Posted on 04/02/2013 10:43:02 PM PDT by Jyotishi
Rio De Janeiro - The brutal gang rape of a US student in a Rio bus has revived concern about public safety ahead of the World Cup and the 2016 summer Olympics, despite an overall drop in violence.
Over the weekend a 21-year-old American student was repeatedly sexually assaulted and her French boyfriend was beaten during a six-hour abduction aboard a minibus in the famed beach district of Copacabana.
The case grabbed international headlines and drew comparisons to last December's similar gang rape of a young Indian woman in New Delhi, which led to a 25% fall in tourist arrivals.
"Nobody expects to be assaulted in Disneyland. Copacabana is our Disneyland. It rings alarm bells," Alfredo Lopes, president of the Rio Hotels Association, said, according to press reports.
The rape came as Rio pressed on with a campaign to shake off a reputation for violent crime, with a succession of police operations to take control of dozens of favelas, slums once under the sway of drug traffickers or militias.
The Marvelous City, as Rio is known, is to host the Confederations Cup, a dry run for next year's World Cup, in June.
And a month later, the city is to welcome Pope Francis and some 2.5 million people for World Youth Day.
The female American student and her French boyfriend boarded a minibus at around midnight on Saturday in Copacabana headed to Lapa, a trendy area home to popular bars and dance clubs.
Two men who also boarded the minibus ordered the rest of the passengers to get off and handcuffed their victims.
They then proceeded to beat the young man with a metal bar and rape the young woman as they rode around the city, Rio's tourist police (DEAT) said.
After seeing photographs of two of the detained suspects, a young Brazilian woman who was raped on March 23, also in a minibus, identified them as her assailants, DEAT added.
The driver of the minibus may also have taken part in the rape.
The G1 news website said the Frenchman suffered a severe eye injury and a fractured face while the American's nose was broken during the assault.
Minibuses are part of Rio's transportation network and, in a city of six million inhabitants, are considered a convenient means of getting around.
Although the case sparked deep revulsion in Brazil, officials were quick to insist it was an isolated incident.
"It is horrendous, but this is not a routine occurrence in Rio," Rio state security secretary Jose Mariano Beltrame told AFP. "It is unfair to present it as such."
"Such a brutal rape is very spectacular but is generally quickly forgotten. It is not (as) common in Brazil as it is in India," said Augusto Rodrigues, a crime expert at the State University of Rio de Janeiro.
"It is an isolated incident which must not be used as a parameter to measure violence," said Michel Misse, of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
Asked about a 24 percent rise in rapes in Rio from 2011 to 2012 (from 4,871 to 6,029), both experts attributed it to increased reporting by women to special police units set up to assist sex assault victims.
"Before they were ashamed to report such crimes in police stations run by men," Misse said.
The experts insist that, broadly speaking, security has never been better in Rio and in Brazil in general, even though the crime rate remains high compared to European or US norms.
In 2010, the murder rate in Brazil was 21 per 100,000 inhabitants, the 11th highest in the world, compared to 26.7 in 2000, according to the United Nations.
In Sao Paulo, Brazil's most populous city, the murder rate fell to 13 per 100,000 residents, "a reasonable rate," from nearly 60 per 100,000 in 2000, Misse said.
On Monday eight military police officers were arrested in Sao Paulo as part of a probe into the killing of two youths after their fatal shooting was shown on television.
A day earlier, Globo TV had aired security camera footage showing two men on a motorcycle approach three youngsters in the popular Bras neighborhood in Sao Paulo and shoot two of them.
Images from another camera show that, at the time of the executions, a military police vehicle was parked about 50 meters (yards) from where the victims were.
Is Chicago any better?
Reactions to Steubenville, Ohio and India gang rapes
Indian reaction to the New Delhi gang rape is in many ways more promising than American reactions to US rapes. Take the Steubenville, Ohio, case, which hasn’t generated the same public outrage as the case in India. Indian protesters’ calls for justice are a heartening sign of progress.
March 15, 2013
PHILADELPHIA, Penn.: The December 2012 gang rape in New Delhi, India, deserves the public condemnation and outrage that it has brought. But much of the commentary on the case has gone beyond this, holding up the case as evidence of India’s larger flaws. The subtext writes India off as a backward and incorrigible third world country, whose primitive norms and lack of rule of law put it outside of modern democracies with more reliable norms and laws.
The unfortunate truth is that India’s reported rape rate, and even the slightly higher rate in New Delhi where the gang rape occurred, is less than that of typical European and American rates. In the days following the attack, scores of protests were held all over India but mostly in the New Delhi region where the attack occurred. Democracy went on the move, as thousands upon thousands of people joined in the calls for justice.
The Indian reaction to the incident is in many ways more gratifying and promising than reactions to American rape cases. Take the Steubenville, Ohio, case, which began trial on Wednesday. It has not generated nearly as much public outrage as the case in India. If there is a larger lesson that the gang rape and the public outcry that followed teach us about India, it is one of promise and hope, not alienation and despair.
But commentators have painted a different picture. Lakshmi Chaudhry wrote in The Nation: “[T]here is only one India, a social Darwinian nation where there is no rule of law; where might always makes right, whether your power derives from your gender, money, caste or sheer numbers, as in the case of a gang rape….The young girl who paid an astronomically steep price for an evening out at the movies proved that the so-called ‘new India’ exists in a bubble built on the delusion of safety.”
Is India indeed “a social Darwinian nation,” to be marked off from other, civilized democracies?
According to UN figures, India’s reported rape rate is 1.8 per 100,000 population (Delhi City’s is 2.8), as compared, for example, to Ireland’s 10.7, Norway’s 19.2, or America’s 27.3. Of course, given the intimate nature of the offense and its social stigma, the actual rape rates are generally higher than these official rates based on reports to police. By last official US estimate, only a half to a third of rapes are reported; and it could be that the reporting rates are even worse in other countries, including India. But the larger picture suggests that the India rape problem may not be that different from the West’s.
Perhaps it is the outrageousness of the conduct that sets the Indian case apart?
Sadly no. Last August in Steubenville, Ohio, for example, young men carried a drunken, incapacitated 16-year-old girl from party to party where two high school football players, Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmond, are accused of repeatedly raping her, one party being hosted by the assistant football coach. Photos of the girl in compromised positions later surfaced on social media.
In October 2009, outside a school dance in Richmond, Calif., a 15-year-old was gang-raped over several hours as others looked on. Two years previously, several teens in Dunbar Village, Fla., were convicted of a brutal gang rape, torture, and forced incest of a woman and her 12-year-old son.
Perhaps it is instead the insensitive reaction by some Indians to the New Delhi rape that marks out India as different?
Unfortunately no. In the Steubenville case, the young men charged with rape and the people at the parties were calling and texting about their alleged exploits in real time. No one at any of the parties apparently did anything to stop the alleged rape or to report it to police.
The rapes at the Richmond high school dance went on for hours, with many observers. After the perpetrators were charged in the Dunbar Village case, neighbors told a local paper that the boys were just kids and didn’t think they should go to jail.
If one is appalled by indifference and inaction in the face of horrendous rapes, the US cases would seem to offer as much or more to condemn than does the Indian case.
Certainly the public outrage in each of these US cases did not rival the mass protests in India and the international attention the reaction drew. Commentary on the New Delhi gang rape should avoid condemning and ostracizing India but should rather join, support, and praise its people for their outpouring of support for the victim, the outrage at the rape, and the overwhelming calls for justice and changes to India’s legal system and culture. This is the process by which a society – be it in India, the US, or any other country – changes and internalizes important norms.
None of this is meant to deny the fact that the New Delhi gang rape does highlight problems that are specific to India. Because the Indian criminal justice system is severely backlogged, with millions of cases pending before criminal courts, justice for victims of sexual violence is often elusive. To make things worse, rape victims in India routinely encounter resistance from local police when reporting their rapes and during the subsequent investigations of the crimes.
All of this is exacerbated by the general disrespect that women are commonly subjected to in Indian society and the impunity with which they are frequently harassed in public places – realities that the outrage and protests in India highlighted.
Yet what was perhaps most striking in the Indian public’s outrage at the incident, in their identification of the malaises in society’s treatment of women, and in their call for change, was the fundamental belief that the law and the legal system had a continuing (and critical) role to play. A commitment to the rule of law and to refining how it works were front and center in the public rallies. This fact is both heartening and inspiring – and is hardly reflective of a “social Darwinian” society.
In taking stock of the New Delhi rape case, we ought to recognize that India is a young democracy, struggling in fits and starts to move its laws and criminal justice system to better reflect its people’s shared judgments of justice in the modern world. That is a path of promise, not despair.
What? Someone was raped in Rio? There’s a real shocker. But don’t call the perp any names as it might be racist.
Used Sorta' like this administration's go to word "unexpected"?
“...but is generally quickly forgotten”
Well there’s your problem right there
“The brutal gang rape of a US student in a Rio bus has revived concern about public safety...”
Ya think?
Rio is one of the most dangerous cities on Earth.
The only reasonably safe neighborhood 0is Ipanema, and I think that’s because nude bathing is allowed on the beach there, and it attracts the police patrols.
In the States, you’d need a coffee shop.
The border has never been safer.
A perfect example of what a world without firearms is like. The strong and thugish rule the streets.
As long as they are bigger, have a weapon, or out number you, you have little chance. And this will always be the case, because they pick the victim, the time, and the place.
You beat me to it.
“The case grabbed international headlines”
I didn’t see any screaming headlines here.
Maybe it’s because of the Third World People Can Do No Wrong syndrome, otherwise known as the Noble Savage syndrome.
Also known as the “Don’t want to alert the flock” Syndrome. If people get scared, they might cling to Guns and Conservatives for protection.
She was protected by a Frenchman was she?
The only reasonably safe neighborhood 0is Ipanema, and I think that’s because nude bathing is allowed on the beach there, and it attracts the police patrols.
Having armed guards sit all day and night in the front yards of the residential properties that are located across the street from the beach does not indicate that Ipanema is as safe as you would think.
However, it is truly one of the most beautiful spots in the world.
The comparison of the muted / insipid reactions for the Steubenville rape (and other gangrapes that took place subsequently) in the US vs. the one that took place in India puts cold water on your “noble savage” thesis. The Delhi incident brought out angry protests all over India and forced the government to pass laws with the death penalty for rapists.
The US has a far, far more serious rape problem than India does, far higher overall and per-capita rape statistics, and a much greater social tolerance of the problem. The trivialization of sex here is partly to blame, of course.
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