When it comes to crimes against Northeastern women, it matters who the perpetrators are.
Watching the fireworks from Le Moon rooftop bar, I peer down to see hordes of locals and tourists at the riverside boulevard in Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia. Pedestrians leisurely loitering the street are spoilt for choice between the many bars and cafes dotted on one side and women vendors selling oysters and cold beverages at the boulevard facing the Tonle Sap River.
The crowd is a mix of young boys and girls, families, backpackers and older white men hand-locked with Khmei women half their age. This, however, is not an unusual sight anywhere in Cambodia.
On the New Year’s eve night, I enviously looked at Cambodian women freely milling about — a privilege that women in India still don’t enjoy. Google search “New Year’s eve + women + India” and you’ll get a list of horror stories of women molested on the celebratory streets of some of our most cosmopolitan cities. Debauchery, like the kind in Manchester perfectly captured by Joel Goodman in this photo that went viral, and mischief on New Year’s eve, though, is not unique or limited to India. The sexual assault and mugging of more than 500 women (including two women who were raped and a police officer who was molested) by as many as 1,000 men in Cologne, Germany, is just a case in point.
In New Delhi, a young student from Manipur was allegedly gang raped by three African nationals a day before New Year’s Eve. Delhi Police was swift to act in arresting the three accused and two women from Manipur, also accused of being accomplices in the crime. Sexual violence against women in the capital usually evokes considerable outrage on social media, especially when women from the Northeast of the country are victims in the story. This incident perhaps elicited no dharnas or bleeding hearts for two reasons: Firstly, the perpetrators was of African descent and, secondly, women from the Northeast have been accused of being complicit in the crime.
A Facebook post issued by the Delhi Police North East cell, which has been spearheaded to resolve issues related to people from the Northeast in the capital, on December 31, made matters worse. While informing about the recent rape case of the student from Manipur (although making no explicit mention of the nationality or race of the perpetrators), the Delhi Police advised young people from the Northeast, especially women, to refrain from accepting house party invitations on New Year’s eve, even from friends in their community.
Nodal officer for the Delhi Police for North East Cell, Robin Hibu (who was also part of the Bezbaruah review committee) has been running the page since it started in 2015. In an interview with him last year, he told me that their social media strategy was to raise awareness about Northeastern cultures. He said, “Through this page, we wanted to clear some hazy perceptions about people from the Northeast. However, our strategy isn’t to compartmentalise but ensure every citizen lives happily in Delhi.”
But compartmentalising is exactly what the Delhi Police has been doing, whether it is the youth or women from the Northeast. In 2007, they released a booklet called Security Tips for North Eastern students/visitors in Delhiin the wake of incidents of harassment. The booklet was heavily criticised for advising women against wearing “scanty dresses”.
Would Delhi Police have put out such a notice if the accused in the December 30 rape case were men from Delhi or even, the Northeast? Likely not. Here’s why.
In the last few years, African men and Northeast women have been making news for all the “wrong reasons”. While a few headlines have reported of NE women being raped or cheated of large sums of money by African nationals, there have been other news reports on both parties being involved in money laundering scams: seethis and this. The comments section of these news articles often sling racist vitriol at African men and are unsympathetic towards women at the receiving end of sexual or physical violence, not to mention unapologetic in slut shaming Northeast women. Most of the commentators are invariably men from the Northeast.
The North East Today even carried a listicle, compiled by Delhi Police, titled “What Drives African Nationals to Relationship with Northeast Women” that was later taken down and replaced with this 404 error message, “We do admit that such nonsense has no news or journalistic value,” after it came under considerable fire.
Last year, one such post on the Facebook page of “Delhi Police for North East Folks” talked about five Nigerian men who were arrested by the Delhi police for transferring large amounts of money from Northeastern women on the false pretext of marriage. The post referred to the complainants as “foolish north east damsels” and that Northeastern girls need to beware of “these Nigerian men”. While there have been multiple cases reported of African men duping women from the Northeast in cities like New Delhi, the paternal victim blaming tone is an issue, especially when the police still makes insensitive remarks towards women from the Northeast.
Contrast this to any incident of rape/molestation/harassment that Northeast women face at the hands of “mainland” Indians. In the latter, the victim’s narrative is supposedly unbleached of any sign or suggestion of her being involved or in any way complicit. Essentially, wherever a NE woman’s agency or choice is clear – of dating an African man or attending their social gathering – she not only loses all character but credibility as a victim. India’s racism towards foreigners of African descent is not limited to forum discussions online. In 2014, a huge mob in Rajiv Chowk station of the Delhi Metro mobbed 3 African students on the allegations that they had harassed a woman in the metro. This woman in question had neither approached the station security officer nor later was she anywhere to be found by the police or the media.
The “cautionary” post by the Delhi Police’s North East Cell is hardly unusual in the history of attempts to restrict women’s mobility in the NCR. In 2012, PC Meena, the then Deputy Commissioner of Gurgaon, imposed a new rule that required owners of restaurants, shopping malls and pubs to register women employees working beyond 8 pm with the labour department. The “8 pm curfew” caused national outrage and protests against Gurgaon police’s “misogynistic” measure to curb violence against women, in reaction to the rape of a Gurgaon pub employee that took place in the wee hours on March 11, 2012.
The fact that the victim was a woman from the Northeast added fuel to fire, given the sexist comments on her job as a hostess in the Sahara mall pub, suggesting victim blaming. While the curfew at the time was perceived as a restriction on all women’s mobility, women from the Northeast would have been significantly affected since they make up a sizeable proportion of the labour force in the hospitality industry and BPO sector, both of which demand graveyard shifts. Had the perpetrators in this case been a bunch of Africans, and not Haryanvi Jats or Punjabis or a bunch of boys from Delhi or mainland India, the victim would have been dismissed as a hussy working overtime. Our racism couldn’t be any less discreet.
This article was republished from Newslaundry.com.