It's one thing to forgive Chris Brown who was arrested and charged for battering his girlfriend in 2009. But the Times of India thinks Brown's record of abuse is downright funny. The newspaper, which has the largest English-language readership in the world, published a joke that goes: "Who is better at singing--women or Chris Brown? A: Women .  .  .  that's why he beats them!"

A Washington Post blogger notes that every sixty minutes, two women are raped in India and every six hours, a woman is beaten to death, burned or commits suicide. Clearly, this is not a community in which physical abuse of women needs to be treated lightly. Tell the Times of India to apologize for its insensitivity to women in publishing the Chris Brown joke. 

We the undersigned find it despicable when a musician basically uses his celebrity to get away with beating up a young woman. It's even worse when your newspaper treats that felony as a joke. You need to wake up and notice how often women in your country are victimized, beaten, and raped. This is a serious problem, and making jokes encourages a culture in which women are dehumanized and made easy targets for abuse.