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Chennai Women Oppose Condom Machines
By A Staff Writer
Chennai
Stepping into active mode, the women activists of the Jamaat-e-Islami-Hind unit in Tamilnadu staged a demonstration here at the city’s prominent cultural landmark, Valluvar Kottam on December 11, 2005. Placards held by the women activists, several of them in hijab, said ‘Down with nudity’ and ‘Remove condom vending machines’.
Convener of the women’s unit, Fathima Jalal said the Jamaat and the women were not against Government’s campaign to promote AIDS awareness and contraception, but were against condom dispensing machines in public places which would imperil the modesty in the society and would promote permissive and licentious behaviour among youth. She said the Jamaat and women from other sections of people are urging the Government to halt the move to install 500 condom vending machines in Chennai. The Government under its National AIDS Control Programme has plans to install 1500 such condom dispensing machines across Tamilnadu. She said the Government was within its right to arouse awareness against HIV/AIDS, but machines would make the youth vulnerable as they would be accessible to all without the barriers of age.
In a press statement, K. Manivasan, Joint Commissioner of Health said, use of condoms by commercial sex workers in Thailand have shown that condoms had proved to be the best guarantee against AIDS.
Several sections in Tamil nadu have welcomed the agitation by Muslim women against condom vending machines. In a letter to the local daily, Deccan Chronicle, Dr. P. S. Lalitha, justified the opposition to condom machines as they could not distinguish between a 16- year old buyer and a 60- year old buyer. Another writer, B. Kousalya said the machines would further degrade the status of women.
A good section of people feel perturbed at the new initiative by the Government and say the freely available condoms would encourage youth to experiment with them. They say, while condoms would block the biological consequences, but would socially stigmatize more women in a society where terms for marriage were already very adverse against them in the marriage market. They feel the move is totally out of sync with the Indian culture where virginity and chastity is seen as an indispensable social value. However, not much enlightened discussion has been seen in the Tamilnadu media over the new official move. It is widely felt that the media is itself in league with such commercial interests which would like to promote Western lifestyles that see no harm in live-in relationships, condoms, single mothers, fast food and other influences that strike at the base of family values. While the pro-condom machine lobby alleges that campaign against condoms amounts to promoting mass suicide due to high incidence of AIDS, the anti-condom groups feel that the Government is promoting lewdness and licentious behaviour on the sly.
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