Report on N-E girls sparks anger

I am just posting a story I did about the North Eastern girls who have been wrongly portrayed in a report. Thought it might not have been read by all so I put it on the blog.

Report on N-E girls sparks anger
By SONAL KELLOGG
New Delhi, Feb. 12: People of the Northeast are angry and agitated that a media report labelled north-eastern girls as "drug peddlers" and also "sex workers".
This was also reinforced by the Delhi police, which had even earlier issued guidelines to north-eastern people on "how to behave in Delhi" which also created resentment among them.
The matter caused so much of anguish that it was taken up in the Manipur Assembly by MLA O. Joy who moved a calling attention motion on the issue last week.
The MLA was angered by the appearance of a report that made sweeping slurs on north-eastern girls, expressed his extreme concern over the biased and predatory attitude towards women from the Northeast that appears to be prevailing in the national capital.
Mr Joy reportedly pointed out that only recently, there had been a case of sexual abuse and harassment of two girls from Manipur at Gandhi Vihar in Delhi by over two dozen people.
Many north-eastern groups and organisations both in Delhi and in the Northeast have taken up the matter and have asked for an apology both from the police and the media. Northeast Indians and others have posted their views on several blog sites angered by the very poor depiction of the north-eastern girls in the report, which said that now north-eastern girls are "peddling drugs" and they also "throw in sex as a bonus for a few thousand rupees more". It also depicted Africans as "drug peddlers".
The Northeast Support Centre and Helpline has, in its statement, asked for an apology to all Indians, Indian women in particular, and to African people for depicting them poorly.
Opposing the way north-eastern girls were depicted, the sixth conference of the just-concluded National Conference of Network of Women in Media, India (NWMI), expressed deep concern over the portrayal of north-eastern girls as "drug peddlers" and "prostitutes" by a media report.
The statement said, "The report has not only shocked the people of Northeast India, but also raised serious questions about media ethics. Such irresponsible reportage will not only reinforce the already existing gap between the people of the Northeast and the rest of the country, but it will also divide the country further on the lines of ethnicity, community and sex."