Is India a Safe Place for Women? Another Brutal Killing Raises the Question.
ANUPREETA DAS, SAMEER YASIR包括医务人员在内的数千名印度人抗议一名实习医生在其工作的医院被奸杀。 Piyal Adhikary/EPA, via ShutterstockIn December 2012, a 23-year-old physiotherapy student boarded a bus in New Delhi a little after 9 p.m., expecting it would take her home. Instead, she was gang-raped and assaulted so viciously with an iron rod that her intestines were damaged. She died days later as India erupted in rage.2012年12月晚上刚过9点，一名学习理疗的23岁学生在新德里登上一辆公共汽车，打算乘车回家。结果，却在车上遭到轮奸，施暴者残忍地用铁棍捅她的下体，以至于肠子被捅破。她在几天后死去，印度民众随之爆发了愤怒。Nearly 12 years later, the nation is convulsing with anger once again — this time, over the ghastly rape and murder of a 31-year-old trainee doctor in a Kolkata hospital, as she rested in a seminar room after a late-night shift. Since the Aug 9. killing, thousands of doctors have gone on strike to demand a safer work environment and thousands more people have taken to the streets to demand justice.将近12年后，愤怒再次在印度爆发，这次是因为一名31岁的实习医生在加尔各答一家医院令人毛骨悚然地被奸杀，当时她刚下夜班，正在一间研讨室里休息。自8月9日的谋杀案发生以来，已有数千名医生罢工要求更安全的工作环境，还有更多的人走上街头要求伸张正义。For a country desperate to be seen as a global leader, repeated high-profile cases of brutal sexual assaults highlight an uncomfortable truth: India, by many measures, remains one of the world’s most unsafe places for women. Rape and domestic violence are relatively common, and conviction rates are low.对这个急于被视为全球领导者的国家来说，一再发生备受瞩目的残忍性侵案件凸显了一个令人不安的事实：从许多方面来看，印度仍是全球对女性最危险的国度之一。强奸和家庭暴力相对常见，施暴者的定罪率较低。This week, the Supreme Court of India took up the Kolkata case as one of fundamental rights and safety, questioning how hospital administrators and police officers had handled it and saying new protective measures were needed. “The nation cannot wait for another rape and murder for real changes on the ground,” Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud said.对于加尔各答的这起案子，印度最高法院将其作为涉及基本权利和人身安全问题的案件，已于本周开始审理，法院对医院管理人员和警方的处置方式提出了质疑，并表示需要新的保护措施。“这个国家不能等到又一起强奸和谋杀案发生后，才让现状真正地改变，”印度首席大法官D·Y·钱德拉楚德说。Gender-related violence is hardly unique to India. But even as millions of Indian women have joined the urban work force in the past decade, securing their financial independence and helping to fuel the country’s rapid growth, they are still often left to bear the burden of their own safety.与性别有关的暴力绝非印度独有。但在过去十年里，尽管已有数百万印度女性加入到城市劳动力大军中来，获得了经济独立，帮助推动了国家的快速发展，但对人身安全的担心仍然是她们常常要承受的负担。Longstanding customs that both repress women and in many cases confine them to the home have made their safety in public spaces an afterthought. It can be dangerous for a woman to use public transportation, especially at night, and sexual harassment occurs frequently on the streets and in offices. Mothers tell their daughters to be watchful. Brothers and husbands drop their sisters and wives off at work.传统习俗在许多情况下压制女性、将她们限制在家，这导致她们在公共场所的安全成为事发后才考虑的问题。女性乘坐公共交通工具可能有危险，尤其是在夜晚，性骚扰在街头和办公室里常有发生。母亲告诉女儿要处处提防。上下班时常能看到兄弟接送姐妹、丈夫接送妻子的情景。
发生了强奸杀人案的加尔各答RG Kar医学院附属医院的正门。 Piyal Adhikary/EPA, via ShutterstockIn 1997, India’s Supreme Court issued guidelines intended to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace. Those rules stemmed from the 1992 rape of a social worker, Bhanwari Devi, who tried to stop the marriage of a nine-month-old child.1997年，印度最高法院颁布了旨在防止职场性骚扰的指导方针。出台这些规则是因为，社工邦瓦莉·德维在1992年被强奸，因为她试图阻止一场女方是九个月大婴儿的婚姻。A bill to put the guidelines into law was proposed in 2007. It was approved six years later in 2013, a year after the gang-rape of the young physiotherapy student in New Delhi, who came to be known as Nirbhaya, or fearless.旨在将这些指导方针变成法律的法案是2007年提出的。该法案在六年后的2013年获得了通过，也就是在新德里那名年轻的理疗学生遭轮奸一年后，她后来被称为Nirbhaya，意思是“无所畏惧”。The legal protections have been ineffectual partly because the government has been lax about implementing the law and investing in mechanisms to properly handle cases of sexual assault, said Vrinda Grover, a lawyer and women’s rights activist.律师、女权活动人士弗琳达·葛洛法表示，法律保护措施一直达不到目的，部分原因是政府没能严格执法，对正确处理性侵案件的机制投资不足。She said that investigations she had examined were often “unprofessional, shoddy” and carried out by people with little training. The state’s approach, Ms. Grover said, is colored by prejudice against women.她说，她查阅过的案件调查往往“不专业、敷衍了事”，而且调查者几乎没有受过专业训练。葛洛法说，政府的做法受到对女性的偏见的影响。If the government acts only after people organize protests, “then it is the system that has become dysfunctional and we will not see the end of sexual violence,” she said.如果政府只是在人们组织抗议活动后才采取行动，“那意味着这个体制已经失去功能，我们将不会看到性暴力的终结，”她说。In the Kolkata case, Chief Justice Chandrachud identified a number of breakdowns in the official response to the rape and killing. He asked why hospital administrators and police officers had not followed protocol in reporting the crime in the hours after the victim’s body, which bore signs of rape and brutal injury, was discovered at R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital, where she worked. The top court also set up a national task force to recommend safety measures to protect medics, who are often subject to violence and abuse.首席大法官钱德拉楚德指出，官员对加尔各答奸杀案的处理存在许多漏洞。他质疑，为什么在受害者的尸体在她工作的RG Kar医学院附属医院被发现后的几小时里，医院管理人员和警察没有按照规定报案，尽管尸体有强奸和残暴伤害痕迹。最高法院还成立了一个国家工作组，为经常遭受暴力和辱骂的医护人员提出保护他们人身安全的建议措施。
加尔各答周三的游行。这起强奸杀人案激起了人们对女性在工作场所缺少安全的愤怒。 Dibyangshu Sarkar/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThree senior officials at the Kolkata hospital have been removed from their posts. A 33-year-old man, who was a volunteer at a police post at the hospital, has been arrested in connection with the killing, but as of Thursday he had not been charged. The Supreme Court ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation, which is handling the case, to submit a status report on Thursday.加尔各答医院的三名高管已被免职。一名在医院警务站当志愿者的33岁男子因涉嫌杀人被捕，但截至周四，他尚未受到指控。最高法院已责成处理此案的中央调查局周四提交一份情况报告。The ongoing protests — with dozens of Bollywood celebrities and other public figures lending their voices — have morphed into widespread anger, not just at the plight of many in the medical profession, but also about workplace safety for women.正在进行的抗议活动已演变成范围广泛的愤怒，这不仅是对许多医务人员所处的困境的不满，也是对女性在职场缺乏安全的不满，数十名宝莱坞名人和其他公众人物纷纷发声。The millions of Indian women who have entered the work force in recent years have challenged patriarchal norms to pursue the same opportunities that men have in one of the world’s fast-growing economies. Women, along with men, are also increasingly migrating from villages to cities, seeking better earnings.近年来，数百万印度女性加入了劳动大军，她们挑战印度的父权制规范，在这个世界上快速增长的经济体追求与男性同等的机会。和男性一样，女性也在越来越多地从农村涌进城市，寻找收入更好的工作。But India still has a low labor force participation rate among women compared to other countries, a figure that had been on a long downward slide until the past few years. Women make up less than a third of India’s urban labor force, and men vastly outnumber women in both government and private-sector jobs.但与其他国家相比，印度女性的劳动参与率仍然很低。直到几年前，这个数字一直处于下滑状态。女性在印度的城市劳动力中所占比例不到三分之一，政府和私营部门工作岗位上的男性数量远远超过女性。Safety in the workplace is essential if more women are to enter the labor force, said Gita Gopinath, the first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund.国际货币基金组织第一副总裁吉塔·戈皮纳特表示，如果要让更多女性进入劳动力市场，工作场所的安全至关重要。“No way that will happen if women in India don’t feel completely safe,” Ms. Gopinath, who is of Indian origin, told the journalist Barkha Dutt in an interview posted this weekend on YouTube. “Not having to worry about your safety is absolutely a basic right” as a woman, she said.“如果印度女性没有充分的安全感，就不可能进入劳动大军，”戈皮纳特是印度裔，她在周末发布在YouTube上的一次采访中对记者巴尔卡·杜特说。“不必担心自己的人身安全绝对是（女性的）一项基本权利，”她说。
加尔各答的案发医院遭到了破坏。 Dibyangshu Sarkar/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe numbers tell a harrowing story for Indian women. In 2023, the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security ranked India 128th out of 177 countries in its annual index on women’s inclusion, justice and security.数字讲述的故事对印度女性来说让人痛心。乔治城女性、和平与安全研究所在其2023年度的指数中将印度在177个国家中排在第128名，该指数衡量的是女性在社会中遭受排挤、公正和安全方面的情况。According to the World Bank, 35 percent of Indian women between the ages of 15 and 49 have experienced physical or sexual violence at the hands of their partners, higher than the world average of 27 percent.据世界银行的数据，15至49岁的印度女性中有35%遭受过伴侣的身体暴力或性暴力，高于全球的27%平均值。Nearly 45,000 rape cases were investigated in 2022, the latest year for which statistics are available from India’s National Crime Records Bureau. But among the cases that went to trial, there were convictions in just over 5,000 — a rate of 27.4 percent, lower than for cases of murder, kidnapping and other violent crimes.2022年，印度调查了近4.5万起强奸案，这是印度的全国犯罪记录局提供的最近一年的统计数据。但在法庭审理的案件中，只有5000多起得到了有罪判决——定罪率为27.4%，低于谋杀、绑架和其他暴力犯罪案件的定罪率。Many more rape cases go unreported because of social stigma and other reasons.由于社会上的羞辱和其他原因，还有很多未报案的强奸犯罪。Though gruesome incidents of rape continue to occur and sexual harassment remains a reality for many women, the Nirbhaya case and the #MeToo movement have changed how such matters are perceived, said Ms. Grover, the women’s rights activist.尽管骇人听闻的强奸事件仍在发生，性骚扰仍是许多女性面临的现实，但“无所畏惧”案和“#我也是”运动已改变了人们对这些问题的看法，女权活动人士葛洛法说。“There is a marked change in how women across brackets of age, class and caste structures view themselves,” Ms. Grover said. “There is no confusion that this is a crime they are in no way responsible for.”“不同年龄、阶级和种姓的女性对自己的看法已发生了显著变化，”葛洛法说。“毫无疑问，她们不应该为这些犯罪承担责任。”On Wednesday, hundreds of doctors wearing aprons and stethoscopes protested outside the federal health ministry and at Jantar Mantar, a designated spot for protests in the nation’s capital. They demanded immediate action to ensure the safety of doctors and other medical workers.周三，数百名穿着白大褂、佩戴听诊器的医生在联邦卫生部外和简塔·曼塔古天文台举行了抗议活动，后者是首都指定的抗议活动地点。他们要求立即采取行动，确保医生和其他医务人员的安全。“Most of the incidents are not reported,” said one doctor, Pinky Verma. “That is because the attacks happen on women, and people can live with it.”“大多数案件没被报道，”一位名叫平基·维尔马的医生说。“那是因为袭击发生在女性身上，人们对其习以为常。”
