Five women were paraded naked, beaten and forced to eat human excrement by villagers after being branded as witches in India's Jharkhand state.I know there are real witches out there, and not just the happy-bunny-Wiccans who call themselves such. But I also know that historically, the majority of people labelled witches are often blameless and are simply those on the fringe of society (such, for example, older women or widows, as seen during the Early Modern Age in Europe, where they were targeted for their property, which was forfeit, due to their lack of male protection).
Local police said the victims were Muslim widows who had been labelled as witches by a local cleric.
These punishments are apparently not uncommon in India, but there was footage shot in this case (there is a video embedded in the article), which of course takes the act out of a small village and into a global world where there's no doubt plenty of outrage, or at least there should be.
The women who were beaten and degraded by the mob are under police protection. Others, including female witch finders, are under arrest.
I really don't see how India can attain first world status so long as this sort of thing happens. All countries have their backwaters, and all have poverty (trust me, I live very close to Appalachia, which is one of our most impoverished areas), but India--despite great technological know-how and the atom bomb--has endemic cultural hurdles to surmount. I hope it will, actually--and sooner than later, but it will take a great deal of work.
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