CYBER CRIME AGAINST WOMEN BY DEBARATI HALDER
For past month or two a very disturbing image is flashing in
the social media: two girls hanging from a large tree with an audience of some
village folks. They were allegedly hanged after they were raped. Many of my
Facebook and Twitter acquaintances shared the image in their respective
profiles with their own opinions of the issue of rape culture in India. The
image got widely circulated. Some shared to show genuine concern, some shared
because they thought they should follow the trend of sharing ‘viral images’ to
establish their presence in the social media. But I can’t really appreciate
such circulation of images which may increase insult to the corpses of the poor
girls. While I was writing my article titled “"Online Victimization of
Andaman Jarawa Tribal Women: An Analysis of the ‘Human Safari’ YouTube Videos
(2012) and Its Effects " (the
online version can be found @
http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/05/05/bjc.azu026.abstract?keytype=ref&ijkey=3XNPIViieFGse4G), I noticed how dangerous it can be to circulate disturbing news channel images of women who are victimised. As
I understand “The peculiar legal understandings that allow floating of
apparently offensive images in the cyberspace(McGuire 2007; Levmore and
Nussbaum 2012) for the need of research, literature or general concern, have
allowed the existence of the Human safari videos in the social media, and they
continue to attract researchers’ as well as general individuals’ interest from
various perspectives including that of sexual fantasy and racial trolling(Jewkes
2011).(see pgs 684-685 in Debarati Halder & K.Jaishankar, Online
Victimization of Andaman Jarawa Tribal Women: An Analysis of the ‘Human Safari’
YouTube Videos (2012) and Its Effects, British Journal of Criminology, 2014
(54) 673-688, doi:10.1093/bjc/azu026). While this had been the major reason
that the Jarawa women may continue to be victimised for some more years in the
internet, this understanding may nonetheless be applied to the case of Badaun
rape victims as well.
In
this case of raped and murdered girls, as far as my understanding goes, the
images were released in the news channels and the civil society members started
sharing the same. We all know how easy it is to spread the flame in the social media
by sharing images. However, such public or even private sharing may not always be good. I do not disagree with the view that the more
such incidences are shared, the more civil society members can be involved for
a mass revolution against violence against women. The Delhi Rape case in
December 2012 and the consequences which resulted in creation of new set of
laws for women in India can be best example. But it also needs to be understood
that our Criminal Procedure Code and the Indian Penal Code strictly prohibits distributing
images of victims, especially women and child victims. This not only may jeopardise
the prosecution, but also may add more insult to the dead. I agree that some
images show blurred faces; but the original image(which had been circulated by
many in the social media) with clear picture is not only visually disturbing,
it actually gives an implied message as how women are still subdued by large
scale discrimination. One never knows what sorts of sadistic trolls may enlarge
the scope of victimisation of the dead in this case. Those who are still sharing
these images may note that the parents of the victim girls can approach the court to stop such post death humiliation of their
daughters in the digital media.
Please consider: to stop violence against
women first stop sharing disturbing images of the victims which may have made them (the victims) feel
ashamed of their womanhood. Use social media
to build up a strong resistance against rape culture by sharing your
views and making people aware of the issue.............. but not by disgracing
the victim or by overriding the law.
Please Note:
Do not violate copyright of this blog. If you would like to use informations
provided in this blog for your own assignment/writeup/project/blog/article,
please cite it as “Halder D. (2014), “What
does social media has to do with Badaun Rape case?
”, 29th
June,2014, published
in http://debaraticyberspace.blogspot.com/
