Just read this article and had to share what came to mind.
This is horrible, yet I cannot help but agree with the writer, the pain and not hiding it is the reason for looking at and knowing about things like this in our history – I have always felt that we humans need to start learning more from our collective histories and ignoring them less, because that willful ignorance is precisely why we keep repeating terrible choices and deeds.
And what REALLY gets my goat, REALLY bothers me, that I take from this article is that to my mind anywhere on earth, ever, home and family/loved ones are supposed to be the things that gives us hope in our bleakest days – but between culture and religion, they are not. People like these women, who were ostracised for getting kidnapped and being raped AGAINST THEIR WILL were (as the article states):
…completely ostracized by society. Many were killed by their husbands, committed suicide, or murdered their half-Pakistani babies themselves. Some women were so scared to go back home after being held captive in Pakistani rape camps, they begged their Pakistani captors to take them back to Pakistan with them.
That is not humane. That is not even a grey area, a flat out “fuck you!” to anyone who tries to argue religious or socio-cultural reason for turning these women away or even voicing that as an option. To me, that kind of morality, that kind of thinking and that kind of behaviour is deservedly clubbed alongside the very RAPE they are so bothered by and other similar heinous acts.
THIS is the true shame.
That an invading army used sexual assault like this, especially in a post-industrial world, is a shame. That it not only hasn’t declined but in fact has GROWN as a war tactic by the mindless, jack-booted thugs of the fanatical legions of the world is beyond a shame, it is a travesty.
And the fact that those same rape victims are treated as… spoiled… unclean… bad… and that they are made to hate themselves and their lives and fates even more than they already do, there are no words to describe the anger that fans in my mind.
I feel even worse however, because this attitude to rape victims is bad enough in a war-zone and a war-torn place where peoples minds are already shaken by what they are suffering through – but that in peaceful places, where there is no war, like right here in most of India, it is not uncommon for Rape victims to be treated in a similar manner.
Something has to give. Something has to change. Something, anything, because at this rate with all ends of the Earth in upheaval and the greedy, heartless and self-absorbed (yes I’m looking at you American conservatives and your ilk, Islamic State, Hindutva hard-liners and all such people) humanity stands on the precipice of losing that very humanity and then being worse than even animals. Because an animal can only reason so far – we are capable of so much and are choosing to squander it for reasons that no actual, thought-out reasoning can justify, too often on the basis of millenia old ideas that are largely meaningless in this brave new world.
So embrace this Brave New World people, look back, see where we came from and moving ahead, try to make it better.
Ref: http://sociopool.com/1971-rapes-bangladesh-cannot-hide-history/
One Happy Monk's Reviews 