Different Americans have different feelings about Pakistan and rape cases

Friends of America

• A women is raped every 2 hours in Pakistan while a woman in USA is raped every 6 minutes ...
• So do some thing to stop it ?

Two published letters addressed to New York Times recently for your interest.

In "The 11-Year-Old Wife" (column, June 21), Nicholas D. Kristof recounts the absurdly awful human rights record of the current regime in Pakistan, one of our closest allies in the Middle East-Central Asia region. Other good friends there include the repressive and exploitive Saudi royal family, and Islam A. Karimov, the "president for life" of Uzbekistan, whose human rights record is accepted as one of the worst in the world. With friends like these ...

How does it happen that we speak out of one side of our collective national mouth about bringing our love of democracy to the world's oppressed, and, from the other side, we praise and reward people like the above named? Do we really believe that nobody is catching on?

John Smart Park Falls, Wis., June 21, 2005

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To the Editor:

In response to critics who voice embarrassment that his columns about rape in Pakistan are drawing attention to barbarism in that country, Nicholas D. Kristof suggests as a comparison the embarrassment Americans feel about Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo.

But he does not mention another source of national shame. Mr. Kristof laments the fact that in Pakistan, one woman is raped every two hours. In the United States, with a population less than twice the size of Pakistan, F.B.I. statistics indicate that one woman is estimated to be raped every six minutes.

When we focus on what are assumed to be cultural or religious sources of gendered violence, we often fail to look in the mirror. We should take seriously the problem of rape in both nations. Leti Volpp Silver Spring, Md., June 21, 2005

Source: www.nytimes.com dated June 27th, 2005.(col: letters)