If the headline of this news article would be the only thing showing up, then a lot of people around the world would've assumed that this news article must've been talking about a country where there's Shariah (Islamic law) & where husbands can have up to 4 wives & Islam rules the land etc. All thanks to Western media.
But this news story, although still quite sad & unfortunate, is of the Central American countries where Christianity rules the land. As per the article, top 3 countries in the world where women are most in danger are El Salvador, Jamaica, & Guatemala, & in these countries, Christianity is 80%, 72%, & 87%, respectively.
Now, someone would say, what religion has to do with abusing women. And they would be correct. Religion has nothing to do with how women are treated in the general public. Heck, all major religions pretty much preach the same ideals to run a peaceful & respectful society. But, then, the Western media force feeds the public around the world that Islam teaches its male followers to abuse women.
No, abusing women has nothing to do with Islam or Christianity or Judaism or Hinduism or any other religion for that matter.
Abuse of women is correlated with the illiteracy, lack of knowledge, special circumstances, & cultural aspects of a society. If a woman is abused in India, that's nothing to do with Hinduism or Islam, but it has to do with how the males are raised to think of women as a sub-species of some sort, or sexual objects, & hence treat them as such. Special circumstance would be as the article suggests that Guatemalan society suffered a 3-decade long war in which men were trained to abuse women. Those men were never re-trained to live in the post-war society as normal humans & hence they abused their own family women. American soldiers went & going through the same thing where they are suffering from PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) & hence their loved ones are the ones who suffer the most as a result.
Blaming a specific religion for violence against women does nothing to help a society or women. It actually furthers that violent behaviour & isolate those women in need because religion becomes a target. As we can see, for instance, that clothing choices of Muslim women has become the topic du jour in the Western world of North America & Europe. Banning head scarves won't help any Muslim woman but further isolate that woman, where she might be abused even further, in silence.
Teaching women their value in society & teaching men how women are their equal partners help a society move forward. Respect & gender equality helps a society build a better future. By the way, please keep in mind here that I am not talking about Western feminism but what Islam teaches about gender equality. Western feminism is nothing to do with gender equality. That's taking the balance out of the society & swinging the pendulum way out towards the other end (woman's end) & punish all men in the process.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Every year an estimated 66,000 women are murdered worldwide. One of the countries with the highest rate of violence against women is Guatemala - so why is it such a dangerous place to be female?
"We are being killed by our fathers, brothers, stepfathers… the very people who are supposed to care for us," says Rebeca Lane, a feminist rapper in Guatemala City.
"Most of us have to live violence in silence so when someone hits us or screams at us we just close our eyes and let go. We have to join other women and talk about it so we know this is not OK, this is not normal."
When Lane was 15, she got involved with an older man who was not only controlling, but also physically & sexually abusive. "He knew what he was doing. He isolated me from my family and friends. I know what it is to live with violence from an early age," she says. The relationship lasted for 3 years.
Now she uses her music to campaign for women's rights. "Poetry saved my life. When I started to write it was vital to my recovery," she says. Her best-known song, Mujer Lunar - Lunar Woman - is a lyrical call for respect for women's bodies, lives & independence.
...
...
Guatemala has the third highest femicide rate in the world (after El Salvador & Jamaica) - between 2007 & 2012 there were 9.1 murders for every 100,000 women according to the National Guatemalan Police. And last year 846 women were killed in a population of little more than 15 million, says the State Prosecutors Office.
It seems the reason for this lies in the country's brutal past. Lane's main inspiration as a feminist activist is the aunt after whom she is named. She never met her father's sister, but her story helps draw a direct line between the social instability of today & Guatemala's 36-year civil war.
Lane's aunt disappeared in 1981 after she joined left-wing guerrillas fighting the military government. Around the time Lane's aunt died, news began to filter out of the rape, torture & murder of tens of thousands of women & girls - mostly from indigenous Mayan communities accused of supporting the insurgents.
More than a decade later, a UN-sponsored report said this abuse had been generalised & systematic - it estimated that 25% or 50,000 of the victims of Guatemala's war were women.
Sexual violence was "at very high levels and used as a tool of war", says Helen Mack, of the Myrna Mack Foundation. "The stereotype was that women were used for sex and seen as an object, to serve families, and this continues today."
Mack's sister, Myrna - after whom the human rights organisation is named - died after she was stabbed in the street by a military death squad in 1990. Myrna had uncovered the extent of the physical & sexual violence the army had used against Mayan communities.
During the conflict, an army of around 40,000 men & a civilian defence force of approximately one million were trained to commit acts of violence against women. When the war ended & these men returned home, they got no help in readjusting.
Mack believes they redirected their aggression towards their wives, mothers & girlfriends - a culture of violence towards women & an expectation of impunity, which still persists today, developed.
...
...
In Mack's experience, it is common for women to be threatened in this way or even killed by their attackers. Violence against women is still considered a domestic matter, she says, despite new laws against femicide & other forms of violence against women. In 2008 Guatemala became the first country to officially recognise femicide - the murder of a woman because of her gender - as a crime.
"The difference in Guatemala between the murder of a woman and of a man is that the woman is made to suffer before death, she is raped, mutilated and beaten," says the country's Attorney General Thelma Aldana.
Aldana is trying to change attitudes towards victims who are often blamed for the abuse they receive. "A few years ago the police and forensic investigators would arrive on a crime scene and say, "Look how she is dressed - that is why they killed her [or] she was coming out of a disco at 1am - she was asking for it."
...
...
"The justice system can do a lot to change culture," she says.
"We asked women to come forward and break the silence. Femicide and other forms of violence against women are now the crimes that are most reported in the country, with an average of 56,000 reports a year - this includes rape, sexual violence, physical and economic violence and murder."
There are now femicide tribunals in 11 of the country's 22 departments or provinces where the judges & police officers receive gender crime training.
...
...
No comments:
Post a Comment