I do not know if any of you noticed yesterdays Dawn newspaper [27th March] page 4 – which showed a picture of a 17-year old [underage] Tharparker rape victim. Its possible many may be aware of her, a local political leader from Tharparker had gang raped her on 24th January and since then she has been screaming for justice, this case has become the talk of the town in Interior Sindh but has failed to capture the fascination of the nationwide electronic and print media. Dawn did in some may have tried to help bring attention to the cause but it went a bit overboard, choosing to publish her picture and name sitting in front of Hyderabad Press Club – practically raping her all over again, and now in public – instead of protecting her even more, they go all out publishing her name and picture but did not so much as even bother to publish the name of the political leader who gang raped her in Tharparker
The issue at Dawn seemingly continues to get worse barely a month back I protested Dawn Raping the Rape Victim where they explicitly named the 20-yr old Daweoo rape victim along with some explicit details on how the rape was done, my argument even then was that if the victim had the courage to come forth to the media, they have taken a very bold step choosing to stand up against their perpetrators publicly, it is mostly seen as a last ditch effort to get some justice from an heinously skewed system that protects the powerful, and when they do, newspapers and the electronic media exploit the victim by publishing explicit details and in a way not actually helping bring the perpetrators to justice.
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