An interview with Rita Banerji of 50 Million Women Missing.
5.What was the motivating factor behind the 50 Million Missing Campaign?
I’d say: outrage. I’m an Indian woman, and my country tells me “We’ve eliminated your kind by the millions, like flies! You are not human. You are nothing!” 20% of women have been exterminated from the population. And people need to know – this is unprecedented in human history. It is not normal for any society! No other human group has been subject to this kind of systemic and targeted extermination. China is the other country that has female gendercide. But what makes India worse than China, is first the apathy of the Indian government. The Chinese government takes this far more seriously. And secondly, in China it is largely sex-selection. In India the violence is perpetuated in all kinds of ways, for girls and women of all ages: starvation, physical battering, rape, honor-killings, dowry murder, witch lynchings. If this was happening to a human group in India because of their religion or their ethnicity, we would have the media and all civil rights sections in India up in arms – like for Kashmir or for the Gujarat massacre. We’d have global human rights groups demanding international action. But are women not human? Why does our genocide not evoke the same response?
I wish I knew.