Admittedly, this is not an entirely happy message. Whilst Christmas was great and New Year celebrations promised to be eventful for most, events unwound throughout December in other parts of the world that for many in their daily lives may have gone unnoticed or, at least, was not really thought about.
I refer to the gang rape of a young woman which took place on a bus in New Delhi, in India.
A 23-year-old female medical student was brutally raped by a large group of men on a bus when she got on with a friend, whom it is said she had been soon to marry, on the 16th December last year. Even the bus driver joined in as her friend was not only powerless to stop it but also beaten himself, and the two of them, having been hit with iron bars, were thrown, mercilessly, off the back of the bus as it was still moving.
The poor woman was so violently attacked that she spent the next two weeks of her life in intensive care in Singapore before dying from her injuries. Can anyone imagine being so viciously raped? Of course not. Neither does anyone want to, and nor should we.
If this was not disgusting enough, it also brought to light the fact that New Delhi is actually considered "the rape capital" of India. When a city already has such a title, how much worse does a problem have to get before there is a change? Now that it has hit this level, let us hope that it requires nothing more.
The debate about how India treats its women in general has begun on a much larger scale now. It is in news reports online, on the television and in the newspapers. Whilst refraining on some aspects of the discussion as no expert in Indian affairs, I must say that stepping into 2013 it is really time for the bigger multilateral world authorities to make a bigger stand for womens' rights globally. There is politics at stake, and maybe forthright stances like these would be threatening to some nations, but is it not a stance worth that risk? India came as a surprise; until this case it was not obvious to me that maltreatment on such a scale occurred at all there, and it must end. Women make up more than fifty per cent of this population, and all of them must have access to their fundamental rights.
There were other atrocities in their dealing with this case. Perhaps I ought not to have done, perhaps it comes from my ignorance of Indian politics, but I expected better reactions from the powers that be. The lack of speed with which the case was dealt is not only my concern, but the treatment of protesters was simply disgusting. Thankfully, thousands of Indians took to the streets, and faith was restored in a vast majority of people. Until the police used water cannons to disperse crowds. Yes, a water cannon. In this day and age it is simply unacceptable to turn weapons on your own people in any country, let alone in one which is, in at least some definitions of the word, democratic.
New Year festivities were toned down in India in mourning of the whole debacle, which is only right. After the whole shameful event, there is a lot of explaining to do, and really many lessons to be learnt and re-learnt. Not only for Indian people, but people the world over.
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