by Maya Oppenheim

The man is watching too much porn and wanting to recreate it in real life.. Increasingly younger people like teenagers are getting access to porn films.

An Indian women’s rights campaigner has said a surge in underage girls being raped can be attributed to the rise in men watching porn but condemned the decision to introduce the death penalty for such crimes.

Dr Rukmini Rao, who has campaigned for increased punishment for rape and the recognition of domestic violence, argued the growing popularity of porn was driving not just underage rape but also marital rape.

The 68-year-old argued there was a “very serious problem” with rape in the country – saying many young girls and women are not properly educated about the definition of consent.

“The rise of porn and the rise of rapes is definitely linked,” she said. “There has been an upsurge in rapes of young women and young girls. I have a lot of young women coming into crisis centres because they feel they are sexually incompatible with their husbands.”

“Nine times out of 10, it is because the man is watching too much porn and wanting to recreate it in real life and also drinking too much. Increasingly younger people like teenagers are getting access to porn films. It is illegal to watch porn in India but it happens a lot.”

Dr Rao said the married young men “demand sexual services” from their wives – noting that marital rape is legal in India.

“They feel entitled,” she added. “Young women are protected from thinking about sex and sexuality and their bodies. You have one person who is an innocent and one person who is predatory.”

Dr Rao said rape investigations and prosecutions can take several years – explaining that parents often do not want to pursue cases of young girls being raped because the cases could still be going on when they are trying to marry their daughters off.

“We need quick prosecutions and then punishment of the guilty every time, because the number of rapists who actually go to prison is very small,” she said.

“You need to find a physical mark or some evidence and if the person is not taken to a doctor soon enough for a swab to be taken they will not find enough evidence for the rapist to be prosecuted.”

India is the third largest consumer of Pornhub content behind the US and the UK, according to data taken from 2017.

A notorious gang rape of a 23-year-old student in Delhi in 2012, which led to the city being branded the “rape capital of the world”, was perpetrated by six men who had been watching violent porn.

Since then, a trend of rape videos going viral in India has led many to raise concerns that smartphones (India has 400 million users), cheap data and easy access to violent porn, combined with a lack of sex education and understanding of relationships, could feed sexual violence.

Sexual abuse in India continues to be highly prevalent despite the introduction of tougher rape laws in 2013. According to the National Crimes Records Bureau (NCRB), in 2016 the rape of minor girls increased by 82 per cent compared with the previous year.

The NCRB data observes that a woman is raped every six hours in India. Across all rape cases, 95 per cent of rapists were not strangers but family, friends and neighbours.

Rape is one of the most under-reported crimes in India – with some estimates indicating 90 to 95 per cent of rape cases remain unreported.

Dr Rao criticised the introduction of the death penalty for convicted rapists of girls under the age of 12 – a move that was introduced via an executive order in April last year amid uproar over a series of high-profile cases.

The campaigner, who has also promoted rights for female farmers and fought against child marriages and the trafficking of baby girls, argued the death sentence was no solution to any problem.

The move has also been criticised by other activists and politicians who say it will not serve as a proper deterrent to child rapists without the criminal justice system being totally overhauled.

Child rights activists have voiced concerns the introduction of the death penalty could make families more likely to cover up sexual crimes – even warning rapists might kill their victims to avoid being exposed for their crimes.

Indian government surveys show some 42 per cent of girls in the country have been sexually abused.

Dr Rao, who set up the first rural women’s shelter in Medak district, said rape cases often involve upper-class men raping lower-caste women – adding that this happens during conflict because rape is employed as a “weapon”.

The campaigner said there was a problem of violence against women more generally and argued the issue of domestic violence in the country stemmed from gender inequality in society.

“It is institutional inequality from birth,” she said. “A woman is told she is different from birth. She is told she is less than a man. But a boy is privileged from birth. He thinks it is OK to behave badly. Violence against women is a major issue. There is street violence, marital violence and sexual violence at the workplace.”

The conviction rate for crimes against women overall in India is very low – only 18.9 per cent and the lowest in a decade – according to the latest official crime statistics from 2016. The average conviction rate for all crimes is 47 per cent.

More than 50 per cent of Indian men and women still believe that sometimes women deserve a beating. One woman is killed every hour for not providing enough dowry – an amount of property or money given by a bride to her husband – at the time of marriage.

The campaigner, who is also chair of trustees at the Lepra Society India, said there was mounting resistance to gender inequality from female activists in the country.

“Indian women are fighting back,” she said. “They are mobilising themselves. There has been a boom in activism over the years. Women are not willing to lie down and die. They are fighting for their dignity and for their rights.”

“We do not need some VIP. We are not looking for saviours. But if you come in friendship and are willing to stand side by side with women, it is not at all patronising.”

by Roland Elliott Brown

Over the last 28 years, officials denied that such massacres took place in Iran in 1988, even though Ayatollah Montazeri had written about them in his memoir.

In 1988, toward the end of the Iran-Iraq War, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ordered the secret mass execution of thousands of Iranian political prisoners. Most were leftists, and many were members of the controversial Mujahedin Khalq Organization, which had sided with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq during the war. Acting on Khomeini’s behalf, a small group of high-ranking officials visited Iran’s prisons and subjected the prisoners — most of whom had already been sentenced by Iran’s judiciary — to a religious-political test. Those deemed unlikely to recommit themselves to Islam and Khomeini were sent to hang in groups and then buried in secret.

Only one man dared to challenge Khomeini over the killings: Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, his heir apparent as supreme leader. Now, Montazeri and the 1988 massacre are back in the news. In August, Montazeri’s family website released an audio recording of a meeting in which the widely-respected cleric, who died in 2009, criticized the officials involved. He called the killings “the biggest crime in the Islamic Republic – a crime that will condemn us all in history.” Far from denying the killings following the release of the tape, several serving Iranian officials named in the tape, notably Justice Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi, have emerged to defend massacre.

In response, more than 100 prominent Iranians, including 2003 Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi and Stanford historian Abbas Milani, have signed an open letter to the United Nations Human Rights Council and the International Criminal Court calling for the killings to be recognized as a crime against humanity.

A Taboo Exposed

Another prominent signatory, Mansour Farhang, was Iran’s first ambassador to the United Nations following the revolution of 1979 before he quit his post over Khomeini’s refusal to release US Embassy hostages. He then returned to the US –where he had lived before the revolution – and became a professor of international relations at Bennington College, Vermont. “This is really an unprecedented situation,” Farhang told IranWire. “This is the mass killing of prisoners who had already been sentenced, and now the Iranian authorities, the people who carried it out, are admitting it.”

That was not always the case. For many years, the mass killings of 1988 were the most taboo subject in Iran’s modern history. Although they were not exactly a secret in Iran — Montazeri’s break with Khomeini over the killings was relatively well known — official denials sustained a level of public doubt. “Over the last 28 years, officials denied that such massacres took place in Iran in 1988, even though Ayatollah Montazeri had written about them in his memoir,” Farhang says. “Iranian authorities could always claim – and they did – that Montazeri did not do the writing.”

But Montazeri’s eldest son, Ahmad, who was present at the meeting in which Montazeri condemned the executions with a tape recorder rolling all those years ago, chose last month to release the tape, for reasons unknown. “Many people have asked him to do it, but it’s a very good question what eventually motivated him to release it,” Farhang says. “It’s impossible to say whether it was his own conscience, or if he was pressured. But the audiotape gives the kind of credibility to the story that cannot be denied. They cannot deny the authenticity of Montazeri’s voice.”

The Fetishization of Ayatollah Khomeini

One reason the killings have remained taboo inside Iran is that the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Khomeini, ordered them himself. Khomeini was the man whose influence over Iran’s religious masses in 1979 led to the overthrow of the Shah, and who decreed that post-revolutionary Iran should be a Shia Islamic state governed by Islamic clerics. Khomeini’s face appears on Iran’s money, and his portrait is displayed in just about every public building, from the grandest mosques to the humblest shops and offices. He is a national fetish – albeit one quietly ridiculed by more skeptical Iranians. To call him a criminal is to rattle the very foundations of the Islamic Republic.

“These killings were based on the decision of one individual,” Farhang says. “Vengeance was the principal motive for the massacre of these people. What is really sad about is that the overwhelming majority of an estimated 3,500 people who were executed were young at the time of their arrest, in their early twenties. Some of them were teenagers. Some of the people who were responsible for carrying out the executions were reluctant. One of them had mentioned the historical judgment to Khomeini, but he categorically rejected that and said, ‘Don’t’ worry about history.’ The man had a dark side to him, no question about it. And then power, particularly absolute power, transformed that dark side into psychopathology.”

Even prominent Iranian politicians widely described as moderates or reformists by western media – such as President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif – are extremely unlikely to back any critical examination of the killings. “In Iran today, so long as it is the Islamic Republic of Iran, that is, a theocracy, any suggestion that Khomeini was not perfect could lead to not only marginalization but arrest and imprisonment. Khomeini is beyond criticism, and criticizing him is blasphemy, is ‘war against God’ according to Iranian laws and practices. Those who want to serve within the Iranian regime, and keep their position and privileges, would never open their mouths.”

Challenging the Silence and the Fear

In Tehran today, any public “debate” about the 1988 killings is entirely one-sided. While Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has remained silent about them, some of his most fervent supporters stand by them and even praise them. “Some right wing people, particularly the conservative Kayhan newspaper and other media belonging to the Revolutionary Guards, have come out and defended it as a righteous act necessary for the defense of Islam and the protection of the country,” Farhang says.

Justice Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi, one of the men criticized on the tape, has also defended the executions. Two other men criticized by Montazeri on the tape, Hussein Ali Nayeri and Ebrahim Raeesi, both hold prominent positions. Nayeri is a high court judge, and Raeesi heads Astan Quds Razavi, one of the largest –and wealthiest – religious foundations in Iran.

While Farhang and his fellow campaigners have addressed their letter to the UN Human Rights Council and the International Criminal Court, they have few illusions that Iran will soon face justice over the killings. “First of all, we know that Iran is not a member of the ICC,” he says. “The only conceivable way that the ICC could actually take the case is if the UN Security Council passed a resolution and suggested that the ICC consider it. That is unthinkable because Russia and China will never vote for such a thing.” Rather, he says, this is a chance to raise awareness much-needed awareness of a subject on which silence has prevailed for decades. “It’s really an expression of the outrage of both the Iranian public and of human rights organizations. What we really want is to explain to both the Iranian and the international public what has happened in Iran.”