posted
During the witch hunts, more women were burned at the stake than men - religion-sanctioned abuse of females.
In may Arab cultures, women are treated like property owned by men.
This excerpted report about Mexico shows abuse of the female continues close to home:
U.N. Chides Mexico Over Unsolved Deaths
Thu Jan 27,10:52 PM ET World - AP Latin America
By NICK WADHAMS, Associated Press Writer
UNITED NATIONS - Mexico is guilty of "grave and systematic" violations of the rights of women for mishandling investigations into the killings of more than 300 women in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, a U.N. committee said Thursday.
The committee released the findings that were the result of an investigation into whether Mexico had violated the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women.
Mexico acknowledged "grave attacks" on women's rights and said widespread societal and cultural traditions were also to blame. It said there was no deliberate policy of discrimination.
Mexican authorities estimate that 258 women have been killed in the city across the border from El Paso, Texas, over the past decade. That tally includes the sexually motivated killings of nearly 100 women. Mexican and international human rights groups put the number of female Juarez victims at more than 350, however.
Victims' families have complained of bungled investigations and suspect authorities of everything from incompetence to a cover-up.
The committee's investigation, the first such inquiry as allowed for under the convention, found that authorities' response to the murders and other forms of violence against women had been "extremely inadequate," especially during the early 1990s.
The killings began in earnest in 1993, when the raped, beaten and mutilated bodies of young women started turning up in the desert outskirts of Juarez.
While there has been some drop in the numbers, and conditions have improved since then, the investigators found similar killings have spread elsewhere, and there was still evidence of negligence by state officials, torture to extract confessions, delays and obstruction.
"It's an environment where gender-based discrimination is widespread and systematic and where violence against women seems to be regarded as a normal or acceptable fact," committee expert Tavares da Silva said.
-------------------- The light of truth is blinding to most.
More comforting to look only at the shadows of falseness. Posts: 4402 | From: Florida | Registered: Jun 2003
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