Malaysia's ethnic Indian men won't marry rape victims

Kuala Lumpur: A video survey conducted by a television channel has shown Malaysia’s ethnic Indian men saying that they will not marry rape victims.

In the video produced by Malaysia's Indian entertainment and lifestyle channel, Astro Ulagam titled “Would you marry a rape victim? Watch the shocking answers from Malaysian Indian men!” that was uploaded on its Facebook page on Saturday, two of three young ethnic Indian men interviewed refused to wed sexual assault victims, saying their family honour will be tarnished, the Malay Mail reported.

“No, I won’t. My family’s honour will fall,” one of the men was quoted as saying in Tamil.

Another man said it would be cumbersome to answer people’s questions if he were to accept a rape victim as his life partner.

“I won’t accept if it is a rape victim because if other people come to learn about it, they will be asking and it will be difficult to answer,” he said.

The names of the interviewees, who appear to have been interviewed in Kuala Lumpur's Brickfields neighbourhood, were not revealed in the four and a half minutes' video, although their faces are shown clearly.

Ethnic Indians comprise a little over seven percent of Malaysia's total population of nearly 30 million.

One of four ethnic Indian women interviewed in the video also said no one will ever accept rape victims.

“Even if it’s not the girl’s fault and it was an unforeseen incident, no one would accept,” a woman said.

One ethnic Indian man, however, expressed his willingness to marry a rape victim, saying she cannot be blamed for her sexual assault.

“Definitely! It’s not their fault... It is stupid to sideline them just because they have been raped,” he said.

Another ethnic Indian woman stressed that rape victims should not be ostracised. “People will talk, but if she’s my friend or my sister, how can I shun her?”

Astro Ulagam said on its website that the social experiment was inspired by a similar video on Wtf India’s YouTube channel “Will you marry a raped girl?”, which interviewed Indian nationals who said they will not allow their son to marry a rape victim.

India recently banned a controversial documentary on the 2012 fatal gang rape of a young woman in a bus in Delhi.

A BBC documentary by British filmmaker Leslee Udwin showed one of the convicted rapists blaming the rape victim for her sexual assault and murder, saying she should not have fought back.