India's Daughter is a BBC documentary which details the shocking gang rape and murder of Jyoti Singh, a young medical student from Delhi. In the days leading up to and following its broadcast, the Indian government have furiously protested its showing, and have enacted a ban to this effect. The film shows a remorseless testimony of victim blaming from one of the perpetrators speaking from death row. Jyoti's family meanwhile have praised the documentary makers, with her father stating that "everyone should watch the film". News of the ban has apparently spurred a backlash: as of yesterday, the film is available in full on a number of popular streaming websites such as Vimeo.
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After a number of high-profile crimes that sparked outrage and protests, India will allow the death penalty for those convicted of raping girls under the age of 12:
The executive order was cleared at a special cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It allows capital punishment for anyone convicted of raping children under the age of 12. Minimum prison sentences for rape against girls under the age of 16 and women have also been raised.
According to Reuters, which has seen a copy of the order, there was no mention of boys or men.
Two recent rape cases have shocked the nation. Protests erupted earlier this month after police released horrific details of the rape of an eight-year-old Muslim girl by Hindu men in Kathua, in Indian-administered Kashmir in January. Anger has also been mounting after a member of the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was accused last week over the rape of a 16-year-old girl in northern Uttar Pradesh state.
India's poor record of dealing with sexual violence came to the fore after the 2012 gang rape and murder of a student on a Delhi bus. This led to huge protests and changes to the country's rape laws. But sexual attacks against women and children have since continued to be reported across the country.
Some activists have criticized the application of the death penalty, saying it will deter reporting, especially given that almost all perpetrators are family members or acquaintances.
Also at Reuters and Bloomberg. Editorial at The Indian Express.
Related: Indian Government Attempts to Suppress Rape Documentary
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 08 2015, @05:09PM
Yes, we know about the Streisand effect. There's no need to bring it up.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 08 2015, @05:47PM
But are we allowed to rant about SJWs?
(Score: 2) by mtrycz on Sunday March 08 2015, @06:15PM
This is out of place and unfunny. It's a real crew with real competences that made a real documentary about a real and serious issue and story.
In capitalist America, ads view YOU!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 08 2015, @06:22PM
Pardon me for just asking - and rape and murder is a terrible thing! - whether we would see the usual modded up comments here blaming SJWs for exaggerating the extent of violence against women, and for insinuating that society as a whole bore responsibility.
And rape and murder is a terrible thing!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 08 2015, @08:39PM
I totally took it as a joke at the expense of the people who consistently bitch about SJWs.
And look, VLM actually came along and did blame the SJWs exactly as you predicted.
Life really does imitate comedy. Sometimes you just have to suck up the down-mods from the lunkheads who have difficulty recognizing sarcasm and irony.
(Score: 2) by mtrycz on Sunday March 08 2015, @09:27PM
I thought yours was sarcasm. It probably was but the other way around? If it wasn't, I'm sorry and have a nice day.
Anyway, yes, you can rant about the-so-called SJWs, but it is still out of place in this story, imo.
In capitalist America, ads view YOU!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aristarchus on Sunday March 08 2015, @07:04PM
No. That is tantamount to yelling fire in a crowded theatre. Governments have a fiduciary responsibility of maintaining peace and the rule of law. Movies that might result in mobs snatching criminals out of jail (which has happened already!) can reasonably be banned. Car analogy! Do you really want a horde of angry Social Justice Warriors, as you so quaintly term it, showing up outside your door, carrying shovels and rakes and implements of destruction? I though not. See, it's all fun and games until someone gets literally ripped to pieces and set on fire in the town square.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by CRCulver on Sunday March 08 2015, @09:02PM
The unabashed rapist in question is already sentenced to death row, just saying. (However, he does have an appeal going and mob justice can often suck.)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 08 2015, @10:58PM
Mob justice always sucks.
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by VLM on Sunday March 08 2015, @07:55PM
There's a sonic boom of backlash at ACs comment but its sarcastically on topic as all the bad guys in the story and movie are totally into victim blaming and stuff. So wanting to censor AC is exactly what the .gov of India is trying to do to the documentary folks.
India is pretty F-ed up in a lot of ways. There's been decades of propaganda along the lines of India as the font of all knowledge and all that, but its really just a dump (literally, the civil engineering of sewage systems is a bit lacking because they just don't care) with messed up cultural issues such as the movie.
Obviously the .gov wants to censor the hell out of it because the cultural concept of rape being a perfectly acceptable form of recreation according to the Indians themselves, probably doesn't sell many outsourcing contracts to female managers in the USA.
India is like one of those places that's always on simmer, just under the point of revolution. So you end up with a huge population who think rape is good clean fun for all boys to participate in because the chick was asking for it, vs a huge population of SJW types ready to skin them alive, and its some kind of miracle the place hasn't turned into Iraq about a zillion times over for this and other issues. Just saying if I woke up tomorrow and heard there was a revolution over there about "anything" I wouldn't be surprised. I'm not sure if there's anything those people all agree about other than maybe how much they love Pakistan (LOL not much)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 08 2015, @08:03PM
Have you even been to India?
Your description is like an India seen through a really badly fractured mirror, where most of the image is a reflection of yourself.
For one thing, even the rapists don't see it as "good clean fun" they see it as their version of social justice. That the women have brought dishonour on their families by violating social norms and if their own family won't discipline them, then some member of society needs to step up and do it. It is just a total coincidence that it happens to be them.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Sunday March 08 2015, @08:50PM
Delhi is the ony city I've walked through and seen homeless families sleeping on the streets. Sure in LA or London you get 20 year olds, but families with 2 or 3 kids under 10? Not even Gaza has that, despite Israel decimating it evey 3 years.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by CRCulver on Sunday March 08 2015, @09:06PM
Reminds me of my first experience of Delhi, where as a low-budget/no-budget traveler I arrived at a train station on the periphery of the city and decided to walk so many kilometers to the city centre to save on the taxi fare. As I walked that distance, I passed innumerable ramshackle tents set up by squatters right on the pavement, where one would indeed see a mother and father surrounded by a multiple children. They looked pretty settled in, and I often wondered how long it would take them to move to another, more residence.
However, while it makes India look very bad compared to other countries of Asia, such a phenomenon can be found in many other countries worldwide. Cities like Lagos have grown rapidly due to the same phenomenon of people coming from the countryside and just setting up their lodgings on whatever patch of unoccupied ground they find.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 08 2015, @09:21PM
Manila too: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/23/philippines-cemetery-urban-poor-home [theguardian.com]
And there are the favelas in brazil.
Poverty sucks and in the 3rd world there is much less sense of collective responsibility for the poor.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday March 08 2015, @10:22PM
I've never been to greater Asia, but I saw similar scenes in Africa and Asia Minor. More Africa than Asia Minor of course.
As for children on the streets? It's still unusual, but growing more common here in the states. Mostly, the families have some old wreck of a car that they can use for a base, but there ARE homeless families here, today.
What does THAT say about America?
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday March 09 2015, @12:52AM
I've seen it in my city here in the US. It's not as common for them to be "unsheltered", because government and charity shelters alike prioritize kids, but roughly 1 out of 8 homeless families with kids are living on the streets. One related phenomenon is that there tends to be a preference in shelters for mom+kids families over mom+dad+kids, which pushes dad to separate from his family in order to give them a better chance of getting help.
However, here in the US our "solution" to this problem often involves locking people up in jail or forcibly kicking them out of any space where they might be visible. Your city or town probably has more homeless folks than you think, you just don't meet them because the cops basically shove them into particular areas out of sight and out of mind.
this [hudexchange.info] is a pretty illuminating look at homelessness in the US.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 09 2015, @11:20AM
Sometimes it is even only preference to mom+daughters.
I remember having a "camping trip" in a park because I was too old to be let into a shelter with my mother and sister. I hadn't hit puberty yet but I guess they were afraid I would try to rape everyone.
(Score: 3, Informative) by cafebabe on Monday March 09 2015, @09:14PM
This also affects boys who are often barred from publicly funded homeless shelters, as described in the Last Statement Of Thomas James Ball [archive.org]:-
1702845791×2
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by Runaway1956 on Sunday March 08 2015, @10:17PM
Perhaps it would be easier to keep things in perspective if everyone remembers that Pakistan was/is part of India and the overall social problem. And, Afghanistan as well. There are places in the India/Afghan border where no one really knows where the border is. These are mostly tribal lands, after all. Just as in the mideast, tribal people have little if any loyalty to any government. Their first loyalty is to their tribe. Their second loyalty is also to the tribe. Whatever loyalty they may or may not feel to the nation runs a distant third behind loyalty to the tribe.
While parts of India are putting tribal law and tribal customs and traditions behind them, there are still many parts of the country that are very strictly tribal.
And, the caste system. When you get down to brass tacks - the caste system has a lot of similarities to Islam. In both, women are the property and toys of men. A woman without a strong protector is lawful prey to any man who wants her.
Yeah, India has come a long way in the past 150 years or so - but they have a long way to go.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 09 2015, @02:11AM
You really don't know much about the region, or the religions, at all do you. Well, thank you for your comment.
(Score: 1) by Balderdash on Monday March 09 2015, @03:02PM
Unlike in US, rape is a "hate crime" in India;
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2325502/Map-shows-worlds-racist-countries-answers-surprise-you.html [dailymail.co.uk]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15/a-fascinating-map-of-the-worlds-most-and-least-racially-tolerant-countries/ [washingtonpost.com]
I browse at -1. Free and open discourse requires consideration and review of all attempts at participation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 09 2015, @04:06PM
And, the caste system. When you get down to brass tacks - the caste system has a lot of similarities to Islam. In both, women are the property and toys of men. A woman without a strong protector is lawful prey to any man who wants her.
Amen brother!
Keep on speaking truth to power!
You ignorant dumbfuck.
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Monday March 09 2015, @03:08AM
Hyperbole aside, it's no miracle the place hasn't turned into Iraq. In this very documentary, you see the results of a panel of judges that condemn the rape culture of India and make huge numbers of recommendations concerning how it should be dealt with. For this to descend into extended civil unrest, you'd need the judges telling the people to piss off and the police to crack more skulls.
I'm more concerned about the mobs demanding that the 17-year old convicted of all this be hung like the adults - I'm not sure stamping out rampant rape and replacing it with the death penalty for minors is really that great an idea, you know?
(Score: 3, Funny) by Non Sequor on Monday March 09 2015, @03:45AM
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 2) by AnonTechie on Monday March 09 2015, @09:40AM
Maybe that was the idea. Reverse psychology and all that ...
Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
(Score: -1, Troll) by No Respect on Sunday March 08 2015, @07:39PM
Maybe I'm just imagining it because I saw it many other places yesterday. A story that's more than 24 hours old is not what I expect to see at the top of the SN news page. The story hasn't got a real tech/geek angle to it, either. Now if the Indian government were carrying out 24x7 ddos attacks to neutralize the video, then that might be newsworthy here. Otherwise nyuh-uh.
(Score: 4, Informative) by VLM on Sunday March 08 2015, @07:45PM
There is a tiny little bit of on topic, in that all the file distribution technologies that I know of and use of including the non-corporate aka illegal ones are flooded with "India's Daughter" which if you don't know the back story you'd assume is some boring documentary of Indira Gandhi (former PM) or similar. So, this whole scandal is why we're flooded with this movie.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday March 09 2015, @12:15PM
How harsh and successful is crackdown on filesharing in India?
(Score: 3, Informative) by wantkitteh on Sunday March 08 2015, @07:59PM
I submitted a story 30 minutes after it broke - didn't show up until evening the next day. This isn't a scooping news site, it's an aggregation, it'll always be slow. So what?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday March 08 2015, @08:14PM
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday March 08 2015, @08:16PM
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Sunday March 08 2015, @08:23PM
Don't worry, as far as I'm concerned, you do a great job - want a cuppa? ;)
(Score: 2) by carguy on Monday March 09 2015, @01:03AM
Seconded -- best wishes to our esteemed editors.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 08 2015, @08:13PM
> The story hasn't got a real tech/geek angle to it, either.
Really?
The largest democracy in the world decides to censor an extremely topical documentary that is completely uncontroversial in the west, youtube even cooperates, and that doesn't have a geek angle? This isn't some dictator trying to control his country's propaganda. How many times have we had stories about censorial DMCA takedowns [soylentnews.org] here?
(Score: 5, Informative) by wantkitteh on Sunday March 08 2015, @09:11PM
YouTube co-operates. Mega says - Screw You! [mega.co.nz]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday March 09 2015, @12:07PM
I'll Mega you! ;)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by wantkitteh on Monday March 09 2015, @03:14AM
As disgusted as I was as a feminist by the appalling things the defence lawyers for the rapists said, one did say something that struck a chord. This was a particularly horrific crime, that can't be denied, and it's encouraging that it's started a movement towards social change in India's valuation of women. Question: If the justice system really wanted to make an example to discourage rapists, why aren't they also fast-tracking the numerous rape allegations pending against sitting members of the Indian parliament? Wouldn't applying accountability for this crime from the very top send an extremely clear message to any man or boy who might consider raping a woman or girl?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 09 2015, @02:25PM
> why aren't they also fast-tracking the numerous rape allegations pending against sitting members of the Indian parliament?
Do you really have to ask that question?
Power is about immunity from the consequences of your actions.
Look at Petreus getting a handslap fine for disclosing shedloads of classified material for his own personal gain, while actual whistleblowers of conscience like John Kiriakou get 2 years in prison.
Those guys in parliament will be the last to go, if for no other reason than price to prosecute them is so high.
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Tuesday March 10 2015, @02:14PM
I didn't really have to ask that, it was a rhetorical question. Silly me ;)
Devs: can we get a "rhetorical" HTML tag added to go along with "sarcasm" plz?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2015, @08:51PM
Around here a lot of people would actually make that argument to prove that the prosecution of these rapists is not about justice.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Monday March 09 2015, @03:47AM
Consent is also essential to liberty.
The Indian government should be ashamed. The full weight of Indian society should come down on those who would force themselves on others, whether that be to rape or murder, or to block expression.
Both are seriously corrosive to both the rule of law and a healthy, free society.
You don't need to look very far to see how well that sort of thing is working out in the west.
Sigh.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr