All language subtitles for VICE.S02E07.1080p.WEB-DL.AAC.H264-KAZ.en_hi

SHANE SMITH:
This week on "Vice,"

women fight back against rape
in India.

SMITH: Then, the horrific
aftereffects

of Soviet-era nuclear testing.

[Beeping]

Whoa, whoa, whoa,
whoa, whoa, whoa

Move that camera, eh?

[Yells command
in native language]

[Crowd cheering]

[Chanting in foreign language]

Uhh!

What's your answer, then, to

all the recent cases
that have been

happening against women?

So this is the epicenter
of a nuclear bomb.

It's what it looks like.

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India's rape issue
grabbed the world's attention

in December 2012 when mass
protests erupted in New Delhi

after a 23-year-old student
was savagely gang-raped

and beaten to death
by 5 men and a teenage boy.

Now, the Indian authorities claim
to be addressing the issue,

however, statistics have shown
a sharp increase in rapes

and many experts say that even
those numbers fail to capture

the accurate levels
of sexual assault

because of factors
like intimidation,

the social stigma
associated with rape,

and the historic distrust
of the local police,

which keeps many victims from
seeking due process of law.

So we sent Gelareh Kiazand
to Delhi to try to see

what, if any,
progress is being made.

*

KIAZAND: We arrived in Delhi
as fireworks and sparklers

lit up the night to celebrate
one of the Hindu religion's

biggest holidays: Diwali.

Aah! [Laughs]

But in December 2012,
India's streets exploded

after a very different
fuse was lit.

The gruesome details of the
"Rape Heard Around the World"

sparked a public outcry
as India's rape crisis

became an international issue.

Intense public pressure led to

the adult perpetrators
of the gang rape

being sentenced to death.

KIAZAND: Since reported
rapes in India

have risen 900%
over the past 40 years,

we spoke to New Delhi's
deputy police commissioner

to find out what they were
doing to stem the tide.

KIAZAND: There's been
a lot of reports that

a lot of rape cases
don't get filed.

KIAZAND: The Deputy Commissioner
wanted to show us

how they were addressing
the rape problem.

[Telephone ringing]

How many years have
you been working here?

Two years.

Can I ask how old
you are? Is that OK?

22. Oh, wow.

Started when you were 20.

It's a tough job.

No? OK.

KIAZAND: The bus gang rapes
spurred India's Parliament

to pass a new law that
expanded the definition

of rape as a crime

to for the first time include

oral and rape by
a foreign object

and installed harsher
punishment for perpetrators.

We wanted to know whether

changing definitions
and lengthening prison sentences

is remotely enough,

so we spoke with Vrinda Grover,
a lawyer in Delhi's high court.

KIAZAND: Reports of rape
in Delhi have doubled

since the bus gang rape.

But, sadly, Delhi might be

as good as it gets
in northern India.

Because in
the rural countryside,

they have even less
law and order.

Approximately 70%
of India's population

lives outside of the cities.

So we took a train to Banda
in rural Uttar Pradesh

to see how the police
treat women there.

We're now in Uttar Pradesh,
which is

north central of India.

There is a rape every
20 minutes in this country.

In a place like Uttar Pradesh,

most of them
don't even get reported.

The one voice out here
that fights against

this violence towards women
is Sampat Pal.

She created the Gulabi Gang,
meaning the Pink Gang,

made entirely of women
with the aim at

empowering victims
to seek justice.

The Pink Gang's
strength in numbers

prevent the women from being
intimidated into silence,

and in turn puts pressure on
authorities to take action.

KIAZAND: We traveled
further into the countryside

to get a look at
the kind of cases

that Sampat and the Gulabi Gang
face on a regular basis.

In the extremely poor
village of Rauli Kalyanpur,

we met the mother of a victim

who was brutally raped
by a 42-year-old neighbor.

The victim was
just 12 years old.

KIAZAND: These villages are so
small that many residents know

not only the victims,
but the rapists as well.

The crimes go unpunished and the
victims are shamed into silence.

KIAZAND: Since the man
accused of the crime

had not been prosecuted,

we wanted to meet the police
who were ignoring the matter.

At the local station, we saw

what the victim's family
was up against.

KIAZAND: In India,
it is common knowledge

that many police officers
are corrupt.

A survey by Transparency
International found that

of Indian citizens that came
in contact with the police,

62% admitted
to paying them a bribe.

What is your opinion on

all the corruption
that takes place?

For example, the bribery

that happens with the witnesses,

the fact that
the doctors are lying.

What is your take on all this?

KIAZAND: After the police's
outright refusal

to even acknowledge
any of our questions,

we went to speak to a superior
district superintendent

and, while he did speak to us,

the answers he gave were
even more dismaying.

What's your answer, then, to

all the recent cases
that have been

happening against women?

KIAZAND: Often in these
villages, the offender's family

pay off the police, who in turn

not only dissuade the girl's
families from pursuing the case,

but also offer them a small
portion of their own bribe

to stay quiet.

We spoke to a couple who suspect
their daughter's in-laws

of murdering her after
she had given birth to a child.

Though their daughter's
body is missing,

the couple can't even get the
local police to file a report,

as they have been
threatened by the accused

and offered bribes
by the authorities.

KIAZAND: When we tried
to follow up on this crime,

we were met with the seemingly
standard operating procedure

of the police, which is
to not even say a word.

No one's following this up,

but I want to know
what you think of this.

He's not gonna speak.

KIAZAND: The more
the police ignored us,

the more we understood
the decision of female victims

to succumb to silence.

KIAZAND: With little
protection from police,

there's no other option
but to form their own group

to support victims and try
to prevent future crimes.

KIAZAND: Sampat says there are
presently over 100,000 members

of the Gulabi Gang.

The rise of social movements
like this

has caught the attention
of psychologists

like Dr. Pulkit Sharma,

who is studying the issue
of rape in India.

Would a movement like
the Pink Sari revolution

be beneficial?

KIAZAND: She not only
groups women together

for strength in numbers,

but teaches them
to defend themselves.

KIAZAND: Hopefully,
moving forward,

groups like the Gulabi Gang

will effect the change
that's needed in India.

We witnessed a sign
of this firsthand

when the mother of
the 12-year-old rape victim,

who only days earlier
was contemplating suicide,

had now, because of the Gulabi
Gang, decided to fight back.

*

When the first atomic weapons
were used in World War II,

the long-term health risks
of radiation exposure

were largely unknown.

Then, during the Cold War,

as the U.S. and Soviet Union

tested larger
and larger warheads,

they studied the aftereffects
more closely.

The Soviet Union, in some cases,

tested theirs over a populated
region of Kazakhstan,

known as the Polygon.

Today, this area of Kazakhstan

is still experiencing
continuing health problems

traditionally associated with
the exposure to radiation.

In fact, the problem
is so severe

that some doctors in the region
have proposed the radical idea

of a genetic passport
to identify

the people who are affected
in an effort to prevent

these problems from continuing.

So we sent Thomas Morton
to the Polygon

to see firsthand what this
health crisis looks like.

Now, we'd like to warn you that

some of the footage in this
piece is very, very graphic

and it could be disturbing.

*

[Beeping]

*

MORTON: Hi. It's Thomas.
I'm in Kazakhstan

at the epicenter of a Soviet
nuclear explosion.

In a rowboat.

This is where the Soviets
tested all their weapons.

It's called the Semipalatinsk
Testing Polygon.

They chose a place that
was relatively uninhabited,

but relatively uninhabited, of
course, by Soviet terms means

1.6 million Kazakhs
who were here,

and the lasting impact
isn't just holes like these,

but permanent modifications
to our human genome.

*

*

MORTON: Dr. Boris Gusev
is a doctor

at the Semipalatinsk
Radiological Institute.

During the Soviet nuclear
testing in the fifties,

he was assigned to
dispensary number 4,

a secret KGB hospital studying
the effects of the radiation

on the Kazakh people.

MORTON: Why do you
think the Soviets

didn't ask these people
to evacuate?

Why not tell anybody that?

Why didn't they do that?

[Chuckles]

Do you think that
affects the genetics

of the people who were exposed?

MORTON: This is the heart
of the Polygon,

where the Soviets detonated
over 450 nuclear explosions.

It is a completely desolated
post-apocalyptic wasteland

and still thoroughly irradiated
over 40 years after

the last bombs went off.

A radiation researcher from
the nearby Kurchatov Institute

guided us to the center
of the blast site.

So this is the epicenter
of a nuclear bomb.

Everything's got
kind of an unhealthy hue.

[Beeping]

Whoa, whoa, whoa,
whoa, whoa, whoa.

That's amazing.

So the sort of
glassy-looking stuff

is rocks that were basically

caramelized by the atomic blast

and are still extraordinarily
radioactive.

MORTON: These rocks that are
pushing our Geiger counter

even further into the red

were turned into glass by the
heat of the nuclear explosions.

The amount of radiation they're
emitting is the equivalent of

getting 3 CAT scans an hour,
every hour, all day long.

*

While the nuclear bombs
were all set off

at the semiuninhabited
testing site,

radioactive fallout
from each of the blasts

drifted into the fully inhabited
villages surrounding it.

Like this one: Kainar, a town
where 1/3 of the local children

have diseases related
to radiation exposure.

And this is the current
crop of children,

born 3 generations after
the last nuclear tests.

Dr. Akimbay is
the local doctor in Kainar

and also its former mayor,

neither of which
are enviable positions

given the town's
general state of health.

All these houses
are sick houses.

Uh-huh.

MORTON: Every home
we visited in Kainar

housed somebody dead or dying
or deformed from radiation.

There were families
where every single member

suffered from something
horrendous like birth defects

or multiple simultaneous
forms of cancer.

MORTON: Is it valid
to be worried about

people from Kainar
going to big cities

and intermarrying
with other people?

*

While the effects of the Polygon
in a lot of cases

aren't very visible,

things that lie in your blood
stream and in the genetics

and they come out
and become very visible

later on down the road.

We're going to go hang out
with a local here named Berik,

whose mom was exposed to a lot
of nasty stuff in the Polygon

and he basically bears
the brunt of it on his face.

MORTON: Berik's skin deformity
is untreatable

in a place like Kazakhstan.

Has left him blind and forced
to live off his aging mother

and whatever slim handouts
he can make

busking with his dombra.

Did the Soviet, uh,
government or army

ever apologize for it
or try to make any amends?

So what is this?
This shows

that you lived in the Polygon?

What does it say?

MORTON: To keep track
of the Polygon's victims

and their health problems,

the government issued
this Polygon I.D.,

which looks like
a nuclear passport,

but there are some in Semey who
want to turn this medical I.D.

into something closer
to an actual passport,

one for your DNA.

*

While the situation
with Polygon sufferers seems

kind of hopelessly bleak,
there is, uh,

one doctor in Semey

who's offered
a comprehensive solution.

His name is Dr. Toleukhan
and what he's proposed

is a genetic passport,
by basically,

Polygon sufferers would
each be assigned this card

where they do their
genetic screenings,

they write down
the results on it,

and it determines whether or not
they're fit to give birth.

MORTON: Dr. Toleukhan
has spent years

treating the victims
of the Polygon in Semey

and has been fighting for his
proposed genetic passport

since losing his wife
to a Polygon-related illness.

He himself is from
a village in the Polygon

and has suffered from both lung
and blood cancers he attributes

to the long-term
effects of radiation.

He also lost his son at age 35,
again due to the Polygon.

*

MORTON: Does that
not scare people,

that it could be misused

or that it could be used to
force people not to marry?

MORTON: At this point,
I can't help but feel

that what
Dr. Toleukhan's proposing

sounds suspiciously close
to old eugenics theory

or just plain old mad science,

especially in the context of
a room full of jarred fetuses.

The next place
he took me, however,

put the true scope
of the genetic crisis

in full perspective.

How many kids on average
are abandoned here?

MORTON: What's wrong
with each of these guys?

*

MORTON: Why did the parents
give these children up?

Why aren't they taking care
of them themselves?

What's it like for them?
Are these kids in pain

or are they just kind of
in their own world?

MORTON: These are all
the aftereffects from

radioactive testing
60 years ago?

*

If there'd been
genetic passports

when you met your wife,

would you not still
have married her?

*

*

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