INDIANS DEBATE ROLE OF JUVENILE CRIME LAWS IN GANG-RAPE CASE

[According to police, the suspect dropped out of his village school in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh and was taken six years ago by a relative to New Delhi to work as a child laborer in a streetside restaurant. For a time, he sent money to his family. But the payments stopped, and police said his mother assumed he might have died in the city.]

By Rama Lakshmi

Rape in India: Shock and grief turn into anger and resolve.

NEW DELHI — The gang rape of a young woman and her resulting death last month sparked a national outcry and calls for harsh punishment for the five people charged with the crime. Now the case of another suspect, a young man who police say is 17, is generating a divisive new debate about whether India’s juvenile crime laws should apply to particularly brutal offenses.

Police have charged five adults with rape, murder, abduction and robbery in the assault. The case of the teenager — who investigators say participated in the rape and wielded the metal rod that caused the young woman’s fatal internal injuries — is being pursued separately.

Yet although police have said they will seek the death penalty for the adults, the teenager, if charged, would face a maximum sentence of three years in a juvenile correctional facility. Police say he claimed to be six months shy of his 18th birthday when the assault occurred.

Those differences have made his case the source of intense controversy.

The public outcry after the rape and anger over poor public safety for women have reignited qualms about a law passed in 2000 that raised the age at which teenagers are charged as adults from 16 to 18. At a conference of India’s police chiefs and top bureaucrats in New Delhi this month, participants unanimously called for a reversal of that law.

But child rights activists, who campaigned for the age change more than 12 years ago, say that would do little to help troubled youths who turn to crime. They argue that the teenage suspect’s biography — a sad but not uncommon history as a trafficked child laborer — proves their point.

According to police, the suspect dropped out of his village school in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh and was taken six years ago by a relative to New Delhi to work as a child laborer in a streetside restaurant. For a time, he sent money to his family. But the payments stopped, and police said his mother assumed he might have died in the city.

He later found work as a helper and cleaner for the bus on which the 23-year-old woman was gang-raped in December. It was the teenager’s job to attract passengers by calling out to them in a singsong voice — a tone police said he used to beckon the woman, whom he called “sister.”

“This case has exposed our failure as a society in protecting our children and women,” said Bhuwan Ribhu, a child rights activist. “First a boy is trafficked and exploited — later he turns to crime to change the power equation by finding a weaker person to dominate and control. We must stop this vicious cycle.”

But workers at the New Delhi juvenile observation home where the teenager is being detained say they have little sympathy for him. They say other youths held there feel the same.

“Here is the boy that the whole country hates. I feel guilty that I am even looking after him,” said a senior official at the home who was not authorized to speak publicly. The official, who said he had participated in street demonstrations last month after the rape, added: “He had crossed all the limits of humanity. The staff feels deeply conflicted here. Our blood boils when we think of what he did.”

A welfare officer at the juvenile home said the teenager is frail and rarely speaks. He is being kept in a separate room for his safety.

“All the other inmates in the home watch television news daily, and they know about the gang-rape case and its horror,” the welfare officer said. “They keep begging me to just hand the accused over to them for a few minutes. They will finish him, they are so angry.”

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, there were 25,125 juvenile crimes last year, up from 16,509 in 2001. That does not signal an increase in juvenile crimes, said child rights activist Minna Kabir, but rather indicates that many youths were “masked as adults” because of slow implementation of the age change.

Even if the legal definition of a juvenile were lowered back to 16 — an unlikely prospect in the short term — lawyers said the change would not apply retroactively to the youth accused in the gang rape. Instead, his case is poised to serve as a high-profile test “to see if the juvenile justice system can work in extreme cases of rape and murder,” said lawyer Karuna Nundy, who has conducted juvenile justice training in some South Asia countries.

“They will have to use strategies to make him truly realize what he did to that girl, make him accountable for his crime, and apply the best psychological and criminological methods to see if he can be rehabilitated in three years,” Nundy said.

Some Indians who thronged New Delhi’s streets to protest the gang rape, however, said that prescription sounded far too gentle.

The teen’s case has spurred conversations among the demonstrators, some of whom gathered in New Delhi on Wednesday to mark one month since the attack. One participant held up a sign reading: “17½ year olds have the right to rape and kill and walk free?”

“There is nothing juvenile or childlike about what he did,” said Zainab R. Haque, 20, a university student who said she opposes capital punishment. “Try him in a separate court if you must, but do not let him get away with just three years. He will do it again if he is freed.”

@ The Washington Post

Correction: 

An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that the teenage suspect was charged with rape, murder, abduction and robbery and that he could serve up to three years in prison. In fact, he has not yet been charged; if he is, he faces up to three years in a juvenile correctional facility. The earlier version also incorrectly said that Karuna Nundy had conducted juvenile justice training in India, which she has not, and that activist Minna Kabir said many youths were “masked as adults” before the juvenile age was changed. Kabir’s comment referred to the slow implementation of that change.

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CHINA COULD TRY TO BLOCK EVENTUAL KOREAN UNIFICATION, REPORT SAYS

[The tight connection between China and North Korea represents a major policy challenge for the Obama administration and for the incoming government in South Korea. Conceivably, Washington and Seoul could each try to re-engage with Pyongyang, but neither finds that palatable. Washington failed to influence North Korea’s behavior during previous periods of one-on-one and multinational talks. Meantime, South Korean President-elect Park Geun-hye, a conservative, says she won’t reinstate major projects with the North unless the family-run police state dismantles its nuclear weapons. The North says it never will.]

By Chico Harlan

Ahn Young-joon/AP -  

Visitors take pictures in front of a barbed-wire fence decorated with messages 

wishing for the reunification of the two Koreas at Imjingak in Paju, 

near the border village of the Panmunjom, South Korea.

TOKYO — A recent report by Senate Republican staff members warns that China, because of its deepening economic ties with North Korea as well as its ancient claims on Korean land, could attempt to “manage, and conceivably block,” an eventual unification between the two Koreas, if ever the Kim family falls from power in Pyongyang.

The report was released last month with little fanfare, but North Korea watchers say it gives voice to an increasingly popular but still-sensitive sentiment: that China will ultimately try to prevent the South from absorbing the North, the long-assumed post-collapse scenario.

Such a situation is well down the road, experts say, but it resonates at a time when China is playing an aggressive role elsewhere in the region, staking claim to much of the South China Sea and to islands administered by Japan.

China might act with similar aggression in North Korea, the report argues, to “safeguard its own commercial assets, and to assert its right to preserve the northern part of the peninsula within China’s sphere of influence.”

The report was written primarily by Keith Luse, an East Asia specialist who worked as an aide for the recently retired Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), who had been a member of the Foreign Relations Committee with a long-standing interest in North Korea. The minority staff report, Luse said in an e-mail, was written to inform committee members — including Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), nominated by President Obama as the next secretary of state — “to not expect an East-West Germany repeat situation” regarding unification between the Koreas.

A Kerry spokesman said neither Kerry nor his staff would comment on the report, adding that the senator has declined all interviews since his nomination.

The tight connection between China and North Korea represents a major policy challenge for the Obama administration and for the incoming government in South Korea. Conceivably, Washington and Seoul could each try to re-engage with Pyongyang, but neither finds that palatable. Washington failed to influence North Korea’s behavior during previous periods of one-on-one and multinational talks. Meantime, South Korean President-elect Park Geun-hye, a conservative, says she won’t reinstate major projects with the North unless the family-run police state dismantles its nuclear weapons. The North says it never will.

Outside analysts see no clear sign of instability in North Korea, under third-generation leader Kim Jong Eun. But the report lays out how China might respond if North Korea is teetering or collapsing. China could send its own troops into North Korea to prevent a mass exodus of refugees, the report says, citing conversations between Chinese officials and Senate staff members. China might also try to use a protracted U.N. process to determine which nation — China or South Korea — has legitimate authority over the North.

“Anybody who is a serious analyst can’t discount this as a plausible scenario,” said Victor Cha, the Korea chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, referring to the general argument of the report.

From a U.S. perspective, Cha said, the greatest concern is how poorly prepared other countries are to deal with — and cooperate during — a crisis in North Korea. Beijing has no interest in planning with Washington and Seoul, thinking such talks too sensitive. And Seoul worries that such talks would cause tensions with Beijing to spike.

The ‘tributary province’

Beyond that, the United States and China have pursued far different priorities with the North in recent years. Washington wants denuclearization. Beijing wants influence. Scott A. Snyder, a senior fellow for Korea studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the report provides “an interesting effort to correct Washington’s tendency to view the [North Korea] issue primarily with a denuclear­ization focus without considering geo­strategy.”

China now accounts for 70 percent of North Korea’s trade, filling a void that opened several years ago when Seoul, under a new conservative government, drew a harder line with the North and drastically cut back on its economic cooperation. Scholars now commonly describe North Korea as a Chinese vassal state — although they note that the North, famous for its propaganda emphasizing self-reliance, bristles at its dependence on Beijing.

In recent years, China has pumped billions in investment into the North, building up its roads and ports, helping the North in several special economic zones, and importing North Korea’s considerable reserve of natural resources and rare earths.

Luse’s report shows the danger of this: China has made a “tributary province” of the North, while South Korea has ceded ground. Still, others point out that China’s growing investment in the North also presents a potential upside for the region, if ever the North loosens tight state control over its economy and allows greater freedom for its people.

Chinese government officials issue frequent calls for stability on the Korean Peninsula, and for the sake of maintaining that stability, they’ve tried to block additional and tighter international sanctions during the past three years after North Korean military strikes and long-range rocket launches. That protection, coupled with the economic investment, acts essentially as a Chinese-led bailout for the North Korean government, allowing it to survive after earlier sanctions were imposed in 2006 and 2009.

Dissent and contentions

Some Chinese experts note that a unified Korean Peninsula — democratic, under a government in Seoul — represents an even greater form of stability.

“A peaceful Korean Peninsula is in line with China’s national interest,” said Zhang Liangui, a professor of international strategic research at the Party School of the China Communist Party Central Committee. He noted that a unified Korea would allow for even deeper Chinese investment.

But he added that within China, opinion on how to handle the Korean Peninsula is sharply divided. “One misunderstanding of the U.S. is that they think of China as a whole,” its leaders in agreement on everything.

The Senate report devotes an extensive section to China’s relatively recent assertion of old territorial claims and says that China “may be seeking to lay the groundwork for possible future territorial claims on the Korean peninsula.”

One state-sponsored research project published in 2003 that was mentioned in the report, for instance, makes the controversial case that an ancient kingdom operating more than 1,300 years ago on the Korean Peninsula was under Chinese control. Another major Chinese atlas says that Chinese territory once descended across the western side of the Korean Peninsula, toward the southern tip.

Liu Liu in Beijing contributed to this report.

@ The Washington Post