Women played a very positive role in the July mass uprising. They were leading very powerfully. When the women appear with in very powerful and leading role, the quarters that do not want to see women in leading positions feel threatened. Quarters with vested interests have been trying to threaten women, pushing them back into a corner.
Each and every incident of sexual harassment and crime must be tried. Not a single incident can be trivialised. The oppression and crimes must stop.
The fallen Awami League has been trying to prove to the people that women and the minority communities are unsafe if they are not there. There is all reason to believe these incidents are being brought to the fore on a large scale to create this narrative.
Some people act in such a way as if those crimes did not take place before 5 August 2024. Everyone has to remain aware about the creation of such a narrative too.
Sexual violence against women in this country is not a new type of crime. Inadequate justice is one of the main reasons for the repetition of such nefarious incidents. The women victims of violence are blamed and held accountable, as if they instigate such crimes. There is also a tendency to harass the victim socially by making her identity public.
Every incident of violence has to go face justice. The process of trial has to be made easier, the social obstacles have to be removed and harassing the victim has to stop.
There is no inalienable relation between tougher punishment and decrease in crime incidents. The incidents of rape have not declined even though capital punishment was included as the highest punishment for such a crime in 2020.
This time many protesters have been demanding public execution for rapes. But this is not a solution if we truly want to reduce such crimes. Though there have been a few examples of trial for rapes committed by poor and homeless people, we don’t see trial of influential people for those crimes. Had people seen trial for incidents involving Tonu, Munia and others in the last 15 years, then the people with the proclivity of committing crimes could have been thwarted.
The government has been trying to decrease the time of investigation to 15 days from existing 30 days in cases of rape and oppression in the face of protests across the country. It will not be right to prove an innocent person as a criminal while trying to complete the trial soon. If the legal steps become questionable, it creates chances of rehabilitation of the actual criminals.
The interim government should focus on developing institutions, how the congestion of cases could be reduced at courts, how a new dignified method instead of degrading two-finger test could be implemented to prove a rape, how the time for investigation and trial could be reduced using new technologies and so on.
The role of the government to prevent women and child repression is very weak. Accused Rinku has been arrested after a few days of creating a “mob” to harass two girls in Lalmatia, Dhaka over smoking. A certain quarter laid siege to Shahbagh police station when a man was detained on accusation of harassing a female student on Dhaka University campus. Why could the government not handle the gathering?
The government seems to have become stern only after women have taken to the streets in protest of the incidents. Why did this not happen in the beginning? The number of failures would increase if the government shows its weakness this way.
The government has been failing for a long time to control law and order. Women have become more unsafe in this situation. But we all want the government to succeed. The government also has to ensure that none takes the law into their own hands.
There has to be changes in the politics of women to face oppression of women. Everyone has to speak up, realise their rightful demands. Women will not vote for a political party that will not take stand for the rights of women.