The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Call for international day to stop violence

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Nov 26, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Call for international day to stop violence

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI, NOV. 25. Representatives of about 150 non-governmental organisations in Tamil Nadu today held demonstrations to express solidarity with the international call to observe November 25 as a day to stop violence against women and girls.

Adopting varying methods of protest, including a State-wide campaign by a cultural troupe, demonstrations, forming human chains and holding public meetings, women came together to raise their voice to protest against violence perpetrated on women.

Members of the Women's Movement Against Poverty and Violence were part of a cultural troupe that has started on a State-wide tour, taking awareness to the nooks and crannies of Tamil Nadu. The troupe, which began in Kanyakumari today and would finish at Chennai on December 10, hoped to dispel myths and erode certain stereotypes being perpetrated by the market economy.

In a release they said, every 15 minutes, a woman is being harassed, every 51 minutes a woman is being raped, every 69 minutes a woman is killed in a dowry-related death, every 11 minutes a woman is being harassed by her in-laws and husband. According to Women's Collective president, Sheelu, the campaign will continue till December 9 with various networks such as groups working among women, Dalits, tribals, disabled, people living with HIV/AIDS pitching in, in some form or the other.

Between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. today, women belonging to the Campaign Against Violence on Women and Girl Child held hands to form a human chain in observance of the Day. They held banners and raised slogans calling for an end to the violence against women.

The International Day commemorates the murder of the Mirabal sisters: Patria, Maria Teresa and Minerva by the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic in 1960, for opposing the regime of Trujillo.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Tamil Nadu