In the afternoon on January 23, an 18-year-old student was picked up by a group of four in Brahmanbaria’s Kasba upazila on her way back home from college and later raped. Media reports suggest that she had been stalked for a long time. She shared the matter with her friends too. On the day of the gruesome incident, being “harassed” again on the street, she resisted and engaged in an altercation with those youths.
A student of Mohammadpur Preparatory School said she had heard of many incidents where her friends faced “uncomfortable situation” by teachers and male students of the same school.
“We often face uncomfortable situation on our way to and from school. But, you know, we just decided to be silent, because we do not know what to do or where to go,” she said amid a helpless gesture.
At least 12 incidents of sexual harassment took place in the last 10 days, media reports say. In the recent years, a number of people were killed or injured by stalkers for trying to resist sexual harassment while many others committed suicide.
According to a baseline survey by Brac, around 36% of the female students face sexual harassment on their way from home to schools or school to home.
Almost no school authorities are following the landmark directives given by the High Court five years ago particularly to protect the female students and girl children from sexual harassment and punish the culprits.
As per the guidelines provided in 2008 and 2010, all the public and private institutions including the educational institutions were supposed to form complaint committees unless the government enacts a specific law to deal with sexual harassment incidents.
The complaint committees are supposed to deal with any sort of allegation related to sexual harassment or assault including passing comments or sound or make distasteful gesture, text message and calls on mobile phone that the students face on their way from and to educational institutes and on the school premises and take effective measures, say the 2008 directives.
No public or private school, so far, has followed the directives regarding formation of the complaint committees. The directives came following writ petitions filed by the Bangladesh National Women Lawyers’ Association (BNWLA).
Officials working with a programme titled “Meyeder Jonnyo Nirapod Nagorikotto (MEJNIN)” operated under the Gender Justice and Diversity project, BRAC said the school authorities were reluctant whenever they had tried to hold programmes on sexual harassment.
Sara Zaman of MEJNIN said: “Our experience regarding working in schools on sexual harassment is totally frustrating. Many schools including Viqarunnisa Noon and Monipur School and College did not even allow us to have a discussion with the students once we mentioned the topic – sexual harassment.”
She adds: “We told them about the High Court guidelines too, but they simply denied our entrance on the school premises.”
Manju Ara, principal of Viqarunnisa, admitted that she had refused the entrance of few NGO’s working on sexual harassment.
“As a reputed institution, we often remain busy with so many works, sometimes it just happens. But it will be wrong if one thinks that we always unwelcome them deliberately,” she argues.
Asked about formation of the Complaint Committee, Manju replied: “We have a committee formed by the school teachers only.”
The 2008 directives clearly state that the Complaint Committee will have minimum five members of who two have to be from outside preferably from organisations working on gender issues and sexual abuse.
Viqarunnisa came under spotlight as one of its teachers assaulted a girl and recorded the incident on his mobile phone on May 28, 2011, as per the case details. He also threatened the girl saying that he would post the video and photos on the internet. The teacher allegedly abused her again on June 17, 2011. Former principal Hosne Ara Begum, along with some other teachers, allegedly tried to save the accused when the girl lodged a written complaint. The case is still going on.
Expressing deep frustration, Salma Ali, the executive director of BNWLA, said: “It seems that the authorities think of such issue as insignificant as it could be. I do not know how justice can be served if such deliberate negligence prevails in the country.”
Fahima Khatun, director general of the Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education, said it was difficult for them to monitor whether the institutions were following the court directives.
“There are 35,000 secondary schools and college across the country. We sent them a letter asking to form the committees. It is difficult to monitor what these schools are doing or not doing.”
She hoped that the field-level education officers would soon inform the authorities about non-compliance of the court directives. “Then we will send another letter to the institutions, may be in a harsh way.”
Led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the ruling Awami League which is in power for consecutive two tenures since 2009 has also failed to enact a separate law to deal only with sexual harassment as per the court directives.
Its manifesto for 2008 and 2014 elections say stringent legal measures will be taken to stop oppression on women.
However, the government in 2010 only proposed inclusion of a new section in the existing Women and
Children Repression Prevention Act, providing jail terms from one year to seven years for harassing women sexually. The amendment did not take place yet.