Alternatives International

Gay Hate Over Gay Pride

Bipasha Sultana — 2013-10-02T00:23:04Z

The various global movements that have been sparked in defense of LGBTI rights during the past century can be charted according to a series of victories, including increasing decriminalization of same-sex relations and the slow but steady legalization of gay marriage.

While the universal recognition of LGBTI rights remains an ideal, the most salient and powerful tools that are impeding its progress are those used by a nation's judiciary system; namely through the discriminatory laws, bills and legislations that purport to protect traditional family values. For a society's laws do not merely reflect its values – it regulates them.

The most recent of such endeavors includes Uganda's Bill 18, also known as the “The Anti-Homosexuality Bill” which criminalizes same-sex relations and threatens life imprisonment for committing a homosexual act and suggests the death penalty for aggravated homosexual acts. Initially proposed in parliament in 2009 and 2012, the bill re-surfaced for consideration this February and is seen by many as making an explicit reference to homosexuality in response to an otherwise vague law that criminalizes “unnatural [sexual] offences”.

The bill would further encourage suspecting individuals to report those believed to be gay and would also abolish LGBTI organizations in Uganda.

Notwithstanding the bill's implications for sexual minorities, many Ugandans are skeptical of its ostensible purpose as a means to protect traditional family values, while they believe the bill functions instead as a tool that guarantees to become a “popularity booster”.

Transparency International lists Uganda as the 17th most corrupt nation in the world and the second most corrupt in East Africa where these ranks reveal the public's cynical attitude towards politicians, judges and the police.

Considering the mounting internal and external criticism of Uganda's corrupt government, it's no surprise that parties and politicians tainted with a bad reputation should wish to reinvigorate their images by tapping into traditional sentiments and values and manipulating them into the formation of a bill that promises to protect traditional values. In other words, Uganda is already an LGBTI un-friendly nation, but the passing of bill 18 would promote – or rather, legalize – active hostility and discrimination towards sexual minorities.

At another corner of the globe, Russia is receiving considerable flak from the international community for its recent attempt at stifling public expression of LGBTI content. This June, Russian parliament has drafted a legislation that imposes a fine for “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations to minors”.

Since 2006, it was originally introduced as a regional law across 10 separate regions in Russia, but it has now culminated to a federal law and it validates the nationwide banning of LGBTI advocate groups and pride parades.

As article 6.21 of the Code of the Russian Federation on Administrative Offenses proclaims:

“Propaganda is the act of distributing information among minors that 1) is aimed at the creating nontraditional sexual attitudes, 2) makes nontraditional sexual relations attractive, 3) equates the social value of traditional and nontraditional sexual relations, or 4) creates an interest in nontraditional sexual relations.”

The article ambiguously suggests that the ideal of traditional sexual relations is at risk of being infiltrated by “devious” influences, without elaborating on what these traditional relations are and who they include. The vague wording of articles such as these and bill 18, however, is intentional and strategic. As the Russian and Ugandan governments define public support of LGBTI rights as propaganda with a licentious agenda, they are in effect, attempting to position themselves as heroic forces fighting the evil influence of nontraditional sexuality.

As long as sexual identity is understood in dichotomic terms, heterosexuality is aligned with tradition while non-heterosexuality is seen as its threatening opponent. It is also worth noting that public discourses on non-heteronormative sexuality is at its preliminary stage in most conservative societies. Thus, such a simplistic binary of “good” and “bad” sexual identity is conveniently implanted in public discourse with the aim of reinforcing the need to defend the status quo of traditional values. In a state's attempt at regulating discourse surrounding sexual identity, it ultimately strives to maintain the status quo of its own governance.

As any society experiences the ebb and flow of social, political and economic change, traditional values are held to be the only stabilizing force that glue a nation together. In light of such desire for political and economic change from the Ugandan and Russian peoples, it is convenient for their governments to wage a battle against their sexual minorities to display themselves as upholders of that which is good and stable.

It is telling that the proposition of these laws is coming into effect at a time when their respective governments are bearing the brunt of bad publicity. What better way to revive national solidarity than by arousing the traditional sentiments of an already disgruntled people, and distracting them from the real issues that are plaguing their nation?

How then, do we come to explain such instances of regression when the world is undergoing a tide of victories for LGBTI rights? Perhaps they should not be viewed as regressions after all, but as necessary obstacles; obstacles that would force marginalized communities such as the LGBTI to emerge out of the fringes of their societies and find a platform within the mainstream to voice their fundamental right to live and not merely exist.

Exploring the Responsibility of Our Privilege: On Independent Filmmaking, Ecological Crisis and Human Extinction with Filmmaker Bérangère Maïa N. Parizeau

Bipasha Sultana — 2013-10-02T00:22:27Z

Environmental catastrophes are scattered across the globe. As they vary in source, scale and impact and are sprouting at an unprecedented frequency, the contentious notion of climate catastrophe is increasingly becoming a palpable reality.

What may be preventing many of us from grasping the severity of environmental disasters could be a lack of foresight for the distant future – a future in which the long-term damage of such disasters will be manifested not only in the deteriorating health of our planet, but of our specie as well as.

The very idea that humanity's near future might be plagued by extinction is one that is difficult to apprehend, where the topic of human extinction is often relegated to the realms of sci-fi fantasy and scientific theory and its possibility is delayed, in our imaginations, for another odd million years. Some, however, such as independent director-producer Bérangère Maïa Natasha Parizeau, view human extinction instead as a looming probability and one that urgently needs to be made transparent to the greater public.

It is the question of this probability that has fueled Parizeau's most recent project, a still-in-progress short documentary titled “Tree Spirit” in which she interviews renown linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky on the planet's current state of environmental crisis.

A native Montrealer, Parizeau completed her Masters in Film & Video at California College of the Arts in San Francisco and is currently pursuing her Masters in Arts in Asian Pacific Policy Studies at UBC in Vancouver. As Parizeau's educational background combines her artistic core with her passion for environmental policy, law and social justice, “Tree Spirit” equally encompasses the separate spheres of experimental art, environmental policy and political activism. As I sat down with her to discuss the making of “Tree Spirit”, she spoke of the inspirations, challenges and ambitions that surround the short documentary.

What motivated you to produce Tree Spirit?

I was taking a political analysis class at UBC, and I was exploring a bit more in-depth Canadian environmental politics and started questioning the whole issue of the keystone pipeline. I was trying to understand what was going on and how serious the issue was. I wanted to understand what the political responses would be that would be ideal for people like me. I'm a student, but I represent Canadians, I represent normal Canadians – where some know more and some know less.

So I emailed a few different people and one of those people was Noam Chomsky.

The reason that I emailed him was because I watched a video online by Al-Jazeera, it's called the “Responsibility of Privilege” and it's an interview with professor Chomsky. In this interview [Chomsky] talked about two different things that inspired me. He said that he received about 15 letters and emails a day asking him to do something with him –to collaborate on a project, and he said that he reads everything but he's unable to collaborate with everyone, and I thought ‘oh that's great, there is a chance of him responding to my message'. So I decided to contact him.

Secondly, in the interview he talked about the extinction of the human specie. It was the first time that I heard Professor Chomsky say that but it was the third time in the span of six months that I had stumbled on a scholar, political activist or organization who was mentioning just that.

Why do you think Chomsky responded to your request for a collaborative project?

I think he was interested in my project because he saw passion and a real concern for the environment. I hope to participate in solutions to help the planet get out of the serious mess we are in ecologically. And I think that transpired in my email.

In your video preview, you mention interviewing Chomsky to discuss global environmental issues. Considering your deep-seated concern for the environment, how might these discussions transpire into your future artistic endeavors?

It's more than environmental issues, it's to look at the environmental context and the relationship between politics, economy , ecology and sustainability. And what I would like to do in the near future is direct a few short politico-artistic documentaries, which I can later transform into a feature film from all the different people I would interview. For example there is Vandana Shiva who talks about a global bio-diversity coalition and she is the director of a seed-saving organization in India called Nayanda. Then there's Chris Hedges who explains that we are at a point in history where we need to consider arrest as part of peaceful protest against the oligarchic state. And the Dalai Lama who views women as potential highly compassionate world leaders.

You explore the possibility of human extinction by suggesting that it is closer to reality than we ever could have imagined. What led you to this conclusion?

I went into the law library at UBC and I just happened to find this book that changed my life, it's called “Property Rights and Sustainability The Evolution of Property Rights to Meet Ecological Challenges” and it's edited by David Grinlinton and Prue Taylor. It's a law book that contains articles that are all about ecological sustainability and the issue of sustainability in regards to law. I read that according to the United Nations millennium eco-system assisted report 2005 – and there's nothing more official than that – the cumulative impact of people on the earth's biosphere is jeopardizing the possibility of future generations to sustain themselves.

Then I saw David Suzuki on “Democracy Now” in an interview, and he mentioned Sir Martin Rees. Sir Martin Rees is the royal astronomer and one of Britain's most important scientists. When he was interviewed on BBC and was asked “what were the chances that humans would still be around in one hundred years” his astonishing answer was “50 percent”. When David Suzuki mentioned that, he said: “Surely we should be in crisis mode!”

Then when I listened to the Noam Chomsky interview on Al-Jazeera, who talks about the destruction of the species not being a joke, I thought “this is the third person mentioning this and it's disturbing”.

Are there any specifically recent or ongoing environmental issues that have incited you to action, by creating this doc?

The keystone pipeline was a major environmental issue that inspired this documentary but it goes beyond the pipeline. I've been in the process of researching environmental issues since 2007. After my Masters in Arts, I moved to China and was there for almost three years. I did a lot of research on the water crisis in China. This research is culminating in my current graduate program. In my Master's program of Arts in Asian pacific policy studies, my focus is on the diplomatic relationships between China and Canada in environmental legal issues specifically, and my masters' thesis will be a film on lake Dianchi which is one of the five biggest lakes in China. The water is hyper-eutrophied and in some areas, the lake is so polluted that it looks like green fluorescent paint. Around the lake operates the largest flower industrial production in Asia. Pesticides and other toxic waste from industrial production facilities have polluted the lake. The interconnection between globalization, politics, and ecology needs to be integrated in environmental policy and filmmaking is a good medium to communicate to lots of people.

As an entirely independent project, what are the freedoms, as well as restrictions, that arise with the production of “Tree Spirit”?

The freedom is that I am completely responsible for the political content of the film as well as the creative form. It is extremely difficult to raise money independently to produce a film.

You are collaborating with a number of multi-media artists, such as animations specialists and music artists. Would you then say that you are experimenting with the documentary genre?

Yes, I am integrating animation and experimenting with the interview based documentary genre. I am interested in the dynamic artistic quality of the filmmaking process. My goal is to inspire those who are artistically inclined as well as those who are motivated by political and environmental issues.

What is the fusion between eco/political crises and artistic creativity in “Tree Spirit” meant to achieve?

Along with “Tree Spirit” I would like to make a series of short documentaries that would be very intentional, so that people understand - because when you say to somebody there's a possibility that humanity will go extinct, it's overwhelming but if it is presented it in a way that embodies both problem and possible solutions – “this is what we face but these are the solutions” – that is more effective. So I could show through the short experimental film series what some of these solutions are. If I successfully unite my creativity and political motivations to start making documentaries that are so artistic that people who are not interested in politics start watching and finding interest in them. People are going to watch the documentary not only because of the radical political views of Noam Chomsky but also because of the artistic form. That's my strategy and it's a very intentional strategy.

As an independent filmmaker, Parizeau is collecting donations for the continuing production of “Tree Spirit” on indiegogo at http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/tree-spirit. Large or small, your donation would play a key role in advancing the growth of independent media artists who generally reap little to no profit from their projects. For Parizeau, the creation and dissemination of her art to raise environmental and political awareness are the fruits of her labor.

Is it not our privileged responsibility to encourage that?

Exploring the Responsibility of Our Privilege: On Independent Filmmaking, Ecological Crisis and Human Extinction with Filmmaker Bérangère Maïa N. Parizeau

Bipasha Sultana — 2013-09-13T19:16:01Z

What motivated you to produce Tree Spirit?

Why do you think Chomsky responded to your request for a collaborative project?

I think he was interested in my project because he saw passion and a real concern for the environment. I hope to participate in solutions to participate in help the planet get out of the serious mess we are in ecologically. And I think that transpired in my email.

You explore the possibility of human extinction by suggesting that it is closer to reality than we ever could have imagined. What led you to this conclusion?

I went into the law library at UBC and I just happened to find this book that changed my life, it's called “Property Rights and Sustainability: The Evolution of Property Rights to Meet Ecological Challenges” and it's edited by David Grinlinton and Prue Taylor. It's a law book that contains articles that are all about ecological sustainability and the issue of sustainability in regards to law. I read that according to the United Nations millennium eco-system assisted report 2005 – and there's nothing more official than that – the cumulative impact of people on the earth's biosphere is jeopardizing the possibility of future generations to sustain themselves.

Are there any specifically recent or ongoing environmental issues that have incited you to action, by creating this doc?

As an entirely independent project, what are the freedoms, as well as restrictions, that arise with the production of “Tree Spirit”?

The freedom is that I am completely responsible for the political content of the film as well as the creative form. It is extremely difficult to raise money independently to produce a film.

You are collaborating with a number of multi-media artists, such as animations specialists and music artists. Would you then say that you are experimenting with the documentary genre?

What is the fusion between eco/political crises and artistic creativity in “Tree Spirit” meant to achieve?

Is it not our privileged responsibility to encourage that?

Can a Moderate President Entail a Moderate Future for Iran?

Bipasha Sultana — 2013-08-02T01:28:15Z

Following the end of the presidential legacy of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during June 2013 elections, the Islamic Republic of Iran will welcome the moderate cleric Hassan Rowhani as its new president.

Gathering 50.71 percent of votes, Rowhani beat his contenders in a landslide victory. His support from various centrist and left-leaning groups, including the Moderation and Development Party and the Iranian Reform Movement, set him apart from his rivals.

Considering Ahmadinejad's hard-lined conservative handling of matters on both national and international levels, Rowhani's moderate stance is largely being received like a breath of fresh air by the Iranian public.

During his victory speech, he declared that “[his] victory is a victory of wisdom, a victory of moderation, a victory of growth and awareness and a victory of commitment over extremism and ill-temper”. Rowhani's promise of moderation, growth and awareness implies a countering of the extremism that has seemingly stifled Iranians during Ahmadinejad's presidential terms in the past four years.

Since the 2009 national elections that culminated in Ahmadinejad's re-election, an ardent plea for reform on the part of the Iranian people has re-surfaced in the months leading up to the 2013 elections. This shunning of the conservative status quo is reflected in the comparatively low voting scores of Rowhani's conservative rivals, which included previous Tehran mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf and Iran's current nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, both of whom scored less than 20 percent of votes each.

As an Islamic republic, Iran's parliament is disproportionately conservative seeing as it is dominated by the authority of the Supreme Leader and the Guardian Council, the latter of which is composed of members chosen by the Supreme Leader. The Guardian Council, moreover, is granted the authority of selecting the presidential candidates during election period, as well as having the power to veto the elected president's decisions.

The new president's landslide win was both unprecedented and unexpected by the international community. Taking into account Iran's uniquely complex theocratic republic that is firmly grounded in the pillars of Sharia law, the possibility for reform and religious moderateness is bound to be met with resistance.

The conservative grounding of the laws and policies that govern the nation are echoed by the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as he reassuringly stated that “a vote for any of these candidates is a vote for the Islamic Republic and a vote of confidence in the system”.

Khamenei's confidence in the system begs the question that many skeptics have raised in light of post-elections optimism: how much reform can Iran's president bring forth when so many of the strings are pulled by the hands of the Supreme Leader? In considering this, what is revealed is the puppet-like role inherent to the presidential seat, which is all the more true seeing as the presidential candidates are thoroughly screened and vetted by the Guardian Council, prior to elections.

Thus, perhaps moderate and reformist hopefuls, as well as leaders from the Western world, who are anticipating a tide of change to sweep over Iran may need to check their anticipation. As Rasool Nafsi , an Iranian Affairs Analyst at Strayer University, crucially notes “Rowhani is not an outsider and any gains by him do not mean the system is weak or that there are serious cracks. The ruling system has made sure that no one on the ballot is going to shake things up”. In other words, the ruling system has final executive say on matters that concern the military, foreign policy and nuclear energy – the latter two being issues that are of current relevance, and of which the Leader is notoriously obstinate about.

If shaking things up, however, imply addressing issues such as inflation, unemployment, excessive moral policing and the still unresolved conflict with Iran's nuclear enrichment project – then Rowhani may very well need to analyze things from an outsider's perspective for the benefit of his country.

Following economic sanctions imposed by the US and the European Union against the energy and banking sectors, the inflation rate has risen to 34 percent – the highest in 18 years. Imports have severely slowed, businesses have become sluggish, investors are pulling out and a growing number of youth are searching abroad for job opportunities.

While the prospect for peaceful negotiations with the West continues to be dismissed by the upholders of the Islamic republic – namely the Supreme Leader and his cohort of clerics – it has been addressed by Rowhani at the behest of his citizens. For it can hardly be denied that such international negotiations are vital to solving the nation's internal problems.

Part of Rowhani's appeal as a presidential candidate can be said to lie in his experience as Iran's chief nuclear negotiator from 2003 to 2005, a time when negotiations with the West were civil. Drawing on this, Iranians appear to recognize the urgency of dealing with conflicts surrounding their nuclear energy program, seeing how it is responsible for hindering their economic growth. In response, Rowhani has vowed to render the measures and activities of Iran's nuclear program more transparent to the international community.

We may be prompted to wonder what overarching impact the new president's ambitions could have on the ideological hold of his society .The State's maintaining of a conservative choke-hold on its citizens has not only put their well-being at stake, but – as mounting protests have demonstrated – it has wavered their faith in the system.

Khamenei and his aides may be quick to publically display an unfaltering faith in the structure of the Islamic Republic, but the very need to assert confidence in the system belies the reality that a growing desire for large-scale reform in Iran can incur potentially seismic changes – ones that would shake the nation's political foundation to its core.

Academic Democracy and the Boycott of Israel: A Question of Ethics

Bipasha Sultana — 2013-08-02T01:28:04Z

Among the series of calls for academic boycott that have taken place in the past few years as a consequence to one of the most volatile geopolitical conflicts at present – Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories – one of the most recent hits very close to home. Our very own McGill University has announced its intention to award the renowned American scholar and philosopher Judith Butler an honorary doctorate this summer.

For Butler fans and enthusiasts, the impending accolade was welcomed as well deserved by someone who has made groundbreaking contributions to gender and sexuality studies. For others, however, – namely, campus groups such as Hillel McGill and McGill Students for Israel – the announcement was met with outrage and a call to overturn the decision, on the grounds that Butler holds a “pro-terror” stance in defense of groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas.

With the same degree of resentment, there exists a minority camp of Butler opponents who reject the accolade not on the basis of her political affiliations, but rather, the quality (or lack thereof) of her work. As former McGill graduate Lauryn Oates quips on a piece in Huffington Post, “Butler's greatest contribution as an academic is writing so bad, it even made some Foucault devotees cringe, winning first place in The Bad Writing Contest of 1998”.

According to McGill, honorary degrees are afforded to recipients who embody the university's “highest aspirations and ideals” and will thus “serve as an inspiration and role model to [McGill] students, graduates and our community as a whole”.

As the debates surrounding the topic of academic boycotting invariably involve either affirming or contesting the value of a scholar's academic input, it goes without saying that the political views and affiliations of the scholar in question are equally weighed into the equation. As such, the question that is perhaps central upon pondering on the validity of academic boycotts is the following: how relevant are personal, political views when one is being measured according to his/her scholarly input?

In other words, does a renowned and influential scholar's contribution to academia become entirely dismissed and stripped of worthiness because of his/her political views? Granted, as a political philosopher, a bulk of Butler's body of works are founded on (or, we can reasonably argue, have resulted in) her political identifications, of which she has been vocal about, particularly in her criticism of the state of Israel.

For those who express the desire to implement a boycott of an academic figure or institution, political affiliation almost always matters. Those who are most outraged by McGill's decision are not really those who think her scholarship to be mediocre at best. They are, rather, those who believe her political stance to be abhorrent and unethical and are accordingly judging the university's decision as being one that is unethical.

The question of ethicality concerning academic boycotting, moreover, becomes twofold. While student-body groups such as Hillel McGill and McGill Students for Israel challenge the ethicality of their university's harboring of an individual with ostensibly offensive views, how might they respond to a situation in which the roles were reversed? One in which an academic figure willfully boycotted an institution or event on the basis of the latter's questionable ethical affiliations? The most recent instance of this consists of Stephen Hawking's contentious decision to back away from a conference hosted by president Shimon Peres in Jerusalem this June.

Make Tomorrow Happen is an annual conference event that gathers a number of famous world figures, including celebrities, politicians and thinkers such as Hawking. It is premised on a three-day discussion panel that addresses issues concerning the future of a global, geopolitical scale, by “[engaging] the central issues that will influence the face of our future: geopolitics, economics, society, environment, culture, identity, education, new media and more.”

This year's conference was the fifth and celebrated Peres' 90th birthday and gathered a number of famous world figures, including celebrities, politicians and thinkers such as Hawking.

It is worth noting that what could have likely motivated Hawing's decision is the conference's partnership with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which effectively makes his boycott an academic one but also one that is an affront to the State of Israel.

Hawking's boycott of the conference, moreover, is part of a wave of boycotts from various pedagogical groups. This movement is primarily fuelled by Boycotts Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), an organization that is increasingly gaining worldwide support as it aims to overturn Israel's policies and treatment of Palestinians, by encouraging academic, consumer and cultural boycotts against the State.

Judith Butler is a vocal and prominent supporter of the BDS movement.

In response to Hawking's announcement, Israel Maimon, chairman of the presidential conference, echoed the sentiment of many who oppose the ambitions of the BDS and the general notion of academic boycott: “The use of an academic boycott against Israel is outrageous and improper, particularly for those to whom the spirit of liberty is the basis of the human and academic mission. Israel is a democracy in which everyone can express their opinion, whatever it may be. A boycott decision is incompatible with open democratic discourse."

In his statement, Maimon addresses the murky question of ethicality that is at the crux of such politically-motivated boycotts. Those who wish to implement boycotts against prominent institutions do so with the aim of exposing the institutions' involvement in questionable decisions. The very notion of boycotting involves the systematic exclusion and isolation of the boycotted object/service/individual etc. for the purpose of maiming it of its power by simultaneously recognizing this very power.

The support for academic boycotting doesn't come without its caveats, as many neglect the simple truth that academic institutions can exist independently of their respective governments. It is this independence and liberty of thought that defines the spirit of academia. To state the obvious, scholarship and academic research has always been driven by the need to criticize and improve the status quo and if the platform to encourage this is compromised – especially in a state that is as fraught with civil and global tension as Israel is – the effects can be problematic.

Ultimately, for BDS and its supporters, Israel is a force that must be reckoned with and its academic realm is a crucial lifeline to its strength as a state.

Israel will not cease to exist as an independent state. Cutting intellectual, commercial and cultural support with the aim of isolating the nation not only undermines this fact, but can prove to be unfair to a segment of the Israeli population that is open to listen and negotiate with their nation's contrarians. The justice for and well-being of the Palestinian people should not be achieved at the stake of the well-being of the Israeli people and academic growth is integral to any people's well-being.

The necessity for open dialogue is perhaps most saliently expressed by British fiction author Ian McEwan who was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for Literature in 2011 and who responded to his critics by claiming the following: “If I only went to countries that I approve of, I probably would never get out of bed…It's not great if everyone stops talking.”

The Endemic of Rape in India: Will the Newly Amended Rape Laws Address the Root of the Problem?

Bipasha Sultana — 2013-06-02T22:43:16Z

Nation-wide protests have provoked a re-consideration of existing rape laws in India. These were triggered by the fatal rape incident in New Delhi this past December, in which a 23 year old student was gang-raped in a public bus. Under the Indian Penal Code, a convicted rapist can suffer a prison sentence of 7 to 10 years. Sparked by the anti-rape protests, however, this sentence has been reviewed and amended by the Indian Parliament on March 21st to extend the minimum sentence to 20 years. Further changes have been made to include the criminalization of voyeurism and stalking, as well as the death penalty for convicted serial rapists.

While the heinous gang rape in December brought India's endemic of sexual assault to the spotlight, a surge of additionally reported sexual assault incidents against girls and women in the following months have intensified the push for stricter punishment. Among these reported incidents include the highly publicized cases involving two female tourists, one Swiss and the other British.

In March 2013, the Swiss victim and her husband were camping in a remote part of central India when a dozen or so men gang-raped the woman and beat and robbed them. That same month, a British woman staying at a hotel in Agra was compelled to jump out of her second floor window, after being harassed by the owner to open her door.

Two more cases were reported only weeks later, this time involving two five-year old girls, one of whom succumbed to her injuries and died May 27th, while the other is in stable condition but must undergo reconstructive surgery. Both girls were lured by men familiar to them and were violated within walking distance of their homes. These reports demonstrate the near ubiquity of sexual violence across India where, be it in the busy streets of a cosmopolitan city or the communal space of a farmland, every female body is a walking potential victim. This especially rings true seeing as the staggering statistic of reported assaults only goes to underscore the likely higher number of unreported cases.

Aside from their relative brutality and recency since the December incident, the above cases received considerable media attention due to the victims' demographics, namely, in their being foreigners and very young children. These factors stress that the presence of sexual violence has become an urgent epidemic that no member of the female sex is immune to including those who are supposedly the most protected - children and tourists.

While long-awaited government attempts have finally been implemented to toughen the century-old penal code for rape, these efforts seem to merely scratch at the surface of a human rights issue that continues to plague women and children across the nation. With the statistics of reported rape cases increasing incrementally by the year, one wonders at the rampant incidence of unreported rapes in a society where the topic of sexual assault remains relatively taboo, making rape not only a human rights issue, but a social one as well.

Following the nation-wide protests of the past few months that have garnered international attention, Rashida Manjoo, an independent UN expert on violence against women, travelled to India to investigate and report on sexual assault laws. Her conclusions were founded on a number of disappointing observations: “My mandate has consistently voiced the view that the failure in response and prevention measures stems from a Government's inability to and/or unwillingness to acknowledge and address the core structural causes of violence against women”. Manjoo's report sheds light on the deep-seated stigma that not only discourages victims from reporting incidents of assault, but encourages perpetrators to commit the crimes in the first place, as they are enabled by a socially-sanctioned attitude that places just as much blame, if not more, on victims than their rapists.

Several women's rights organizations that are at the forefront of the protests stress the pivotal role that society's patriarchal belief-system plays in fueling the endemic of sexual violence. As Ruchira Gupta, the founder of ApneAp a women's rights group observes, India's “women are in danger even before they're born”. This inherent danger is founded in gender-divided attitudes, whereby women live in the fear of being victimized while men shift the blame of sexual assault on the victim. Results from a survey conducted by UN Women reveal that up to 95% of women in New Delhi feel unsafe in public, while three-quarters of the surveyed men agree with the statement that “women provoke men by the way they dress”. More disturbingly, 51% of these men have confessed to having committed an act of sexual assault in a public space.

In condoning sexual violence, these pervasive views perpetuate a patriarchal cycle in which women have been, and continue yet, to be treated as second-class citizens. In a society in which sex-selective abortions, female infanticides and dowries continue to prevail in spite of being illegal, rape becomes an additional factor to add to the supposed burden of the female sex. As these misogynistic crimes are founded on the view that women are financial liabilities to their families, being a victim of rape usually implies bearing a mark of shame and dishonor that only adds to their statuses as liabilities. This stigma primarily accounts for the prevalence of unreported incidents.

Ultimately, the stigma of rape surrounds the archaic, primitive belief that once violated, a woman's value to her family, community and society is greatly diminished – she becomes, in essence, unmarriageable. This myth, however, is countered by the recovery of many victims of sexual assault as they learn to deal with the trauma of sexual violence. While the 23 year-old student in New Delhi eventually succumbed to her wounds and passed away, she lives on in the legacy of a new-age women's rights activism that has burgeoned following her rape. The recently amended rape laws in India will probably have a bare minimum effect in curbing the prevalence of rape, but perhaps its most promising aspect lies in its opening up of nationwide discourse on an otherwise taboo topic.