Showing posts with label gender-based abortions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gender-based abortions. Show all posts

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Leave The Girls Alone!



The headlines are full of woman being battered today. A woman protesting in Egypt stripped and stomped on the street. Another was set on fire in a New York elevator and burned to death. But not to worry, the same web page that carries the gruesome story of an unimaginable horrible death has several links to stories in their right hand column scroll about Kate Upton's sexy curves, about Sofia Vergara's sheer tights, about FHM's nude front cover model. So simultaneously we are supposed to be shocked at the dehumanization of women and then to see them as objects of sexual desire. Leave them alone!




A 42 year old Helena, Montana man was arrested today for videotaping young girls. A 35 year-old Phoenix, AZ man was arrested yesterday for hundreds of images of child porn. Same story for Athens, GA. A 54 year-old man who gets off on the the sexual exploitation of tiny kids! It is perfectly legal to have in your possession child porn in the entire nation of Japan! While all the while the ad execs of major companies are titillating the buying public with child sexuality to separate you from your dollars and your heart from your conscience. Then a French Fashion magazine proffers this type of anti-innocence, hyper-sexualization of an EIGHT YEAR OLD!!!! Leave the girls alone!!


Thylane Blondeau, at 8, her childhood being stolen, the flames of lust being fanned in the minds of perverts everywhere.

Last week a nine year old girl, was raped by a  man in the district of Samundari Tehsil, Faisalabad, Pakistan. The child is still in a state of shock and suffering both physical and psychological trauma.


"On December 10 the third grader returned from school to bake chapatti bread with her sister-in-law. She went with her 7-year-old cousin to collect firewood in a nearby sugarcane field. After a short time, the cousin came home and reported that Gulfam had been dragged away by a man. When relatives arrived at the scene, they caught the rapist red-handed, who then immediately fled.


Gulfam's mother took the half-naked girl home. Then the parents went to the police to report the rape, who then arrested the suspect. But the family is still terrified. The relatives of the rapist have already tried to intimidate Gulfam's family withdraw the charges. The girl said when she refused the rapist's offer of money, he then taped her mouth and assaulted her. The assailant reportedly told his victim “not to worry because he had done the same service to other young girls.”"


Or what about precious 7 year old Jorelys Rivera (above) who was raped, stabbed and then beaten to death on December 6. LEAVE THE GIRLS ALONE!!!


Everyday in India girls are the victims of gendercide. This story from the International Business Times suggests that number is 50 thousand a month and that the total missing from this generation are 40 million girls. The article goes on to state, "Since 1980, Elizabeth Vargas reports that an estimated 40 million girls are "missing" due to sex-selective abortion, neglect or murder. Vargas spoke with Ruchira Gupta, a women's rights activist, who said, "It's an obliteration of a whole class, race, of human beings. It's half the population of India." He said, "We put very little value to girls or to women. So they are always in danger, from birth to death. If they are born, then they might be murdered just because they are girls."


The main reason for the gendercide is money. Families must pay expensive dowries to marry off daughters. When a boy is born, he will bring in the money; when a girl is born she is a steep expenditure. This is the main reason families promote abortion of daughters. Dowery expenses increase year after year. Once a girl weds, her family is required to pay this fee. If they do not, the girl is "often beaten, tortured, even burned to death. And while dowries have been illegal for decades, the law is often ignored."


Despite the fact that one might assume the gendercide tactic is practiced by the poor and destitute, it is the rich and educated who use sex-selection abortions most frequently. Vargas reports that census data shows that the problem is becoming more severe in the most elite areas. In some neighborhoods, there are only 300 girls for every 1,000 boys.


Vargas spoke with a female doctor who described her harrowing tale of struggle and torture when her family discovered she was pregnant with twin girls. The doctor's husband's family demanded she get an abortion, but she refused. Because she did not give her husband a son, she was deemed a "useless wife." His family then tried to force her to miscarry by denying her food and feeding her eggs, which she is allergic to. When her daughters were born, the grandmother pushed one of them down the stairs. 


This woman is not alone. Her story is familiar to many. Yet, for others forced to give up their daughters, there is hope and salvation. In the northern region of the country, Vargas traveled to orphanages, known as "Cradle Houses." Unwanted daughters are brought here, dropped down into a drop box and given over to those willing to shelter and care for the discarded."Mostly these girls are half-dead," said one volunteer, "because their mother take [sic] so many medicines for the killing, to try to poison them."


LEAVE THE GIRLS ALONE!!!!!!!!!


Below the original ABC news story from reporter Elizabeth Varges. Please watch these both, the story starts after a 30 second commercial and is incredible. Both are worth the few minutes of your time!!! 



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Throughout this world there are millions of women trapped in the illegal sex trade. 100's of thousands of them are young girls, some as young as 4 years old. They are brutalized ten sometimes twenty times a day. For as little as a couple of dollars so disgusting men can get a few seconds of perverse pleasure, leaving these babies scarred for a lifetime. There are no excuses. There is no apology that will suffice. We must stand as a united front of loving people and end the mentality of second class citizens and gender imbalance. We must celebrate the differences between the sexes, we must champion the rights of women. We must demand the laws be enforced. We must get on top of our soapboxes, at work and play and church and we must scream from the top of our lungs:


LEAVE THE GIRLS ALONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Please before another generation of women is systematically erased. Please for your daughters, your mothers, your wives and yourselves. This is the fight of our lives. If you would like to help Conspiracy of Hope and Prishan Foundation with our current project to protect 34 precious orphan girls from a life of homelessness you can do so here or more preferably directly to Prishan Foundation here.


From all of us at Conspiracy Of Hope thank you for caring about justice for women, for being their voice when they are silenced by brutality, enslavement and draconian law. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.




For NKA

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

The War On Women: Gender Based Violence And Human Trafficking



A young woman fleeing violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Soldiers and militias have been waging a war of rape and destruction against women since the 1990s. Millions have been killed. In Rwanda, up to half a million women were raped during the 1994 genocide.


According to the U.S. Department of State, Trafficking in Persons Report: 2007, 80% of transnational trafficking victims are women and girls. This means generations of women systematically eradicated from society through enslavement in the sex industry. Their bodies abused into oblivion, their souls cremated in the fires of lust and greed. Girls as young as seven brutally raped in a sex industry that views females as a commodity with the very youngest girls demanding a premium for their virginity.


(Above) Sreypov Chan, at 7 the Cambodian girl was sold into slavery by her mother and raped as many as 20 times a day. The building behind her where she was enslaved. Read her incredible story here.


Worldwide, one in every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex, had her genitalia mutilated or been abused in some way, most often by someone she knows, including her husband or another family member; one woman in four has been abused during pregnancy. One in 5 women has been raped or the victim of an attempted rape. In many societies women are often held responsible for the violence against them, and in many places laws contain loopholes which allow the perpetrators to act with impunity. In a number of countries, a rapist can go free under the Penal Code if he proposes to marry the victim.



Child victims of Forced Genital Mutilation.




In countries with very little rule of law these percentages spiral upward at a perverse rate. When woman are afraid of violent retribution, when they lack confidence in the ability of of law to protect them, they are often silent, even complicit in the exploitation of their daughters.


A young victim of gender violence. Her burn very intentionally placed.


6 out of 10 of the world's poorest people are women and girls. All over the world women wake well before dawn to go about the day's work, sometimes walking hours in one direction just to procure water for their family. Dark roads and deranged men leave these hard working woman at great danger for violent rape or worse. In the most extreme cases of poverty, families with starving children may feel that selling one daughter to save the lives of the rest of the household is an acceptable act in light of their desperation.


Sudanese women, waking the day, busy with their work, at extreme risk for violence.


Two thirds of all children denied access to school are girls. Illiteracy, ignorance and misinformation about every topic from sex to AIDS leaves girls extremely susceptible to violent exploitation. Not to mention that when girls are educated they feel much less desperate, believing that they have the means within them and the opportunity to rise above societal norms that often view them as property, or at very least, second-class citizens.


Part of the ongoing fight to stop violence against women is the structural transformation that comes from empowering young girls through education. Above, an International Justice Mission worker teaches kids about the dangers they may face and how to avoid them.


Sati, or bride-burnings along with other dowry related deaths, take the lives of as many as 60,000 woman a year in India. A poor girl's parents cannot afford the dowry required by her fiance's parents and so she is immolated or violated in some other gruesome way. There are many misconceptions concerning the practice of Sati and even a bit of romanticism involving Hindu mythology, but call it what you will, the reality is the number of dowry deaths are on the rise.



Indian victims of bride-burning.




In nature, 105 boys are born for every 100 girls. But in India there are 112 boys born for every 100 girls. In China, 121 (with plenty of Chinese towns over the 150 mark, mostly due to the countries one child policy). Azerbaijan is at 115, Georgia at 118 and Armenia at 120.


Above, Chinese propaganda poster championing its one-child family planning policy. Below the rapid increase of female infant mortality since the inception of the policy.






In her book "Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls and the Consequences of a World Full of Men", Mara Hvistendahl reports on this gender imbalance. By her count, gender-based abortions over the past three decades mean there are 163 million girls missing from the world.




This horrorific trend is often rooted in poverty although certainly a function of the continuing societal prejudice against the female gender. In the the last three decades technologies which reveal the sex of a baby in-utero such as amniocentesis and ultrasound, have been used as a "sex test" in countries where parents put a premium on sons or feel they can only afford one child. "Better 500 rupees now than 5,000 later," reads one ad put out by an Indian clinic; the price of a sex test versus the cost of a dowry.




Ms. Hvistendahl predicts that such a gross gender imbalance is a harbinger of very bad things to come. And rightly so, as Columbia economics professor Lena Edlund corroborates: "The greatest danger associated with prenatal sex determination is...that a significant group of the world's women will end up being stolen or sold from their homes and forced into prostitution or marriage."


Child bride in Afghanistan. Cultural prerogative or child abuse? As the number of females decrease, the number of girls who are forced or sold into marriage will certainly increase.

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If you have ever loved a girl, ever stood knees knocking stomach fluttering on the precipice of romance, ever stared tenderly into your daughter's eyes, ever benefited from the nurturing love of a mother or grandmother- then raise your voice today for women. And if you are a woman please stand in solidarity with your sisters. Please support International Justice Mission as they rescue girls from the sex trade, as they fight for widow's rights, as they educate young girls of the risks of exploitation that surround them. Please support My Refuge House as they restore the battered broken lives of the victims of sex trafficking. Give generously to organizations like Samaritan's Purse and Respire Haiti that work tirelessly to end poverty and rescue those most at risk. Please remember, this is a fight for the soul of humanity.This is the fight for the future of us all.




Silence is complicity. Please be a voice for the voiceless.