ATTACKS AGAINST WOMEN IN BANGLADESH
A report by Bangladesh Mahila Parishad released in January 2018 revealed that that at least 141 women were killed for dowry and 58 were killed after rape in 2017. The report also said at least 12 domestic helpers were killed and 400 women committed suicide, of which 34 killed themselves after being followed by stalkers. [Source: newagebd.net, January 2, 2018]
The report found that 969 women were victims of rape and 224 of gang-rape between January 2017 and December 2017. BMP prepared the report on the basis of news published in 14 national dailies which showed that a total of 5,235 women were victims of different violence in the year. Of them, 713 were murdered, 34 killed in fire accident and two in acid attack. The report said at least 324 were victims of physical torture, 247 of attempted child marriage, 230 of stalking, 208 of dowry-related torture, 197 of child marriage, 180 of attempted rape, 164 of sexual harassment, 143 of abduction and 93 of assault. Another 60 were victim of trafficking, 45 of fatwa, 38 were of acid attack and 32 of police harassment.
Violence Against Women: proportion of women subjected to physical or sexual by current or former partner: 23.9 percent. [Source: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Statistics Division, genderstats.un.org ]
In the 2000s, the government increased the punishment for crimes against women, including rape, kidnapping and acid attacks. Bangladesh has sexual harassment and domestic violence laws but no laws regarding maritial rape. In the late 1990s, a law was enacted that called for the death penalty for the rape, trafficking or murder of women. Bangladesh is the only country in South Asia to have such stiff penalties for crimes against women. The laws are poorly enforced though. There are few arrests or prosecutions. Police are often bribed by suspects and set free.
According to the “Worldmark Encyclopedia of Nations”: “Although the constitution prohibits discrimination, women and minority groups are confronted with social and economic disadvantages. Violence against women remained widespread. In 2004 reports continued of women being tortured and killed over dowry disputes. Rapes are seriously underreported due to the social disgrace to the victims. Acid attacks to women remained a problem. [Source: “Worldmark Encyclopedia of Nations”, Thomson Gale, 2007]
Public Lashing and Other Harsh Punishments Inflicted on Bangladeshi Women
Death sentences have been issued for women for eloping with their boyfriend and committing adultery. One cleric called for the execution of a woman for suggesting that women should have the same inheritance rights as men.
In rural villages women have been flogged over 100 times for and buried up their waist and pelted with old shoes for having premarital sex with her future husband. One married woman was burned and pelted with stones after she was accused of committing adultery. Honor killings have occurred.
According to a report by Amnesty International, "A 14-year-old girl was sentenced by saleesh [village council] in August 1992 to 100 lashes after her rape by an influential villager. The saleesh acquitted the rapist but took the pregnancy resulting from the rape as evidence of illicit sexual intercourse."
In February 2011, four Islamic clerics were arrested after a teenage girl accused of having a relationship with a married man was whipped to death. Associated Press reported: The clerics were accused of ordering Mosammet Hena, 14, to receive 100 lashes in a fatwa, or religious edict, at a village in south-western Shariatpur district, the area's police chief, AKM Shahidur Rahman, said. The area is 35 miles from the capital, Dhaka. Fatwas are illegal in Bangladesh, but Islamic clerics sometimes preside over courts that use sharia law and issue fatwas to deal with issues such as extramarital relationships. Rahman said the girl collapsed after she was lashed in public with a bamboo cane about 70 times. She was taken to a hospital where she died the same day. The police chief said the 40-year-old man with whom Hena was allegedly involved was also sentenced to 100 lashes, but fled. "We are hunting for the man," he said. [Source: Associated Press, February 3, 2011]
Acid Attacks on Women in Bangladesh
According to Human Rights Watch Bangladesh is the world leader in acid attacks with over 3,600 recorded cases between 2000 and 2018. The vast majority of cases involve men attacking women and include incidents stemming from land disputes in which a woman is attacked as a means of harming her husband or father by damaging their “property.” In 1997 200 women were victims of acid attacks. [Source: Human Rights Watch, February 4, 2019]
The acid used in thedisfiguring attacks on women is sold openly in hardware stores and markets. Most of the acid victims have had sulphuric or hydrochloric acid splashed on their faces. The attacks are motivated by revenge for unrequited advances and disputes over property and dowries. According to the Dhaka-based Bangladesh National Women Lawyer's Group, there were 80 acid attacks in 1995, 117 in 1997, 130 in 1998, and 200 in 1999. In 2001, 338 acid attacks were carried out in Bangladesh, 90 percent of them against women.
The victims are often hideously scarred or disfigured. Sometimes their noses are burned away or they go blind because their eyes melt. In addition to looking horribly ugly the woman feel constant aching even after they recover and can not tolerate low amounts of heat. Some women die but this result seems unintended.
Cases of Acid Attacks on Women in Bangladesh
Time described the one woman who had acid thrown on her face in the middle of the night by a man wanted to sleep with her but was rebuffed. The left side of her face, including her eye and arm were almost totally burned away. When she was taken to a hospital doctors couldn't treat her because she couldn't afford the medicine. Her attackers was caught and released on bail.
In another a case man poured acid on a 13-year-old girl and her two younger brothers as they watched television because the girl told her parents about the unwanted advances by the man. Time also reported a woman who was blinded by acid in an attack by a man she refused to marry and woman who had acid poured on her genitals by a husband who thought the dowry of gold jewelry and cash he received was not enough (he wanted a goat).
The New York Times described one victim who was forced to marry her attacker by her parents who were concerned about having to support an unwanted bride.
The aim of the acid attacks appears to be to create a living hell for the victims. One lawyer told Time, "The idea is to damage the face or the vagina, because that will hurt a woman — and her honor — the most." Some sociologists claim the acid attacks are a male response to threat of increasingly powerful women who are emerge from purdah and the home.
In 1995, Parliament passed laws stipulating the death penalty for acid attack, but there were fewer than 10 convictions between 1995 and 1999. An even in those cases the perpetrators walked the streets while cases were being appealed. No one has been executed. These laws were strengthened in 2020. Even though many victims can identify their attackers they avoid testifying because they find court appearances traumatic and don’t want to stir up any more trouble, Those that do testify are often portrayed as easy or flirtatious by defense lawyers.
Dowry Deaths in Bangladesh
Every year scores of Bangladeshis women are murdered by their husbands or in-laws in dowry murders. This is less than the thousands that occur in India but is still a tragedy. The murders don’t just take place in rural villages, often they occur in middle class families in some of India's most affluent neighborhoods. Only a handful result in convictions.
In Bangladesh, as is true throughout India, Pakistan and South Asia, assets are moved from the bride’s family to the groom’s family. In most parts of the world it is either the other way around or there is no exchange of assets between families. A typical wedding and dowry can cost a family the equivalent of several hundred or thousand dollars, representing three or four years income for many villagers. The family of the groom often demands large dowry payments. If the money is not forthcoming after marriage they can easily initiate divorce proceedings. The logic behind the dowry system in part is based on the idea of paying compensation if one side of the marriage partnership marries up or down in terms of caste and status.
In many cases, particularly in urban areas, a groom's family makes excessive demands on the bride's family — even after marriage — and when the demands are not met, murder the bride, typically by setting her clothes on fire in a cooking "accident." The male and female in-laws implicated in these murders have seldom been punished. Such dowry deaths have been the subject of numerous media reports. [Source: Library of Congress *]
According to South Asian custom, if a dowry is too small the groom's family may persecute or immolate the bride. Sometime men murder their wife and marry again to collect a second dowry. The sums of money are so large that the murders can still turn a tidy profit after lawyer fees and bribes to police and doctors have been payed. In January and February 2017 alone 13 women were killed and 17 physically abused over dowry issues. There were 107 deaths, five suicides, and 94 physical abuse victims related to dowries in 2016. [Source: Sarah Anjum Bari, Daily Star, May 4, 2017]
A report of Bangladesh Mahila Parishad (BMP) said that in 2017 at least 141 women were killed in dowry-related crimes. BMP prepared the report on the basis of news published in 14 national dailies which showed that a total of 5,235 women were victims of different violence in the year. Of them, 713 were murdered, 34 killed in fire accident and two in acid attack. The report said at least 324 were victims of physical torture, 208 of dowry-related torture. [Source: newagebd.net, January 2, 2018]
Bangladeshi Woman Cruelly Tortured 16 Years After “Low” Dowry
In May 2017, it was reported that a Bangladeshi woman was chained to a bed, beaten up with sticks and hot iron rods, pushed to swallow poison, and had salt and chilli powder rubbed on her wounds over a low dowry. [Source: Sarah Anjum Bari, Daily Star, May 4, 2017]
Sarah Anjum Bari wrote in the Daily Star: “Thirty-five year old Taslima Begum had already paid a dowry of Tk 2 lakh, along with gold jewellery, at the time of her wedding to Badal Mridha some 16 years ago. Apparently dissatisfied even 16 years after the marriage, the husband had been asking for more money from his wife's family. When they failed to comply, Badal Mridha and his family started torturing Taslima, to the point where she had to flee to Dhaka to get treatment. She came back home on April 25, and having returned without the additional dowry, she faced the worst form of physical abuse imaginable. She was fortunately rescued by her parents and taken to the hospital with severe bruises and burns all over her body. “
“Taslima wasn't tormented in one brief, impulsive moment of fury. She was abused over a long period of time — almost the entire length of her marriage from what has been reported. And on the night of the final incident, Badal Mridha went to the trouble of preparing his weapons by dousing them in fire and tortured his wife through a series of horrifying acts that left stamps of trauma and cruelty all over her body. It takes an extremely sadistic streak to cause this much pain to a person.”
Dowry-Related Domestic Abuse
According to Human Rights Watch: “Disputes over dowry were often a trigger for abuse. My mother-in-law scolded because we didn’t give anything good for dowry,” said Bibi M., who married at 14. “During marriage a lot of people give jewellery or furniture but we were in such a state that we couldn’t give them anything. My mother-in-law would go to other weddings and compare: ‘They got this and this and my son got nothing.’ Even now my husband says: ‘A lot of people give vans [motorized rickshaws] to their husband, but you didn’t give me anything.’” “My mother-in-law said lots of things, like, ‘She hasn’t given you anything. I’ll get you a prettier girl from a rich family,’” said Hafsa A., who married at age 12 and was abandoned by her husband after about a year of marriage. “She told him to take me back home.” [Source: “Marry Before Your House is Swept Away: Child Marriage in Bangladesh”,Human Rights Watch, June 9, 2015]
“Some girls whose families paid dowry told Human Rights Watch they faced pressure after the marriage to pay more or to pay more quickly. “They got me married with one lakh [100,000 taka – US$1,290] but they wanted another 50,000 [$640] and they all started beating me— my husband, my mother-in-law, my father-in-law, and my sister-in-law,” said Roshana M., who married at the age of 14. “When I said I couldn’t pay they sent me back home.”
“Nasima A. married at 16. Her parents promised a dowry of 62,000 taka [$80 but still owed 10,000 [$13 at the time of the wedding. “After marrying, for one month it was okay,” Nasima said. “But my husband used to drink and do drugs and he started to beat me up and say I ruined his life and demand money. I couldn’t give him money, so he beat me. My father-in-law used to say, ‘This girl doesn’t want to live with you— if she did, she would have brought the money.’” Nasima’s father eventually managed to pay the remaining 10,000 taka [$13, but the abuse continued and after about 2 years of marriage, Nasima fled back to her parents. With the help of an NGO, she has now filed a court case seeking a divorce and return of the dowry, but her husband and his family have not appeared for the court dates.
““When I first got married, my husband and in-laws were very caring,” said Musamat N., who married at age 12, to a 19-year-old husband. “But there were some dues for the dowry and because we hadn’t paid it they started behaving badly with me.” Musamat’s father had abandoned her mother and Musamat’s mother, who does domestic work, had told Musamat’s in-laws she would need one to two years to pay the second half of the dowry. “But after two months they started asking for it,” Musamat said. “She managed to get the money from the people she works for. I came and took the money and paid the rest of the dowry. Now things are a bit better.”
Laws Against Dowry Crimes
Under the Dowry Prohibition Act 1980 people found guilty of dowry crimes that injure a woman can be imprisoned of up to five years, or fined, or both. The Dowry Prohibition Act 2017 says anyone who causes critical injuries to a woman over dowry will face 12 years' imprisonment, along with an additional fine. If a death occurs the perpetrator can be charged with murder.
In 2006, a Bangladesh man was executed for killing his wife in dispute over dowry. Associated Press reported: “Abul Kalam Azad, a Bangladeshi man convicted of killing his newlywed wife after she failed to meet his demand for dowry, was hanged to death in the early morning. The execution of Azad, a former bank official, took place in Dhaka Central Jail. The execution came days after President Iajuddin Ahmed turned down Azad's clemency appeal. [Source: The Associated Press, November 27, 2006]
“ In 2000, a trial court convicted Azad of strangulating his newlywed wife Mahmuda Sultana to death in Narayanganj town near Bangladesh capital Dhaka the previous year. The court was told that Azad asked his wife to bring him an unspecified amount of money from her middle class family to start a business. He started beating her after she said her family was unable to give him the money. On October 29, 1999, Azad was involved in an argument with his wife over his demand, the prosecution said. The next morning the woman was found dead in her bedroom, a piece of cloth tied around her neck. Azad claimed she committed suicide.
Domestic Violence in Bangladesh
According to Human Rights Watch: “ An estimated 60 percent of married women in Bangladesh have experienced abuse at the hands of their spouse or in-laws according to the UN special rapporteur on violence against women. Bangladesh government responses, including police response, legal assistance, and the provision of emergency shelter for women fleeing violence, are not adequate. “Many young brides we interviewed had experienced assault and other physical abuse at the hands of their husbands and in-laws. “He tied my hands and feet and started putting me in a bag and said he would kill me with a machete and throw my body in the river,” Rashida L. said, about the husband she married at age 10 or 11. [Source: “Marry Before Your House is Swept Away: Child Marriage in Bangladesh”,Human Rights Watch, June 9, 2015]
“Laki B., age 15, was eight months pregnant and asleep along with her parents and siblings in her parents’ two-room bamboo home when they awoke to the sound of crackling. Laki’s estranged husband had set fire to their house. The family managed to escape, but the house was half destroyed. Laki, who married when she was 12 and her husband was 27, told Human Rights Watch she fled back to her parents several months earlier when her husband’s long history of beating her culminated in him kicking her in the stomach when she was 5 months pregnant. The abuse began immediately after the marriage, she said, first at the hands of Laki’s parents-in-law but then from her husband too. Laki’s explanation for why they beat her was, “Because I wasn’t very good looking, and also because I eat too much rice. Since I was pregnant, if I eat too much rice they beat me up.”
“Laki left and moved back in with her parents. But her husband showed up at their home several months later. “He wanted to stay with me. I refused because I was afraid he would kick me again. Then he tried to hang himself. We cut him down and got his aunt to come get him. But a few days later he came back and tried to burn our house down,” Laki said. The fire was nine days earlier and Laki had not seen her husband since then. Laki’s mother said they saw him the night of the fire and tried to catch him, but he got away. Laki’s baby was due in 10 or 12 days. She hopes to get a divorce and stay with her parents.
““One day he kicked me in the lower abdomen, another time he came in and put a pillow over my mouth,” said Shahina L., age 14, describing the abuse she encountered from the husband she married 5 or 6 months earlier. “ [The abuse] started as soon as I got married. My husband used to beat me up and my in-laws shouted at me because I would protest about his beating me.” Shahina’s husband had severe scarring from burns from his ankle to his back; she does not know how he got the scars, but wonders if perhaps he has mental health problems because of being burned. After two months of this abuse, she managed to call her sister’s husband and ask him for help and he came and rescued her and brought her back to her parents.
“ “My mother-in-law and other elders come and say he won’t gamble and play cards and beat me anymore and then they take me back [to my husband]. After they take me back, he starts those things again,” said Paramita B., who married at 14 or 15 to a man who was 20 or 22 years old at the time. She said she has endured regular physical abuse from her husband, as well as being denied food, since about three months after they married. Paramita showed Human Rights Watch multiple old scars and new bruises on her legs. “When I had appendicitis he refused to treat my illness. Recently when he beat my leg he also kicked my stomach,” said Paramita, who has a 3-year-old son. She has fled back to her parents’ house seven or eight times to escape violence, and her parents are encouraging her to get a divorce, but she always goes back. “I have a small child— I don’t want him to be fatherless,” Paramita said. “It will be a dishonor. Anyway, if I come back home to my parents how long will I be able to stay? They are also poor— how long will they be able to feed us?” Paramita’s father is old and struggles to do agricultural work in an area where the rice fields are damaged every year by flooding. “I got married for happiness, but this is how it is now,” said Paramita.
“A number of young wives, especially those from slightly more well-off families, found that their husbands expected to be financially supported either by their wife or her family, and when such financial support was not forthcoming, these husbands responded with abuse. Taslima A. was 15 years old and already working in a garment factory in Dhaka when her stepmother (her father’s second wife) arranged for her to marry the son of a neighbor. “He was not nice,” Taslima said. “He didn’t do any work. He expected me to bring money and when I didn’t he beat me.” Taslima’s father, seeing the abuse, took Taslima away from her husband and back to the home where he lives with Taslima’s stepmother three months prior to Taslima being interviewed by Human Rights Watch. “I’m not divorced from him yet,” Taslima said. “I’m trying to get divorced, but he refuses to give me a divorce. I refuse to eat his rice, though— he has no money and can’t provide rice.” Taslima’s mother and siblings live in a small village in Noakhali; Taslima is solely responsible for providing their financial support from her wages at the factory, as her father has no legs and does not work. “I’m like a son and a daughter,” she says. She earns 6,000 taka [$78] a month. She says that her parents are looking for another husband for her to marry after her divorce comes through. She says she does not know whether she wants to get married again but she will do whatever her parents tell her to.
“Household responsibilities and the tight grip of control by in-laws may mean that some girls do a disproportionate amount of the household’s work and even become virtual prisoners in the home. “Before I would go out and play and do whatever I want,” said Masuma A., who married at the age of 15 to a 25-year-old husband. “Now that I am married I can’t really go out much because if I go to the road my mother-in-law says bad things. I only go to weddings and to see my parents.” Masuma’s first child was born when she was 15.
““She was tortured several times after her marriage,” Suresh M. said, about his daughter who married when she was 16. “They used to beat her up. When her husband goes away for work her mother-in-law gives her so many tasks and she doesn’t finish them and then when her husband comes home her mother-in-law complains to her husband about her. She came back home, but she prefers to go back even when she’s beaten because in Hindu society it is very difficult to get married for a second time so she thought she wouldn’t have a future if she didn’t go back.”
Teenage Girl Burned to Death for Refusing to Withdraw Sex Charges
In October 2019, the principal of a religious school in Bangladesh and 15 others were sentenced to death for the murder of a teenage girl who refused to withdraw a complaint of sexual harassment against the principal. Reuters reported: “The killers poured kerosene over Nusrat Jahan Rafi, 18, and set her on fire on the roof of her madrasah in April in the southeastern district of Feni. Police said in their charge-sheet the murder was carried out on the orders of the principal. [Source: Reuters, October 24, 2019 <<<]
AFP reported Rafi was lured to the rooftop of the Islamic seminary she attended, where her attackers asked her to withdraw a sexual harassment complaint filed with police against the headteacher. When she refused, she was doused in kerosene and set on fire. She died five days later. [Source: Agence France-Presse, May 29, 2019]
Investigator, Mohammad Iqbal said that Siraj Ud Doula, the head of the Sonagazi Islamia Senior Fazil Madrasa, where Rafi was a student, ordered the murder from jail. Rafi had gone to police in late March to report the alleged sexual harassment against the teacher and a leaked video shows the local police station chief registering her complaint but dismissing it as “not a big deal”. Iqbal said at least five people had tied her up with a scarf before setting her on fire. The plan was to pass the incident off as suicide. Rafi suffered burns to 80 percent of her body and died in hospital on 10 April. She recorded a video before her death, repeating her allegations against the principal of the seminary. Rafi’s brother, Mahmudul Hasan Noman, said they wanted a fast-track trial. “We want all the culprits to be hanged to death,” he said.
“The judgment proves that no one is above the law," public prosecutor Hafez Ahmed told reporters after the court verdict. He said the defense lawyers had tried unsuccessfully to establish that Rafi had committed suicide. Rafi death sparked public outrage and mass demonstrations calling for her killers to be punished. She had faced pressure to withdraw a complaint to police in March accusing the school principal of attempted rape, her family said. <<<
“Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had met her family and vowed to bring the killers to justice. “I can't forget her for a moment. I still feel the pain that she went through," mother Shirin Akhtar said as she burst into tears at her home following the verdict. Jahan's brother, Mahmudul Hasan Noman, demanded that the death sentences be carried out swiftly and sought protection for his family against reprisals. “We live in fear. We were threatened even today in the courtroom," Noman said. <<<
Sex Abuse 'Rampant' at Islamic Schools in Bangladesh
Around the time of Nusrat Jahan Rafi’s murder, AFP reported: “Former Bangladeshi students are turning to social media to detail allegations of "rampant" sex abuse at the hands of teachers and older pupils in Islamic schools, breaking their silence on a taboo topic in the conservative country. Child abuse in madrasahs has long gone unreported in Bangladesh, where hardline Islamist groups draw their support from the tens of thousands of schools across the nation. But in the wake of a brutal murder of a teenage girl who was burnt to death in April after accusing her headteacher of sexual assault, such incidents have been subject to national scrutiny and debate for the first time. [Source: AFP, August 29, 2019]
“In July alone, at least five madrasah teachers were arrested on rape charges against boys and girls under their care. Several senior students were also held by police over the rape and beheading of an 11-year-old orphan. The accusations reveal how students from poorer and rural backgrounds, whose parents send them to madrasahs as they are more affordable than secular schools, are disproportionately affected by the abuse.
“Rights activists said the assaults — which range from violent rapes to forcible kissing — are so pervasive that the cases reported in the media are just the tip of the iceberg. “For years these crimes eluded spotlight due to sensitivity of the subject," Abdus Shahid, the head of child rights' group Bangladesh Shishu Odhikar Forum, told AFP, . “Devout Muslims send children to madrasas, but they don't speak up about these crimes as they feel it would harm these key religious institutions."
Al Mamduh, now a journalism student at a Dhaka University, told AFP, “Many madrasah teachers I know consider sex with children a lesser crime than consensual extramarital sex with women. Since they live in the same dormitories, the perpetrators can easily hide their crimes and put pressure on their poor students to keep mum." The 23-year-old's posts generated heated debate in the country, and he was personally threatened. “He was accused of being "an agent of Jews and Christians" and smearing the "sacred image" of a madrasah by one social media user. Another reminded him of the fate of Avijit Roy, a top Bangladeshi atheist blogger and writer who was hacked to death by Islamist extremists in 2015. But his posts encouraged others to share their own experiences of alleged sex crimes.
“Mostakimbillah Masum, who published his story on a feminist website, said he was "first raped by an elder student in my madrasah when I was just seven".The 25-year-old told AFP, that another one of his rapists was "a teacher who made me unconscious and raped me. It traumatised me permanently". “Dozens of madrasah students I know were either raped or witnessed rapes and sexual assaults of their fellow students," he added. "It is so rampant almost every madrasah has a fair share of such stories."
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons
Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Lonely Planet Guides, Library of Congress, Bangladesh Tourism Board, Bangladesh National Portal (www.bangladesh.gov.bd), The Guardian, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Wikipedia and various books, websites and other publications.
Last updated February 2022