MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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Swiss tourist gang-raped in Madhya Pradesh, India
By artappraiser on Sat, 03/16/2013 - 11:51pm |By Umesh Singh in Gwalior, Hindustan Times, March 16, 2013
A 38-year-old Swiss national, who was taking a bicycle tour through Madhya Pradesh, was gang-raped, beaten up and robbed at gunpoint by more than six men on Friday night.
The victim, who resides in Lausanne, Switzerland, was with her husband when the horrific incident took place. The two were cycling from Orchha, a heritage tourism spot, to Agra when they decided to camp in a jungle near Jhadia village.
Around 9pm, the criminals, mostly in their 20s, broke into their camp, handcuffed the husband and raped the woman. They then fled with their mobile phones, a laptop and Rs. 10,000. Battered and bruised, the couple took a lift from a passerby and reached the police station in Datia district, from where they were taken to the hospital. A medical examination confirmed rape by multiple people [....]
URL:
http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/MadhyaPradesh/Swiss-tourist-gangraped-in-MP/Article1-1027232.aspx
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Comments
This might be more of what my friend was talking about when he talked of India not being the exotic locale he imagined. Never been there but that many people in that exotic a location with a pretty decentralized government, seems like bad will happen alot.
by Orion on Sun, 03/17/2013 - 10:57pm
That may well be.
But what it says to me is that rape as a signifier of power for men is epidemic in India, especially that this would happen after all the Indian media coverage of rape of Indian women.
by artappraiser on Sun, 03/17/2013 - 11:38pm
Boycott everything from this country. If the ruling class can't reign in these animals we can starve the beast.
Tell India act civilized or else.
by Resistance on Mon, 03/18/2013 - 12:29am
It's a country of 1.25 billion - roughly 4 times the US, with extreme poverty and marauding street gangs in a number of areas (the slums of Bombay & Calcutta are famous, no?). They have 130 police per 100,000 people, half the US rate.
In this case, the police arrested most of the men within days - isn't that impressive?
The December rape/murder resulted into huge outrage and street protests. As a result, India increased the penalty for rape to 20 years, upped penalties for crimes like throwing acid, and added capital penalty for death or coma from rape.
How well does the US respond to similar tragedies?
Has anything positive come out of our latest gun massacre?
I think we should be less judgmental of India.
What the police did say that came out sounding "blame the victim" is that tourists don't announce themselves, so police have no warning for what to protect. If a tourist wanders into East St. Louis or El Paso and sleeps outside in an alley or park, there might be problems too. (though El Paso's crime rate is dropping). I"m sure the police there would simply say, "don't do it, or you'll deserve what you get"
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 03/19/2013 - 2:39am
Evidently the police are unable to protect the people.
2.8 India
by Resistance on Tue, 03/19/2013 - 6:14am
No comprendo - because some people feel threatened & want guns?
India has a moderate murder rate, 3.x per 100,000, lower than the US - can only imagine what a billion guns on the street would do for it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 03/19/2013 - 6:35am
Yeah, that sounds right. I think sexual attitudes in general are locked in a different direction than we are used to here as well.
I think language like Resistance used is extreme, however. We may look at stuff like this as uncivilized but people don't really get blown apart by assault weapons in public areas there.
by Orion on Mon, 03/18/2013 - 3:05pm
Rape is epidemic everywhere, absolutely everywhere, and its usually a signifier of male power.
Even in so called civilized countries. From the Stubenville rape to the epidemic of gang rapes in poor suburbs and the countryside in France.
India is just getting publicity atm. Here's a link if you haven't heard about the gang rapes in France.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/12/world/europe/in-france-light-gang-rape...
by ocean-kat on Mon, 03/18/2013 - 6:29pm
This.
by tmccarthy0 on Mon, 03/18/2013 - 7:24pm
This incident is obviously part of gang terrorizing the local community - not just rape. The main leader broke the woman's nose on the street, leaving her unconscious. When the police asked her if anything more to report, she reported a several year old gang-rape. There's likely some sensitivity here too because it's a North African gang, and France is trying to be either non-racist or anti-African, depending on political affiliation. Even the Times tip-toes around this obvious point. As usual, women are the suffering the worst of a gangland criminal environment in the ghettos - intimidation, rape, theft, extortion, abuse.
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 03/19/2013 - 1:41am
As usual you're clueless yet you keep telling people how "obvious" your superficial misunderstandings are. Yes gang rapes are often gang related, surprise surprise. But the link is not an isolated incident. There is an epidemic of gang rapes in poor neighborhoods in France just as there is an epidemic of gang rape in India.
If you care to educate yourself on this issue, which I doubt, start with Samira Bellil
by ocean-kat on Tue, 03/19/2013 - 3:19am
Nice to start off being an ass. And what detail did you provide? Nada.
No, I didn't pull the tautology that "gang rapes are often gang related". In the French suburbs, there is (or at least was) a gang culture including rape initiation rites. In India, some of these "gang" rapes likely mean a group of guys, rather than members of what we call a gang (i.e. Mafia, crack-gang, etc.). Makes a bit of difference in how police & others might tackle the issue, and probably makes it easier to catch the Indian rapists without a mafia-like code of silence and retribution.
The NY Times case (badly) prosecuted in France was from 1999, similar to Samira Bellil. Here you can read about a documentary on gang rape in the Muslim projects around this period: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/crossing_continents/europe/1456204...
Do I know that there's a gang rape epidemic in 2013 based on a gang rape epidemic in 1999-2001? No. Are the police still afraid to enter the projects? I don't know. Do you? I'd guess with better reporting & exponentially more users of internet & mobile phoes with cameras since then that we'd see & here about gang rapes much more frequently. Any sign of that? As 1 blogger notes, France has these "suburb rapes", standard city rapes, and date rapes - the latter likely a bigger problem than in the US, since she says French girls are taught to be more flirtatious & to blame if things get out of control. Nevertheless, rape rate in France overall appears to be half that of the US, though hard to be sure + or - due to variations in reporting.
For India, we know of 2 highly public gang rape cases in the last 3 months - I see reports of 3 others for 2012, 1 other in 2013. Likely the publicity brought forth the increased reporting of rapes since December - and fortunately it seems the police caught most of of these.
http://www.zcommunications.org/how-to-stop-the-rape-epidemic-in-india-by...
My issue with this "epidemic of gang rapes" is it seems to target India in particular (no rape squads in Congo or Burma or South Africa or in the high crime city of Ciudad Juarez?) and ignores the much larger problem of single rapes & violence - home & outside - all around the world, including the US.
All this tut-tutting about India, but even sexual slavery and abuse of Philipino & other foreign housekeepers in the Gulf is rampant. I know how useless the US police were when I reported my wife's near-rape: 20 minutes asking her what she was wearing, why she was walking alone down a fairly well-lit major boulevard at midnight a half-mile from a trendy students' bar/theater/restaurant zone. And then they went looking for the guy. Brilliant.
But in much of the Indian reporting, it looks like the police are actually catching criminals - which encourages women to speak up, unlike the French case which creates fear of retribution from gang members not punished.
So sorry for my "superficial misunderstandings", jackass. Thank you for "educating" me via Wikipedia.
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 03/19/2013 - 6:30am
My issue with this "epidemic of gang rapes" is it seems to target India in particular
If that's your issue why are you bothering me with your nonsense? Look again at my post. "Rape is epidemic everywhere, absolutely everywhere, ... Even in so called civilized countries."
I know how useless the US police were when I reported my wife's near-rape: 20 minutes asking her what she was wearing, why she was walking alone down a fairly well-lit major boulevard at midnight a half-mile from a trendy students' bar/theater/restaurant zone. And then they went looking for the guy. Brilliant.
You know, that's exactly what I thought when you posted "India increased the penalty for rape to 20 years, upped penalties for crimes like throwing acid, and added capital penalty for death or coma from rape" to resistance above. Its easy to up the penalties but meaningless when the police in India are even worse then the US police you describe. It will take years of unrelenting work to change the police. As you describe we've made only small progress after years of activism in the US. Post your comment to your response to resistance and you can have an argument with yourself about how superficial your comment was on the trivial "reform" of India's penalties for rape.
Thank you for "educating" me via Wikipedia.
I didn't link you to Wikipedia. I gave you a name of a child who was gang raped and went on to become a major activist in France to start your research on gang rape in France. An issue you clearly have no clue about. That you used that name to go to a superficial site for information was your choice, not mine. But pretty typical for you when you decide to spout out on an issue you haven't studied until last night.
by ocean-kat on Tue, 03/19/2013 - 2:51pm
The child was gang raped in 1986 when she was 14. The just completed trials for crimes around 1999-2001. So we have 2 data points from 27 years ago and 12+ years ago. Gee, this is going to be an intellectual discussion.
How do we define your "epidemic"? Epidemic everywhere? Bullshit. There are places where it's high, places where it's not. I was "spouting out" about mass rapes in the Congo years ago, as well as South Africa. If you want to discuss rape epidemics, good places to start. If you want to pontificate vacuously, well, you're off to a good start.
Re: Indian police, almost every case noted there had been arrests made. Whether that always happens, worth considering that maybe they're sometimes trying.
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 03/19/2013 - 3:28pm
Re: Indian police
There is a consciousness raising process going on in India. Where most police eventually hopefully get the message. Might take years, as it did in this country. And like as happened in this country, even after many years of cultural change about acceptable norms, there might be some areas, like
SteubenvilleStupidville, Ohio that lag.What I saw in this case, where a precious tourist was raped, more valuable to India's PTB than Indian women themselves (the latter available in mass quantities and not even that valued in utereo) was criminal perps from a lower class sending a message for police to read: we got this power, you let us have it and even support it at times, we ain't giving it up. It's probably not the case that the perps knew they were sending that message, but I think it's there nonetheless. I.E., tourists being raped is maybe where Indian police start getting serious about not enabling a rape-is-no-big-deal culture.
I've said it before on Ramona's thread on this issue and I'll say it again: I have more optimism about India being able to change its culture than a lot of other places. Partly because I think shame plays a larger role there than it does elsewhere. That is why I find "rape news" from India of more interest than say, a rape in NYC. And it also is why I (and others, no doubt) find the Steubenville story of interest, that shame and publicity might finally effect change ("Anonymous" obviously thinks public shaming would be a good tool here.)
And to oceankat: yes, France has a misogyny problem, and those stories, and of feminists fighting back against "Strauss-Kahn"-culture as well as gang rape there, interests me along the same lines. But I don't agree rape is epidemic everywhere, and I do think that cultural norms that enable it can change, and have been changed in plenty of places. And I think it's important to note that it can change, and that\s why it's important not to believe or even stress that it's the same everywhere.
by artappraiser on Tue, 03/19/2013 - 4:13pm
I don't claim its the same everywhere and epidemic is a subjective term. If it works for India, as you used it, I think it fits everywhere.
The US is among those at the top of the list in effectiveness in dealing with rape. According to United States Department of Justice document Criminal Victimization in the United States, there were overall 191,670 victims of rape or sexual assault reported in 2005. That doesn't include unreported rapes or attempted rapes. 1 of 6 U.S. women have experienced an attempted or completed rape. (according to Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault.
I'm comfortable in calling that an epidemic though as I said, its a subjective term, and opinions may vary on how accurate that word is.
Sure, cultural norms can change and have changed. Far as we may have gone we still have a long way to go.
http://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/reporting-rates
by ocean-kat on Tue, 03/19/2013 - 6:13pm
The US is hardly the poster child for sexual respect or law & order.
There are a number of European countries for example where we might say rape is not "epidemic".
Not to dismiss problems with sexual abuse & violence, but there's great variation around the world in where a woman might be in grave continual danger vs. a more manageable (but still disturbing & actionable) level.
We should certainly distinguish between the incidence of violent sexual attacks that leaves a girl dying in a hospital in Singapore vs. a much less traumatic date rape, even though wanting both to decrease.
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 03/20/2013 - 12:23am
Underreporting is especially egregious in India, where police in many areas not only act as enablers but even as perps, that's actually one of the main problems there. See the new article I posted downthread.
by artappraiser on Thu, 03/21/2013 - 8:54pm
I recall some Denver cop(s?) a while back charged with picking up & raping underage girls, just took a Google & found another Denver cop just convicted of something similar. Hard to trust anyone.
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 03/21/2013 - 9:36pm
It's odd to say there was anything about this incident for which to be grateful but for whatever reason the rapists didn't kill the couple.
Perhaps because they feel sufficiently confident of not being competently pursued by the justice system that they felt secure leaving eye witnesses behind.Which would bring us back to AA's suggested explanation: the power structure just doesn't care. Sad.
by Flavius on Mon, 03/18/2013 - 10:00pm
by artappraiser on Thu, 03/21/2013 - 8:50pm
New York Times main news section report on the law, published 3 hours ago:
by artappraiser on Thu, 03/21/2013 - 11:20pm
That sounds harder to enforce than an anti-gun law.
by Orion on Thu, 03/21/2013 - 11:29pm