The year 2015 was a multi-shaded mosaic of violence, especially against women. Be it the dowry deaths and the rapes in India or the atrocities of the ISIS & Boko Haram in Syria & elsewhere, women were the target of blood & gore. SUNDAY PIONEER tells you more
Extreme terror
ISIS & Boko Haram redefined violence & terror this year with unplugged atrocities, reports PRAKRITI ROY
The year 2015 can, in some ways, be marked as the year of violence and terrorism. The list of incidents is so that it can’t be fitted in a single web page; two lists of six months’ duration each is needed. Terrorist attacks this year were mainly by two notorious organisations that have come up in the Middle-East and western Africa — ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) and Boko Haram (the Islamic jihadist group).
The ISIS, becoming huge in just over two years, has even declared the provinces of its ‘Caliphate’ - Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, libya, Algeria, Nigeria (where Boko Haram originated), Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Fifty-one planned attacks were carried out by the ISIS in 2015, including the Turkey bombing (leaving over a 100 dead), the explosion of a Russian airliner over Egypt (claiming 224 lives) and the most recent ones in Paris (leaving 130 dead) and Beirut (killing at least 43).
The modus operandi of this infamous organisation is very different. They don’t try to hide; rather they openly claim responsibility for the attacks, even making use of social media. They proclaim their aim is to create a Caliphate, adhering to their brand of Islam.
India has been affected by the ISIS by way of radicalising and recruiting Indian youth to join the war in the Middle-East. The influence in India was first seen when a young techie, Mehdi Masroor Biswas, from Bangalore was arrested on charges of spreading ISIS propaganda through a Twitter handle. A middle-class electrical engineer from West Bengal, he was working his first job at an MNC. No one could fathom that the studious boy was a propagandist for the ISIS. It was UK’s Channel 4 who unveiled his truth but in an interview he said: “I haven’t done anything wrong...I haven’t waged war against anybody. I just said stuff, people followed me...then we talked. I only knew what the IS fighters or sympathisers said in public tweets.”
Reports vary on the number of Indians who have actually joined the fighting. But confirmed reports surfaced of young men being prevented from travelling to the conflict zone and sent back to India. Reports state that at least 23 Indians joined the fighting, six of whom have died, and another 50 people are under surveillance of intelligence agencies, for their alleged ISIS leanings. Reports say that pro-ISIS elements were posting messages in regional language with the maximum number of messages posted in Tamil after English.
Earlier this year, reports surfaced that in August, 17 youths who intended to leave India to join the IS were stopped by intelligence agencies and police forces. Most of them were from Telangana, Maharashtra and Karnataka.
While India is as yet safe from the bombs of ISIS, the youth are being targeting. Also the number of ISIS recruits from India has gone up to 28 as per the latest figures.
The recently released 2015 Global Terrorism Index contains figures to shock the senses. ISIS has garnered more media attention worldwide but the report reveals that Boko Haram claimed more lives in 2014. While a total of 6,073 deaths were attributed to ISIS in 2014, a total of 6,644 deaths were caused at the hands of Boko Haram. Boko Haram has this number after 453 attacks and ISIS after 1,071 attacks, reiterating that Boko Haram is a much more dangerous group in terms of intensity of its attacks.
The group first caused an international outcry when it kidnapped more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls receiving Western education. In 2015, Boko Haram reached one-third of its death toll of the previous year in the very first week in the massacre that occurred from January 3-7 this year, in Baga, Nigeria, reportedly claiming 2,000 lives. As per the UNICEF, the conflict between the Nigerian military, civilian self-defense groups and Boko Haram has displaced 8 lakh children. Amnesty says that women and children continue to be abducted; captives are subjected to rape, torture, forced marriage and religious conversion.
To fight them, the US Government has been providing funds, training and equipment to countries dealing with the menace of Boko Haram. Their tactics seem to be more in sync with organised crime, using firearms instead of bombs. The biggest challenge in the battle against the ISIS is financial. The group has a huge influx of money, mainly from sale of oil, that helps keep the group solvent, with some estimates saying that ISIS is gaining a billion dollars per year (some even say two to three billion) and has developed ‘war economy’ with a diversified portfolio.
Rape only got worse
Post the Nirbhaya gangrape case, rape has only increased and turned more violent, reports SHAlINI SAKSENA
· Two youngsters, one a juvenile, gang-raped a woman after murdering her. The semi-naked body of the 25-year-old woman was found in North-West Delhi’s Shahbad Dairy.
· A two-and-a-half-year-old girl was raped by two men in Nangloi after being kidnapped from her home. She is struggling to survive.
· The East Delhi Police arrested three men for gang-raping a five-year-old who was alone at her home. The girl was hospitalised with severe injuries.
The year 2015 had all the shades of violence, and in extreme forms. It started with Boko Haram’s atrocities, especially on women, which shocked the world. Back home, it was the crime against women, especially minors, that made headlines. According to police data, crime against women in the Capital went up by 20 per cent as compared to 2014. There was also a 27 per cent increase in registration of rapes cases.
A total of 6,482 rape and molestation cases were registered up to October 31, 2015. The Delhi Police registered 7,124 FIRs of rape in the first eight months of 2015 of which only one case has been solved.
The Nirbhaya gangrape in December 2012 had created plenty of shock-value worldwide. One would have expected that with perpetrators behind bars, the rape graph of the Capital would come down with the police and Delhi Government’s tall promises of ensuring safety of women stand tall. Instead Delhi was tagged as the ‘rape capital’. What was even more alarming was that the city witnessed an increase in the number of rapes of girls between the age of two and 12 in the first 11 months of 2015. Of the 2,015 rape and sexual assault cases registered this year, 892 were of girls below 18.
According to Supreme Court advocate Ashok Dhamija, the reason for increased crime against women is the society’s mindset. “Whatever change that is happening for good is at a slow pace. We have to see our values, the morality that is being taught; what kind of social education we are inculcating in our boys. Also, it is a fact that there are some cases where the police don’t even lodge an FIR and if it is does chargesheet, it takes years in our courts. The Nirbhaya case garnered so much attention and nation-wide outrage; today the criminals are yet to be punished. This kind of delay sends out wrong signals to criminals who know that the system will take time to punish them and in some cases may even let them out scot-free,” Dhamija says.
Of course, a prime example of this is the juvenile in the December 2012 gangrape case who walked free on December 20, 2015, to widespread chagrin and in the absence of a law to keep juveniles involved in heinous crime at bay.
Also, rulings like the one given by the Madras High Court wherein it granted interim bail to a rapist so that he could mediate with the rape survivor is reason enough for the rise in crime against women.
According to an IndiaSpend analysis based on the last decade’s data, 2.24 million crimes against women were reported: 26 crimes against women are reported every hour, one complaint every two minutes. This, despite several stringent laws and acts being passed over the years.
“Mere passing of a Bill or introducing an Act is not enough. The truth is that ground realities have not changed. For any law to make an impact, its implementation is must. For example, giving one rapist punishment is not enough of a deterrent. At least 100 perpetrators must be severely punished on a fast track to have any impact and decrease crime against women,” Dhamija explains.
According to Dr Rajat Mitra, a Delhi-based clinical psychologist and the director of NGO Swanchetan Society for Mental Health, stringent laws do not stop crimes against women. “We were never a rule of law society and we are seeing years of accumulation of that and a steady decrease in rule of law. Hence, crime is increasing, specifically towards people who are more vulnerable,” Dr Mitra tells you.
Unfortunately, in India very few understand what rule of law means, including the police, and it is needed that the process of law enactment, administration and enforcement be accessible, fair and efficient. Justice needs to be delivered in time by competent, ethical and independent representatives - sufficient neutrals having adequate resources and perfectly reflecting their communities.
“In India, sadly this is not so. For instance, saying ‘Do you know who I amIJ’ calls for severe punishment in some countries. The law is fair and justice is meted out properly,” Mitra explains.
But it was not just rapes, kidnappings, molestations, stalking, etc. that made headlines this year, even though there was no place where women were safe — homes (incidents of incest, rape by fathers and relatives was on the rise); cabs (women continued to be molested and raped); pubs (incidents of assault were also reported from NCR); workplace and public transport. Even the world of cyber crime didn’t spare women this year. There were 13 per cent cases of outraging or blackmailing women.
A big crime that made headlines this year was the Sheena Bora murder case that came to light after three and a half years. The murder shocked the nation — a young girl murdered by her mother Indrani Mukherjea. What shocked more was that as her ex-husband Sanjeev Khanna held Sheena by the hair, Indrani strangulated her daughter herself.
Alarmingly, it’s not the first time that Indians woke up to such acts of violence by mothers. In June 2015, a six-year-old was set afire by his mother for stealing `5.
Dr Pulkit Sharma, a consultant clinical psychologist with Imago-Centre for Self says that parents are killing children because of two major changes at the psychological level: First, parents have become egoistic. Second, they are finding it hard to see that children are not their possession but individuals in their own right.