gang raped and hung from a tree- Boycott India as a holiday destination

[doziedoozie]

I know there is a thread about this but 'girls raped and murdered' is not the same.

I can't believe there isn't more response on MN about this horror.

A 14 and 15 year old whose father, from the sound of it, was mocked by police and locals when he wanted help to find his daughter. Absolutely disgusting.

Yet westerners happily tootle off to admire the sights and lounge on the beaches when this is what is going on in the background.

If we all boycotted the tourist destinations in India and hit their pockets they might actually do something about it.

Oh fgs Anya

I am Indian and female. What happened is beyond horrific and horrifically not that unusual. Just that this case has garnered media attention. A lot of complex caste politics are involved in this but if you think that Westerners boycotting India will get a centuries old tradition to be 'sorted out' you are being desperately naive though. I don't have a magic solution but if you think the local panchayat in a Northern Indian state cares about the income from Western tourists you are mistaken. It's not like discrimination in the basis of caste isn't illegal according to the Indian Constitution but the lives of many Dalit people as this case shows is wretched beyond belief and the law is a mute bystander.

What the ofgs for?

So India isn't a rich country then. So how would boycotting their tourism and affecting a lot of liveilhood change anything?

The Sudanese woman's husband is a dual US citizen! If the world's "most powerful country" can't or won't intervene effectively, when the situation is clear and moving slowly, and it's own citizens' are involved, what hoe us there?

And yes, the UK is much safer. And India is not. Even within India there are differences. My hometown is a city of 12 million and relatively safe. I can hang out with friends and take a cab home. In the capital Delhi I would not get into a cab at night alone. Mumbai again is relatively safe. I a a city girl a d have little experience of village life in India. But I have an India mode I go into: I dress differently- avoid sleeveless (although Mumbai is more relaxed), no shorts, nothing that hints at cleavage. I also walk on the street in a different way- more aware I guess. India is a v complex country- the privileged lead lives almost more comfortable than their Western counterparts. The poor and especially the lowest castes are very very poor and destitute indeed.

The US embassy are being quiet involved in that case. They are attending the hearings too. I think they are looking at an appeal too.

I agree OP. I was in a team that was looking to set up an overseas branch, with the potential to employ hundreds of people. India was in the frame, and was the preferred location but some of us in the group argued against it, due to the reasons listed above. I've also turned down a job in Saudi for similar reasons.

We can't turn a blind eye. It's barbaric

but if you think the local panchayat in a Northern Indian state cares about the income from Western tourists you are mistaken

I accept this is the case but if tourism income in other places was seriously affected the powers that be might do something to influence the local panchayat.

Or they might not because they need the votes of those particular upper castes to win elections...

I love India, I will not let small minded idiots ruin the hardwork of those so detached from such idiocy. Without western visitors and focus how will they develop?

I'd more likely avoid the US where 10,000 people die per yr from firearms, where they still execute people.. A supposedly DEVELOPPED country. India has one foot in the modern world, one in the past. It is a melting pot of religion: some liberal; some very strict/extreme. Big and sad challenges ahead, boycotting achieves nothing.

Hasn't the UK stopped sending aid to India in light of their space program? And yet there are thousands of desperately poor people who need help? I just don't think the Indian government gives a damn about the lower caste at all, stopping tourism wouldn't help.
International outrage might, highlighting the shoddy police work more undercover documentaries about how unfair they are to their own people.
This story is barbaric & had me up crying last night. It's incomprehensible how humans can treat other humans.

Surely pressure on the police to at least react is worth trying to achieve.

And can this really be described as strict religious behavior???

Caste is not religious per se. Technically Sikhs, Muslims, Buddhists, Christians in India are caste less but that's not the reality. But the majority of Dalits are Hindus.

I don't mean to come across as defensive. I think something should be done. I just think with an issue of this complexity you need Indians to change. You need Indians to put pressure on their politicians etc, for their to be a ground swell of change, for Dalits to be empowered- foreign 'interference' won't make a jot of difference if local attitudes don't change. And these are v entrenched attitudes. So in the last elections that finished 2 weeks ago India elected as PM a man accused of orchestrating an anti Muslim pogrom (for which the US once denied him a visa). Fat lot of difference that made- he won an overwhelming majority (look up Gujarat 2002- some of what happened there was stomach churning. Hindu Mobs cutting open the bellies of pregnant Muslim women while the police stood by etc).

There may even have been instructions to the police NOT to react. The District Magistrate may have had instructions from higher up not to intervene etc.

I have a disability and went alone to a conference in Gujarat last year. After the conference, I was invited to Bihar and a woman told me not to go as I would be a target to maoists. So I stayed in Gujarat. Apart from an earthquake, nothing happened. I eventually got a SIM card and people began to know me. I didn't go out after dark, and Gujarat is a dry state. I felt quite safe, even wearing knee length skirts.

I live in Vietnam and men can be pretty awful. I reported some cyclo drivers who were bothering me to the police. They still bother me. I've also had a motorbike driver put my hand on his "banana" for banana massage".... In broad daylight in crowded HCM City, and a few other drivers who wanted bang bang....

One of my Vietnamese friends said I shouldn't have told the police, the men might hit me. "Things are different" in Vietnam...

My neighbour regularly hits his wife and daughter. Another neighbour's son used to throw tables through the glass door and other things. Everyone knows, but nobody does anything.

Did anyone see the survey asking men from 5 Asian countries how many had raped a woman. A large number said they had "out of boredom"

OP people are Hanged not hung.

Meat is hung, people are not.

www.global-briefing.org/2013/10/asia-pacific-study-three-out-of-five-men-see-rape-as-entertainment/ Survey I mentioned

Kewrious - your posts are well placed. You have local knowledge.

I had a PhD student who did some work in Indian villages in Uttar Pradesh where this rape took place. Not the actual village but ones just like it. He also worked in New Dehli in upper middle class areas.

Your posts very much align with my understanding of the local political economic situation in different sections of Indian society.

There are local, state and national politics involved as well as reported by Reuters here.

My experience is as you say, that Western sensibilities hold no sway at all. If Indian wanted to change it would, but in reality millions live in slavery or as bonded labour. The horrific death of these girls from a lower caste is just a part of that cultural and social landscape where life has literally no net worth beyond the next days labour.

As one of my former colleagues used to say, if you go to one of these countries you have to accept even as a Westerner you can fall into an abyss at the stroke of a pen of some petty bureaucrat. There is no law. Whether you get justice is down to the personnel behest of some local politician, police chief, senior caste leader who may or may not choose to act in their own interest in assisting you.

Applying Western values and Western frames of thinking to this situation is just not going to work.

Surely you can be hung by the neck until dead.

I'm not expecting anyone to consider Western sensibilities. But financial influence such as reduction in visits by tourists might imo make the Gov put pressure on local leaders.

Countries like Dubai have pretty strict moral laws over promiscuity for example but rather than some westerners being lashed or jailed for years a negotiation takes place where the miscreant is moved home to complete their sentence and is prob then freed early, can't quote but just giving an example. Dubai doesn't want foreigners scared to visit in case they inadvertently break a law despite their pretty draconian laws.

Visitors wear bikinis in Sharm el sheik, Tunisia, Morocco. But locals usually don't. They are bending the rules for the tourist industry. Why, because they want tourists to visit for the income it produces.

You are hanged from the neck until dead.

"Hanged" is a word exclusively used when referring to execution or suicide by hanging. In all other cases, use "hung" for past tense.

Hangman (does the hanging, not the hunging).
Hung jury is correct. They are hung, not hanged ... unless you've executed the jury.

FFS hanged/hung, is so not the issue here!

OP I can understand why you feel the way you do and want to try to do something.

Maybe international outrage and the bad publicity that goes with it could force a change, but as other more knowledgeable posters have said, this is an entrenched system and would be very difficult to change.

dozie - yes they bend the rules when it suits them and then they choose to impose the law in a draconian way at the whim of a local politician and that is when you get arrested and you fall into the abyss. Do you really believe that if you were raped or murdered by the son of an important local person you would get any justice?

I am constantly bemused by the way Westerners visiting Africa, Middle East, Far East believe that they are immune from this arbitrary justice. I am equally bemused by the way people allow their teenager sons and daughters to swan around the world on gap years in places like this.

Most countries outside the G20 are just places you do not want to go and we need to stop believing that we can change them.

When you say it is an entrenched system do you mean - entrenched in a belief that women should be gang raped and then hanged. Bloody hell. Is that how they operate? You can just murder a woman if you feel like it??

Entrenched in the belief that the life of some people is literally worthless. A human life literally of no value.

Some development economists have worked out the implied value of a human life in Developing countries and its value (net of the cost of feeding and providing basic shelter to keep you alive) is in fact negative depending on the section of society you live in, your age and if you are a man or a woman. Young girls tend to have a net negative implied economic value and hence the dowry system carries on as a man has to be paid money to be persuaded to take a young woman away from her family. She brings with her a net economic cost. That is why girl children are often killed at birth.