Gender violence on the subcontinent. Bilal Ahmed, in Monday's Souciant.

b_b:

Unfortunately, no amount of law enforcement will stop this problem, because it's not a crime problem they're dealing with; it's a cultural problem. The West has done a great deal to affect cultural changes at home, as has been doing it for a century. The Mid-East and South Asia, lag so far behind that they seem anachronistic and backwards, uncivilized in many ways. I remember reading a few years back about riots in Jordan, because the King decreed that honor killings would be treated as murder in their court. Riots. The only thing that can change the culture is to mirror the Western model: civil disobedience and nonviolent protests. A lot of brave women were harmed in America for suffrage, but I think non of them regretted it. We can't impose our ideals on India, and police within India can't stop rape; all they can do is lock up rapists. That is an ineffective strategy, given that even if they doubled or tripled their arrests, they would still have the vast majority of rapes unreported and unpunished.


posted 3866 days ago