WUNRN
TO ESCAPE SEXUAL
HARASSMENT "EVE TEASING"
Farzana Rupa - 19 February 2011
Sexual harassment against women in Bangladesh is turning deadly.
According to local human rights groups28 women committed suicide this year to
escape frequent sexual harassment.
Before killing themselves most of
them wrote a note demanding an end to the sexual harassment known locally as
‘eve teasing’ where boys intercept girls on the street, and shout
obscenities, laugh at them, pull or touch them or worse.
Afroza
Begum sits at the kitchen table and hands me the note her daughter wrote before
she killed herself.
It
reads...‘I have been suffering for a long time and the hands of those bad boys.
I tried my best to live. But I have no weapon to stop them.’
After
writing this she drank poison. Afroza begum lost her youngest daughter.
Her
daughter had told her the same group of boys had thrown burnt
cigarettes at her chest, injected urine from a syringe on her
and tried to cut her hair.
For
the last ten years since her death, Afroza has been searching for justice.
She
has gone to the police and influential people in her community demanding that
the boys who harassed her daughter face justice.
Nothing
has happened.
“I
want justice. I get so tired of talking to the media. Can you ensure
the punishment of Shimi’s killers?”
It
takes a brave woman to speak out against sexual harassment.
Late
last year hundreds of students and some teachers took to the streets
outside the gates of
They
came in support of a female teacher who has accused a superior of
sexual harassment.
But
the teacher herself wasn’t at the protest. She was inside the classroom with
her face covered, hiding her identity.
“If
I reveal my identity, people will see me on television, newspapers
will print my photo. I will be treated very badly, isn’t that right?”
Sexual
harassment or eve teasing as it’s known locally is extremely widespread in
And
is accepted as ‘normal’ by many men here.
Jafar
Hasan, a university student is sitting in a roadside tea shall.
“A
girl should cover herself properly, if they don’t it and don’t wear a
scarf or keep herself modestly dress, and then a man will not be able
to control himself from doing bad things. A man can’t control
his sexual desire!”
Abdur
Rashid, works in a nearby stationary shop.
“Men
can make sounds or make any comment to women! That’s our
right, we can do it!”
In
front of a shopping mall a group of young female students say sexual
harassment is part of everyday life.
Ayesha Begaum is
one of them.
“Bad
boys, just roam all around, stand in front of the girls school or
women’s college, they look at us rudely and say dirty things and make
sexual signs with their hands.”
Faria Ahmed is
an NGO worker.
“In
our country situation is so bad even a poor person like a rickshaw puller can
harass a woman! The men are bad! We woman never care or comment about what
a man is wearing, but they don’t respect our freedom.”
In
this office female lawyers are fighting to change the situation.
In
2008 the
After
two years of fighting the Supreme Court ruled that every business or college
must have a place where women can safely make complaints about sexual
harassment.
Salma Ali,
the executive director of BNWLA says it’s a step forward but much more
needs to be done.
“Women
don’t feel like complaining, because, if they complain, they will not be
allowed to go outside. Parents will say better you stay at home. When the girls
are married she has to stop going to the office, or accept pressure from her
husband. There are so many challenges for women. And the complaints
office should be women led, but in most of the cases, institutions are not
following that.”
But
there are some small signs that things are changing.
A
young female patient and her family have surrounded the director of the Sheikh
Mujib medical university, the biggest hospital in the country.
They
are here to complain about sexual harassment of the girl by one of the doctors
Saiful Islam.
He
tries to defend himself.
“I
didn’t do anything bad. For check up we have to touch patients. I tried to move
her to the picture board so that I can investigate her eyes
properly.”
“But
for eye testing you don’t need to touch the body, remember where were your
hands what did you do?”
After
listening to all the evidence the doctor was suspended from the hospital.