Media blood-thirst and the silence of the church

Media Blood-thirst and the silence of the Church

John Dayal

In one of the more traumatic recent weeks in India, the media, electronic and print, exposed their bigotry and their blood thirst in ample measure. The issues were the tragic death in Ireland of an Indian dentist, Savita of Karnataka State, of septicemia following a miscarriage, and the execution by hanging of Ajmal Qasab, a 25 year old Pakistani citizen who was part of a terrorist commando group that killed over 160 persons in Mumbai four years ago. Both issues were also marked by a deafening silence from the official church in the country.

A response in the first case could have pre-empted a very focused attack on the Catholic social teachings, and the second would have brought the Church in consonance with the very vast civil society that opposed the ghoulish ranting in the media.

There is no doubt but that these are very polarizing issues in India where hyper nationalism and identity have become critically important in the face of a economic slowdown at home, and a perceived isolation abroad. It does not help that President Obama in his re-election rhetoric repeatedly called for an end to outsourcing services to India, whose economy has become increasingly dependent on remittances from the labour in the Gulf region, the engineers in northern America and Europe, and the “call centers” in metropolitan cities, and even in some small towns.

But the church, apart from affirming its continuing faith in its own doctrine and social teachings, also has to show that it is a part of that component of rational civil society which keeps the lunatics, the extremists and the fringe elements at bay, and effectively prevents them from usurping public space in the media and the political discourse.  Above all, it would show that the church has the courage to go against the grain, to oppose what it perceives to be wrong.

In the case of Savita’s tragic death in a Galloway hospital, India’s pro-choice lobby made common cause with its western sister groups demanding that India intervene to force Ireland to change its “Catholic” laws on abortion which had led to the medical “murder”. The media, specially television, led a hysteric propaganda tsunami pillorying the church. It did not help that the few Catholics invited to participate in the studio debates assumed positions of wounded faith and emerged as ogres of a monstrous religion.

The hanging of the Pakistani terrorist was “celebrated” in India, even in some official circles, as a victory of our judicial system, as a “closure” for the victims, and in the crude language of the Home Minister of the state of Maharashtra,  “justice” for the victims. Sections of the media even have us believe it was a victory over Pakistan.

The community must be clear on the church’s social teachings on the death penalty and abortion. 

In a position paper in 2007 during the World Congress Against the Death Penalty in Paris, the Vatican said that the death penalty "is not only a refusal of the right to life, but it also is an affront to human dignity." Governments have an obligation to protect their citizens, "today it truly is difficult to justify" using capital punishment difficult when other means of protection, such as life in prison, are possible.  It carries numerous risks, including the danger of punishing innocent people, contributes to a "culture of violence" and shows "a contempt for the Gospel teaching on forgiveness."

The statement on the Irish issue touching on sanctioning abortion when the life of the mother is in danger came too late, and diluted under the umbrella of the National United Christian Forum, which includes mainline Protestant denominations as well as the Catholic Bishops Conference. A statement at the beginning of the controversy would have put the church in a warmer light. But it was a good and tempered statement and clearly set out the social teachings of the church in which primacy is for a respect of life as a gift from God, which is not for man to tamper with, just to pander to some exigency of the day. As important, the statement cautioned against bowing to peer pressure, social trends or lobbies with a vested interest.

The silence in recent decades on issues of human dignity, development and gender has rapidly marginalised the mainline Church, specially the Catholic Church. Jesuit scholars have been pioneers in documenting displacement and the ecological havoc from big dams and nuclear plants. The “commissions” of the CBCI dealing with Justice, peace and development have attended workshops and tried to educate bishops and protests. Similarly, the Indian Catholic Church has been among the first in organized religion to come out with an official Gender Policy, and an Education code.  Not only are both these revolutionary documents not contributed to the national discourse, they are not even fully known within the church. It needs hardly worth repeating that the average parish priest and the Layperson do not have a clue of the church’s position on these issues.

Was the church frightened it would be pilloried as being anti national if it spoke its mind on the issue of capital punishment in general and the hanging of Qasab in particular, that it would be misunderstood, or that there would some kind of violent reaction against it, specially in hinterland areas where it is already a victim of violent persecution? If this were so, it is high time the church came out of its fear complex, and showed the maturity of standing in the face of obscene and extremist nationalism. This will earn it the respect of the better elements in the country. The church needs realize that while it ought not be as arrogant as to presume it is the repository of all that is moral, its interventions are important in shaping the national social, political and development discourse as it stands up for all that is true and honorable and nurturing for the common people of the country whose voice is carried but feebly in forums that matter.

Human trafficking gangs evolve some new and sickening tricks

Human Trafficking – three short stories and a brief interview

JOHN DAYAL

The horror of contemporary Human Trafficking in India

JOHN DAYAL

On issues of human tricking, specially where the victims are women and the girl child, it does not take very many words to bring out the stark horror of the situation as it exists in India at present.

First, three horror stories told me recently by national and international activists working in India on this subject. Each one is true, I am assured.

STORY 1 – Nagpur, Maharashtra:

A baby girl was found abandoned near a garbage heap. She was picked up by some people and brought to a woman, apparently a widow, and in need of money.  She was promised a handsome monthly allowance and asked to take care of the baby as if it were her own daughter, with enough to pay for her food, education and clothing.  In fifteen years, the little girl grew with the woman, believing her to be the mother. The widow too developed a strong bond with the girl. The girl was a student of class X when a man came to the woman, told her that her “duties” with regard to the child were over, handed her some money and took the girl away. The story came to light when anti-trafficking activists subsequently rescued the girl.

STORY 2 – Mumbai, Maharashtra:

After a rescue mission, a minor girl was being counseled by the group, which had done the rescue. The woman objected when the counselors addressed her as a female, insisting that “she” was a man. Non-plussed at first, the counselor persisted, asking why the woman did not want to be addressed as one. The person narrated his/her story. “I was a youth living in a Mumbai suburb, commuting daily to work in the city. One day, in the local train, a fellow passenger gave me something to eat. I took it and lost consciousness. When I woke up, I was in a luxurious hospital suite, but in great pain. I discovered I had been castrated, and now had a vagina.” Apparently a cosmetic surgeon had done the complicated surgery to create an artificial vagina. The victim was kept in the hospital for several weeks while the wounds healed. He was given hormone injections and began to develop breasts and other female characteristics. After a couple of months of stay in the hospital, he was discharged – now looking like a woman. He was subsequently passed onto a Mumbai brothel owner where he was forced to entertain clients like other inmates, and did so till he was rescued. The Child Welfare Committee before whom this youth, legally still a minor, was produced got extensive tests done which confirmed that “she” was a male. This remains the most bizarre case of human trafficking the rescue group has ever come across.

STORY 3 – also from Maharashtra

Minor girls rescued from brothels are usually put in the custody of government homes. The custody of the girls in the government homes meant for minors ends the day, the girl turn 18. On that day, the girl is set free from the “protection” of the shelter homes. Often the girls don’t have a home to go to and are clueless about how to proceed once they are released. Often traffickers are in touch with the clerical staff of the government homes and know exactly when a particular girl is going to be turn 18 and will be released from the shelter home. On the appointed day, the trafficker’s agent is waiting outside the gates of the shelter home in a car ready to pick up the homeless and clueless girl. The girl is picked up in a car, brought to a brothel readied to receive her and soon she is reintroduced into trafficking, now as an adult.

Ruchira Gupta, an internationally acclaimed and Delhi-based activist working on issues of human trafficking and the sex “business” says of the 20 million enslaved people in the world, about a million are trafficked into prostitution, cheap labour, organ trade, domestic servitude, child marriage, child soldiers and bonded labour every year. Seventy per cent of these are women and children. In India, the last official figure is from the Central Bureau of Investigation is from 2009, says more than 3 million women and girls were trapped in prostitution, of which 1.4 million were girls. About two hundred thousand were being trafficked additionally every year.

The following are excerpts from an interview Indian Currents had with her recently.

Question:  is trafficking just a quotient of poverty. Are parents involved?

Trafficking is a demand driven Industry. It is formed of the buyer (end user), the business (pimp, recruiter, transporter etc.) and the Bought (prostituted child, bonded slave). Because there is a demand for using and abusing little girls and women, traffickers simply go into poor and isolated villages, in “low caste” Dalit and Tribal communities, and prey upon the destitution and vulnerability of such poor people by offering a job in the big city or the false promise of marriage. In the big cities brothel managers force mothers who enter their late twenties to replace themselves with their daughters as they are unable to attract customers.

Question: With development, is it increasing or is there a palpable decrease:

It is increasing because the demand to buy human beings for cheap labour or exploitative sex is increasing, and the trafficking rings as well as the sex industry are getting more increased. On top of that foundations like the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation have entrenched the sex industry further by hiring pimps and brothel managers as peer educators to distribute condoms, creating a false notion of "ethical" demand that it is all right to but sex if one uses a condom. They even funded a programme where the social marketing campaign said, " It does not matter which sex worker you chose, chose the right condom."

The rise in the use of pornography is also fuelling the demand as twelve year old boys surfing the net are suddenly invited by a cartoon character to play a game with her and lo and behold a few clicks later he watches a woman being penetrated from every part of her body, crying and saying give me more. He begins to believe that sex is connected with violence ad domination and wants that kind of sex!

Question: Have rescue agencies and NGOs, or for that matter police, made a dent?

In terms of actual human beings, NGOs have made a dent in preventing the trafficking of people in some of the pockets they work, but very little has been done to make a dent in the trafficking industry. Hardly any traffickers and certainly know end users, who are basically slave owners are ever arrested, prosecuted or convicted. “Crime in India” statistics show that more women are arrested under the Indian law than men!

Question:  Can this be prevented at all?

Yes, it is very preventable. If we see trafficking as a demand and supply problem, Demand being formed of people who have choices with impunity - the buyers and the business and supply being formed of people with lack and choices - marginalized girls and women, isolated and poor low caste people, etc. If the government tackles demand and supply simultaneously- tackle demand by holding legally accountable people who enslave others, buy them and sell to deter their choice and at the same time invest more in marginalized girls and women and caste communities vulnerable to trafficking to increase their choices, trafficking can be dismantled.

Sweden, Norway, Iceland have all changed their laws to make the purchase of sex illegal, not the selling of sex. They have shifted the blame from the victim to the perpetrator and they have managed to reduce trafficking in their country.

The problem can be tackled very easily if we value our girls ad women more and hold those who abuse them accountable. Right now neither the police nor the government wants to do anything about it.

Recently, an anti-trafficking activist from the low-cast Nat community, Md Kalam, who had been providing information against traffickers to my NGO, Apne Aap was falsely arrested by a corrupt police official Shivdeep Lande. The police officer has not been punished and anti-trafficking activists working for my NGO in Bihar are absolutely terrorised. Kalam is out on bail but now traffickers know that the police are on their side, so keep attacking our staff with impunity!

Ruchira Gupta NGO website is www.apneaap.org .

Governments mum on gang rape of Dalit girls in Kandhamal, Orissa

To The Chairperson

National Commission for Children

Government of India, New Delhi

Dear Dr Shantha Sinha

This is to request you to kindly look into the plight of a young Christian girl who was gang raped in Kandhamal, Orissa and then subjected to abuse by the state child right and police authorities [women themselves]

Thank you

John Dayal

Member, national Integration Council

Government of India

KANDHAMAL REPORT NOVEMBER 2012

Gang-rapes in Kandhamal, and the apathy of government agencies towards the young victims

JOHN DAYAL

The gang rape of two Christian girls in Kandhamal, both 13 years old, and the murder of one of them subsequently during the Dussehara festival has created not just panic in their villages, but a sense of disgust among activists for the obnoxious attitude of police and the State Child Right Commission.

It was possible to meet the surviving victim because she is now with her parents who now work as casual labour in Bhubaneswar.

The first one, a class VII student of Dadamaha, had gone to witness a 'yatra'(play) at nearby Simanbadi village on Thursday night when the youths sexually assaulted her. Sub-divisional police officer (SDPO), Baliguda, Arjun Barik said the girl apparently attempted to raise an alarm, she was tied to a tree and strangulated to death with her scarf. The body was found from the roadside near Masanipada village 26 October.

An autopsy was conducted on the body at Daringbadi public health centre and a case was registered on the basis of an FIR lodged by her father. There have been no arrests so far.

The second girl, a  resident of  Ritangia village in Tiangia block, was also 13-year old, and a student of class VIII in a local school. Her father is now a security guard in Bhubaneswar, and the girl lives with relatives to continue her studies. On 27^th October, she went to see the Dussehara festivities, which attract a large crowd. On the way home, she was abducted by six men, taken the nearby forest, stripped naked and raped by all six of them. She collapsed.

She regained consciousness after one of the rapists sprinkled water on her face. One of them put a shirt on her and brought her close to the village. She was found in the marketplace in the morning, and taken to her aunt’s house.

Initially the local police did not help at all. She was brought to Bhubaneswar and taken to the offices of the State Commission for Child Rights. This is where she was subjected to mental torture by those designated to help children in distress. The  chairperson was rude and crude, said this was a police matter and that she could not do anything even if she believed the story of the girl.

In the all-woman Police Station set up for registering crimes against women in an environment friendly to the victims, the office on charge was absent. When Inspector Itti Das came to the office at last, she too was rude, and even more crude. According to the woman social worker who had accompanied the victim to the police station, the woman inspector said “you would not be alive if you had been gang-raped”. The implication was that  the girl was covering up, had gone with the rapists of her own accord.

The police filed a report at last, and referred the report to the Raikia police station in Kandhamal. The victim was finally given a medical examination on 3^rd November, a full week after her  traumatic experience. The medical report  has not been given to the police yet.

Activists who ar now counseling the girl, who was still in a state of shock when we met her, are aghast at the manner in which the child right chief, a government appointee, and the woman police officer behaved with the girl, who is no more than a child, small and in distress.

Surprisingly, the local and state media have chosen not to investigate this story. The two gang rapes merited a passing couple of paragraphs.