Rape and punishment
Reinhard Sinaga is being called Britain’s worst rapist. Accusations of raping 48 boys have been proven against him and police suspect that the actual number will exceed 100. He has been sentenced to life imprisonment. The judges say he must stay at least 30 years in jail. Out in the open, he is a threat to anyone.
Sinaga is 36 years old. He is from a rich Indonesian family. He came to Manchester in Britain in 2007. He had earned three university degrees there and was doing his PhD at Leeds University. He lived in a rented flat in a night club area of Manchester. This homosexual predator would ‘help’ inebriated young men emerging from the night clubs, take them to his flat, give them some colourless, odourless drug and then rape them. Most of them couldn’t recall anything after they woke up. Even if they did, they were too ashamed to let anyone know about it. Then in 2017 one of his victims suddenly woke up and began to beat him up. Sinaga’s cruel and brutal crimes then came to light.
While Sinaga’s trial was underway, many distraught and suffering young men contacted the police. Most of them had mental breakdowns. Psychiatric experts said that many of them had even developed suicidal tendencies. They said that the manner in which they were rendered helpless and entrapped during the rape, had scarred them for life.
Sinaga’s victims were educated, many of them independent and from upscale strata to society and it wasn’t difficult for most of them to keep their identity hidden. Their situation cannot be compared to the women rape victims in Bangladesh who are completely helpless and hapless. The horrific trauma of Sinaga’s victims is just a shadow of what these women undergo.
The women victims of such crime in Bangladesh are not just raped. They are pitched into fresh trauma due to carelessness of the media, lack of justice and are ostracised by society. We heard about rape and sexual abuse driving them to suicide. Those who live on, lose their normal identity. The family of the rape victims also undergoes such crises.
Rape is a brutal crime. When such a crime continues to recur in society, we are furious and cannot remain coolheaded. We are enraged when we hear of child, a disabled girl, a student, a working woman, a housewife or anyone being raped. In an outburst of that rage, we see people of Facebook demanding death of the rapists. Others describe torturous punishments that they feel the rapists should face.
These demands for such punishments may be unacceptable, but understandable. But it is not understandable when the members of parliament, the lawmakers of the state, make such demands. It crosses limits of sanity when they demand not death sentence through legal process, but extrajudicial killing of the suspected rapist through crossfire.
No matter how our lawmakers are elected, they have taken oath to uphold the constitution. Many articles in the constitution clearly indicate that extrajudicial killing, forced disappearance and crossfire are violations of the constitution. Those who are promoting extrajudicial killing are encouraging violation of the constitution and, according to Article 7(A), can be said to be guilty of sedition.
Their demand for crossfire has been heavily criticised. This demand simply has no justification. However, there is debate among the public as to whether the penalty for rape should be death. This debate cannot be ignored, given the manner in which rape has been increasing.
Those in favour of death as a punishment for rape, point to the deterrent theory of punishment. In Bangladesh, acid violence decreased when death sentence was imposed for this crime. But at the same time another stringent law had been enforced to control the selling and buying of acid. So it can’t be said that the death sentence alone was responsible for the decrease in acid violence.
In Bangladesh the most death sentences are given for murder. If death sentences were sufficient to curb crime, then murder would have significantly lessened in the country. But that has not happened.
There is logic also offered against death sentence. In many cases the victim is raped by a known person. As a result, the rapist will have the propensity to kill the victims so as not be be caught. And in the case of death penalty, there must be strong proof of the crime and so the trial is a difficult one.
To me, the most important way to decrease this crime is to ensure that the punishment is carried out. In Bangladesh, rape is hardly ever punished. If the rapists if of the ruling party camp, then as in the case of the Subornochar housewife rape case, all attempts are made to divert justice. And such attempts are often successful.
The prevention of rape must also be given equal consideration. Pornography has spread all over in the country due to mobiles, internet and communication technology with inadequate safeguards. Alongside that, the prevalence of drugs creates a rapist-friendly environment.
Crime will never lessen in a country if the criminals are caught but the criminal breeding grounds remain open. This is all the more true in the case of rape. But when these issues are raised in parliament, such vital facts are ignored. They enjoy spewing out statements on crossfire, but do nothing to go to the bottom of the problem.
We have to stand up against rape right now. According to the World Population Review and other international studies, it has been seen that rape is more prevalent in countries with less education and wealth. And even then, the picture we get of rape in such countries is not a fraction of the actual situation. Many incidents of rape go unreported out of same, insecurity and lack of justice. But the reports we seen in the newspapers are shocking enough. The reports on child rape are enough to stun anyone.
It must be ensured that justice is done in the case of rape. Rather than death sentence on paper, it is more important to ensure an environment for justice to be carried out. It is not a difficult task to devise how this can be ensured by the police, the public prosecutors and the court, all who are paid with public money. All that is required is the government’s commitment.
* Asif Nazrul is a professor of law at Dhaka University’s law department. This piece appeared in the print edition of Prothom Alo and has been rewritten in English by Ayesha Kabir