Tag

france

Browsing

Indian law prevents the revelation or use thereof of the name of the victim of a sexual offence(s) without the explicit consent of the victim, and none else. To what, then, does one direct justice?

 

France has not been spared the wild and purposed rioting towards a cause of sexual and social injustice pursuant to the recent developments of the rape case of Gisèle Pelicot. I shall recount the details of the case and the brutality involved in order for the reader to make sense of the argument that I shall proceed to posit later in the article. 

 

Trigger warning: Mention of rape 

 

Gisèle’s husband of 50 years, Dominique Pelicot, has been accused of inviting strangers—the numbers of whom have been calculated from video evidence to be around 83, out of which 50 have been identified—to rape his drugged wife over the course of almost a decade, from 2011 to 2020. In 2020, Dominique’s laptop was searched after he was caught by a security guard filming videos up the skirts of women in a supermarket near the couple’s residence. A folder labelled ‘abuses’ was discovered there, containing more than 20,000 photos and videos of the act. Gisèle, who was completely unaware of what was happening to her, later recalled instances where she would experience complete blackouts in memory where she could not remember having gotten into bed or watching a movie before falling asleep, given that Dominique would usually drug her around evening.

 

Gisèle, who had only recently mustered the courage to view the videos, confessed to being treated like a ‘ragdoll’, ‘sacrificed at the altar of vice’. She recalls being apprehensive that she had Alzheimer’s on account of the repeated instances of memory loss, out of the fear of which she had decided to stop driving; she remembers having lost weight and hair, alongside several other health complications, including gynaecological problems that no doctor could properly explain to her. 

 

Drawing parallels with the case of R.G. Kar, we cannot deny numerous, almost uncanny similarities, the two most prominent of which are the abject failure of the healthcare system to protect them and the sheer brutality of the assault. The primal, most striking difference is but one. Pelicot, despite the protection offered to her identity by France’s legal system, chose to make the case and most of its details public. In explanation, her lawyer disclosed that she refused to have private proceedings, for that is “what her attackers would have wanted.” Surely enough, the accused, with the exemption of her husband, have chosen to remain unnamed. She herself declared that the choice was so made so that she might be the voice for all the other women who have been raped, drugged or both.

 

Whenever they experience blackouts, they may remember the testimony of Ms. Pelicot,” she said. 

 

On the other hand, with R.G. Kar, during the first stages of the protest and legal developments, streets were strewn with irate bodies, ferociously chanting, “SAY HER NAME. Remember her.” Following the corrective and thereby preemptive action taken by Kolkata police against those that were the first to reveal her name to the public, in violation of the law, the citizens promptly switched to, what I must say, thoughtless abstractions in an attempt to immortalise her name. But they did not immortalise her name.

 

‘Tilottoma’, ‘Abhaya’, and the worst of them all, ‘Nirbhaya 2.0’, served to further mutilate her identity, one that was generously trampled upon by all the slighting politicians in their specious and fairly nonsensical speeches. The argument that many took to, in order to defend their turns, was essentially this: that the consent and participation of the victim are of critical importance and that using their name hurts their dignity. While to the first proposition, I may concede, to the second, I could not, and urge the reader to understand the following. The naming of the victim in an event where they are unavailable to consider their position in the order of incidence is certainly wrong; it should not have been done in the first place. 

 

*Please note that the following argument stands only in the event that a name has already been revealed to the public. It is interested in discussing the aftermath and not in passing a value judgement on the morality of the violation itself. 

 

All protests are fuelled by a cause, and essentially, a core, physical object that is the realisation of said cause. The ideology or the cause of a protest is merely an abstraction. Such an abstraction cannot be realised in the absence of a physical conduit through which it shall manifest. Similarly for all abstractions, a physicality must be invoked. For instance, the word ‘chair’ has no meaning in itself. It is given meaning by our experience with and knowledge of a particular physical object that looks a particular way. My object is, then, to communicate the idea that all protests converge not in an idea but in a real, physical manifestation that happens to embody that idea. In this case, the name of the victim serves the purpose. 

 

When we immortalise their stories through names taken from legends, we find ourselves grasping at air. The importance is effectively shifted from the lives of the victims, their concrete stories, to the idea or the cause that could extend to infinite examples. Without a point of concentration, the surge of the protest weakens. The identity of the victim once again stands erased. When we say her name, we recall the blood, the bones, and the torture.

 

We recall the apathy of the state and the plight of the devastated families. In a way, the name becomes dignity personified, as has been the case with Pelicot. She has become the face of a long broiling unrest in France with regard to the mass attitude towards assault. All the world’s rage concentrates in her name and in her face. If instead it were a faceless caricature, it would become emblematic of not the victim, but victimhood, subsuming countless names and countless cases; but the truth is that we could not give them justice, and we will not be able to compensate now. Therefore, it is important to remember them, but they could no longer drive the fight with the grit that a name so fresh in our memories can.

 

When we say Abhaya, or Tilottoma, the force is dispelled, the cause falters. There is no Kolkata’s Nirbhaya; there has only been one Nirbhaya, and it shall remain so. It is important to acknowledge their individual identities and their stories, lest they become statistics in a survey. In an attempt to immortalise them, we negate their physical suffering and their tangible reality. We exalt the victim, fossilise them at the pinnacle of history, but what purpose does that serve? Protests do not happen in the realm of ideas; the conception does. An act of protest itself is a physical one. Therefore, its focus must be immediate and real. If not the name, such pale substitutes certainly do not serve their intended purpose. I invite the reader to reflect.

 

Read Also: To politicise, or not to politicise?

 

Featured Image Credits: World Pulse

 

Aayudh Pramanik

[email protected] 

 

Almost all major international events begin with a process of hiding – greenery reinvigorated, slums covered with steel sheets, littered roads cleaned overnight. The displays of international might and prosperity are always accompanied with a subduing of political realities. Host cities, in the effort to establish themselves as global hubs, polish the good and conceal the bad. Failures of governance are rescinded to the dark. The game of global politics rears an ugly side during global events, one where the politicians are temporary magicians and their nations, another stage for spectacle. 

The Olympics have always been an ace spectacle, gilded with the exertion of soft power and budding nationalism. As the games began in Paris this week, political and bureaucratic machinery was mobilised, as it always is in such cases to make the city “presentable” – turning iconic French sites into a backdrop, la culture was there but it barely spoke, as the city was reduced to a ghost town. This is partially because it’s summer, but also because large swathes of the city have been armed and barricaded. So Parisians chose to flee the city while others – have been asked to leave.

Earlier this year, around 3000 students were asked to leave their subsidised student accommodation, provided by the Paris affiliate of CROUS, a public institution which manages affordable housing for university attendees. This was done to accommodate volunteers and public officers for the Olympics. In return, the displaced students, who’re often unable to move out of Paris for the summer due to financial constraints, were handed a 100 euros and two tickets to the Games – an imperfect compensation. Social collectives like Le Revers de la Medaille issued public letters to the Olympic Organising Committee regarding the displacement of refugees, squatting in Île-de-France, around the Olympic village. Behind its touristique sheen, Paris is known for high living prices and its mismanagement of refugee populations. While some may argue the Olympics jolted administration into civil action, there’s little consideration of the long- term.

Even after the Parisian mayor’s dip in the Seine and a hole of 1.4 billion dollar in the government’s pocket to make it swimmable – the iconic river still appears to be somewhat hazardous with positive tests for E.coli as late as the end of July. These infrastructural developments, usually done in haste and with power projection in mind – are far from effective sustainable strategies. Behind the race of gold medallions, there is a grave political reality which can be visually manipulated, but continues to speak after such events, which exacerbate more than heal.

Moreover, the city of the Paris Protocol has attempted to decrease emissions this time – aiming at about 1.5 metric tonnes, half of the London Olympics. While only two sporting venues have been constructed with bio-sourced materials and claim to use 100% renewable energy, methodologies remain unclear and lack monitoring. Organisers already were pressured to drop phrases like “carbon-neutral” by local activists, as they remain silent on the several fuel-guzzling planes that flew in tourists, athletes, and heads of state.

The 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics were held in Sochi barely having pre-existing sporting infrastructure. Villages in Krasnodar Krai became dumping grounds for construction waste; the ground-up construction displaced locals and cut off water supply while contaminating local streams. Local activists raised concerns, however the games continued as they usually do, turning out to be the most expensive Winter Olympics in history. While many would like to believe so – this isn’t solely a Putin problem. The most horrifying stories are from the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics, where parts of western Rio de Janeiro – particularly Vila Autódromo, a favela — was fully levelled to construct gyms and swimming pools. When they protested, the police responded brutally – for them the legacy of the Olympics was one which razed their village to the ground.

The Olympic memory remains duplicitous – the celebration of sportsmanship is built of the foundations of forced evictions, displacement and wastefulness. As the city of love is transformed into the city of sport for the Olympics, it’s easy to forget that behind the glitz and glam lies the human cost of hosting events of such magnitude, a cost citizens shouldn’t have to bear.

Read also: The Green Curtains of G20: Solution to All of ‘Bharat’s’ Woes

Featured Image Credits: Reuters 

Chaharika Uppal

[email protected]