'Delhi rape victim's death far from peaceful'

Bangladeshi writer-activist Taslima Nasreen has expressed anger on Saturday over the Singapore doctors’ statement that the Delhi gang rape victim died “peacefully”. Srinand Jha reports.

Bangladeshi writer-activist Taslima Nasreen has expressed anger on Saturday over the Singapore doctors’ statement that the Delhi gang rape victim died “peacefully”.

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“She was only 23... Her whole future was ahead of her, she was supposed to live her life, but she was brutally gangraped, tortured, mutilated and murdered. There is no ‘peace’ in it,” she said.

Nasreen said, “Millions of women are oppressed, harassed, abused, tortured, trafficked, burned, raped, gangraped and murdered every day. Here women hardly get any opportunity to live peacefully or die peacefully.”

Pointing out that mindset changes won’t come so long as society remained patriarchal, she said boys grew up believing that “they have a right to control minds, bodies, desires, wishes and the freedom of women”.

Nasreen also trounced Bollywood for portraying women as sex objects. “Everywhere, the woman is merely a body. Her brains are not important.” She also said, “Rape has been a weapon of war. Armies do it. Community and castes inflict rapes on women as a strategy to dominate.”

So, does she support the demands for castrating rapists or hanging them? “Capital punishment... is a rather easy, hassle-free solution for the government, she said, adding it was lot more difficult to make men cease to see women as sex objects.”