Saturday, October 29, 2005

Bitter Harvest of Human Rights Crime Against Women

Series of blasts rocks Indian capital New Delhi
At least 49 killed; terrorists blamed but no claim of responsibility made

NEW DELHI - A series of explosions shook New Delhi on Saturday, tearing through markets jammed with shoppers ahead of an upcoming Hindu festival and killing at least 49 people, officials said.

The initial blast took place in the evening in the main Paharganj market, when it was crowded with shoppers ahead of a major Hindu festival next week, fire officials said. All roads to the scene of the explosion were sealed off by authorities.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9859307/


The thing that struck me throughout the last day or so is that the television coverage of this horror did NOT feature one woman in the background of the streets of India. NOT EVEN ONE.

The last shopping weekend before a major Hindu holiday and where were all the woman who should have been out there shopping?

In short, they had never been permitted to be born.

India, like China, has abused the use of sonogram technology to identify and abort girl children; thus an abundance of men exists in the age group of 15 to 34 years old (probably also the same group more likely to commit crimes and other anti-social acts against their society, including terrorist bombings).

This inbalance according to the article below probably accounts for a shortage of about 30 million women in each country. When will we learn that human rights abuses against women anywhere needs to be addressed, as eventually they threatens all of us everywhere?


Bare Branches:
The Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population.

OGDEN, Utah - Weber State University's Honors Issues Forum will feature author and professor Valerie Hudson presenting "A Surplus of Sons."


Hudson will explore the increasing abundance of males in some Asian countries and the possible consequences it may have on those nations and international stability.

The presentation will be held at 11 a.m. March 11 in Stewart Library Special Collections and is free to the public. Hudson, who teaches political science at Brigham Young University, is the author of "Bare Branches, The Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population."

Historical and sociological evidence gathered for the book predicts that excess males in China, India and Pakistan portend instability and more authoritarian states.

According to a BYU press release, the root of the problem is a growing disparity between the number of boys and girls born in Asian societies, which place a special value on sons.

It's estimated that by 2020, China will have 29 to 33 million surplus males between the ages of 15 and 34 and India will have 28 to 32 million.

Historical research shows societies laden with surplus males were volatile and struggled with increases in crime, unrest and violence. For more information about Hudson's book and research, visit

http://byunews.byu.edu/archive04-Jul-barebranches.aspx


We can see here that much of Asia, through their irresponsible actions, has contributed to the chaos their own countries will be experiencing over the coming decades.

Millions of single men with no prospects for marriage are a source of instability for any society they exist within.

For let's face it in spite of many men and feminists attempts to deny it, women marrying men functions as a stabilizing force which most societies, throughout history, have taken advantage of to their benefit. Not having those millions of women available now in India because they were aborted has probably led in large part to this sort of situation happening.

They are now reaping the bitter harvest they sowed when they terminated the lives of 30 million or so girl children.

You can read the full story in my archives (see link below) to get an idea of the sheer enormity of the human rights crime committed here against women.

http://womenasmothers.blogspot.com/2005_03_01_womenasmothers_archive.html


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

As soon as this incident has occurred those streets were cordoned off by security forces and people were taken away, as you can see in this picture http://specials.rediff.com/news/2005/oct/29sld5.htm, isn't she women?. In India when it comes to festival shopping its a family affair and thats the reason why many women and children had died and got injured in this attack. Your use of this attack as pretext to write about something you want is nonsensical.

I appreciate your writing on female infanticide and agree that it is a big problem but i don't agree with your figures and i think it is not a big problem as you portray, to me it seems exaggerated, do you have any figures to support your writings from UN?. By the way, what do you think is the cause of such attitude in Indian society, specially when one of their supreme god is female and why do such a society adore & elect a women Prime Minister?

NYMOM said...

Thank you for posting.

"As soon as this incident has occurred those streets were cordoned off by security forces and people were taken away, as you can see in this picture http://specials.rediff.com/news/2005/oct/29sld5.htm, isn't she women?"

Unfortunately one picture does not negate my central point; as this is not the first time I have noticed this absence of women in the news feeds from this part of the world. Even at the hospital, which many pictures were shown of that, the absence of women was noticable.

This is just the first time I've done a post about it on my blog.

Check back into other news stories and you'll notice the same thing. Few women in the streets of the cities in this part of the world.

"I appreciate your writing on female infanticide and agree that it is a big problem but i don't agree with your figures..."

They are not MY figures but the figures from Valarie Hudson's book Bare Branches. Read that and you'll see where she gets her figures. I didn't make them up.


"By the way, what do you think is the cause of such attitude in Indian society, specially when one of their supreme god is female and why do such a society adore & elect a women Prime Minister?"

I don't know what the psychology is behind this. Maybe it's like many men in patricarchal societies adore their mothers, as I have heard, they are spoiled rotten by them, YET beat their wives.

Or even how in the US, we discriminated against African-American people for years, even as flocked in droves to see them entertain us in movies, plays, radio, etc.,

As I said, the psychology of this I don't know what it's about...it's obviously a love/hate thing.

Anonymous said...

Part 2

I'm an INDIAN CITIZEN and I can tell you the situation for women is REALLY grim (and yet, this is the best it's ever been!). Most Indians won't easily admit it, they get indignant when the rest of the world comes to know the ugly REALITIES of India, hence this other poster's defensiveness.

While there are certainly some kind, decent gentlemen in India, the fact is that most of the menfolk harbor an intense visceral hatred of women. Women here are seen as a necessary evil that must be begrudgingly tolerated in order to produce sons. Domestic abuse of every stripe permeates all castes and income brackets. Forced abortions happen all the time and at times without the aid of a sonographer. I read an article in one of the English dailies a year or two ago where a pregnant woman was beaten by her in-laws with iron rods (to induce miscarriage) because a SOOTHSAYER told them the foetus was female!

This is all very common. Despite the Indian government banning dowry, women are still routinely harassed and murdered for dowry. Indian society wants a woman to pay an obscenely huge dowry to her husband, yet also wants her to live as an uneducated, unemployed chattel slave with zero earning power. This "burden" status of women in India contributes to the hatred and mass slaughter of girlchildren. College educated women who work in IT or other well paying sectors become easy targets for extortion. Even after they have paid the agreed upon dowry, the extortion never stops. Their education goes to waste because their in-laws bleed them dry at every turn. It's not uncommon to hear of gainfully employed (economically liberated??) women committing suicide because they can't bear the abuse. Women of all ages (including teenagers), castes and income levels are forced/coerced into arranged marriages. Those who aren't coerced with threats of violence are coerced with emotional blackmail or other harm.

Honor killings are still a routine occurrence as well. While murder is illegal, and the Indian law does not prohibit a woman from choosing her own spouse, women are commonly murdered by their own fathers and brothers if they get caught befriending or dating a man from a different caste. Some of the more extreme-right Hindus often look upon Muslims and Christians as untouchable, so inter-faith relationships are usually punished with equal bloodlust.

Rape is another big problem, especially in north India. It's a problem everywhere, but up north (in and around Delhi especially) it is at epidemic proportions and has been for a long time. And rape is not limited to young women- toddlers and grandmothers are also considered fair game. Cops are useless, they usually refuse to file an FIR because they believe ALL rape victims (even toddlers and grandmothers) somehow "asked for it." It's also not unheard of for rape victims to get raped AGAIN by the very cops who are supposed to be filing the FIR. The hell that Dalit women go through is something else entirely.