Women are in chains all over the world. We are excited with the strides we have made; more female lawyers, more female doctors, and more educated women. Statistics show that we are increasingly getting more women educated and hard as it may seem to get our voices heard, but as the days pass in every part of the world and in spheres of influence and even in the simplest of things, some men are becoming more and more upset with these strides and turning back the hands of the clock. The ordinary woman still bears the burden; fetching water from far off in the villages, trekking miles to get cooking fuel and wood, and are exposed, when seeking a place to relieve themselves in the night. Vulnerable, alone and threatened like those two girls in India last week, cousins who were raped, strangled and hung in a bizarre testimony of how perverse some men in India and many other nations still are when it comes to attacking women, intimidating them, groping them and treating them like beasts of burden. I was so stunned by the fact that India’s report card still rankles so bad even after the international and national outcry over the young female medical doctor who was gang raped and left to die in a horrific attack. What could those young men have seen when they decided to attack these girls. Seriously something is wrong with a society that does this to its women.
We snigger at India but a lot of Nations including Nigeria have been maligning women for so long and still are. Young girls whose parents are divorced face the trauma of rape from well -known relations and in some cases even their birth fathers. Armageddon is upon the world. Things are going from bad to worse to bad. It’s anybody’s guess which little girl will be abducted and raped by anyone from family friend, to brother, to step father, to father. It is getting harder to be a woman these days and yet it was worse in the time of our grandmothers. We can shout all we want; if men do not come along in improving the girl child, we are simply wasting our time.
Dateline Pakistan, where honour killing to uphold the honour of a man, often a father or a brother is all the rave. What is trending now is the young woman whose paternal relations were involved in stoning her to death unabashedly, including it is alleged her father. The sacrifice is often the girl’s life. Honestly these primordial activities that give the girl no say in whether she lives or dies is atrocious. What she does with her life not given to her by any of these persons becomes their business. They take a life they did not create. It has become slowly accepted in Pakistan and some other parts of the world that if a man is unhappy with his daughter, he can kill her for daring to even look at him or reply when he speaks. Let us even assume that she was disrespectful of her father, and then she must pay with her life? I love the words of Jesus in the bible when dealing with a woman considered a sinner and of low moral values, he who has no sin let him be the first to cast a stone. So this girl’s father in Pakistan and uncles who perpetuate these acts are clean and sinless right? And really what sins do these girls commit other than disagree with them or lead a different kind of life. Were God to smite us for our sins, we will all be dead, for we have all sinned and come short of the glory of God.
Dateline Sudan: A young lady is sentenced to death for marrying a man of a different faith and is imprisoned while awaiting her punishment. She has her baby in prison while she is in shackles. Barbaric, and we say we are in the 21st century with the rest of the world. What manner of men are these who do not believe that all human beings have rights? Our divisions and cleavages are getting deeper and we do not respect each other or relate with each other based on humanity. It is all about religion, ethnicity, height, profession and colour. The hand of the clock is running riot going backwards. Something is really wrong. Kudos to the civil society all over the world, all trying to rescue that poor girl in Sudan. Love is meant to be free, a choice but it is not so anymore. To be a girl is just so difficult these days.
Dateline: Morocco, where it is believed that a female corpse has been found and suggestions are that she may have been buried alive.
Dateline, Thailand, where PatPong the red light district that never sleeps continues to be notorious for displaying female prostitutes as young as nine, whose parents have sold them to child traffickers in the big cities for a pittance. They become sex slaves. I saw, I was not told.
Dateline: Nigeria; the Chibok Girls!
Women in chains; everywhere!
Eugenia Abu
