Tag Archives: South Asia

Maldives Political Crisis and Human Rights Implications

August 8, 2010 at 8:52 PM

Maldives cabinet holding an underwater cabinet meeting to highlight climate change's risk to the country.

Maldives is the only country I know where the leader is a former Amnesty International Prisoner of Conscience.  I was planning on using that fact to write how Maldives was a model of how a country could transition from one that was strewn with human rights abuses to one that upholds human rights and the rule of law.  Well…the situation in the country is not as rosy as I was hoping.  In fact, its political leaders will need to use a lot of deftness to avoid bloodshed.

SEE THE REST OF THIS POST

Men Getting Away with Rape as an Everyday Occurrence in South Asia

July 31, 2010 at 5:14 PM

Throughout South Asia, women face rape at the hands of men who will almost certainly get away with it.  Rafia Zakaria, a columnist for Ms Magazine writes of one case in particular (worth clicking to read the whole article):

It is in this fraught atmosphere of political intrigue and crushing human need that Magdalene Ashraf worked as a nurse trainee. A member of the Catholic religious minority in Pakistan, 23-year-old Ashraf was receiving nursing training with the hope of obtaining a permanent job. She was on duty July 13 when a fellow nursing student, Sajida Fatima, approached her with a lead on a job. According to a statement given by Ashraf to the police, Fatima asked her to accompany her to Mess 96, a housing area for doctors, under the pretext of meeting two doctors who could help her with her career. It was outside this apartment complex that Ashraf was found hours later, lying face down and bleeding, her clothes torn and her body bruised.

She was treated for subdural hemorrhage–bleeding under the skull–and remained unconscious for two days. When she finally regained consciousness and was able to give a statement, she described the events leading up to her gang rape. When she and her friend reached the apartment, Dr. Abdul Jabbar Memon, a medical legal officer at the hospital, was present along with the two other doctors. Ashraf’s friend soon disappeared, leaving her with the three doctors, who then proceeded to brutally rape her. Witnesses reported seeing her being tossed from the balcony apartment onto the street.

The aftermath of Ashraf’s harrowing ordeal has been shocking. First, even as fellow trainee nurses protested against the rape and harassment of nurse trainees by doctors, the police made few efforts to register a report, begin an investigation or apprehend two of the accused men who had fled the scene. The room where the rape took place was not sealed as a crime scene for days. Jabar, the chief culprit, was arrested, but rape charges weren’t added to the police report until after the media began reporting on the case.

But this lack of justice for the victims of rape is not something that happens only in Pakistan.  Women in India and Bangladesh also face a criminal justice system stacked against them.  For example, Dalit women in India who are raped face a judicial system that weighs against he poor, unless it becomes a story in the media.  Let’s hope that the perpetrators of this rape will receive the punishment that they deserve for destroying the life of Magdalene Ashraf.