acid attacks Archives | Stop Street Harassment

Welcome to the Street Harassment Weekly, your update on all the street harassment news you missed from the past week. Here’s what’s been going on:

The ATM At Which Women Can Report Sexual Assault – “In the Indian state of Odisha, the state government estimates that around 60 per cent of sexual assaults against women go unreported. The ICLIK, developed by the Odisha government and OCAC, a local computer company, allows women to log a report of assault or harassment while appearing to visit a bank machine.”

Indian “Sex Offender” Forced to Bend Over To Be Smacked By Women– “Is this India’s new, creative way of disciplining sex offenders? A man, 23, accused of sexually harassing several young women in central India was reportedly forced to bend over in the middle of a public street to have his buttocks smacked by a group of angry schoolgirls.”

Commentary: Why Do We Ask For Gender-Segregated Transport For Women If The Problem Is Men Behaving Badly? – “Women need to be able to occupy public spaces and use public transport in the same way that men do. We need to go to work and school and walk the streets without fear – and a women-only train car doesn’t do anything but offer a temporary solution filled with too many gaps. If we want to stop harassment on subways and buses, we need to start with men and getting them to change their actions.”

Acid Attacks: The Other Half of the Story You Don’t Know– “Acid attacks are seen as one of the most horrendous crimes against women. However, not only women, men are equally prone to the attacks. Chandras Mishra from Meerut is an acid attack victim. He was attacked with the lethal chemical three years back by his landlord’s son, who he had stopped from eve teasing a woman.”

Four Arrested for Eve-Teasing in Hyderabad – “The victim, in her complaint to the police, said that on Friday while she and her sister were returning from a shop the accused started to tease her. When she stopped and questioned them, one of the accused tried to pull her scarf.”

One Tweet Sums Up The Struggle Every NYC Woman Faces On the Sidewalk – “This is called “manslamming,” which Jessica Roy, who interviewed Breslaw about her experience for the Cut, defines as “the sidewalk M.O. of men who remain apparently oblivious to the personal space of those around them” who “will walk directly into you without even acknowledging it” should someone fail to move out of their path.”

It Happened To Me: I Was Catcalled Wearing the Equivalent of a Down Comforter – “Women get catcalled in skirts. They are catcalled in jeans. They get whistled at in trench coats, in yoga pants, in business suits. The problem with catcalling does not lie with women’s clothing. Rather, the problem is with the men who do it.”

The Backlash Against African Women – “Public strippings represent the front lines of a cultural war against women’s advancements in traditionally conservative but rapidly urbanizing societies. They aren’t really about what women are wearing. They are much more about where women are going.”

Street Harassment: Why It’s Not Ok To Comment On Me – “A woman’s body is part of a person; it’s not an object. I am a woman, and my body belongs to me and no one else. Strangers on the street having the right to comment on it? When did that happen? Did I miss the memo?”

CONTEST:
Female Singer-Songwriters wanted to help create anti-street harassment video

UPCOMING EVENT:
Challenging Violence Against Women and Girls on UK Public Transport–
DATE: Tuesday 20th January 2015
TIME: 10.45 to 13.00 (with lunch provided 13.00-14.00)
VENUE: Room G1 & G2, British Transport Police Force Headquarters, 25 Camden Road, London NW1 9LN

By Pallavi Kamat, SSH Correspondent

Trigger Warning

When we talk of street harassment, we usually visualize women being subjected to a few catcalls and obscene comments in public places. Over the last few years, in India, however, women are being confronted with a completely gruesome form of street harassment.

Women in different parts of India have faced acid attacks from men for several reasons, most common among them being refusal of a proposal. Men track down these women, accost them and attack them with acid leaving them severely scarred. Though the physical injuries may heal (after laborious and multiple operations), the mental injuries remain for life.

Instances include Preeti Rathi, a nurse who had left Delhi to come to Mumbai for work. She was attacked by an unidentified man at Bandra Terminus in May-2013 and eventually succumbed to her injuries a month later. In 2006, Bollywood actress Kangana Ranaut’s sister had acid thrown on her by a young man in Dehradun, Uttarakhand. In 2003, Sonali Mukherjee’s face was permanently disfigured by an acid attack in Dhanbad, Jharkhand, by three men who wanted to teach her a lesson. A property owner attacked Y N Mahalakshmi in 2001 in Mysore, Karnataka, because she had filed a complaint against him.

The widespread nature of such attacks can be attributed to the lack of specific laws against such attacks; men attack women blatantly in open streets because they know they can get away with it. Even if the woman does manage to raise a hue and cry and complain, it might be months, even years, before the men are punished. That is, if they are. Often men get away with a much lighter punishment. The easy availability of over-the-counter acid is another reason for such attacks.

Though there are no official statistics on acid attacks in India, a study conducted by Cornell University in 2011 stated that 153 attacks had been reported in the media from January 2002 to October 2010. Many of these were acts of revenge because a woman spurned sexual advances or rejected a marriage proposal.

Since the media and all of us in general have short-term memory, we speak about the incident for some days and then forget about it. The media moves on to more recent stories and we move on with our lives.

However, there seems to be light at the end of the tunnel. In April-2013, the Criminal Law Amendment Act, which got passed, defined an acid attack as a separate offence under the Indian Penal Code and proposed punishment of not less than 10 years to a maximum of life imprisonment for perpetrators and fines up to one million rupees. On 9^th July, 2013, in response to a PIL filed in 2006 by a Delhi-based acid attack victim Laxmi, the Supreme Court of India came down heavily on the Central Government for not implementing the court’s order on regulating the sale of acid. It said that if the Centre did not come out with a scheme by 16^th July, 2013, the Court would completely ban the sale of acid. In February-2013, the Supreme Court had asked the Centre to enact a law which would regulate the sale of acid and also incorporate a policy for treatment, compensation and rehabilitation of acid attack victims.

I hope such legislations prevent further acid attacks. The courts also need to speed up the process in the earlier cases so that the victims get justice, albeit delayed. Women should feel free to step out of the house without a nagging thought at the back of their heads that any spurned suitor may return to take his revenge.

Pallavi is a qualified Chartered Accountant and a Commerce Graduate from the University of Mumbai, India, with around 12 years of experience working in the corporate sector. Follow her on Twitter, @pallavisms.

Street Harassment Weekly – Jan. 5-11, 2015

India: Acid-Attacks: A Social Crime