While the International Day of the Girl Child was observed worldwide with a focus on “Innovating for Girls’ Education” on Friday, a number of girls in Bangladesh are being compelled to drop out from schools to escape sexual harassment at present day.
Figures released by Bangladesh Mahila Parishad (BMP) reveal that 2,538 incidents of girls being harassed on streets on their way to schools took place from 2008 to 2012. 71 girls took their own lives as a direct result of such harassments.
A recent report of human rights organisation Ain O Salish Kendra disclosed that eight girls refrained themselves from pursuing education within the period of January to September this year, due to social pandemic.
This year, the International Day of the Girl Child had been observed with a view to embrace “new ways to overcome barriers that keep girls out of school and keeping girls safe as they walk to and from school.” Experts state that situation of the girls are much worse in reality than showed in the reports.
Women Rights Activist Khushi Kabir said: “The actual number of incidents of sexual harassment would be much higher as reports of the human rights organisations accommodate only the number of cases that have been reported.”
This reporter met two victims of sexual harassment who did not file any report until they were physically hurt by their stalkers last month.
Drishty Patang, 14 and Lima Patang live in Kalachandpur in the vicinity of Gulshan area in the capital. For almost one and a half years, they constantly faced sexual harassment by local goons named Bappa Dipra and Babu, as they mention.
As a result, they decided to stop going to school on September 21 after the night when Bappa and Babu, accompanied by seven to eight goons forcefully entered their house and left their family members injured.
Lima’s father Madak Rangma, also brother-in-law of Drishty, told he was thinking of going back to his native village and engaging the girls in agriculture.
“In our scariest nightmare, we never imagined that they would come to our house following the girls and attack us.
It is better not to send them to school by risking their lives. The girls are also not willing to go to school anymore amid such harassments,” said Madak.
Tariq-Ul-Islam, secretary of the Ministry of Women and Children Affairs, told the Dhaka Tribune that most of the time the sexual predators manage to escape from law as the victims and their families do not file any case against them. Our efforts for holding the criminals would bring in results only when the victims, their families and the society would act as a whole.”
“We have a help line which is 10921, for reporting such incidents. Moreover, there are mobile courts functioning with magistrates to deal with such crimes,” he added.
Not only on streets, girls are being subjected to various forms of sexual harassments like physical and mental abuse as well as rape both at home and at workstations at an alarming rate.
According to the report of BMP, 2436 incidents of rape took place between the years 2008 and 2012.
Several other reports suggest that only during the months of October and November in 2012, 21 and 26 female children were raped respectively.
According to a statistics of Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies (BILS), 398 domestic workers were murdered and 399 were either wounded by physical abuse or harassed sexually during 2010-2012. It also flagged out that 83% of the domestic workers who were females and aged under 18, went through the same torment.
Shockingly, perpetrators of such crimes include law enforcers as well. Many of a time, the victims are deprived of justice because of the political and legal power of the predators.
In September 2012, an 11-year-old indigenous girl was raped by police in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, according to a report of Asian Human Rights Commission.
On September 30, five police constables allegedly raped an adolescent girl for three consecutive days in Gaibandha’s Govindaganj police station. The recent development of the case says no steps have been taken against the five police constables so far, except for transferring the acting officer-in-charge Sheikh Delwar Hossain of the station to Nilphamari.
When asked how only transferring the officer paves the way to justice for the victim, Tariq-ul-Islam, said: “The ministry had been monitoring the case and the OC was transferred following public demand. I am certain that further investigation would be carried out by the police into the case.”
