Why one atrocity and not another?

That is so sick. But what can we do? Declare war on India? Demonstrate night and day outside their embassy with banners saying, "Sort your bloody selves out"?

How can a country, civilised-(ish) in its cities, let such evil flourish in its outer regions?

I rest my case

The difficulty is, is that cases like this are very common in India and we cannot highlight every one. What does happen is one particular case, like the dreadful bus rape case, touches something in India and overseas and stands as a terrible example of the sexual abuse of women in India. This case caused horror there and abroad and hopefully the awareness that has now been awakened in India in that case - and the repercussions for the assailants will start to trickle down.

Even in the UK after a century or more of campaigning, women and children are sexually abused by men who use it as a way of punishing those who transgress.

I agree FlicketyB but I always try to resist being influenced by a media-induced frenzy.

From what I have read, the awful bus rape case is not going to influence the more conservative and less educated Indian. There were testimonies from 800 witnesses as to what happened so why did no-one intervene?

In the village killing case I mentioned, onlookers were approving.

The danger with highlighting one particular case and punishing the perpetrators is that it gives a false sense or hope of change and I don't think it's that simple. As you say, cases like these are very common in India.

And a family were deliberately burned to death in England..... not sure what the point is?

There are far too many horror stories but the press choose some to mediate to sell their papers, promote the opinion of their editors, sponsors and their readers.

We each have to support /fight for our own causes best we can.

I'm uncomfortable with media induced hysteria. It gives a false impression of what is going on in the world.

But actually, I wish I'd never started this because I am now boring myself.

End of thread.

Is the oppression of women all over much of the world a false impression?I have been looking at the statistics for rape in South Africa and they are rarely mentioned in UK papers. As far as I am concerned, the more the light of publicity is shone on the situation of women worldwide, the better.

Greatnan exactly!

As you say, the light of publicity needs to be shone on the worldwide abuse of women, not just on one or two celebrity cases.

That is what I meant by false impression, that incidents like the bus rape are held to be isolated and unusual incidents perpetrated by especially evil people. The truth is that equally terrible things go on all the time.

And worldwide, including the UK