An Indian government official is under fire for idiotic statements about the crime of rape following the latest horrific case in which two teenage girls were assaulted and hanged from mango trees.  Describing rape as a “social crime”, he said, “sometimes it’s right, sometimes it’s wrong.”  And this guy is an idiot all of the time.

Babulal Gaur is a home minister from new PM Narendra Modi's own Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) who angered a lot of people with these comments, which only get worse.  Gaur then commented on the assault in Uttar Pradesh in which two female cousins, aged 12 and 14, were raped and hanged last week by members of the region’s highest caste.

“Boys commit mistakes: will they be hanged for rape?” Gaur asked.  (Ed note:  Yep.)

To be fair, India set up a special fast track court to deal with this atrocity.  The new courts were established after several highly publicized cases, including the gang rape of a promising medical student in Delhi who died of her injuries.  Those suspects were sentenced to death.  But Gaur’s comments show the attitude the country has to overcome.

Meanwhile, Egypt is legally defining sexual harassment as a crime, and setting the punishment as five years in prison.  It’s a strong contrast to the prevailing attitude that the victim of such a crime somehow had invited it.

A 2013 UN study said that nine out of 10 Egyptian women had experienced some form of sexual assault, ranging from minor harassment to rape.  And foreign journalists were shocked at, and in some cases even victimized by, rampant sexual assaults going on amid the chaos of the 2011 Arab Spring.