Unhelpful attitude of police figures among issues brought before TNSCW
The failure of the police and the administration to address their grievances is the reason why women approach the Tamil Nadu State Commission for Women (TNSCW), according to its members.
Data from the commission reveals that of the 813 petitions, 125 concerned domestic violence, 60 cited property disputes, 55 were against sexual harassment at the workplace, 49 were to do with dowry harassment and 47 mentioned the police’s unwillingness to solve matters.
“A lot of women have alleged that a few police officers colluded with their husbands and harassed them and their families. They insisted that they file for divorce. They have cited instances in which officers were also unwilling to conduct a thorough enquiry,” she said.
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/domestic-violence-harassment-at-work-top-complaints-before-panel/article24618405.ece
Only two-thirds of eligible sexual assault survivors choose to undergo a “rape kit” and less than one-third subsequently hand over the forensic evidence to police, say researchers at an Ontario hospital with a dedicated emergency department program for victims.
Across Canada, only 33 in every 1,000 cases of sexual assault are reported to the police; six lead to prosecution, of which three end in a conviction, says the study published online Tuesday in the Emergency Medicine Journal.
As part of the Ottawa Hospital program, sexual assault victims are offered the opportunity to undergo a rape kit — the collection of evidence that includes bodily fluids, fingernail scrapings and DNA samples, such as those left on clothing.
Yet many victims decline to go through the process, which can take eight to 10 hours and may feel like a second violation, Sampsel acknowledged.
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2018/08/07/sexual-assault-victims-often-decide-against-giving-rape-kits-to-police-study-finds.html
Category: Violence
The Andrew Gaff overreaction is as sickening as the punch
Kate Halfpenny in New Daily writes:
What happened to Andrew Brayshaw is disgusting, but it’s such a contrast when a bloke is hurt doing his job – playing a game in which violence is part of its intrinsic appeal – and gets mass national attention, yet women are bashed and killed every day and it routinely merits a mere couple of paragraphs.
When Phillip Island mother Samantha Fraser was killed at home in July, why weren’t there whole TV shows dedicated to her death? She died. She didn’t just get a broken jaw. She died. Her kids have no mother anymore. Because she’s dead.
In 2017, when a 27-year-old Broadmeadows woman was cut into pieces in front of her children, her eyes gouged out while she was alive and her fingers cut off and shoved inside her, why weren’t TV shows dedicated to what should happen to the perpetrator? She died in the most hideous way. She isn’t alive anymore.
But nope. No panels of experts weighing in on what punishment was suitable, no thousands of newspaper columns saying the same thing. Not much sympathy, but then the one or two women killed every week in Australia aren’t alive to get the sympathy, and it’s not like their deaths are part of a multi-million-dollar industry.
This week showed how we respond when one man gets hurt in the workplace.
Men, imagine if it was you being killed every week by women.
Imagine if we were stronger and meaner than you, and filled with vengeful thoughts and hate over money and child custody and because you didn’t look good enough or you looked too good, or whatever else was getting our goat.
Imagine if, literally, one of you was being picked off every couple of days by a woman.
And then a couple of tributes were written, a couple of tongues were clicked in sympathy, then you were forgotten because women were busy watching footage of an unseemly one punch at netball that ended in a dislocated jaw.
https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2018/08/08/gaff-punch-domestic-violence
Pakistan: 12 Girls' Schools Burnt Down Overnight In Gilgit-Baltistan
Twelve girls’ schools have been burnt down by unidentified persons in coordinated attacks in Pakistan’s restive Gilgit-Baltistan, triggering protest by local residents who sought safety for educational institutions which are often attacked by the militants, a media report said on Friday.
Girls’ schools are often attacked in the northern areas of Pakistan.
In December 2011, at least two girls’ schools were partially damaged in low-intensity explosions in Chilas.
Earlier that year, unidentified men had also blown up two girls’ schools.
In 2004, girls’ schools in Chilas came under a string of attacks. Nine schools of which eight were girls’ schools were attacked and destroyed in five days in the area in February.
According to a report, about 1,500 schools have been destroyed in the tribal belt during the last 10 years.
Nobel Prize winner and education activist Malala Yousafzai was also shot by the Taliban in 2012 for advocating girls’ education in Swat.
In 2017, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) in its report stated that attacks by the Taliban and other militant groups disrupted the education of hundreds of thousands of children, particularly girls, in Pakistan.
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/pakistan-12-girls-schools-burnt-down-overnight-in-gilgit-baltistan-1894700
Evie Amati found guilty over 7-Eleven axe attack
EVIE Amati, the transgender woman who attacked overnight customers in a suburban 7-Eleven with an axe has been found guilty of wounding with intent to murder in a unanimous verdict by a jury.
She had pleaded not guilty saying she was suffering mental illness while committing the attacks.
But a jury did not believe her and found her guilty on two charges of wounding with intent to murder and wounding with intent to murder against two store customers and attempting to wound a pedestrian with intent to murder him.
Ms Amati’s barrister Charles Waterstreet told the trial on its first day that Ms Amati was on a cocktail of drugs and had “lost her mind”.
But Crown prosector Daniel McMahon told the trial that Amati had lashed out with an axe after becoming angry because of a romantic rejection because she was transgender on the night of the incident.
Amati denied she was angry, saying she had “experienced rejection countless times before”.
https://www.news.com.au/national/courts-law/axe-attacker-evie-amati-found-guilty-for-7eleven-attack/news-story/e73b674e2cfde7b24086a58d192b2189
South Africa women's protest: Women march against gender-based violence
Women in various parts of South Africa have taken to the streets to protest the increasing levels of gender-based violence in the country.
South Africa’s femicide rate is five times more than the global rate. According to a report by Africa Check, the global figure for femicide in 2015 was 2.4 per 100,000 women, while South Africa’s rate was four times higher at 9.6 per 100,000 women.
According to the organizers’ website, ‘The Total Shutdown’ marches will take place in eight provinces as well as in other African countries such as Botswana, Lesotho, and Namibia.
The women planned to march to South Africa’s parliament, Supreme Court of Appeal and other provincial and regional structures where a memorandum of demands would be handed over to the government, organizers said.
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/08/01/africa/south-africa-women-protest/index.html?no-st=1533249687
Latest News – NSW Police Public Site
The NSW Government today has teamed with the Police Force, the Australian Hotels Association and the City of Sydney to launch the internationally recognised “Ask for Angela” safety campaign within the Sydney CBD.
Under the program, which originated two years ago in Lincolnshire, England, when a patron “Asks for Angela” at a participating venue, the code-word triggers a response from trained staff who will discreetly escort that person to safety or contact authorities for further assistance.
“Ask for Angela sends a message that creepy behaviour will not be tolerated and that nobody has the right to make anyone else feel threatened in any way,” Councillor Miller said.
https://www.police.nsw.gov.au/news/news_article?sq_content_src=%2BdXJsPWh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGZWJpenByZC5wb2xpY2UubnN3Lmdvdi5hdSUyRm1lZGlhJTJGNzE0MDUuaHRtbCZhbGw9MQ%3D%3D
Petition · Charge a crime as a male crime, according to UK law – not by self-identified "gender". ·
British Transport Police are at present allowing some alleged criminals to self-identify as female when arrested. These alleged criminals are clearly not women as eye witnesses can testify. The crime is then recorded as a female crime and reported as such to the press. An example of this was recently reported widely in the tabloid press where many were shocked to see females in a video allegedly repeatedly stomping on a man’s head. The man suffered a broken eye socket. Two police officers also received injuries.
It seems that British Transport Police are misusing/misunderstanding the Equality Act 2010 and also misunderstanding/misapplying the provisions in the Gender Recogniton Act 2004 which refers only to the application for and use of Gender Recognition Certificates.
Suspects should be required to validate their sex as claimed upon arrest and at interview stage and certainly before a crime is reported as female to the press.
Establishing the sexed nature of crime is utterly essential to preserving the validity of crime statistics which show that most violent crime is committed by males upon other males and that most violent crime committed upon females is committed by male.
If men can simply self-identity as female against any current legal provision then no crime statistics are relevant.
We call upon the Government to commit to ensuring that the British Police are aware of the legal requirements to establish the sex of suspects. We call upon the British Government to apply the laws currently in place.
https://www.change.org/p/charge-a-crime-as-a-male-crime-according-to-uk-law-not-by-self-identified-gender?
Almost 600 arrested at Washington protest over Trump immigration policy
Nearly 600 protesters, mostly women, were arrested on Thursday after they staged a non-violent action in the heart of a US Senate office building in Washington against Donald Trump’s “zero-tolerance” policy towards immigrants and separation of families at the border.
The mass protest was one of several demonstrations that erupted across the country, providing a taste of what are expected to be much larger demonstrations on Saturday called by the Women’s March and the Center for Popular Democracy Action.
Daily images are still emerging of distraught immigrant children separated from parents and not yet reunited, despite an executive order last week ending the policy of summarily tearing families apart and arresting the adults after anyone is caught crossing the border illegally.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jun/28/us-immigration-protest-trump-washington-senate
INTERVIEW: Maria MacLachlan on the GRA and the aftermath of her assault at Speaker's Corner
My experience of court was much worse than the assault. I was the one on trial that day and if it hadn’t been for the clear video evidence that I’d been assaulted, my assailant wouldn’t have been convicted, even though there were over a dozen witnesses who could have said what happened. I was asked “as a matter of courtesy” to refer to my assailant as either “she” or as “the defendant.” I have never been able to think of any of my assailants as women because, at the time of the assault, they all looked and behaved very much like men and I had no idea that any of them identified as women. After he was arrested, the defendant posted vile misogynistic comments on his Facebook page that no woman would ever make. He was also filmed aggressively intimidating a woman on a picket line, shouting obscenities at her. In what sense is this person a woman?
The judge never explained why I was expected to be courteous to the person who had assaulted me or why I wasn’t allowed to narrate what happened from my own perspective, given that I was under oath. His rebuke and the defence counsel’s haranguing of me for the same reason just made me more nervous and I so continued to inadvertently refer to my male assailant as “he.” In his summing up, the judge said I had shown “bad grace” and used this as an excuse not to award compensation. One writer said, “It was as if the state had colluded with the defendant to take one last stab at the victim,” and that’s exactly how it felt.
https://www.feministcurrent.com/2018/06/21/interview-maria-maclauchlan-gra-aftermath-assault-speakers-corner/
These Are the Women Saudi Arabia Doesn’t Want to Talk About – Bloomberg
The night the Saudi government declared an end to its ban on women driving, Aziza Alyousef was elated. The retired professor was inundated with celebratory calls and messages after years of fighting for the freedom. She couldn’t wait to get in line for a license.
“I want to be No. 1,” Alyousef told a reporter after the government’s announcement in September.
Alyousef now awaits the milestone behind bars. She was detained last month, along with some of the most outspoken women’s rights advocates in the ultra-conservative Islamic kingdom. With days to go before the ban is lifted, nine of the 17 people arrested remain in prison, accused of aiding enemies of the state.
Indeed, the women targeted have been fighting for more basic freedoms than the right to drive, including the end to guardianship, the Saudi legal system that requires women to have the approval of a male relative to travel outside the country or get married.
After the announcement that the driving ban would be lifted, Alyousef and other activists celebrated their breakthrough. Then the mood changed. One by one, they started receiving calls from authorities warning them to stay silent.
The arrests have sent a chill through Saudi Arabia’s intellectual elite. People who once talked freely with foreign journalists are now canceling meetings, saying they’re worried about the risk.
Women are unlikely to push for change in public now, observers say. The future is “state feminism” led by the government, said Al-Dosari, the researcher.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-19/the-saudi-women-most-eager-to-drive-are-sitting-in-jail
