WUNRN
BANGLADESH - 16-YEAR-OLD GIRL RAPED, PREGNANT,
FLOGGED 101 TIMES FOR FATWA, HIGH COURT NOW ORDERS PROTECTION
January
27, 2010
By Patrick
Goodenough, International Editor
(CNSNews.com) – Bangladesh’s High Court
has ordered authorities in an eastern district to protect and produce in court
a 16-year-old girl who was lashed 101 times earlier this month after becoming
pregnant as the result of a rape.
The girl, who has not been named, received the punishment on the orders of
village elders in the Brahmanbaria district who issued a “fatwa,” or Islamic
ruling, declaring that she be flogged for immoral behavior. The elders pardoned
the 20 year-old rapist.
The incident occurred five months after the country’s highest court issued a
ruling ordering authorities to investigate incidents of extra-judicial
punishments and take action against those responsible.
The August ruling came after a rash of earlier floggings of women, including
one who spoke to a man from a different community, another who filed a rape
complaint, and a third who refused sexual advances made by a relative. In each
case locally-issued fatwas ordered punishment of 101 lashes.
In the latest case, Bangladesh’s Daily Star reported that the assailant,
who used to taunt the 16-year-old on her way to school, raped her last April.
She kept it quiet and her family subsequently married her off to a man in a
neighboring village.
But when medical tests shortly after the marriage showed her to be months into
her pregnancy, he divorced her. After an abortion she returned to her family
home, but village elders then declared the family should be isolated until she
was punished.
On January 17, on the basis of the fatwa, she was flogged in the yard of her
home. The report said she collapsed and fainted during the assault. The paper
named eight men involved, including two mosque imams and the village head
elder, Delwar Hossain.
The girl’s father was also fined 1,000 taka (about $15) and another fatwa was
issued saying the family would be ostracized if he failed to pay it. The father
said the elders’ group was keeping a close watch on the family to ensure they
would not take legal action.
After human rights activists visited and the incident was reported this week, a
lawyer filed a petition at the High Court in Dhaka, the capital.
The court has directed Brahmanbaria authorities and police to protect the girl
and produce her in court on February 7. It also ordered the government to
explain why it should not take legal action against those involved in the
flogging.
Earlier, the head of police in the district told the Daily Star that
police would investigate if the victim filed a complaint.
In an editorial, the newspaper said the police response was incomprehensible,
given last August’s court order.
“The incident is shocking not only for the gruesome brutality meted out to the
16 year-old girl, but also because of the attitude of the law enforcing agency
who did not act promptly enough to prevent the whipping or take cognizance of
the incident later,” it said.
The paper called on the government to “take steps to stop the parallel system
of justice that misuse the name of religion.”
‘Feudalistic’
Mohammad Ashrafuzzaman, program officer for the Asian Human Rights Commission,
said Wednesday that what is known as “village justice” or “village arbitration”
is a widespread problem in Bangladesh, despite court directives.
He said various factors were involved, including a culture of obeying certain
individuals regarded as important or powerful, even if they do not necessarily
have lawful authority; widespread ignorance of the laws of the land; and a
broad lack of freedom of expression which “allows the so-called local leaders
to abuse unauthorized power with feudalistic mindsets.”
The “village justice” phenomenon “becomes possible in country where the basic
rule-of-law institutions are completely dysfunctional and reluctant to provide
justice to the ordinary people.”
As far as the religious element was concerned, Ashrafuzzaman said some of the
decisions were based on shari’a but in other cases “shari’a provisions are
being abused to facilitate the influential persons to do injustice to the poor
and vulnerable groups, especially the women, in order to retain or increase
their so-called power.”
Cases also occurred in non-Muslim minority communities, he said.
Ashrafuzzaman charged that the authorities were not addressing the problem
“because of lack of commitment for upholding the rule of law in the country as
well as rampant corruption from the top to the bottom of the public
institutions.”
Flogging, forced marriage, isolation
Punishing rape victims under shari’a (Islamic law) is not restricted to
Bangladesh.
In 2007, a Saudi court sentenced a young woman who had been gang raped to 90
lashes because at the time she was abducted at knife-point she was in a car
with a man not related to her – a violation of Saudi law.
When the woman, who was 19-year-old at the time of the assault, appealed the
verdict a higher court increased the sentence to 200 lashes and six months’
imprisonment. Amid an outcry – President Bush joined the criticism – the
government first defended the court decision but eventually King Abdullah
Monday pardoned her.
Last August a Filipina working as a janitor in Saudi Arabia was raped by a co-worker.
When a medical examination found her to be pregnant, she was arrested. The
woman has been detained since September, and miscarried her child in December.
With the pregnancy over, an alliance of organizations representing Philippine
migrant workers voiced concern last week that she could be sentenced shortly
for falling pregnant out of wedlock, with lashing the expected punishment.
Under Pakistan’s shari’a-based hudud ordinances, a rape victim is required to
present four male Muslim witnesses of good standing to back her claim, failing
which she can herself be charged with adultery.
Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are all currently members of the
47-nation U.N. Human Rights Council.
Bangladesh, the world’s third most populous Muslim-majority state, is an
Islamic state where shari’a has “an influential role in civil matters
pertaining to the Muslim community,” according to the most recent annual State
Department report on human rights, released last February.
The report that although a court ruling in 2001 banned fatwas, village
religious leaders have continued to issue them, resulting in extrajudicial
punishments.
It said 20 cases were reported over the previous year, with punishments
including whipping, forced marriage and exclusion from a community.
In one incident recounted in the report, a man divorced his wife during an
argument – an Islamic provision called “talaq” allows a Muslim to divorce his
wife by declaring “I divorce you” three times – but the two were later
reconciled.
Local elders then intervened, saying they could not continue as man and wife as
they were now divorced. Instead, the woman would have to marry someone else,
consummate that marriage, and then be divorced, before she could “remarry” her
first husband.
When the woman refused to undergo the interim marriage ritual, known as
“hilla,” she and her family were shunned by the community.
The State Department report also discussed incidents in which assailants threw
acid into people’s faces, leaving the mostly female victims disfigured or
blind. During the previous year, a Bangladeshi rights group had recorded 133
such attacks, 73 against women, 26 against children, and 34 against men.
Because of the shame of ostracism, official or extrajudicial punishment and
“honor” killings, most rapes in many Islamic countries go unreported, according
to human rights advocacy groups.
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