Women anguish over discrimination and stigma
Source: Hueiyen News Service / Newmai News Network
Imphal, April 25 2011:
Women victims who have been at the receiving end of conflict situation in the State of Manipur congregated today to voice their anguish over discrimination and stigma at a One-day capacity building on Human Rights, organized by Eikhoigi Club with support from Conflict Women Forum and sponsored by Women Action for Development (WAD) .
Secretary General of WAD Sobita rued that the rate of crime against women has witnessed a comparative jump this year from last year.
While the average per day crime rate against women was recorded at somewhere between 2 to 3 last year, the figure from January to March this year has already touched 48, she said.
The advocacy meeting today highlighted the plights of women of the State ranging from outright discrimination to threat and assault and from rape and murder to kidnapping, abandonment and suicide.
According to Sobita, there has been a total complaint of 48 which have been recorded till March this year: rape-4, rape and murder-1, murder-2, attempt to murder-3, suicide-5, missing-13, molestation-6, abandonment-2, divorce-6, assault-5, and kidnapping-1 .
Most of the victims today were members of Conflict Women' Forum (CWF) who have lost their husbands to the fake encounters by security forces in the State.
As they put it, they have come together to fight the stigma attached to victims of conflict situations perpetuated by their families and general public.
The Forum has membership strength of 80 women with more expected to join in the coming days.
The threat to women is life-long, she said, adding that from the moment they are conceived to the day they die, girl child are subjected to filthy discrimination, from education to food they are being discriminated upon by male dominated familial and political systems.
They are also being abandoned recklessly by their husbands after marriage, then go on and remarry another woman without any qualm.
In many cases, the husbands who have two wives subject the first wife to gross torture, she said.
Then she went on to say that another telling problem in our society today is pre-marital sexual harassment of young girls.
Young girls are lulled by their lovers by promising them the moon while simply looking at her as instrument of instant sexual pleasure.
This has become a social problem in the sense that it helped in the rapid transmission of HIV/AIDS with used to be the preserved of intravenous drug users before, she said.
"We need to be united in the fight against crime against women.
Women must support other women when such crime happens before their eyes and not be complacent because even police have showed their helplessness on women issue.
Especially the difference between Meitei and tribal women must cease at once for the interest of women in general," she said.
She then drew the attention of the gathering saying that the public must not don the garb of law enforcer by subjecting wrongdoers to public ire, and added that such practices reflects the failure of the police force.
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