Murdering The Future

<a href="http://in.today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-12-14T230956Z_01_NOOTR_RTRJONC_0_India-280322-1.xml" >India has killed 10 mln girls in 20 years</a><br />n<br />n<blockquote>Ten million girls have been killed by their parents in India in the past 20 years, either before they were born or immediately after, a government minister said on Thursday, describing it as a "national crisis".<br />n<br />nA UNICEF report released this week said 7,000 fewer girls are born in the country every day than the global average would suggest, largely because female foetuses are aborted after sex determination tests but also through murder of new borns.<br />n<br />n"It's shocking figures and we are in a national crisis if you ask me," Minister for Women and Child Development Renuka Chowdhury told Reuters.<br />n<br />nGirls are seen as liabilities by many Indians, especially because of the banned but rampant practice of dowry, where the bride's parents pay cash and goods to the groom's family.<br />n<br />nMen are also seen as bread-winners while social prejudices deny women opportunities for education and jobs.</blockquote><br />n<br />nThis just infuriates me. Killing children because they don't have the right plumbing. I understand there are cultural issues here but think about all of the potential human beings destroyed here. Hitler and Stalin were some of the great mass murders of history. Are we now going to add India to this list?<br />n<br />n<blockquote> The practice of killing the girl child is more prevalent among the educated, including in upmarket districts of New Delhi, making it more challenging for the government, the minister said.<br />n<br />n"How do we tell educated people that you must not do it? And these are people who would visit all the female deities and pray for strength but don't hesitate to kill a girl child," she said.</blockquote><br />n<br />nThis mass murder is more prevalent among the educated. Can you believe that? Do these people have no morals or ethics. Don't they think human beings have any rights at all or are they just expendable in their little pea sized brains. It's simple genocide. Why do so called human beings feel it necessary to slaughter someone who looks different, or is a different skin color, or worships a different deity, or has different plumbing than they feel they should have? What perverse thrill do they get from such slaughter? Don't they realize they are murdering their future? It might not feel like it at the moment but that's what it amounts to, murdering the future.<br />n<br />nThe next question is what can be done about this genocide? Shining the light of day on it helps but that won't stop it. The Indian government has taken measures like banning the practice of dowry and banning the ultra sounding of pregnant women just to tell the sex of the baby but just making these practices against the law isn't enough. Maybe they need to actively peruse these bans and severely punish wrongdoers. <br />n<br />nShine the light of day on this evil and let your voice be heard. Innocents are dying every day because it is done behind closed doors and accepted by the world as the way things are done "over there." I will not be quite. I will let my voice be heard in protest to this evil that needs to be stopped. <br />n<br />nWhether that will change things or not I don't know but the slaughter of this children just because they are female needs to stop. It's flat wrong no matter how you cut it. Normally I can hold my cool better than this but I am so enraged by this I can't think straight. I guess such slaughter clouds my judgment.<br />n<br />n<strong>He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it. Martin Luther King, Jr.</strong><br />n<br />nUPDATE: People here in the US worry more about the treatment of horses, cattle, pigs and such than they do about the slaughter of humans in places like India. These people that think this way really need to take their values out and examine them a little closer. A value system that places the rights of animals above those of a human needs some careful consederation because it is flat wrong.