Responding to a brutal gang rape, a female politician on the women's commission in India said that women can "invite" rape with their behavior and clothing. Someone who blames rape victims for their attacks has no place on a commission to protect them.
A photo journalist was gang-raped by five men inside an abandoned mill in Mumbai – and in response, a politician on India's women's commission blamed the journalist for her own rape. The Indian government needs to hear loud and clear that people who make comments like these won't stop the rape epidemic in India.
A slew of harrowing stories of women being raped and murdered are coming out of India. In 2012, a student was gang-raped to death on a bus in Delhi, India. This horrifying crime sparked protests around the world, and many Indian politicians vowed to take action to better protect women in the country.
Asha Mirje, a leader on the National Congress Party, didn't defend the photo journalist or the student.Instead, she implied that the student who died should not have been going to a movie so late at night.And when discussing a journalist who had been gang-raped while on assignment at an abandoned mill in Mumbai, she asked why the woman had been in a dangerous area in the first place. She also said a woman's clothes and behavior can invite her own attacks.
Obviously, the only people responsible for causing rape are rapists themselves. It i s absolutely unconscionable that a politician on her state's women's commission -- who, in theory, has women's best interests at heart -- would so willingly blame assault survivors for something they have no control over.