Authorities In India Prevent Rape Documentary From Being Shown

Authorities in India stopped the domestic broadcast of a British documentary about the gang rape of a young woman in Delhii, according to The Guardian.

The British director of the hard-hitting documentary has appealed to the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, to intervene.

Leslee Udwin, whose documentary India’s Daughter, is scheduled to be broadcast internationally on Sunday, made an emotional plea to Modi “to deal with this unceremonious silencing of the film” in India.

The Indian parliamentary affairs minister, M Venkaiah Naidu, declared: “We can ban the film in India. But this is an international conspiracy to defame India. We will see how the film can be stopped abroad too,” states The Guardian.

The movie is based on the brutal rape of 23-year-old physiotherapy student Jyoti Singh from December 2012.   Udwin’s documentary includes interviews Mukesh Singh, one of the men convicted for the crime, who is now in prison in Delhi and waiting for the supreme court to hear his appeal against the death sentence.

In the film, Singh suggests his victim would not have been killed if she had not fought back against her attackers and appears to blame her for not behaving like “a decent girl”.

“You can’t clap with one hand,” said Mr. Singh, who was convicted of rape and murder, though he denied taking part in the assault. “It takes two hands. A decent girl won’t roam around at 9 o’clock at night. A girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy. Boy and girl are not equal. Housework and housekeeping is for girls, not roaming in discos and bars at night doing wrong things, wearing wrong clothes. About 20 percent of girls are good.”

Those and other comments by Singh were released as part of a publicity campaign for the film, according to The New York Times.  They were met with outrage in India, partly because the filmmaker, Leslee Udwin, had been permitted to interview the defendant in jail.

After complaints by the home minister, an Indian court issued a restraining order, stating that Mr. Singh’s interview created “an atmosphere of fear and tension with the possibility of public outcry and law and order situation.”  The order said the film violated four Indian statutes, including one against “intent to cause alarm in the public” and another banning acts “intended to outrage the modesty of a woman.”

The filmmaker said the order amounted to a ban.

More:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/04/world/asia/delhi-gang-rape-mukesh-singh.html?_r=0

Dutch Court Prevents Man’s Extradition To U.S. Over Torture Concerns

According to Reuters, a Dutch court on Tuesday blocked the extradition of a man accused of having fought against U.S. troops in Afghanistan.  They said it could not be ruled out that the CIA had been involved in his torture after his arrest in Pakistan.

Dutch court documents showed the suspect, a Dutch-Pakistani dual citizen named Sabir Khan, was tortured after his arrest by Pakistan’s ISI security service.

The man faces charges in New York of a conspiracy to commit murder and of supporting al Qaeda.