Tendring Topics.......on Line
Half the Human Race.
The
appalling gang-rape and murder of a young woman medical student, travelling
with her fiancé on a public bus in India ’s capital has produced both
local and international protest. While this outrage was taking place the bus is
said to have passed several police check-points. Subsequent events suggest that the Delhi
Police show much more enthusiasm for restraining public demonstrations at this
atrocity than for preventing such incidents from taking place
The
blatant way in which this young woman was attacked, tortured, violated and then
thrown naked from the bus onto the highway, ensured that it made the headlines
world-wide. Many similar, if less
public, outrages against women occur in India and other parts of the world
daily and are too common to attract more than local media interest. Only last week the Clacton Gazette reported an attack on a young woman and her attempted rape less than half a mile from my home and outside the primary school attended many years ago by my two sons. Nor are such attacks on women and girls
necessarily of a directly sexual nature. Only
weeks earlier an attempt was made, again on a bus but in Pakistan , to
murder a girl in her mid teens for her courageous campaigning for the right
of girls to enjoy the same educational opportunities as boys. Fortunately, and
almost miraculously, this young lady survived the attack and has been discharged from hospital, though she will have to return for further major surgery. She lives to fight
another day for the right of members of her sex to a proper education.
There
is little doubt that a great many such offences against women and girls spring from a
conviction, particularly prevalent in the Middle East ,
that women are an inferior sex created for no other purpose than the service and entertainment of men. I once
heard a supporter of this attitude explaining on tv that it was quite wrong for westerners to
suggest that he and many of his compatriots and co-religionists held women in low
regard. On the contrary, he insisted, the women of their households were regarded as their most precious possessions and – like all precious
possessions – were kept away from prying eyes and potential danger. He was quite unable to see that to regard any
fellow human as a possession, however
highly prized, was in itself deeply offensive.
Well-meaning people may hesitate to criticise
or condemn such an attitude for fear of showing disrespect for a centuries-old
culture and its traditions. Respect has
to be earned. Past English culture
and tradition included burning heretics alive, bear-baiting
and cock-fighting, hanging or transporting people to the colonies for trivial
offences, torturing and hanging old women denounced as witches, and husbands beating their wives, provided that they did so with a stick no thicker than a
thumb! ! Although our country can’t yet claim to be
completely free of bigotry, prejudice and the myth of male superiority, we may
thank God that there were those of both sexes who showed no respect whatsoever for those old cultural traditions and who were prepared to oppose and eventually
abolish them.
.
.
An
extreme example of the effects of an uncompromisingly male-dominated society is
illustrated by recently published statistics relating to the position of women
in Afghanistan . 87 percent of Afghan women are illiterate,
one in every eleven Afghan women dies in childbirth and 70 percent are forced
into arranged marriages. I have no
doubt at all that those disgraceful figures will become even worse in the next
couple of years following the complete withdrawal of NATO troops. My advice to Afghan women who have embraced
western values is to get out while they are still able to do so!
Towards Anglo-German Understanding
On
my return to Clacton from celebrating my 90th birthday with my family in Zittau
Last year, I revised my previous self-published memoirs ‘Zittau…and I’, corrected a couple of errors and added a section
about my birthday visit to the town and the warm welcome that my family and I had received there. In January 2012 I
self-published the result as ‘Zittau…..and
I’ (2nd Edition). I gave
copies to all my British friends and relations and sent copies to the new friends that
I had made in Germany .
Among my German friends ‘Zittau….and I’ proved gratifyingly popular. The scholarly Dr Volker Dudeck is a
distinguished historian, a Cultural Senator of the Federal State of Saxony and
the former Direktor (Curator) of Zittau’s town museum. He now devotes his retirement to the
conservation and display of the Zittau Grossen Fastentuch (Great Lenten Veil). He was particularly enthusiastic. He arranged for my booklet to be translated into German,
secured the interest and support of the Mayor, (Oberbürgermeister Arnd Voight) and of other members of the Council, and members of the Fellowship of the Zittau
Lenten Veils (of which I was made an Honorary Member in 2011), and arranged for
the German version to be printed and published for sale in aid of the continued
preservation and display of the Great Lenten Veil.
As a result, Meine Begegnungen mit Zittau (I was told that the English title made no
sense when translated word for word into German) was printed and published as a slim hard-back
in December 2012. I was delighted to
receive copies just a week or so before Christmas; a very welcome
Christmas Present! It is printed on high
quality paper with an introductory preface by Dr Dudeck. There are two
black-and-white illustrations included within the text and. fourteen colour photographs illustrating
my recent visits to Zittau form a supplement at the back. These include a full-page picture of my
welcome by Oberbürgermeister Arnd Voight on the occasion of my 90th
birthday!
The books are
to be sold in aid of the continued preservation and presentation of Zittau’s
Great Lenten Veil which has played an important part in my life during the past
six years. Now permanently displayed in Zittau’s Museum/Church of the Holy
Cross, it attracts some 30,000 visitors a year!
.JPG) |
A pencil drawing of my late wife by grandson Christopher. It is one of the illustrations in the text of Meine Begegnungen mit Zittau.
At about the same time as Meine Begegnungen mit Zittau was being printed I had other heartening news from my good friend Ingrid Zeibig, originally from Zittau but now living and working in Bayreuth in Bavaria, and from Joyce Hartung, born and brought up in Sunderland but now married to a German and also living in Bayreuth.
Both
are members of the Bayreuth Anglo-German Society and Joyce runs an ‘Improve
your English’ course for members. They
have been using both my ‘Zittau and I’ (English version of course) and ‘In the Beginning’, ten monologues written
by my late wife and myself that purport to be by witnesses of Jesus Christ’s
Nativity and its aftermath, as text books in their English classes. Ingrid and Joyce both tell me that members of the Anglo-German Society have
thoroughly enjoyed reading them.
I like to think that the publication of Meine Begegnungen mit Zittau and the use of my own and my wife’s publications by the Anglo-German Society in
.
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