Dalit women and girls are victims of violence due to their caste and gender. Thessaly La Force/Flickr. Some rights reserved. On May 5, in Uttar Pradesh’s Sahranpur district of northern India, a brutal episode of caste-based crime was committed by a gang of Thakurs – India’s dominant caste – against the Dalits. The Dalits saw their houses set on fire and their properties vandalized, with several severe injuries sustained. Horrific incidents of inter-caste violence like these are a regular occurrence in India, happening almost every day.
On March 31, the non-Roma residents of Gheorgheni, in Romania’s Harghita county, directed an anti-Romani mob which left a household burned to ashes and several Romani families “dragged from their homes in five locations and then beaten before the baying crowd before their houses were set alight.” The attack had reportedly been incited by a theft that had taken place earlier in the week, thought to have been committed by two presumably Roma individuals. The response to these individuals’ – arguably minor – transgression, however, was a humiliating attack against the wider Roma community. The mayor of Harghita Zoltán Nagy viewed it as an unpleasant incident, provoked by Roma “criminality.” Reflecting widespread Romanian opinion, he remained indifferent to the racist and cruel nature of this hate crime. The mainstream media similarly maintained a lukewarm response to the incident.
