Protest
walk against female infanticide in
India set for S.F. and other cities, March 6
A protest march against female infanticide and feticide
in India will take place March 6 in San Francisco, part of an international
effort to end the killing of baby girls in India. Marches are also scheduled
for Delhi, Mumbai, Pondicherry, Dublin, Melbourne, Ontario and in Kuwait,
said local organizer Nyna Pais Caputi.
Caputi, a member of St. Agnes Parish in Concord, is a documentary filmmaker
working to expose the gravity of the problem of what she calls “India’s
missing girls.”
In the last two decades in India, she said, 10 million girls have been
killed by their parents either before or soon after their birth. Among
other things, this has resulted in an imbalance in the gender ratio. In
some regions of India, the ratio is 500 girls per 1000 boys. “This
had led to an increase in trafficking, sexual abuse and violence against
women,” she said.
The local Walk for India’s Missing Girls will start at 11 a.m. in
front of the Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park and end at the
Indian Embassy, 540 Arguello Blvd.
Walkers will wear black ribbons in memory of the infant girls who have
been killed. The march is timed to coincide with International Women’s
Day on March 8.
The South Asian Behavioral Health and Training Foundation, founded by
clinical psychologist Harmesh Kumar, is the San Francisco Walk’s
main sponsor.
Caputi has also partnered with several social justice organizations —
including Fight-Back, Campaign Against Pre-birth Elimination of Females,
and Pink Pagoda — as well as Indian women’s groups to organize
the various walks throughout the world.
Caputi became acutely aware of the problem of female infanticide in her
native country when she tried to adopt a girl in India and was told of
the long waiting list because so few are available for adoption.
“The orphanage I visited in India pointed a lake out to me where
baby girls used to be drowned by their parents,” she said.
She and her husband are working on a film about female infanticide entitled
“Petals in the Dust: India’s Missing Girls.”
It will be the first full-length documentary on this topic made in the
U.S. Caputi plans to get the film dubbed in Hindi and shown to young teenagers
in Indian schools. “That’s one audience that we will be targeting,”
she said.
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