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Traffic of Truth

No more gender-genocide!

Published : Thursday, 11 May, 2017 at 12:00 AM  Count : 1317
Ahmed Tahsin Shams
The recent Banani rape case hints how far we are from achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)! Because it’s State’s responsibility to mechanise its legal system, and to ensure security of all gender. 
 
Certainly, Bangladesh is ahead in gender equity among SAARC countries, according to a report of Gender Inequality Index 2016.  And here goes the incoherent proofs -- let me remind the 'gender-genocide' in TSC on the eve of Pahela Baishakh 2015, brutal rape of teenagers like Yasmin, ten-year-olds, five-year-olds, even two-year-olds, or the unsolved mystery of Tonu murder case, and the number goes higher each year. It is to be noted that by ‘gender-genocide’, I mean, a systemic practice of action and thinking towards a certain gender.

Now another example of the old maxim 'justice delayed, justice denied’, like Tonu case, is going to be set, it seems, for the Banani hotel rape case of two girls.

The matter of irony is that 'highly educated men' in facebook and other social media blame the girls for attending the birthday party of a friend at late night. Similar to the Pahela Baishakh 2015 incident, these 'highly educated' generation alleged girl's etiquettes, whether related to attires or timing of going out in the street.

So it is clear that a ‘Taliban-trend’ has already emerged by the male 'educated citizens' of our 'secular middle-income developing' country!

"We are yet to be human. But we can initially start the process to be human. Let's imply a Utopian idea: drag down those 'men', whether in virtual social media or in real, to whom women are 'objects', and appeal to create a new law to categorize them  -- 'suspects of the upcoming rape incident'. Let's talk straight: No more gender-genocide."

In 2007, a Saudi Arabian judge sentenced a 19-year-old gang rape victim to a six-month prison sentence and 200 lashes for being in the car of a man who was not a relative! In Bangladesh, many ‘educated men’, perhaps, are eager to follow such practice.

At present this is practised in mysterious ways: delay in filing the rape case, 5-day leave of the OC from police station, and the 'alleged will be taken to task in no time' only in words of officials, and most significantly 'educated' facebook rape justifiers are accusing the girls for a late-night party! Was such advancement enlisted in those development goals?

It is certain that when rape is justified by blaming women's manners, and barring free movement of women in a democratic country, gender equity is questionable. Let's see how fast these ironies will fetch us the SDGs and MDGs! 
 
We live in a country where people consider women the binary 'other', even if get raped. Social security of gender is now the prime question, more than how much digitalization or economic prosperity we have achieved. 

Seven days have passed since the case was filed, but Banani police failed to make any arrests. The case has been transferred to the Victim Support Centre. DMP Additional Deputy Commissioner (Media) Yusuf Ali declined to explain why the transfer was made and whether the fact that Banani police Officer-in-Charge BM Forman Ali took a five-day-leave from Tuesday.

Another news report in a national daily says, the accused of the Banani rape case of two university girls might have been sighted in Sylhet area, a local hotel owner said on Tuesday. Yet, till now, police could not arrest any of the five accused.

Invited to a birthday party, the girls went to the hotel around 8:30pm on March 28. "They confined us to two rooms at gunpoint after the rooftop party ended around midnight," one of the girls said, adding that one of them raped her twice.

But the most gruesome act is the downpour of abusive comments in social media against these girls who went to a friend's party. Such act should be considered parallel to rape, such ‘educated citizens’ are no less than Ahmed Shafat and Nayem Ashraf!

This case reminds us Yasmin Akhter murder and rape case who was brutally murdered 22 years ago on August 24, 1995. And all three rapists and murderers were sentenced to death in 2004. It took 9 years to serve justice!

Doing a crime, and helping the criminal -- are similar. Not being able to arrest the alleged yet indicates -- the officials are assisting the elite patriarchs. The way Yasmin's death mobilised a whole movement, at present, again we need to raise voice, shout, scream for a simple basic right: "As an individual adult human it's my wish when to go out, what to wear, where to attend, and with whom to sleep, whom to say YES, and whom to NO."

Forceful sexual harassment is a crime, known as rape, and in no way people can justify it. Till today, women face harassment, domestic violence, abuse -- at home, office, or on street -- by family members or strangers. In short, no haven for women!
Of any class, women are objects to 'men'. There is a suggestion: Spit on the face who blames women's attires that arouses 'natural desires' (or animalistic desires) of the most 'educated men'. 
 
A research by the United Nations in 2013 shows, nearly a quarter of men have admitted that they raped a woman at least once in their life (in an anonymous interview of 10,000 men aged 18 to 49 years from Bangladesh, China, Cambodia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Papua New Guinea). And three quarters of those did not experience any legal consequences!

Now, being silent, in a way, we are agreeing with those patriarchal 'highly educated' facebook 'rapists' to whom women are 'objects'.

Being mouth-zipped, we are accepting the 'fatwa' of 100 lashes to a 14-year-old rape victim Hena Akhter which put her to death in Shariatpur in 2011.

We seem to be handicapped, as we are not torn apart inside by the suicidal deaths of many raped teens in Bangladesh.
It seems we are 'okay' with a mother's urge begging to those 'men' to rape her young daughter, Purnima, one after another to keep her alive during gang rape in October 8, 2001, in Sirajganj!

Let's not only blubber those ironies of national and global achievements. We are yet to be human. But we can initially start the process to be human. Let's imply a Utopian idea: drag down those 'men', whether in virtual social media or in real, to whom women are 'objects', and appeal to create a new law to categorize them  -- 'suspects of the upcoming rape incident'.

Let's talk straight: No more gender-genocide.

Ahmed Tahsin Shams is Editorial Assistant, The Daily Observer


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