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India’s nationalist
lawmaker arrested
on rape allegation
By BISWAJEET BANERJEE
Associated Press
LUCKNOW, India (AP) — A governing Hindu nation-
alist party lawmaker was arrested after being ac-
cused of abducting and raping a teenage girl last
year, officials said.
Kuldeep Singh Sengar denies the allegation. He
was arrested Friday after questioning in Lucknow,
the capital of northern Uttar Pradesh state, said Ab-
hishek Dayal, a spokesman for the federal Central
Bureau of Investigation.
The teen also accused Prime Minister Narendra
Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party of shielding the law-
maker and police of delaying his prosecution.
Violent crimes against women have been on the
rise in India despite tough laws enacted in 2013. In
2012, the fatal gang rape of a young woman in
the heart of India’s capital prompted hundreds of
thousands of Indians to take to the streets to de-
mand stricter rape laws.
The outrage over the New Delhi attack spurred
quick action on legislation doubling prison terms
for rapists to 20 years and criminalizing voyeurism,
stalking and the trafficking of women. Indian law-
makers also voted to lower to 16 from 18 the age at
which a person can be tried as an adult for heinous
crimes.
The Associated Press generally does not name
people who say they are a victim of a sex crime.
The girl told reporters Thursday that Sengar was
known to her family because they were from the
same village in Uttar Pradesh state. She accused
Sengar of raping her in June last year when she
went to his home in Unnao district, 40 kilometers (25
miles) from Lucknow.
Federal investigators said the teenager’s family
also accused four other people of kidnapping and
raping her. Police are investigating the complaint.
The girl said she protested to state authorities in
August last year, but nothing happened. She and
her family moved to New Delhi because they felt
threatened by the lawmaker and his support-
ers and she sent petitions to India’s president, the
prime minister and the state police chief seeking
help.
Last week, she visited the state’s top elected offi-
cial, Yogi Adiyanath’s office in Lucknow. When she
was denied meeting with state officials, she took
out kerosene and tried to set herself on fire.
The lawmaker’s brother, Atul Sengar, and his sup-
porters have been accused of beating up the girl’s
father and Atul Sengar was arrested this week for
causing the father’s death.q
WORLD NEWS Saturday 14 april 2018
Myanmar military put on U.N.
blacklist for sexual violence
“This can be linked to an in-
flammatory narrative alleg-
ing that high fertility rates
among the Rohingya rep-
resent an existential threat
to the majority population.”
The report, which will be
a focus of a U.N. Security
Council meeting Monday
on preventing sexual vio-
lence in conflict, puts 51
government, rebel and ex-
tremist groups on the list.
They include 17 from Con-
go including the armed
forces and national po-
António Guterres, right, Secretary-General of the United Nations, lice, seven from Syria in-
speaks during a Security Council meeting, Friday, April 13, 2018, cluding the armed forces
at United Nations headquarters. and intelligence services,
Associated Press six each from Central Af-
By EDITH M. LEDERER was integral to this strategy, rican Republic and South
Associated Press serving to humiliate, terror- Sudan, five from Mali, four
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — ize and collectively pun- from Somalia, three from
A new U.N. report puts ish the Rohingya commu- Sudan, one each from Iraq
Myanmar’s armed forces nity, as a calculated tool and Myanmar, and Boko
on a U.N. blacklist of gov- to force them to flee their Haram which operates in
ernment and rebel groups homelands and prevent several countries.
“credibly suspected” of their return,” Guterres said. “As a general trend,”
carrying out rapes and oth- Buddhist-majority Myanmar Guterres said, “the rise or
er acts of sexual violence in doesn’t recognize the Ro- resurgence of conflict and
conflict for the first time. hingya as an ethnic group, violent extremism, with its
An advance copy of Sec- insisting they are Bengali ensuing proliferation of
retary-General Antonio migrants from Bangladesh arms, mass displacement,
Guterres’ report to the Se- living illegally in the country. and collapsed rule of law,
curity Council, obtained It has denied them citizen- triggers patterns of sexual
Friday by The Associated ship, leaving them state- violence.” This was evident
Press, says international less. The recent spasm of in many places in 2017 as
medical staff and oth- violence began when Ro- insecurity spread to new
ers in Bangladesh have hingya insurgents launched regions in Central African
documented that many a series of attacks last Aug. Republic, violence surged
of the almost 700,000 Ro- 25 on about 30 security in eastern and central Con-
hingya Muslims who fled outposts and other targets. go, conflict engulfed South
from Myanmar “bear the Myanmar security forces Sudan, violence wracked
physical and psychologi- then began a scorched- Syria and Yemen, and
cal scars of brutal sexual earth campaign against “’ethnic cleansing’ in the
assault.” The U.N. chief said Rohingya villages that the guise of clearance opera-
the assaults were allegedly U.N. and human rights tions unfolded in Northern
perpetrated by the Myan- groups have called a cam- Rakhine State, Myanmar,”
mar Armed Forces, known paign of ethnic cleansing. he said. Guterres said most
as the Tatmadaw, “at times “Violence was visited upon victims are “politically and
acting in concert with lo- women, including preg- economically marginalized
cal militias, in the course of nant women, who are seen women and girls” concen-
military ‘clearance’ opera- as custodians and propa- trated in remote, rural areas
tions in October 2016 and gators of ethnic identity, as with the least access to ser-
August 2017.” well as on young children, vices that can help them,
“The widespread threat who represent the future of and in refugee camps and
and use of sexual violence the group,” Guterres said. areas for the displaced. q