Danish Tourist Says She Was Gang-Raped in India
By HARI KUMAR and ELLEN BARRY

NEW DELHI — A 51-year-old Danish woman said she was gang-raped at knife point by seven or eight men in central New Delhi after she approached them to ask for directions to her hotel, the Delhi police reported on Wednesday.

Late Wednesday night, the police announced the arrest of two men they described as “vagabonds” living at the capital’s railway station, and said they had property stolen from the tourist, including a glasses case, an iPod and earplugs.

The woman, who was staying at a hotel in an area popular with backpackers, told the police that the men had taken her to a secluded spot near the railway station on Tuesday and raped her repeatedly, said Rajan Bhagat, a spokesman for the Delhi police.

The woman arrived in Delhi on Monday from Agra, the site of the Taj Mahal, and was planning to leave India on Wednesday morning, said a manager at the hotel where she was staying.

The manager, who refused to give his name for fear of harming the hotel’s reputation, said she returned to the hotel around 8:30 p.m. and asked the reception desk to call the police. After consultations with the police and staff members from the Danish Embassy that lasted until the early morning hours, she caught her morning flight out of India, the employee said.

NDTV, an Indian news channel, reported that the woman was held by the men from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., after which she made her way back to her hotel.

Mr. Bhagat said that the woman had refused to be medically examined and that the police were trying to gather other evidence.

Freddy Svane, Denmark’s ambassador to India, confirmed that an allegation of rape had been made by a Danish citizen on Tuesday.

The report of the attack comes after a year of intense national debate on the problem of sexual violence, set off by an attack on a 23-year-old physiotherapy student in New Delhi in December 2012. The victim, who had boarded a private bus along with a male friend, was gang-raped and brutalized with a metal rod; she later died from her injuries. Amid widespread outrage over the attack, India’s Parliament stiffened penalties for sexual assault, and four of the woman’s attackers were sentenced to death by hanging.

Although the per capita rate of rapes reported to the police in India is below that of many developed nations, some experts believe that many sexual attacks go unreported and that the actual number is far higher.

Tourism figures fell after the 2012 attack on the student, with visits by women dropping 35 percent in the three months that followed it, according to the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India.

Attacks on tourists have been reported in the meantime. Last March, a group of men raped a 39-year-old Swiss tourist and attacked her husband as the couple camped during a bicycle trip across the state of Madhya Pradesh in central India. Six men received life sentences in the crime.

This month, a 33-year-old Polish woman reported to the police that she had been drugged and raped by a taxi driver who offered to drive her to Delhi along with her 2-year-old daughter, local news media reported.

And an 18-year-old German woman told the police that she had been assaulted in the sleeping compartment of a train headed for Chennai, formerly Madras. Though she made the report several days after the encounter, too late to gather medical evidence in the case, a man from Bihar State has been arrested in connection with the assault, Seema Agarwal, a police inspector general, told NDTV.

印度又性侵 女遊客遭輪暴

一名五十一歲的丹麥女遊客十四日在印度首都新德里遭人搶劫及輪暴，印度警方已拘留六名疑似涉案的流浪漢，但尚未逮捕任何人。此事再度凸顯印度的性暴力頻傳，也再度讓女性遊客在印度的安全議題成為焦點。

印度警方及媒體報導，這名丹麥女子十四日晚間打算返回她在新德里帕哈拉甘區的奧馬仕旅館時迷了路，她向兩名男性問路，但他們把她引到附近一處僻靜地點，接著約有五、六名男性現身，先是以刀脅迫，搶了她的現金、iPad及手機，接著將她輪暴。

奧瑪仕旅館的老闆巴爾說，受害人遇害後哭著走進旅館，且「情況不佳」，巴爾報了警，他說：「發生這種事，我真覺得很丟臉。」帕哈拉甘區在新德里市中心的康諾特廣場附近，距新德里火車站不遠，是許多背包客常去的地點，區內旅館餐館林立。

新德里警方發言人巴加告訴法新社：「警方已查出嫌疑人，正在偵訊中。」警方還說，嫌疑人都是流浪漢。印度警方不公開受害者姓名，但表示受害者拒絕接受體檢，已在十五日早上搭乘一班前往哥本哈根的班機離開印度。

丹麥駐印度大使斯瓦內坦承有丹麥公民聲稱遭性侵，但未提供更多詳情。受害者曾告訴印度警方，她過去一周都在印度旅遊，曾前往泰姬瑪哈陵參觀，十四日才抵達新德里。

印度的性暴力問題曾在2012年十二月引發軒然大波，當時一名廿三歲女大學生在行駛中的巴士上遭輪暴後被丟下車，後來傷重喪生。此事曾引發全國許多城市的大規模示威抗議，但強暴及輪暴案件仍層出不窮。

法新社引用印度政府的統計報導，在新德里及其郊區，去年一到十月的性侵案有一千三百卅例，遠高於前年全年的七百零六例。美聯社則指出，印度性侵案頻繁到據說平均每廿一分鐘就有一起。

暴力頻傳現象嚴重影響印度旅遊業，根據印度聯合工商會研究，在2012年女大學生遭輪暴致死案之後三個月，外籍觀光客赴印旅遊的人數就減少了四分之一，女性遊客人數更劇減百分之卅五，印度旅遊部去年還發起「我尊重女性」運動，企圖減少觀光客的安全疑慮。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/16/world/asia/danish-tourist-says-she-was-gang-raped-in-new-delhi.html

紐約時報中文版翻譯：
http://cn.nytimes.com/world/20140116/c16delhi/zh-hant/

2014-01-16．聯合報．A14．國際．編譯馮克芸