The recent assault and public humiliation of women by a group of men in Cox’s Bazar is yet another shocking reminder of just how far Bangladesh still is when it comes to being an egalitarian society, and further reinforces how deeply rooted misogyny still is.
Several amateur videos are currently circulating in social media showing a group of men attacking women at the sea beach and other areas of Cox’s Bazar, with one particular clip showing a man, identified as Mohammad Farokul Islam, forcibly making a woman do sit-ups in a display of public humiliation with the threat of physical assault with a stick that he was brandishing.
In another such clip, a man can be seen holding the woman by the ear and beating her with a stick while ordering her to leave the beach. While in another video, the same group could be seen approaching a woman sitting on a beach chair late at night who then proceeded to question her about her presence at the beach in that hour before forcing her to leave.
All the footage which has come out so far is shocking and disturbing to say the least, and the perpetrators need to be brought to book.
To that end, it is good to know that one of the identified perpetrators, Mohammad Farokul Islam, has been arrested after the Cox's Bazar District Police conducted a drive based on a tip-off. However, this is not enough, the rest of those complicit in these videos need to be brought to book as well -- given the severity of the harassment faced at the hands of this group, our law enforcement needs to ensure that such conduct is stamped out with extreme prejudice.
With the recent gang rape of a girl in Chittagong and the harassment campaign in Cox’s Bazar, it has become abundantly clear that more needs to be done to ensure the safety and security of women in our country. But before such issues can be tackled at a policy and cultural level, for now, incidents such as these need to be dealt with to the fullest extent of the law.