The looting and vandalising of a 200 year old brothel in Madaripur, by members of a religious organisation, sets a dangerous precedence for how religion and authority can be used in tandem to illegally appropriate land in this country.
Allegations suggest the Islahi Qawmi Parishad is being used by political elites in the area to grab the lucrative land on which the brothel stands. Plans for commercial development of the area have prompted similar eviction efforts in the past and the brothel has obtained a High Court ruling to stave them off.
Sex workers who live at the brothel own 75% of the land, and as they are licensed, are legally entitled to run their operations from there. Unable to dislodge them legitimately, the convenient alternative, of using religiously motivated individuals to do it for them, gives unscrupulous people the sort of moral “cover” they need to go about their unsavoury business unopposed.
So much so, that law enforcers agencies did absolutely nothing to stop the criminal destruction of private property.
Though sheathed in religious veneer, this is in fact an attempt to deprive marginalised members of society of their constitutional rights, and is just as unconscionable - if not more so - as the more obvious ones that occur elsewhere.
Land grabbing cannot be condoned whatever the pretext. In fact, using religiosity as a cloak to justify such illegality is even more noxious.
