Media In India/elsewhere -2

Husky · (This post was last modified: 04-14-2007, 07:59 PM by Husky.)

Can I request Mudy or other Admin to move posts 53 to 56 as well as this one - and any others of mine to follow on the same topic - to the Media in India and Elsewhere thread? It might be more appropriate there.

QUOTE(Capt Manmohan Kumar @ Apr 9 2007, 06:25 PM)<!--emo& Sad

--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif' /> Dogs, Frogs and Dalits: The Indian Model Minority Has A Dark Side
By Brenda Walker

When Mahatma Gandhi was asked what he thought of Western Civilization, he famously answered, "I think it would be a good idea." [right][snapback]66682[/snapback][/right]I'm so tired of having to read the same accusations originating from the US over and over again. All in the same tune, same theme. I wonder how any self-respecting Hindu lives in that country. Wonder if the pay's worth so much more than the work done for it that it compensates for the incessant humiliations against one's identity.

Whether the west constitutes a civilisation or not is irrelevant. Civilisation is a western word, and the English-origin countries have every right to self-designate themselves as they choose. Also, the very existence of many good people in/originating from those countries (as also from all countries) constitute good arguments for the case that the west is in fact a civilisation - if not in the colonial past, it is today.

As Brenda Walker has played Sewer Inspector of India (although paid by higher-ups to paint the foulest picture), I now have the right to write on the infinitely shadier side of the west. If India's sewer according to B Walker's partially-researched, partially-informed, selectively-informing, biased 'expose' was a stinker, the west by the same calculation will be 'The Pool of Eternal Stench'.
But I won't have to rely on inventing 'facts' and hiding inconvenient ones, like B Walker did (at her very best she referred to the likes of Amartya Sen for supporting 'evidence' - never a good sign).

I want to write about, this:
QUOTEEven the demonstration by Nobel-prize-winning economist Amartya Sen that tens of millions of women and girls are missing from India has found little attention among those who claim to value human rights.Ignore that it's Amartya Sen (pretend the stats are reliable). Look at that word FROM. And think of what that entails. It means these women and girl children have gone elsewhere, because they've gone "missing from India". That means that there's a market for them elsewhere. Isn't that right? So what does that say?

All here might be aware about that despicable scourge on this planet, the Traffick in Women and Children.
If not, let me acquaint you/refresh your memory with a little of it. B Walker has mentioned India. Let me talk of the west, perhaps the US in particular. Let's start with the Phillipines and I'll make my way to other places after that.

Phillipines
Several years back I had watched a very disturbing documentary on how huge numbers of the unfortunate beautiful women of Phillipines, who thought they were going to the US to work in respectable jobs actually found themselves in anything but. They returned to their homeland in bodybags <img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/furious.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='furious.gif' /> (For those Indians who don't know what that is: they were murdered, and only their bodies returned in a bag for burial.) Many bodybags of Philipino women arrive from the US each year. The Land of Opportunity didn't say what kind of opportunity it was that was awaiting them. But may these unfortunate women be happy with their ancestors now.

It is a HUGE problem in the Phillipines. No need to guess why, it's a christian colonised Asian nation. Western christo-exploitation of converted nations is the worst. This exploitation and the associated high-speed 'development' had also led to many prostitution and other exploitation rings to be started in the Phillipines itself.
I'm not going to discuss the matter of child exploitation and traffick here, that's another sick topic.

Some pathetically simple googling for data on this gave the following:

http://www.gabnet.org/campaigns/purplerose/prc2.html
QUOTETrafficking of Filipino Women and Children IN THE UNITED STATES
* From the 1980s on, around 5,000 Filipinas are married to American men annually through the so-called mail-order bride agencies or the international match-making agencies. These agencies comprise a multi-million dollar business.

* Wife battery and control are usual features of these marriages, where the divorce rate is estimated at 70%.

* The fiance/husband/male client usually believes he has been taken advantaged of when the Filipina tries to divorce or leave him. His retaliation runs the gamut of mild (maxing out credit cards and making sure the court divides the debt between him and his to-be-ex-wife) to killing her, as what happened in a Seattle courtroom.

* Several young Filipinas were married to psychopaths and/or serial killers. Estelita Villa Reeves in Texas disappeared and the police discovered that her husband had married two others--a Latina and a Vietnamese--before her, both died mysteriously.

* An estimated 25,000 Filipinas have been brough into the US to work at brothel houses, bars, nightclubs and illegal sex farms in various states and in the vicinity of US military bases and camps.

* Some 25 sex tour operators in the US each send 15-25 men each month to the Philippines to engage in sex tourism. A Philippine Adventure Tour, for instance, costs $1,645 including RT airfare, hotel and guided tours to the bars where women are purchased for sex for as low as $24.

* Neither the Philippine embassy and its consulates nor the US government has any adequate program to deal with the problem. US legislators of Philippine ancestry focus largely on whether the women should be called "mail-order brides," the agencies "mail-order bride agencies," or some other term which would effectively hide the fact that women are being sold.
http://media.www.thevarsity.ca/media/stora...s-2772603.shtml
QUOTEFilm fights for Filipino women's rights
Amy Smithers
Issue date: 3/12/07 Section: News

Like the designer rose, women from the Philippines are reguarly moulded-physically and mentally-to fit the desires of their buyers. For example, the Phillipines are the only predominantly Christian Asian country, and many men troll websites trafficking Filipino girls they feel are likely to honour traditional Christian family values.

On Thursday evening, a concerned group gathered to view Say I Do, a documentary chronicling the experiences of Filipino mail-order brides. The event was one of many put on by the Philippine Women Centre of Ontario, in conjunction with Concerned Students of POL 108 and SAC, as part of the Purple Rose Campaign, an international movement against the sex trafficking of Filipino women and children.

"A lot of [the men] have been divorced and don't want to go through that again, and they know divorce is not acceptable [in the Filipino culture]," said SAC VP student life Camille Cendana. "It's this perception of the Philippine women that drives the industry."

The websites in North America are privately run, and connected with recruitment centres in the Philippines.

"They arrange tours to the Phillipines and also operate a group of women you can meet while you're there," said Sioson.

Some men will write letters to ten or more girls a year. They then book a tour to meet each of them and decide which potential wife they would like to sponsor. The immediate problem with Canadian law is that there is no limit to the number of women one man can sponsor.

"There's no way for the women to screen the men, to find out that the man has already sponsored three wives," Sioson adds.

Roughly one in nine Filipinos currently live abroad, sending home a total of US$12 billion in remittances each year. The increasing influence of globalization has made the Phillipine people themselves some of the most valuable exports that the country has to offer.(Red bit above Smile

Having converted the Phillipines to christianity was a stroke of genius. But isn't it always? It makes the people ready for (and helpless to) exploitation.

http://members.tripod.com/~gabriela_p/8-ar...0601_prose.html
Stop Sex Trafficking of Filipino Women and Children!
QUOTEWhy does the problem of sex-trafficking exist and persist in the Philippines?
As poverty worsens and living conditions deteriorate, the number of women and children who become vulnerable to sex-trade increases. As the crisis intensifies, women's economic rights are incessantly infringed upon. Presently, women and children make up the largest section of the reserved labor force. According to government reports, the number of unemployed has reached 3.9 million and 40% of these are women. (Philippine Star, June 12, 1999)

Philippine society remains semi-feudal and semi-colonial. The economy remains "export-oriented and "import-dependent" â the reason for the country's continued widespread poverty. The implementation of the policies of privatization, liberalization and deregulation has meant greater exploitation of the Filipino masses. The Estrada administration warned that wage increase will result in the rise of prices and the devaluation of the currency, an increase in the unemployment rate and will drive foreign investors out of the country. (Manila Times, April 30, 1999) The Estrada administration falls short in admitting that the country's economy depends so much on foreign investors whose interest is not the welfare of our people but their capital gains.

With the advent of imperialist globalization, underdeveloped countries like the Philippines are fast removing economic barriers in the name of "free trade". Particularly in the Philippines, this means unhindered entry of imported products and capital and the export of raw materials. It also means repatriation of profits in collaboration with big land owners and bureaucrat capitalists in the country. The implementation of these economic programs has also been accelerated under the dictate of the IMF-WB through the Structural Adjustment Policy (SAP) and the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade â World Trade Organization (GATT-WTO).

With the so-called "free-trade" among countries, legal barriers are gradually being eroded to make prostitution legitimate, especially in semi-colonial countries like the Philippines. Under these circumstances women become more vulnerable to exploitation in "sex-trade" and prostitution. The number of women and children in prostitution will rise even faster when and if prostitution is loosely defined as "work" or "sex-work". At present, there are approximately 600,000 prostitutes in the Philippines. 50,000 to 60,000 of this are children forced into prostitution.
Low regard for women persists as perpetuated by the church, home, school and mass media. Not only women's labor power but women's bodies has become a commodity.
I was surprised to find that so many Phillipino women were trafficked to South Korea. But when I looked into it, it became clear as to who and what was the cause:

http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/2396.htm
QUOTEThird World Network Features
Geneva: Over 5,000 women, mainly from the Philippines and the former Soviet Union, have been trafficked into South Korea for the sex industry since the mid-1990s, with the largest employers of Filipino women being bars located near US military bases, according to new research published by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).
http://action.web.ca/home/catw/readingroom...6d7508850d41038
QUOTEFilipinas in Prostitution around U.S. Military Bases in Korea: A Recurring Nightmare
by Jean Enriquez
CATW-Asia Pacific
In the recent years, Filipino women have been migrating in flocks to neighboring countries, despite and because of the Asian economic crisis. Push factors for women in the Philippines are numerous. These include the feminization of poverty wherein the Filipino women suffer the worst impacts of structural adjustment programs, on which loans from World Bank and IMF are contingent. 'Women fisherfolk are edged out by corporate fishing, indigenous women lose their lands to mining interests, urban poor women are displaced by development infrastructure, and rural women are enduring a steady decline in incomes because of agricultural free trade.' There is also increasing trend in casualization of labour among big companies, mostly victimizing women workers. In terms of employment, only 46.8% of women are employed compared to 85.7% of men. The severe economic burden experienced by women, in connection with their roles within the family and status within society, compels women to work abroad.Woohoo, US Free Trade! American imperialism is no different from the violence of communism.

Is it any wonder who has brought this on?
http://sandiego.indymedia.org/en/2006/10/119914.shtml
QUOTEPhilippine Women's National Day of Prtest
US-BASED WOMENâS GROUP GABRIELA NETWORK COMMEMORATE PHILIPPINE WOMENâS NATIONAL DAY OF PROTEST; DECLARE U.S. CULPABLE FOR EXPLOITATION AND OPPRESSION OF FILIPINAS

The US introduced large scale systematic prostitution to the archipelago, creating red light districts in and around its military bases that entertained 10,000 soldiers daily during the height of the Vietnam War. With the arrival of close to 12,000 US troops in early 2002, when the Philippines was declared the Second Front in the US-led âwar on terror,â sex trafficking of Filipino women and children increased to 600%. The US remains the largest importer of mail-order brides from the Philippines. The US is the biggest supporter of Macapagal Arroyo, giving her administration the fourth largest US foreign military aid package in the world, at over US$400 million. Around 5,500 US troops are in the islands.

This state of militarization has had detrimental effects especially on the women. Almost a year ago, 22-year old âNicoleâ was allegedly raped and tossed aside by six US Marines outside of a club in Subic Bay, Olongapo City (former US naval base site). The verdict of the case, which will be decided next month, looks grim. According to Nicoleâs defense team, the best they can hope for is one conviction and, at worst, all marines will be freed. Nicoleâs case is further example of the way women in the Philippines have been and are being treated by US-backed Macapagal Arroyo: easily disposable cheap commodities. Last year alone, over 700,000 women were exported to other countries to work as overseas contract and migrant workers. Everyday, an average of 10 body bags arrive in the Philippines carrying the remains of Filipinas.Such cases of US Army abusing non-American women in other nations is not unique to converted Phillipines. It happens in Japan and happened in Buddhist Vietnam where women and children have been raped and even murdered by the American 'officer and gentleman'.

Ah, the joys that would await a converted India! With such incentives, I wonder why us stubborn Hindus are not leaping to grasp at the offer... 'Eternal salvation' and a wonderful life of exploitation, plus a free body bag for the womenfolk!!!!
(I'm being sarcastic. No disrespect meant to the Phillipino women victimised or their families or country.)

My question: if, as per Amartya Sen, 10s of millions women and girl children have gone missing from India where have they gone missing to?

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