People of this society should change
When she was born, it was celebrated; candy was distributed to neighbors and friends. Some said, “You rejoice as if you had a boy,” and there were also those who were surprised at this joy.
She wanted to be a doctor; her family was poor; they did not have any money to send her to medical school.
“Dad,” she said, “Spend the money you are saving for my wedding on my education.” They sold the only piece of land they owned. The uncles were not happy with that; they said, “Are you selling the field for a daughter?”
Because the money from the sale of the land was not adequate, she worked the night shift at a call center. She was only able to sleep for three or four hours a night. When her friends asked how she could do it, she answered, “I have to and I can.”
She always said the biggest problem of the country was mentality. She complained about the different treatments of girls and boys the moment they were born.
She had dreams. She wanted to help the poor; she wanted to build a hospital in her grandfather’s village. She always said, “A woman can do any job.”
She was happy. She had taken all her final exams, finished school and went back to her family home. She told them there was nothing to worry about any more, that their little daughter was a doctor now and everything would be much better.
It was an ordinary Sunday.
A friend called in the evening; they decided to go to the movies. She was to start her internship on Monday, so she wanted to spare some time for herself before that.
They went to see “Life of Pi.” They took a bus to go home at around 10 p.m.
There were six men in the bus including the driver. One of the men approached them and asked her friend, “What are you doing outside with a girl at this hour?” Her friend told him to mind his own business, so they attacked them, took her behind the bus, beat her and raped her repeatedly.
Afterward, they dumped both her and her friend at the roadside.
The doctor told her parents, “I am a doctor of 20 years. I have not seen anything like that. We do not know what to stitch where.” They told them she would not live long. Before she gave her last breath, she took her mother’s hands into her hands and said, “Mom, I am very sorry.”
After the incident, one of the murderers said, “A decent girl wouldn’t roam around at 9 o’clock at night.
A girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy. Boys and girls are not equal. Housework and housekeeping is for girls, not roaming in discos and bars at night doing wrong things, wearing the wrong clothes… This ‘accident’ is a lesson for them.”
A lawyer of the murderers said, “Women are like flowers or diamonds, and therefore always needs protection. If you put your diamond on the street, certainly a dog will take it. You can’t stop it. That girl was out in the street with a non-relative male. In our society, we never allow our girls to come out from the house after 6:30 or 7:30 or 8:30 in the evening with any unknown person. In our society, women and men cannot be friends. We have the best culture. In our culture, there is no place for a woman.”
“If my daughter or sister engaged in pre-marital activities, I would most certainly take this sort of sister or daughter to my farmhouse, and in front of my entire family, I would put petrol on her and set her alight.”
No, this incident did not happen in Turkey, it happened in 2012 in India. Many of you might have thought it was in Turkey.
You are right, though, there is no difference. We hear those words of the rapist and the lawyer almost every day here.
Maybe we should put those words of the brutally murdered 23-year-old Jyoti Singh’s friend as a poster in village squares, neighborhoods and city centers from the documentary “India’s Daughter,” which is banned in India: “The law should punish criminals, otherwise they become fearless. But will the society change when you take a monster out of the society? No. The people of this society and their mindset need to change.”