THE United Nations has set aside November 25 as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. This observance will last up to December 10 which is Human Rights Day. These 16 days of activism against gender-based violence are intended to create public awareness and to stir public action for ending violence against women and girls across the world.
In Meghalaya, several programmes were organized by different organizations and church bodies to observe this day. November 25 was chosen to commemorate the Mirabal sisters, three political activists from the Dominican Republic, who were brutally assassinated in 1960 during the Rafael Trujillo dictatorship (1930-1961). Since the many more women have been brutally assaulted and many more raped and abused. The fight to end discrimination and violence against women continues. In India more stringent laws have been passed to contain violence against women, including the Domestic Violence Act 2005. After the Nirbhaya rape case of December 2012 and following the Justice Verma Commission recommendations the CrPC clauses have been further tightened to prevent any miscarriage of justice. But despite these stringent laws, rape cases have been on the upswing. Conviction rates for rape accused remain dismal. According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) in 2011 out of 1.27 lakh rape cases facing trial, the courts pronounced verdict only on 21,489 suspects. At this rate it seems that any hope for justice by rape survivors is a distant dream.
Meghalaya is one state in India where the three major tribes practice matriliny, meaning that lineage flows from the mother’s clan line. It used to be assumed that this society would be a better place for women and that they are naturally empowered. Nothing is further from the truth. In a NSSO survey of 2009, Meghalaya reported the highest number of cases of domestic violence. The local newspapers carry news of rape of women and girl-children almost on a daily basis. So frequent are the rape crimes that the media itself has become inured and reports of rapes today are taken as a matter of routine. This is not a healthy sign. An insensitive media is the last thing we want. It is media reportage that creates empathy and compassion in readers and pushes them to form cohorts of like-minded citizens to initiate public action and to push the government and judiciary to speed up the trial of rape offenders. However, there is need to sensitize the media on the ethics and sensitivity of reporting cases of violence against women. For that media persons must be exposed to gender training where they can better understand gender concepts and the use of gender sensitive language.
