls alive.
The girls’ crime: they dared to defy the will of their fathers and the customs of their tribe and choose their own husbands. The mother of one of the girls and the aunt of another were shot and killed while begging for the girls’ lives, according to local media reports.
The incident has touched off widespread condemnation from human rights groups, but also a sturdy defense from local officials. “This action was carried out according to tribal traditions,” said Israrullah Zehri, a senator representing Balochistan in the upper house of Pakistan’s parliament in the capital Islamabad. ”These are centuries-old traditions and I will continue to defend them,” he said.
We visited the scene and interviewed locals to try and learn more about this gruesome crime.
India, which has a skewed sex ratio (927 females to 1,000 males), has banned ads that promote sex pre-selection. Google and Microsoft recently pulled ads that offer sex selection products and other services following a complaint filed in the Supreme Court. AFP has that story [via Breitbart]
Internet giants Google and Microsoft have pulled adverts for sex selection products and other services considered illegal in India after being threatened with legal action, activists said Thursday.
India’s Supreme Court had last month asked the two companies plus Yahoo to respond to a complaint that they were illegally advertising do-it-yourself kits and expensive genetic techniques to find out an unborn baby’s gender.
Activists said the products — which have not been scientifically proven to be accurate or safe — damage efforts to stem mass abortions of girls because of a traditional preference for boys in India.
“Sponsored links in Google have come down considerably. They have disappeared from Microsoft India search,” activist Sabu George, who filed the petition, told AFP.
A random search for “gender selection” on Yahoo, however, produces links to resources and clinics offering to help people choose the gender of their child.
The ads are brazen: ‘healthy young women - superovulated exclusively for you!’. The fees are half those of UK clinics (’flights and hotel included!’). And the industry is unregulated, leaving doctors free of legal and ethical constraints. No wonder more and more Europeans are going to India for fertility treatment. Raekha Prasad reports in The Guardian:
Ekatrina Aleksandrova, 42, flew to India for fertility treatment
At the end of last year, Ekaterina Aleksandrova boarded a plane in London and flew to Mumbai. It wasn’t her first trip there - she is a management consultant and often goes abroad on business. But this time she went to have five embryos implanted in her womb. A couple of days later she flew back to Europe. While on business in Hong Kong in January, she discovered she was pregnant with just one embryo.
For Aleksandrova, 42, this was the culmination of a six-year struggle to become a mother. She divorced at 29, and hadn’t been in a serious relationship since she was 34. “I always wanted to have a child but the men kept saying, ‘Why don’t we travel?’” she says. “It wasn’t that I was obsessed with my career, I just couldn’t get men to be a father.”
First, she tried to adopt in Germany, where she holds citizenship, but that didn’t work out. Then, in 2004, she moved to the UK to take advantage of this country’s more liberal attitude to single women who need IVF. She spent £18,000 in less than three years, trying and failing to conceive at a private Harley Street clinic. When she finally conceived in India, Aleksandrova was in a state of “shock and disbelief”.
Amrita Pande on surrogate motherhood in The Indian Express:
When I started my research on surrogacy in 2005, people wondered if I had my facts right. Women getting pregnant for someone else? In our country? Why haven’t we heard about it? The queries ran from disbelief to fascination. In the past two years, however, the Indian and international media have published so many “human interest” stories on this subject that now I can have a debate on the topic with almost anyone who reads a newspaper. The international media cover this industry as a new and sensational form of “outsourcing”. Invariably, the articles start with a description of the pigs, the crowded streets and filth in Anand, move on to the swollen tummies of these enterprising-although-illiterate Indian women and to their life stories filled with drunken husbands and poverty. The articles talk about the cost difference between a surrogacy in Anand and one in the United States and the win-win situation for the two parties involved. The Indian media follow a similar path. But is that all that we need to talk about?
A major survey - carried out by Muslim women’s magazine Sisters and Ummah Foods, a halal food business - shows most want to marry their soulmates and enjoy high street fashion, while keeping a delicate balance with their Islamic values. From The Observer:
She wants to marry her soulmate, shops in Primark, TK Maxx and Topshop, and dreams of starting her own business. Meet the typical Muslim woman in Britain today.
A thousand women throughout the country have responded to the biggest lifestyle study of Muslim women undertaken in the UK. It appears to show that Muslim women have established a delicate balance between a desire to live a contemporary lifestyle and tap into consumer trends while sticking to values underpinning the Islamic guide to life.
The survey shows that 58 per cent of Muslim women do not think the racial background of a partner matters, although two-thirds believe it is very important for their man to be knowledgeable about Islam.
As India gets more wealthy, arranged marriage is giving way to more love weddings, and divorces. From Newsweek:
Not long ago, 19-year-old Sreeja Konidela returned home to Hyderabad from Delhi to attend a family funeral-but didn’t get the welcome she expected. Konidela, whose father, Chiranjeevi, is a megastar in the Telugu-language film industry, had been disowned for eloping with Shirish Bharadwaj, 23, who was from a different caste. The two had married on live television last October in a bid to keep Sreeja’s father from interfering-they were afraid he’d accuse Bharadwaj of kidnapping her, a common tactic in such cases. But their TV wedding alerted police and a mob of angry fans, who trailed the couple from the temple to the registrar and scared them so badly they fled to Delhi. Now the lovers were back, but Konidela’s relatives weren’t interested in reconciliation. Instead, she says, they forced Bharadwaj to wait outside and tried to browbeat her into dumping him so she could marry a groom of her parents’ choosing. “They just tried brainwashing me,” she says. “So I got out of there as fast as I could.”
The story electrified India, where a rapidly modernizing society is changing its views on marriage.
One of only six plastic surgeons in Sri Lanka, Dr Chandni Perera performs reconstructive surgery to burns victims. She talks to NPR on abuse, why women burn themselves, stigmatisation and changing social attitudes.
Severe burns or fires kill or injure nearly 4 million women each year, according to figures from the World Health Organization, and nearly half of the reported cases occur in Southeast Asia.
Dr. Chandini Perera, one of only six plastic surgeons in Sri Lanka, performs reconstructive surgery to burn victims. She says most of the victims are poor and their living conditions make them vulnerable to the danger of fire. But there’s a disturbing dynamic in some cases: Women are set on fire by their husbands and boyfriends, and others set themselves on fire in an empty bid to escape abuse.
Those who survive the burns do so with disfigurement and disabilities requiring long recovery periods. That process tends to be more emotional than physical, Perera says, noting that victims are often ostracized. That, in turn, keeps the problems hidden. “If you are stigmatized and you are an outcast, then you live in this unseen world,” Perera says.
Perera believes that empowering burn victims to reenter society will help change social attitudes.
Punches, skirmishes and a strong pair of lungs. Flank your man with two strong women. Pushing and shoving is the name of the game. The Women’s Quota Bill, which provides 33 per cent reservation to women, is finally tabled, after a delay of 12 years, in India’s Rajya Sabha. The Times of India has the report.
The planning would have done a military strategist proud. The defence was deployed with skill and guile. The back-up was forceful and arrived in time. And even though the “enemy” managed to land a few punches, the skirmish was brief and ended with the contentious women’s reservation bill being introduced in Rajya Sabha on Tuesday.
Congress parliamentary managers had done their homework well. They placed law minister H R Bhardwaj on the second row away from the aisle connecting the rest of the House. He was flanked by two women ministers, Kumari Selja and Ambika Soni.
The anti-bill lobby led by Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh did its best to disrupt proceedings. SP members moved into the well, ostensibly raising demands for action against Raj Thackeray for his anti-north Indian fulminations. But they had their eyes fixed on Bhardwaj.
A Pakistani human rights organisation says violence against women more than doubled to over 4,000 cases last year. It also says that more suicide attacks took place in the country in 2007 than in all previous years combined.
Conservative social practices and religious extremism are identified as the main cause of gender inequalities. Islamic militants have increasingly resorted to suicide attacks to outgun the government troops they are fighting in the northwest.
A profile of Pakistan’s new information minister from The Post, Pakistan:
Studied art history and politics from Smith College, USA, and University of Sussex, UK, Federal Information Minister Sherry Rahman has a strong family background and belongs to an educated family of Sindh.
Her mother Sabiha Hasan was the first woman director of the State Bank of Pakistan (1980). She was recalled after her retirement to serve as the media advisor to the SBP governor in 1995-96. She recently served as consultant of the SBP.
Sherry Rehman’s father Hassanally A Rahman (1909-1986), a barrister-at-law, was the founder, architect and the first principal of the Sindh Muslim Government Law College, Karachi. Known as a social and community leader, Mr Rahman was the first vice chancellor of Sindh University, Jamshoro, where he served twice as the VC.
A scheme that was supposed to have reduced female infanticide is, instead, legitimising traditional discriminations against the girl child, reports PC Vinoj Kumar in Tehelka
THE IMAGE is emotionally evocative: a palna rocking outside an orphanage, while a desperate young mother tenderly places her child in the cradle, imbued with the hope that he or she will be adopted and get a better life than she can give. That’s the kind of social benefit Union Minister For Women and Child Development Renuka Choudhry also imagines she is engineering when she says that her dream project to combat female infanticide is to extend this very cradle scheme to every district in the country. Almost exactly a year ago, her ministry issued a press release stating that baby reception centres would be set up in each district. The reality, however, far from being evocative, is truly grotesque: abandoned by their parents, these children of a lesser god are then deserted by the state. Once handed over to adoption agencies, their last link with their roots is broken, since agencies are not required to keep records after adoption or fostering, or to provide regular updates to the government. more
In Times of India, CPM Rajya Sabha MP, Brinda Karat on the Scarlett Keeling murder being raked up in Parliament
The Scarlett Keeling case has received a great deal of attention. In Rajya Sabha, there was a sharp exchange of views on the case. A view expressed in Parliament that it was the responsibility of parents to take care of the security of their children finds resonance among some people. Indeed, the Goa government and its spokespersons have projected the case as a tragedy caused by bad parenting. They have said that if the mother had been more responsible, if the victim had been a “good girl”, then… more
Pakistan is poised to get its first woman speaker in Parliament. The 52-year-old Fahmida Mirza is medical school graduate and also a businesswoman. A Bhutto loyalist (her husband, Zulfikar Mirza is a close friend of Asif Zardari), Mirza has been nominated by the PPP to the top post in the 342-member lower house, or National Assembly.
Forced to marry at the age of 13, Sameem Ali is the quintessential survivor. Tim Bouquet in Times Online tells her story [via 3QuarksDaily]
Sameem Ali’s life is as neat and tidy as the small red-brick terraced house in which she lives in Moss Side, Manchester. She’s a first-time author, a happily married mother of two grown-up sons and, since organising her neighbours to lobby the city council to spend £1 million to clean up their area, renovate houses, plant trees and stop fly-tipping, a busy councillor. “This is my community now,” Sameem says. Even her book is called Belonging, but that is where the neatness ends and something altogether more alarming and brutal takes it place. “To this day I cry when I remember all the things that were done to me,” she says. “My memories are not a comfort to me, a place to retreat to; they are a curse.”
The annuals Birds Eye View film festival returns this year to showcase the best work from women filmmakers all over the world. It will feature over 70 events, including screenings, workshops and parties at 7 London venues. Two screenings are from India this year.
Lakshmi and Me: Exploring the relationship between employer and servant, this is a delicate and brave documentary which asks how two women negotiate the ingrained social and cultural attitudes that govern their lives. Based in Mumbai, Indian filmmaker Nishtha Jain turns the camera on her maid Lakshmi and finds that the delicate boundaries of their tentative friendship are put to the test through Lakshmi’s unexpected pregnancy and illness.
Migration: A new short film from world-renowned director Mira Nair explores the perennial issue of HIV/AIDS in India.
Women leaders from 45 nations meet in India to discuss their role in conflict resolution, reports Mark Sappenfield in The Christian Science Monitor
Sakena Yacoobi well knows the hardships of Afghan women, caught between a war and the hopelessness of poverty and illiteracy.
Yet on International Women’s Day Saturday, the Afghan educator will not ask the world to help Afghan women. Instead, she will ask Afghan women to help the world.
In a time of growing conflict around the world, she believes the wisdom and compassion of women can offer a way out. “Women bring tolerance and patience,” she says. “Women can bring solutions – we cannot accomplish that with weapons.”
She is one of several hundred prominent female leaders from 45 countries who have come to India this week to seek ways to raise women’s voices worldwide, hoping that their ideas – so often ignored – begin to move the world away from war.
Wazhma Frogh, an Afghan, uses her religion to press for women’s rights - and development agencies take note. Jill Carroll in The Christian Science Monitor:
Just hours after Wazhma Frogh arrived in an isolated, conservative district in northeastern Afghanistan in 2002, the local mullah was preaching to his congregation to kill her. Ms. Frogh was meddling with their women with her plan to start a literacy program, he told the assembly.
As she walked past the mosque during noon prayers, his words caught her ear. Shocked, she marched straight into the mosque. In a flowing black chador that left her face uncovered, she strode past the male worshipers and faced the mullah. Trembling inside, she challenged him.
“Mullah, give me five minutes,” she recalls saying. “I will tell you something, and after that if you want to say I am an infidel and I am a threat to you, just kill me.”
India’s boom in audience-based reality TV spawns new jobs for poor, unemployed young women, but forces a break from tradition writes Rama Lakshmi in The Washington Post
Eighteen-year-old Mital Limbad stretches lazily in bed in her tiny, one-room tenement. It is 8:30 a.m., and she has been home for only a few hours, having spent the previous night at a long and tiring TV shoot.
As her family goes about the morning chores, her cellphone rings. Limbad answers it, listens and hangs up.
“I need to be at the Cinevista studio in two hours,” she says.
“What show will you be on this time?” asks her mother, Jyoti, 39.
” ‘K for Kishore,’ ” she answers, referring to a popular TV talent show. Her mother and her younger sister and brother cheer.
A woman president. A woman who heads the country’s oldest political party. And yet, women in India have a bad deal. A study on violence against women by Yogendra Yadav and Sanjay Kumar published in The Indian Express.
You don’t need a survey to find out that women feel insecure in this country. You just need to take a walk in the evening. You don’t need numbers to see that domestic violence against women is widespread. You just need to look into their eyes, perhaps yours. Yet this realisation is not enough to devise a strategy to combat this violence. You need to understand the anatomy of violence — where, how and why of violence against women — to begin to think about countering this violence.
Neeta Lal reports on the pink gang in Asia Sentinel
“We’re a gang for justice,” says the leader of a crew of sari-wearing vigilantes.
Banda, a blip on India’s vast geographic radar, is one of the country’s poorest and most regressive districts. Located in the heart of the populous northern state of Uttar Pradesh, this 3,061 sq km region infested by dacoits, or bandits, invariably makes headlines for all the wrong reasons – drought, starvation, domestic violence, land-grabbing, killings and a thoroughly corrupt administration.
However, lately, blighted Banda has been attracting attention for an entirely different reason. The area’s Pink Gang, about 200 self-styled female Robin Hoods, is taking on dowry deaths, wife beating and even cases of government apathy and corruption, often fighting violence with violence.
Kalpana Sharma takes a reality check on the New Year eve incident in Mumbai
When 70 to 80 men surround two women, push them, touch them, pounce on them, it is not “molestation”; it is sexual assault. So before we even begin to discuss the incident that took place in the upmarket Mumbai suburb of Juhu in the early hours of January 1, 2008, we should call the crime by its real name.
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