NEW DELHI: Crowds of Indian doctors dressed in white coats came as if ready for work on Saturday but instead stood outside hospitals demanding justice after the rape and murder of a colleague.
“We just want to be safe while we are doing our duty,” said Sapna Rani, a 27-year-old woman doctor in the capital New Delhi who took part in a 24-hour nationwide strike by medics.
“The hospital is the last place where we should have to worry about our safety.”
The killing of the 31-year-old doctor, whose bloodied body was discovered on August 9 at a state-run hospital in the eastern city of Kolkata, has focused rage at the chronic issue of violence against women.
At Delhi’s Ram Manohar Lohia public hospital, usually one of the capital’s busiest, Rani said the “doctor-to-patient” ratio was so abysmal that shifts often lasted 36 hours.
“And after that, there is no proper place to rest,” she said, describing how doctors took breaks in “wheelchairs and stretchers.”
The murdered doctor in Kolkata was found in the teaching hospital’s seminar hall, suggesting she had gone there for a break during a 36-hour-long shift.
Hospital security staff say that they regularly witness violent behavior by angry patients and relatives who would run out of patience, waiting for hours in long queues in the heat.
“Just the other day, an angry relative of a patient slapped a female guard,” said Gopal Bisht, a security supervisor at Delhi’s Lady Hardinge Hospital.
The usual busy hubbub of patients was replaced by protest chants on Saturday.
Women doctors held up placards outside hospitals, chanting slogans demanding justice. Male colleagues joined in.
The gruesome nature of the attack has invoked comparisons with the horrific 2012 gang rape and murder of a young woman on a Delhi bus.
It has sparked widespread outrage in a country where sexual violence against women is endemic.
An average of nearly 90 rapes a day were reported in 2022 in the country of 1.4 billion people.
The wider public has also marched in several cities this week, including at a candlelight midnight rally in Kolkata.
Doctors say the protests are also to highlight “systemic issues” plaguing India’s overstretched public health care infrastructure.
Such issues, the protesting doctors said, compromise the “safety and security of health care workers.”
Doctors working in public institutions say that violence against health care workers has become so commonplace that people have become “desensitised” to it.
“What happened in Kolkata was not a one-off incident,” said Pankhuri Sharma, 24, a doctor-in-training at a state-run hospital in Delhi.
“Violence and molestation is an everyday affair,” she said.
Her senior, 27-year-old gynaecologist Akanksha Tyagi, said it was “deplorable” that “it took the life of a doctor” for people to take notice.
Furious Indian doctors mourn the rape and murder of a colleague
https://arab.news/9ndbe
Furious Indian doctors mourn the rape and murder of a colleague
- “We just want to be safe while we are doing our duty,” said a 27-year-old woman doctor
- The killing of the 31-year-old doctor has focused rage at the chronic issue of violence against women
China’s top diplomat to visit Somalia on Africa tour
- Stop in Mogadishu provides diplomatic boost after Israel formally recognized breakaway Somaliland
- Tour focusses on Beijing's strategic trade access across eastern and southern Africa
BEIJING: China’s top diplomat began his annual New Year tour of Africa on Wednesday, focusing on strategic trade access across eastern and southern Africa as Beijing seeks to secure key shipping routes and resource supply lines.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi will travel to Ethiopia, Africa’s fastest-growing large economy; Somalia, a Horn of Africa state offering access to key global shipping lanes; Tanzania, a logistics hub linking minerals-rich central Africa to the Indian Ocean; and Lesotho, a small southern African economy squeezed by US trade measures. His trip this year runs until January 12.
Beijing aims to highlight countries it views as model partners of President Xi Jinping’s flagship “Belt and Road” infrastructure program and to expand export markets, particularly in young, increasingly affluent economies such as Ethiopia, where the IMF forecasts growth of 7.2 percent this year.
China, the world’s largest bilateral lender, faces growing competition from the European Union to finance African infrastructure, as countries hit by pandemic-era debt strains now seek investment over loans.
“The real litmus test for 2026 isn’t just the arrival of Chinese investment, but the ‘Africanization’ of that investment. As Wang Yi visits hubs like Ethiopia and Tanzania, the conversation must move beyond just building roads to building factories,” said Judith Mwai, policy analyst at Development Reimagined, an Africa-focussed consultancy.
“For African leaders, this tour is an opportunity to demand that China’s ‘small yet beautiful’ projects specifically target our industrial gaps, turning African raw materials into finished products on African soil, rather than just facilitating their exit,” she added.
On his start-of-year trip in 2025, Wang visited Namibia, the Republic of Congo, Chad and Nigeria.
His visit to Somalia will be the first by a Chinese foreign minister since the 1980s and is expected to provide Mogadishu with a diplomatic boost after Israel became the first country to formally recognize the breakaway Republic of Somaliland, a northern region that declared itself independent in 1991.
Beijing, which reiterated its support for Somalia after the Israeli announcement in December, is keen to reinforce its influence around the Gulf of Aden, the entrance to the Red Sea and a vital corridor for Chinese trade transiting the Suez Canal to Europe.
Further south, Tanzania is central to Beijing’s plan to secure access to Africa’s vast copper deposits. Chinese firms are refurbishing the Tazara Railway that runs through the country into Zambia. Li Qiang made a landmark trip to Zambia in November, the first visit by a Chinese premier in 28 years.
The railway is widely seen as a counterweight to the US and European Union-backed Lobito Corridor, which connects Zambia to Atlantic ports via Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
By visiting the southern African kingdom of Lesotho, Wang aims to highlight Beijing’s push to position itself as a champion of free trade. Last year, China offered tariff-free market access to its $19 trillion economy for the world’s poorest nations, fulfilling a pledge by Chinese President Xi Jinping at the 2024 China-Africa Cooperation summit in Beijing.
Lesotho, one of the world’s poorest nations with a gross domestic product of just over $2 billion, was among the countries hardest hit by US President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs last year, facing duties of up to 50 percent on its exports to the United States.
