The viral videos of Farokul Islam morally policing women and beating them with sticks in Cox’s Bazar while the police do nothing is symptomatic of a deeper problem in Bangladesh. This is not an isolated event of vigilantism but an act by an increasingly emboldened section of society.
On Friday night, several videos emerged of him and his gang attacking unaccompanied women, for simply existing in western clothes, some justifying this by commenting they are night walkers and therefore deserved it, which isn’t true but even if it was, they too have a right to their safety and livelihood.
Their language and the way they conducted themselves with impunity is reminiscent of the moral policing in Middle Eastern countries famous for their authoritarian control over women.
Interestingly, his cohort of moral police garnered a lot of support before he deleted those videos, turned off his Facebook page for a few hours.
In one video, Farokul is holding a large bamboo stick along with his gang and is seen to be verbally abusing a woman, then forcing her to hold her ears and squat on the beach. What was her crime? Being alone on the beach.
In another video, the same group approached a woman sitting on a beach chair late at night.
They asked what she was doing so late at night and forced her to leave, despite her repeatedly saying, "I am just a tourist, what is my fault?"
A third video shows a woman begging policemen near a room at a restaurant at Sugandha Beach to help her retrieve her mobile phone, which had been taken by the group.
In another video, Farokul was seen repeatedly hitting a woman who was on a floor with sticks in a room as she begged him to stop.
What was even more outrageous was his claim that the police and the army were helping him. It is clearly evident from the video of a woman distressfully asking the police to help her get her phone back so she can leave, the police are just sitting there, not saying or doing anything.
It’s appalling, the lack of understanding of their own jobs. They said they can only do something if someone files a case. The police themselves can file a case, as in the state arresting him for violating someone’s sovereignty.
This is not new though. Just the scale of these incidents have increased. In 2022, a girl was attacked by a woman at Narsingdi train station for wearing a crop top and jeans. Her two male friends were beaten and she had to seek refuge at the station master’s office as a mob grew around her, agreeing with the attacker.
When the attacker, Marzia Aktar Shila was arrested and promptly granted bail, (showing exactly how seriously the legal system takes the harassment of women), the High Court bench itself asked why the girl had worn those clothes and gone to the railway station. The rot of misogyny is deeply entrenched in every facet of this country.
In the same year, another girl was verbally abused by a woman on a bus for wearing a t-shirt. She blamed the girl for rapes, because naturally, what a woman wears is directly responsible for her sexual assault. This time too, the crowd chimed in, blaming the girl and not the abuser. Women, in order to survive, have deeply internalized patriarchy and its logical fallacies.
This should come as no surprise as a large number of Bangladeshi young minds have been increasingly radicalized. While young people from neighbouring countries are leading global companies, the young in Bangladesh have become more inward looking and highly reactionary.
When hoards of Farokuls graduate from increasingly insular, self-congratulating institutions and find themselves unemployable, they spend most of their time in an echo chamber of algorithms on the internet, reconfirming their already toxic confirmation bias
So why do we have many Farokuls and so few Fazlur Khans -- the famous structural engineer and architect, known as the father of the tubular designs for high rises?
The easy answer is education. The harder answer is to look deeper into what Bangladesh values in its human capital. What it values is cheap labour -- our only competitive advantage in the global marketplace.
What the state did not anticipate is that the different forms of education would produce a diametrically opposite thinking middle class, who neither fall into the cheap labour category, but are not educated enough for high ranking management positions.
When hoards of Farokuls graduate from increasingly insular, self-congratulating institutions and find themselves unemployable, they spend most of their time in an echo chamber of algorithms on the internet, reconfirming their already toxic confirmation bias.
The rise in moral policing and radicalized thinking among Bangladesh's youth is not just a cultural problem -- it’s an economic disaster waiting to happen.
This trend has consequences. Women’s participation in the workforce is crucial for Bangladesh’s economic future. Gender violence and harassment discourage women from engaging in public life, which hampers economic growth. A culture that undermines women's safety is one that limits its own potential.
In the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) latest report, there is a concerning rise in unemployment across Bangladesh. Their data shows, during the first quarter of 2024, the unemployment rate in the country surged by 3.51% compared to the last quarter of 2023.
With the latest development, there are approximately 240,000 new unemployed individuals, with the current tally standing at 2.59 million, up from 2.35 million in the preceding quarter.
Incidents like these don’t just have domestic consequences. They tarnish Bangladesh’s international reputation.
While Bangladesh is struggling economically, these instances of moral policing and violence against women send a message to the world that the country is regressing on fundamental issues like human rights and gender equality.
International investors, tourists, and even global partners are watching, and the increasingly fundamentalist rhetoric and behaviour erode their confidence in Bangladesh as a safe and progressive society.
While these issues disproportionately affect women, this is not just a “women’s problem.” It’s a societal problem.
We must figure out how to rehabilitate the mindset of a country so deeply entrenched in patriarchal values that it will justify it in any way they can, be it religion or culture. Can it be done? That entirely depends on who the new Bangladesh wants to be when it grows up. What is clear is that, If we really want to prosper as a nation, we must recognize women’s safety isn’t a luxury, it's a right.
Esha Aurora is the business editor at Dhaka Tribune.
