Then I returned and considered all the oppression that is done under the sun: And look! The tears of the oppressed, But they have no comforter—
On the side of their oppressors there is power, But they have no comforter – Ecclesiastes 4:1
It saddens me that in some countries, it is dangerous or even deadly to be a woman. Sex trafficking, bride burnings, infanticide, gender related crimes, poverty and oppression are the realities that girls and women face in Asia.
Women should be able to live in a society where their rights are protected and are not oppressed because of their gender. Gender discrimination is something that all women may encounter at some point in her life but in Asia, women are perpetual victims of violence, abuse and oppression.
Imagine that you are a mother and one Sunday evening you find your daughter lying naked on the front step of the house she shares with her husband and children. There is no one there to help her and no one wants to come to her so you are the only one she can call for help although you live quite a distance away. Imagine how you would feel when you see your daughter with burns on more than 80 percent of her body, crying in agony. She survives for three days, long enough to tell the police that she was doused in kerosene by her mother-in-law and set on fire by her husband–the father of her children. Then she dies…
This is what happened to Laxmi, a woman in Bangladore. She was a victim of bride burning which is a crime that accounts for the death of at least one woman every hour in India. More than 8000 women die in this horrendous way. This type of crime is also called, “dowry death”.
A dowry death is the death of a young woman in South Asian countries, primarily India, who is murdered or driven to suicide by her husband. This results from the husband continually attempting to extract more dowry from the bride or her family. Bride burning is just one form of dowry death. Others include acid throwing and Eve teasing. Because dowry typically depends on class or socioeconomic status, women are often subjected to the dowry pressures of their future husband or his relatives.
Laxmi was only 28 years old when she died. Hers was not an arranged marriage. It was a love marriage and she came from higher caste than her husband, Majunath. He became increasingly drunk and was unable to find regular work because most of the money Laxmi earned was spent on liquor. Pressured by her in-laws to provide, Laxmi turned to her mother for financial support. Laxmi was harassed and accused of adultery by her in-laws and beaten by her husband. It turned out that it was her mother-in-law who compelled her son to set his wife on fire. Majunath ended up dying because he suffered from burns when Laxmi hugged him in a desperate attempt to put the flames out. So, their two children became orphans. An arrest warrant was issued for Laxmi’s mother-in-law but she has disappeared.
Trafficking of minor girls – the second-most prevalent trafficking crime – surged 14 times over the last decade and increased 65% in 2014, according to new data released by the National Crime Records Bureau.
Girls and women are the main targets of immoral trafficking in India, making up 76% of human trafficking cases nationwide over a decade, reveal NCRB data.
Other cases registered under human trafficking over the last decade include selling girls for prostitution, importing girls from a foreign country and buying girls for prostitution.
Sexual exploitation of women and children for commercial purposes takes place in various forms including brothel-based prostitution, sex-tourism, and pornography.
As many as 8,099 people were reported to be trafficked across India in 2014.
In the article, Silent Slaves: Stories of Human Trafficking in India, I read about a 15 year old girl who was in a New Delhi hospital. She was frail, her face and head were bandaged. A bruised black and blue eye and swollen lips were visible. She had burn marks and scabs on her neck and down her whole body and one of her ears was disfigured. She had a wound on her skull which was rotting and filled with maggots. This caused a stench. She was in this horrific condition because of her employer who beat her everyday with a broom and a stool. Many times the woman would put a hot pan on the girl’s body and burn her skin. The skin on her skull started to peel because she was repeatedly burned in that same spot.
How could one human being treat another like this? Sadly, this teen’s case is not an isolated one. Thousands of girls like her are trafficked every year from remote villages to large cities and sold as domestic workers. Many of them are abused or sexually exploited.
Extreme poverty, lack of education and employment, and poor implementation of the government’s minimum wage system in rural India make girls more vulnerable to being trafficked. The 2013 Global Slavery Index, published by the Australia-based Walk Free Foundation, an organization that works to end modern slavery, found that almost half of the 30 million “modern slaves” in the world are from India.
The article describes how domestic worker placement agencies operate and how they are flourishing at the expense of minor and illiterate girls. Read more.
Due to the fact that girls are seen as an economic burden and boys a source of income, girl babies have been aborted and murdered – female infanticide or Gendercide – in their millions in India. The Lancet estimates that 500,000 female fetuses are aborted in India every year. As a result according to the BBC, “an estimated 25-50 million women in India are ‘missing’, if you compare the proportion of women in the population with other countries.” Staggeringly, Unicef believes 10 million girls, were killed by their parents in the last thirty years.
Killing babies because they are girls really hits close to home. As a woman, I can’t imagine my parents ending my life because I was born a girl instead of a boy. I always remember my mother telling me that she had a dream of how I would look before I was born. My father used to take me kite flying. My parents loved my two sisters and me. I know fathers who have only daughters and no sons but they are ecstatic. They adore their girls. This is not the case for the girls in India, however. Some are aborted or killed after they are born, others are neglected or abandoned.
In India a girl is an expensive burden because when she marries, her family is expected to pay a sum of money to the groom’s family regardless of whether or not they can afford it. It’s an expense they don’t want to deal with. So, when a girl is born, there is no joy. There is no celebration, only disappointment and anxiety. In some cases, there is rage–rage of the husband toward the wife and the baby girl. The wife is blamed for the gender of the baby and the girl, if she survives, is constantly reminded that she is a mistake–she should have been a boy.
Bride burnings, sex trafficking and girl infanticide are just some of the hardships that women and girls face in Asia. The documentary film, “Veil of Tears” takes you on a harrowing journey into their lives. Their stories may make us squirm but instead of shutting them out, we ought to raise awareness and do what we can to help. Let us be the voice of hope for the oppressed.
Find out more information at this link: http://veiloftearsmovie.com/take-action/
And the LORD shall help them, and deliver them: he shall deliver them from the wicked, and save them, because they trust in him – Psalm 37:40
Sources: Gospel for Asia; The Sidney Morning Herald; Wikipedia; Scroll In; Women’s Media Center; Counterpunch
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