FACEBOOK GAME HIGHLIGHTS DOWRY ILLS
Launched by Indian matrimonial website
CBC News Jan 17, 2012

(Image from the Deccan Chronicle)

An Indian matrimony site is highlighting the issue of dowries in South Asian culture with a new Facebook game.

Shaadi.com launched Angry Brides as a takeoff of the popular Angry Birds online game but instead of hurling birds in cyber space, it involves throwing objects, such as pans, hairbrushes and shoes at grooms who are supposedly demanding a dowry. As players hit the target they score points to add to their “anti-dowry fund.”

“The Angry Brides game is our way of throwing a spotlight on the nuisance of the dowry,” Shaadi.com vice president Ram Bhamidi wrote on the website’s Facebook page.

Both men and women are playing the game since it launched last week, with more than 270,000 “likes” on Facebook, Bhamidi wrote.

Dowries —typically large sums of money, cars, appliances or gold jewelry given to a groom by the bride’s family — was outlawed in 1961 in India, but the practice continues in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, particularly in rural areas.

The tradition sometimes spurs violence against a bride if the groom's family feels the dowry is not lucrative enough and demands more, according to Shaadi.com. The website says there is a dowry-related death every four hours in India.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2012/01/17/tech-shaadi-facebook-dowry.html

  (Photograph by Chris McDowell)

Police blasted at Missing Women inquiry for failures to catch killer sooner

Almost four years after serial killer Robert (Willie) Pickton was convicted of killing six women from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, the Missing Woman inquiry began with a protest outside.
By Neal Hall, Vancouver Sun, October 11, 2011

VANCOUVER - The lawyer for the families of the victims of serial killer Robert Pickton blasted police Tuesday for their failures to catch the killer sooner.

Cameron Ward, in his opening address to the Missing Woman commission of inquiry, suggested the Vancouver police gave families the "brush off" when they tried to reported their loved ones missing. He said the VPD, and later the RCMP, treated the missing women case with indifference and incompetence by failing to assign enough resources. That was because the missing women were poverty stricken, poorly educated and largely were drug-addicted sex trade workers, with a large proportion being first nations women, Ward said.

Police "couldn't have cared less what happened to these women," Ward told the inquiry. "The pervasive problem was the Vancouver police department and the RCMP simply had a bad attitude," the lawyer. Ward pointed out that the RCMP, tipped that Pickton was a possible suspect, failed to conduct surveillance on the serial killer before he was caught in 2002. And the Mounties failed to act on Pickton's offer to police in 2000 that they could search his farm.

The inquiry is supposed to complete its work by Dec. 31 of this year, but the commissioner likely will ask the provincial government for an extension until sometime next year.

Almost four years after Pickton was convicted of killing six women from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, the Missing Woman inquiry began today with a protest. A circle of women on the street at Georgia and Granville beat on first nations drums and sang songs. The protest, involving about two dozen people, took over the intersection at Georgia and Granville streets, shutting down traffic, before it broke up shortly past noon. One person held a sign saying, "Justice denied."

The protest was over what is being called a "sham" inquiry after 16 groups granted standing dropped out because the provincial government refused to grant funding for legal counsel. Another coalition of sex trade workers announced today it was dropping out of the inquiry. The coaltion includes the WISH Drop-in Centre Society, PACE (Providing Alternatives, Counselling & Education) Society, and SWUAV (Sex Workers United Against Violence) Society. The Assembly of First Nations also withdrew from the inquiry today, bringing the total to 16 groups who have pulled out to protest the lack of government legal funding for participating groups.

Rick Frey, the father of Marnie Frey, whose daughter was killed by Pickton, said he was sad to see so many groups withdraw. "The way it is now, the families are the only ones in there being represented, he said. Frey said the police and government has 19 lawyers. "That's not a level playing field," he said. Frey said he and other families want the truth to come out about what went wrong with the police investigations. He also wants to hear if Pickton had accomplices. Frey believes Pickton did not act alone.

The inquiry began with a prayers from a first nations elder, who fanned Commissioner Wally Oppal and almost two dozen lawyer with a eagle feathers. "You're going to set our sisters free, our aunties, our loved ones," the elder said. "Set our families free," he added. Lawyers held their hands out, palms up, to receive the blessing.

The packed inquiry includes families of Pickton's victims. "The missing and murdered women are at the heart of this inquiry," Oppal said. He said the women were all loved and now are missed. "This is the first inquiry of its kind to seek answers," the commissioner said.

This inquiry is important to make changes to how investigations are conducted. The inquiry aims to probe why it took police so long to catch Pickton, who was arrested in 2002 and eventually charged with the murder of 27 women. The charges were divided into two trials, starting with six first-degree murder charges. The second trial on 20 charges was never held after Pickton was convicted.

Pickton admitted to an undercover officer that he killed 49 women, but he may have killed more. The DNA of 33 women were found on Pickton's farm in Port Coquitlam, where Pickton often butchered pigs late at night. One DNA sample has never been identified. One murder charge involving an unknown victim, identified as Jane Doe, had been laid but it was later stayed by the trial judge.

Oppal's mandate includes probing the mistakes made by police and finding fault, if necessary. One of the areas to be probed is the Crown decision in 1998 to drop attempted murder charges against Pickton, which stemmed from a knife attack on a women who fled naked and bleeding from Pickton's farm. The woman had slashed Pickton with a knife before she fled with a handcuff dangling from one wrist. Police later found the handcuff key in Pickton's pocket in hospital, where he and the woman were both treated for their wounds.

The charges against Pickton were dropped because the victim was considered a junkie prostitute whose credibility was suspect.

Art Vertlieb, in his opening outline of the evidence to be heard at the inquiry, said there will be allegations that a civilian clerk with the Vancouver police missing persons unit was dismissive of reports of missing women working in the sex trade and failed to treat first nations women with compassion and respect.

The inquiry will also hear how the missing person unit took a long time identifying the problem of long-term missing women. Vancouver police received two tips about Pickton in 1998 that "Willie" made comments to people about his ability to dispose of people and feed them to his pigs. Another tip was that Pickton had women's purses, identification and bloody clothing in his trailer home on his farm, and that Pickton wanted to "finish off" the woman who had stabbed him and fled his farm. Vertlieb said despite this contentious information, Vancouver police continued to insist the women were missing.

The lawyer told Oppal the inquiry will have to answer these questions: Why was foul play dismissed and why did police not warn the public, particularly the women of the Downtown Eastside? Between February and August 1999, more informants told police that a woman named Lynn Ellingsen said she had witnessed Pickton slaughtering a woman in his barn, Vertlieb said. He added that Ellingsen was interviewed and denied the allegations and denied telling the informants.

Pickton was interviewed by police at one point but police failed to take him up on his offer for police to search his farm property, Vertlieb said. He said at the time, Vancouver police thought the disappearances of women were historical and were not ongoing. That belief changed after the formation of the joint forces Missing Women task force, which realized women were continuing to go missing, he added. Eight more women would be killed by Pickton before he was caught, Vertlieb said.

The inquiry is going to hear much about Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, one of the city's poorest neighbourhoods. It is an area plagued by violence, drug addiction, mental health problems and homelessness. Most of Pickton's victims were vulnerable because they were addicted to drugs and alcohol and involved in the sex trade. Pickton picked up the women and took them to his farm with hollow promises of drugs, alcohol and money.

nhall@vancouversun.com
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre and Women’s Memorial March Committee Announce Non Participation In Sham Inquiry, Say Will Rally on First Day of Hearings
October 3, 2011 by ajik

Monday October 3, Vancouver Coast Salish Territories –Calling the Missing Women’s Commission of Inquiry a “disgrace” and an “insult to women in the Downtown Eastside”, the Coalition of the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre (DEWC) and Feb 14th Women’s Memorial March Committee (WMMC) have announced today that they will not be endorsing or participating in the Inquiry.

The Coalition is also announcing a rally at the beginning of the hearings on October 11th, 2011 at 9:30 am in front of at 701 West Georgia. They will be denouncing the Sham Inquiry and will call for a new fair, just, and inclusive Inquiry that centres the voices and experiences and leadership of women, particularly Indigenous women, in the DTES.

“This inquiry has a responsibility to highlight those systemic injustices that allowed the unimaginable deaths and disappearances of so many women from the Downtown Eastside. We have been raising awareness on this issue for over twenty years and demanding an Inquiry for decades, but this Sham Inquiry is flawed and unjust. We cannot endorse it. ” states Carol Martin, victim services worker at the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre...

For contacts and to read more:
http://womensmemorialmarch.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/non-participation-sham-inquiry/

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