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BHRC Human Rights Report July 2015
Total 165 persons killed in July, 2015

Human Rights Report:

The documentation section of Bangladesh Human Rights Commission (BHRC) furnished this human rights survey report on the basis of daily newspapers and information received from its district, sub-district and municipal branches. As per survey it appears that 165 peoples were killed in July, 2015 in all over the country. It proves that the law and order situation is not satisfactory. Bangladesh Human Rights Commissions extremely anxious about this situation. In the month of July, 2015 average 8.5 people were killed in each day.
The Law enforcing agencies and related Govt. departments should be more responsible so that percentage of killing may be brought down to zero level. To institutionalize the democracy and to build human rights based society the rule of law and order must be established everywhere. Through enforcing rule of law only such violation against human rights can be minimized.
It appears from documentation division of BHRC:
Total 165 people's killed in July 2015
Political killing 10, Killing for dowry 2, killing by family violence 38, Killed due to social discrepancy 43, Killed by Law enforcing authority 6, Killed due to doctor negligence 4, Assassination 6, Mysterious death 23, Killed due to BSF 3, Women & chilled killed due to rape 4.
Killed by several accidents:
Killed by road accident 245, Suicide 20.
Besides victims of torture:
Rape 17, Torture for Dowry 4, Sexual Harassment 5.

 

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Curb human trafficking,  PM tells DCs
 

Human Rights Report:
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on 28 July directed the deputy commissioners of all districts to curb human trafficking and drug trading in the country.
She also asked them to take strong steps against anti-social activities including eve teasing and stressed the importance on women's education.
The DCs were also asked to preserve environment, water bodies and manage government-land properly. She also directed them to manage disasters effectively and properly. Sheikh Hasina gave the directions during her inaugural speech of the three-day annual conference of the deputy commissioners of the districts at Prime Minister's Office in Dhaka today.
She handed over prizes to the DCs of Kushtia, Lalmonirhat, Narayanganj and Rangpur divisional commissioner for giving information and communication technology service to the people. The conference began this morning where the chiefs of the root-level administration will receive guidelines for the next one year. Here, the DCs will place their demands and developments works in the annual meeting.
 

Stabilising musical chairs
Mahfuzur Rahman

Periodic ministerial reshuffle is necessary as it allows ministers to learn from various sectors so as to work to improve the lives of people. Reshuffle can be made as and when it is needed, even one week before a general election, and ministers are expected to be quick in learning. While going for Cabinet overhaul it needs to be made sure whether the right position is given to the right person. It is obvious that a good major reshuffle raises the confidence of both domestic and foreign investments for countries like ours.
One and half years after the formation of her new government for the second consecutive time, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has gone for a major overhaul of her administrative line-up inducting three new faces in the Cabinet and elevating two others apparently to build a stronger team to fulfill duties within the Cabinet and the aspirations of people. But what people had expected from the much-anticipated reshuffle that did not happen exactly.
The expectation of people was that Prime Minister Hasina would remove at least two ministers - Food Minister Qamrul Islam and Disaster Management and Relief Minister Mofazzel Hossain Chowdhury Maya - for their alleged irregularities. Minister Qamrul Islam had been on the newspaper front-pages for over two weeks following the import of bad quality wheat from Brazil, while Maya hit the headlines when the Supreme Court turned down the High Court ordering acquitting him in a graft case.
Many had expected that the Prime Minister would drop them from the cabinet, while many others wanted him to go on their own taking the moral responsibility for the scandals. But to their dismay, neither has happened. As the Prime Minister has her hands firmly on the ground, she knows what she has done and that is her absolute jurisdiction. However, there should always be a good reason for a reshuffle. No reshuffle should ever take place simply because it is assumed that there should be one.
According to political analysts, the reshuffle has been done at the right time but it failed to address the issues that tainted the government's image. The changes, they say, should be according to what the public wants. Now it has been widely seen as an exercise that lacks the "pragmatism to some extent". Apart from reshuffling to fit the new representatives into the different portfolios, the performance of other ministers could have been evaluated since it has been over a year since the 10th general election was held on January 5, 2014. Commentators say any reshuffling should result in a Cabinet that emphasises more on integrity and addressing the woes of the people. Any future reshuffle will hopefully drop those ineffective members replacing them with younger members who are more dynamic and aggressive.
In this reshuffle, State Minister for Home Affairs Asaduzzaman Khan and State Minister for Science and Technology Yeafesh Osman have been elevated to full ministers. It is also interesting to see that Asaduzzaman Kamal Khan has got the elevation. Among the new faces, Chittagong Awami League leader and former MP Nurul Islam BSc has been minister, while Nuruzzaman Ahmed, MP of Lalmonirhat-2 constituency, and Tarana Halim, MP of reserved seat-16, made their way into the cabinet as state ministers.

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Former Indian president APJ Abdul Kalam passes away
 

Human Rights Report:

Former Indian president APJ Abdul Kalam, who came to be known as "people's president", died 26 July after suffering a massive heart attack in Shillong, the capital of northeastern Indian state of Meghalaya.
Kalam, 84, collapsed while doing what he loved most to do -- giving a lecture to students of the prestigious Indian Institute of Management in Shillong last night.
The former president, a bachelor, who would have turned 84 on October 15, was confirmed dead more than two hours after he was taken to the ICU of Bethany hospital in a critical condition following the collapse around 6:30pm.
Considered the most popular president, Kalam, a space scientist who was considered the chief
architect of India's missile programme, became the 11th head of the state and occupied the post between 2002 and 2007, but a lack of consensus denied a second term in office for a man who came from outside political spectrum.
Meghalaya Governor V Shanmu-ghanathan, who rushed to the hospital on hearing the news of his admission, said Kalam died at 7:45pm. Despite the doctors' best efforts, he could not be revived.
Doctors from the army hospital and North Eastern Indira Gandhi Regional Institute of Health and Medical Sciences (NEIGRIHMS) rushed to Bethany hospital but their efforts proved to be of no avail.
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Delhi agrees to open BD Deputy HC in Guwahati

Human Rights Report:

India has conveyed its concurrence to the request made by the Bangladesh government to open a Deputy High Commission in Guwahati, India.
With the opening of the new Deputy High Commission in Guwahati, the government of Bangladesh diplomatic representation in India would increase to five - in New Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Agartala and Guwahati.
In pursuance of the Joint Declaration issued on the occasion of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Dhaka visit from June 6 to 7 last.
The Bangladesh Deputy High Commission will have consular jurisdiction over the states of Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh, according to Indian High Commission in Dhaka.
Both Prime Ministers earlier agreed that strengthening diplomatic and consular presence in each other's country will further boost people-to-people contacts.

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Obama's trip to Kenya : 12 things 

Human Rights Report:

1) On his first trip to Kenya the airline lost his bag
"The first time I came to Kenya, things were a little different. When I arrived at Kenyatta Airport, the airline lost my bags. That doesn't happen on Air Force One. They always have my luggage on Air Force One.
"Auma [his half-sister] picked me up in an old Volkswagen Beetle, and think the entire stay I was here it broke down four or five times."
2) He keeps discovering more members of his family
"There's more immediate family that I had known well from previous visits... In these extended families, there are cousins and uncles and aunties that show up that you didn't know existed, but you're always happy to meet."
3) His grandfather was a cook for the British army
"I found the passbook he had had to carry as a domestic servant. It listed his age and his height, his tribe, listed the number of teeth he had missing. And he was referred to as a 'boy', even though he was a grown man, in that passbook.
"And he was in the King's African Rifles during the Second World War, and was taken to the far reaches of the British Empire - all the way to Burma. And back home after the war, he was eventually detained for a time because he was linked to a group that opposed British rule...
"A young, ambitious Kenyan today should not have to do what my grandfather did, and serve a foreign master."
4) He gave health tips to Kenya's president
"We see the legacy of Kip Keino every time a Kenyan wins one of our marathons. And maybe the first lady of Kenya is going to win one soon. I told the president he has to start running with his wife. We want him to stay fit."
5) He's slow at texting but thinks mobiles are the future
"Through these technological platforms, what might have previously required huge investments of capital, and as a consequence, big barriers to entry, now you can get a start-up moving, and if it's the right idea, it can travel with the speed of how fast you can text.
"I can't text very fast...
"Every day around the world, millions of people send and save money with [the Kenyan mobile money transfer service] M-Pesa... From Zimbabwe to Bangladesh, citizens work to keep elections safe, using the crowd-sourcing platform Ushahidi - and that's a great idea that started right here in Kenya."
6) He was corrected on poaching figures
He told a room of civil society leaders. "20,000 elephants have been lost in recent years".
This was then corrected by Paula Kahumbu from WildlifeDirect who told him that 30,000 elephants are being killed every year in Africa. "That's one every 15 minutes", she added.
7) His Power Africa project, launched in 2013, has not generated any electricity yet
"I noted that there was an article in a US publication suggesting, well, there's no electricity being generated from this yet. The next time somebody is interested in how electricity gets generated, go back home and find out how long it takes to build a power plant.
"I mean, sometimes these are long-term projects, but we have billions of dollars of transactions already locked in, and billions more in the pipeline."
8) He said corruption costs thousands of jobs
"Across the country, one study shows corruption costs Kenyans 250,000 jobs every year - because every shilling that's paid as a bribe could be put into the pocket of some body who's actually doing an honest day's work."
"My hometown of Chicago was infamous for Al Capone and the mob and organised crime corrupting law enforcement. But what happened was that over time people got fed up, and leaders stood up and they said, we're not going to play that game anymore."
9) He said women were "powerhouse entrepreneurs"
"Any nation that fails to educate its girls or employ its women and allowing them to maximize their potential is doomed to fall behind in a global economy.
"You know, we're in a sports centre. Imagine if you have a team and you don't let half of the team play. That's stupid. That makes no sense. And the evidence shows that communities that give their daughters the same opportunities as their sons, they are more peaceful, they are more prosperous, they develop faster, they are more likely to succeed."
10) He sees a lottery of birth in Kenya
"A young child in Nyanza Province is four times more likely to die than a child in Central Province - even though they are equal in dignity and the eyes of God. That's a gap that has to be closed.
"A girl in Rift Valley is far less likely to attend secondary school than a girl in Nairobi. That's a gap that has to be closed."
11) He links good driving and gay rights
"If somebody is a law-abiding citizen who is going about their business, and working in a job, an obeying the traffic signs - and doing all the other things that good citizens are supposed to do, and not harming anybody - the idea that they are going to be treated differently or abused because of who they love is wrong. Full stop."
12) He thinks Kenya is "on the move"
"When I came here as a US senator, I pointed out that South Korea's economy was the same as Kenya's when I was born, and then was 40 times larger than Kenya's. Think about that. It started at the same place - South Korea had gone here, and Kenya was here. But today, that gap has been cut in half just in the last decade. Which means Kenya is making progress.".

 

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Suu Kyi's halo slips
Alamgir Khan

Aung San Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner of Burma, has been widely criticized for her silence on the genocide against the minority Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. She has clearly fallen in line with the government policy of eliminating a minority people from the geographical map of Myanmar. Now when she speaks up about the Rohingya issue, she makes it worse than her world-famous silence.
On her return to Myanmar a few days ago after her five-day tour in China, Washington Post's editorial page editor Fred Hiatt talked to her on telephone and published the interview in the paper on 16 June 2015. To Mr Hiatt's question, (What is behind rise of Buddhist nationalism?) Suu Kyi said, 'I think we have to make a distinction between nationalism and extremism, and what we worry about is extremism. Nationalism, when it's controlled and when it's used in the right way, that is not a bad thing. It's extremism that is a problem.'
Next, to the question of whether it is a problem now in Burma, she replied, 'I think extremism all over the world, not only in Burma, in any society, extremism would be a problem.' Here it is clear that Suu Kyi actually stood for the 'Buddhist nationalism' though she said nothing for or against it. She gave a lecture on nationalism and how it can be used for good purposes if properly controlled. To her, what is bad is 'extremism', neither nationalism nor its Burmese Buddhist form.
But Mr Hiatt clearly did not see the gulf of difference between 'Buddhist nationalism' and its ultimate fruit 'extremism', the way it is separated in Suu Kyi's imagination. He wanted to know about the problem of 'extremism' generated by 'Buddhist nationalism' in today's Burma. She beat around the bush and spoke about the problem extremism poses to peace across the whole world. Thus she condemned extremism everywhere except in Burma and gave her wholehearted support to its Buddhist form in the name of nationalism.
In this interview, Suu Kyi never uttered the word 'Rohingya', avoiding it 'very, very carefully'. And what type of nationalism is this? Buddhist. We in this part of Southeast Asia have once tasted the poisonous fruits of nationalism based on religion. The Muslim nationalism was stoked up here and later was used to oppress the minority peoples, which ultimately could not keep us together. We in the independent Bangladesh are bearing the pains of the falsehood of that nationalism. Muslim nationalism and the rising Hindu nationalism are still big problems respectively in the present-day Pakistan and India. This is all for nationalism based on religion.
But how much good, innocent and democratic is pure nationalism, if there is any such thing in the world? Nationalism is a progressive bourgeoisie weapon needed during the struggle against the oppression of some people by the bourgeoisie of other nationalities. Hence the struggle for building a nation state begins. But as soon as the nation becomes free and its people form a state, leaders soon realize that the nation state is nothing but the hegemony of a majority over the minorities within the state. A modern state must include all nationalities, irrespective of their religious identity, language and colour, on equal terms. This complete equality of all nationalities is the only ground on which a modern civilized state can effectively stand. This is as true for Burmese nationalism as is for our Bengali nationalism today. But the Burmese nationalism has been worse for the ground it stands on, Buddhism.'

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Green tea trumps antibiotics
 

Rafiqul Islam

Avoiding antibiotics' use in broiler production, quality poultry could be produced in the country through using green tea, which will be safer for human consumption, according to a new study.
The study reveals that 0.25 percent of green tea (250 grams in every 100 kilograms of feed) as feed additive could bring better results than the use of antibiotics in poultry production. The poultry, which use green tea, are safe for human consumption as the long-term use of antibiotics adversely affects the human health.
Dr Md Elias Hossain, an associate professor of the Department of Poultry Science at Bangladesh Agricultural University (BAU), conducted the experimental study titled, 'Supplementation of green tea in broiler diet for the production of antibiotic-free broiler meat'.
The experiment was carried out recently at BAU Poultry Farm in Mymensingh. A total of 280 day-old broiler chicks were reared for 35 days in five dietary treatment groups, which includes control (basal diet), antibiotics and three levels of green tea powder (0.25, 0.5 and 1 percent).
The result suggests that green tea at a level of 0.25 percent may be used as potential feed additive in broiler diet.
Broiler production is one of the most important and promising industrial sectors in Bangladesh. But, poultry farmers are extensively using antibiotics with broiler feed to improve growth and feed efficiency.
Although it is known that antibiotics have short-term impacts on human microbiome, evidence demonstrates that the impacts of some antibiotics remain for extended periods of time, says a research article published in the science journal - Microbiology - in 2010.
Using green tea as feed additive is a new phenomenon in Bangladesh. In addition to human consumption, lower-grade green tea and green tea by-products have been used as feed additive in animal feed all over world. It contains more than 200 bioactive components such as flavonoids (powerful antioxidants), amino acids, xanthine alkaloids, vitamin and minerals, which are safe for human. So, the biological, physiological and pharmaceutical effects of green tea have been increasing in this decade.
Researcher Hossain said the use of antibiotics is almost common in broiler production although there is no law or regulation in this regard in the country. It is, therefore, necessary to find alternative sources of antibiotics to prevent the possible pathogens and to maintain the growth.
He said medical plants like green tea have already been used as an alternative source of antibiotics because it has no residual effects like antibiotics.
"If we extensively use green tea in our country as alternative feed additive in poultry production, we can make antibiotics meat and eggs, which will be safe food for human and can play an important role for the improvement of national health status and the country's socioeconomic condition," Hossain said, citing the findings of his study.
The researcher says the use of green tea in poultry production may be a little costlier than antibiotic use, but there will be more body weight gain of broiler-fed green tea. "So, farmers may make a balance in production cost. These days, consumers hardly think about price but surely look for safe food."
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Against drugs and trafficking

M. A. Jabbar
 

Every year on June 26 International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking is observed as per declaration of the United Nations General Assembly that resolved in 1987. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) select a theme of the day and Health is the ongoing world drug campaign of the day. On the day, UNODC takes elaborate programme to involve every individuals, non-profit organizations, the private sector, and member countries by organizing awareness programme in support to drug prevention and treatment efforts or making in-kind contribution to the campaign and related events. Member countries adopt master plan, which serves as the blueprint for theme for preventing and reducing alcohol and substance abuse and its associated social and economic consequences on those countries.
UN Secretary General viewed drug trafficking as a social and criminal problem that has transformed in recent years into a major threat to the health and security of people and regions. He further says drug dependence is a disease, not a crime. The real criminals are the drug traffickers. Nevertheless, the supply side is only half of the equation. Unless we reduce demand for illicit drugs, we can never fully tackle cultivation, production, or trafficking. Governments have a responsibility to counteract both drug trafficking and drug abuse, but communities can also make a major contribution. Families, schools, civil society, and religious organizations can do their part to rid their communities of drugs. Businesses can help provide legitimate livelihoods  family and community is extremely important to prevent, treat, rehabilitate, and accept those addicted to substances. The youth can play good role to deal with life challenges to substance abuse. Low-income group, less educated, unemployment, homeless people, and adverse family environment are more vulnerable to illegal drugs. According to news-report nearly 4.6 million people in the country use illegal drugs. Bangladesh is most vulnerable for drug abuse and illicit trafficking due geographical location. Young as well as children also experiencing alcohol, phensidyle, heroin, ganja, and other forms of available drugs is a concern of the society.

Every Eid brings its tragedy

Human Rights Report:

Eid, the very word conjures up images of festivity and celebration in the Muslim imagination. The two Eids that they celebrate every year, roughly 70 days apart, are both rooted in ancient traditions as essentially happy occasions, and Islam encourages its followers to give of themselves as much as they possibly can in anticipation of both Eid-ul-Fitr and Eid-ul-Azha, as a way to getting back the maximum quotient of joy they can. And so as much as the days themselves, Eid-ul-Fitr that falls on the 1st of Shawwal at the end of a month's fasting during Ramadan and Eid-ul-Azha that marks the end of the annual Hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, on the 10th of Dilhajj, the periods leading up to them every year also carry their own distinct flavour and festival atmosphere.
In Bangladesh though, home to nearly 150 million Muslims who make it the third most populous Muslim nation in the world (behind Indonesia and Pakistan, even though India's minority Muslim population is bigger) the bitter truth is that as much as the people here look forward to Eid, and enjoy it, and once it's over, miss it, a series of incidents over the years means the holy occasion has become synonymous with tragedy as well. By now we are well-versed in the stories of the overloaded ferries carrying hundreds of home-bound passengers capsizing in some part of the country's vast network of rivers. Over the years, countless lives have been lost in the days just before Eid when the holidays start and millions of people look to rush home from urban centres, especially capital Dhaka, to spend Eid with their families.
The most risky period for such accidents is therefore still to come, in the last few days of Ramadan, after Dhaka Courier goes to press this week. Yet already we have witnessed a tragedy of another kind in Bangladesh, not exactly new, but in its most dangerous manifestation for years, and especially poignant in light of the present bullish atmosphere where the country's fortunes are being transformed, we are led to believe, in the whole march towards middle-income-status (currently we are said to be on the lower-middle end of the scale). And then an incident such as that which occurred in Mymensingh on July 10, comes along to give us some sense of the perspective that we are at risk of losing. On the day, 27 people, including 22 women and 5 children, were killed and 50 others were injured in a stampede as hundreds of poor people rushed to the house of a businessman in Mymensingh town to receive Zakat clothes. The stampede took place at about 5:00am when people gathered in front of the house of Nurani Talukder alias Shamim, the owner of Nurani Zarda Factory, and tried to force their way in through a small gate, police and witnesses said.
Some of us are teachers, while some are entrepreneurs, entertainers, physicians and politicians. Do we have anything in common? Of course we have - the lack of civility and humanity. Manners, civility and humanity are among the qualities that are central to a human being. But, those are not so basics anymore. Showing respect to a woman while entering a room or opening the door for her was once part of our culture. Women used to be treated with marked courtesies. But that civility has drastically changed. Things have eroded. The societal norms that deter bad behaviours have weakened or disappeared. Brutality and incivility that were once rare are now everyday facts.
No wonder, now you will see a woman is forcibly stripped naked and humiliated in public by people with more power than her. Pictures of women forced to strip, forcibly stripped by others, forced to be naked in public, forced to do something naked, forced to be naked in group of clothed are these days have become too common as we see in newspapers every day. Take the example of the woman who fell victim to such monsters on July 24 in Sherpur, a district 200 kilometers off capital Dhaka. The young housewife was stripped naked during arbitration at Shapmari village in Sadar upazila in an undeliverable incident of humiliation. Upset, the victim filed a case against four people with Sadar Police Station two days later. According to the case statement, the victim went to her father's house at Shapmari from her house at nearby Badapara village after her husband, who works at a washing company in Chittagong, left for his workplace on July 19. Meanwhile, victim's brother Azmir Hossain, a garment worker, had an altercation with his wife Shyamoly Begum over his job which went to arbitration on July 24.
The victim had an altercation with Shyamoly's cousin Joynal Abedin Hasi, son of Ayez Uddin of the same village, after she sided with her brother at the arbitration. At one stage, Hasi and his associates Mintu, Bhutto and Mithu stripped off her clothes and dragged her around in front of the villagers present at the arbitration.
Hasmat Ali who was present at the arbitration said no one came in the rescue of the victim. "Although I managed a scarf for the girl, Hasi and his men took it away too and burst out wild laughing," he said. Victim's mother Asma Begum said, "It would have been better had I not noticed the humiliation. The criminals were laughing like movie villains while my daughter was screaming for her chastity. I want punishment of the offenders."

A breakdown in human values

Mahfuzur Rahman

Some of us are teachers, while some are entrepreneurs, entertainers, physicians and politicians. Do we have anything in common? Of course we have — the lack of civility and humanity. Manners, civility and humanity are among the qualities that are central to a human being. But, those are not so basics anymore. Showing respect to a woman while entering a room or opening the door for her was once part of our culture. Women used to be treated with marked courtesies. But that civility has drastically changed. Things have eroded. The societal norms that deter bad behaviours have weakened or disappeared. Brutality and incivility that were once rare are now everyday facts.

No wonder, now you will see a woman is forcibly stripped naked and humiliated in public by people with more power than her. Pictures of women forced to strip, forcibly stripped by others, forced to be naked in public, forced to do something naked, forced to be naked in group of clothed are these days have become too common as we see in newspapers every day.

Take the example of the woman who fell victim to such monsters on July 24 in Sherpur, a district 200 kilometers off capital Dhaka. The young housewife was stripped naked during arbitration at Shapmari village in Sadar upazila in an undeliverable incident of humiliation. Upset, the victim filed a case against four people with Sadar Police Station two days later.

According to the case statement, the victim went to her father’s house at Shapmari from her house at nearby Badapara village after her husband, who works at a washing company in Chittagong, left for his workplace on July 19. Meanwhile, victim’s brother Azmir Hossain, a garment worker, had an altercation with his wife Shyamoly Begum over his job which went to arbitration on July 24.

The victim had an altercation with Shyamoly’s cousin Joynal Abedin Hasi, son of Ayez Uddin of the same village, after she sided with her brother at the arbitration. At one stage, Hasi and his associates Mintu, Bhutto and Mithu stripped off her clothes and dragged her around in front of the villagers present at the arbitration.

Hasmat Ali who was present at the arbitration said no one came in the rescue of the victim. “Although I managed a scarf for the girl, Hasi and his men took it away too and burst out wild laughing,” he said.  Victim’s mother Asma Begum said, “It would have been better had I not noticed the humiliation. The criminals were laughing like movie villains while my daughter was screaming for her chastity. I want punishment of the offenders.”

We who live in Dhaka city have fair reasons to be worried about more, as the campus of Dhaka University, the country’s premier university, has turned out to be too unsafe for female students. These days, girls fear to be on the campus alone, especially in the evening. They say they feel insecure on their campus amid the rising number of harassment cases in recent times.

According to them, male students of the university, especially the freshers, harass them whenever they get the chance. Over the last six months, as a media report says, a number of female students complained to the university proctor and police about harassments they had faced but nothing has been done to stop such acts.

But the incident that triggered countrywide outcry is the one that happened on Pahela Baishakh when some 20 women were sexually assaulted by a group of rogue youths on the Dhaka University campus as they had been there to join the Bengali New Year celebrations. According to witnesses’ accounts, there were at least 30 youths in the group that assaulted the women in TSC and Suhrawardy Udyan gate areas.

On the same day, Jagannath University students beat a member of Bangladesh Chhatra League for harassing female students on a university bus. The incident took place at Chankharpool when two buses of the university were returning from the campus after the Pahela Baishakh celebrations.

More disturbing is that when a teacher of the university that once used to boast of being the ‘Oxford of the East’ loses his job on charges of sexual harassment. The university authorities have recently dismissed former Chairman of the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies Prof Dr Saiful Islam for sexually harassing a female student of his own department. The fourth year female student lodged a complaint with the university authorities against Dr Saiful that he had harassed her when she had been at his residence. Disgusting!

Bringing justice to those involved in humiliating the Sherpur housewife is important to help protect women in the long term. If the people involved in this heinous incident are convicted, then it can help stop more possible incidents like this in the future.

This should not be an occasional reaction or a topic just for a few days. There must be a constant focus on women and their rights. We all want the government to make that happen and ensure justice. If we do that, we might well have created the reform that all of us here understand is so desperately needed if our country is to survive and thrive. The good news is that the Prime Minister’s Office has taken notice of it and sought details of the heinous incident. We do believe justice will prevail

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