Editorial
Fakhruddin’s words ring hollow
The comments of the chief adviser to the military-driven interim government, Dr Fakhruddin Ahmed, made during an interview given to the British Broadcasting Corporation on Friday deserve greater scrutiny. But before moving on to the comments of the chief adviser, it is worth noting that while the interview to the BBC is just the latest in a series of interviews given to the foreign media, the chief adviser has not yet given a single interview to the local media despite the fact that several media outlets, including New Age, formally applied to his office months ago to seek interviews with him. While we are happy that the chief adviser is speaking to the foreign media because this provides us with some insight on his thoughts and plans, his selectiveness naturally raises certain questions: Is it that the chief adviser hesitates to face the local media for fear of being asked more difficult and searching questions, given that the local press is more aware of the ground realities in Bangladesh? Or does the chief adviser feel a greater accountability to our foreign partners than to the people of this country? We should also not forget that this chief adviser found it necessary, soon after his assumption of office, to send a special envoy to the United States of America to clarify his government’s position, and that members of his government like to quote positive comments of foreign governments and their envoys to prove how well this government is performing.
Coming back to the chief adviser’s comments, he said that the government has not played any part in the internal affairs of the political parties and is therefore not responsible for their apparent fracture. This clearly proves that the chief adviser is either hiding the truth or is not aware of certain facts. That there have been overt and covert attempts by a particular government agency to restructure the political order through the political neutralisation of former prime ministers Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina is known to all quarters concerned in our country. The agency has been active from the centre to the local levels in trying to implement the government’s minus-two formula, and even if the people at large are tempted to believe the chief adviser’s statement, the hundreds of politicians who have come in direct contact with this agency will know how hollow the words of the chief adviser are.
The chief adviser has also claimed that there have been no attempts to intimidate the media during this emergency period. Once again, the chief adviser has been less than candid. The people at large may be confused by these statements, but those in the media who have received phone calls from members from the same government agency, been visited by members of it, or have been summoned to its offices, know only too well the extent of intimidation that has taken place. This proves that the chief adviser has failed even to sympathise with the members of the news media, both electronic and print, who are being obstructed from carrying out their professional responsibilities.
Lastly, the chief adviser suggested in his interview that the emergency was not hurting the common people of this country. Nothing could be further from the truth. When a proclamation of emergency suspends the fundamental rights of the citizens, it is those who are most disenfranchised that are hurt the most as all avenues that exist for them to express both their aspirations and their grievances are closed. This government must understand that the people cannot be expected to be apolitical in a modern state, even if the government claims itself to be, and the suspension of their fundamental rights is a denial of their aspirations for a genuinely democratic republic.
Lifestyle diseases and globalisation
The World Health Organisation has warned that the incidence of ‘lifestyle diseases’ will double by 2015 unless all-out efforts to combat them are taken. The WHO said global epidemic of preventable diseases which are now claiming 17 million lives prematurely will kill 18 million eight years hence.
Despite the rise in life expectancy in almost all countries including Bangladesh, degenerative diseases, or lifestyle diseases, are spreading fast and threatening to wipe out much of the worldwide gains in public health. In Bangladesh we do not have to pore over surveys and research to know that the incidence of diabetes, the main lifestyle-related disease, is much more widespread now than, say, a generation ago. Rapid urbanisation, crowded living, lack of physical exercise and opportunity for exercise and mental stress are exacting their toll. Some changes in the mode of life due to changed socio-economic reality perhaps cannot be helped. But food preference is the consumer’s own choice. Why should they so readily abandon traditional food? Is there any metropolitan glamour in adopting the new food habit? Every year on World Diabetes Day experts rail at fast food as one of the factors that predispose the consumers to obesity and the resultant degenerative diseases.
Corporatisation of food items has happened not in this country but in the world capitals of global economy as part of globalisation. It was not for nothing that fast food chains in western cities were routinely attacked in the course of protests against WTO. But this did not much affect the chains as they are firmly rooted in the prevailing world economic order. Fast food and soft drinks are the mantra of metropolitan living vigorously promoted by western financial interests. Surveys have found that the new generation in rich countries are increasingly obese due to the changeover to fast food and soft drink. In our country too we, especially our affluent sections, were only too ready to give in to the new food culture.
The WHO did not mention the mental stress and psychiatric breakdowns associated with the desperate race for profit maximisation triggered by globalisation. The ever-increasing pressure of global competition has not only made the world selfish; the young executives of multinationals doing their fourteen-hour daily shifts are severely stressed to outdo their rivals. The WHO has called for national intervention; alongside we think there should be international intervention to rein in greed.
Social awareness key to curbing
violence against women
Though physical abuse due to the non-payment of dowry sits at the core of violence against women in Bangladesh, several other manifestations of the social affliction continue to poison our lives. From forced sexual intercourse to crank calls on the mobile, violence against women has countless manifestations and, to counter this, a mammoth social mobilisation with political and media backing are required, writes Towheed Feroze
WHEN Masuma was married, she was sixteen, an age which is not supported by law for wedlock but one, which is socially accepted as the right time for a girl to be wedded. Unlike many of her friends who had to be married off at an earlier age and endure a despotic family environment, Masuma came to a house, which did not have the common social setting of a torturous mother-in-law or a spiteful sister of her husband. However, Masuma’s life was not totally free of suffering – as years went by she turned into an object of sexual experiment for her husband. What started out as a dream life soon turned perverse as her husband, an avid fan of porn, started to demand painful and unconventional physical acts from her. Masuma thought that, in time, this habit would wane but eventually it became a sickness and today she feels that she is no more than a female body ready to carry out any whim of her husband. Mentally scarred and disoriented and physically abused and ravaged, she is silent because her sense of dignity and a conservative social nature prevents her from opening up for justice. She tried once, but her tales of woe provoked lewd interest rather than sympathy among her friends.
Choyonika is a college-going girl and being a person of the 21st century, is also tech savvy. Her mobile keeps her in contact with her friends and it is also her source of entertainment. But it is this latest gadget that is making her life intolerable now. Going to the local mobile credit-loading centre she had to give her number and now, it seems that her contact is public knowledge. Whenever she goes to college, she sees young boys of the area standing by her house, looking at her and making salacious comments. Later on, she is bugged on the phone with propositions. She tried complaining but this move backfired as now, instead of proposals of love, she hears abusive words and obscene invitations.
The situations above presented in a Bangla paper do not fall under the common perceptions of violence against women but, in truth, incidents like these are all around us and fall within a broader categorisation of the social malady. In fact, we are so focused on a set of stereotyped situations relating to violence against women that, often, we fail to grasp the extent of the problem. At a recent national workshop titled, ‘Domestic Violence: Legislation in Bangladesh’, arranged by CARE Bangladesh and Action Aid, the enormity of the situation involving women in general came out as violence against women was discussed with all its ugly manifestations. Of course, dowry and dowry-related abuse, both mental and physical, lie at the core of violence against women but there are other subtle and often non-subtle forms of prejudice against women that we need to recognise and remedy. For instance, in Masuma’s case, she may look like a happy housewife with a lot of liberty but her trauma lies in a fact that her predicament is not directly acknowledged by society. Sexual abuse within marriage is still not an open issue because the whole matter is still a taboo in Bangladesh. A woman may apparently have a happy life but if she is forced to yield to sexual demands that do not care whatsoever about her desires then she is, without question, a victim of violence against women. Yet, how many cases of matrimonial rape or unconventional sexual demands do we get? It is safe to speculate that many such events are not reported. As we target dowry and other more tangible forms of violence, we are leaving aside the acts of injustice that are being carried out under the protective garb of social regulations.
Come to the matter of Chayonika and we get a picture, which has been around for ages. Women in the past were bothered on the telephone and the problem has now taken a new dimension because contact numbers belonging to young girls can be availed pretty easily. Sadly, the common response of the parents of young girls has been to marry off their daughters believing that to be the end of the nuisance. Marrying off a girl may stop her from being disturbed but it does not take care of the problem. Eve-teasing is a crime yet society has a lenient attitude to look at it as a mere ‘peccadillo’. For argument’s sake, let’s look at the eve-teaser for a change. He is a young man, naturally with a desire to know women, but instead of going straight on and asking politely for friendship he chooses a path that is sleazy. To attract attention he resorts to wolf-whistles, leering glances and saucy lines taken from films. Now, how would this man be as a husband? Would he be a person alert about the rights of women or would he be a grown-up man with his teenage bad habits overblown into something more sinister? It seems that a psychological perspective into eve-teasing has become essential. Unfortunately, girls in Bangladesh cannot go up to a police officer and ask for help in such cases because there have reportedly been many cases in the past when the law failed to come to the aid of a hapless woman.
It would not be correct to say that the police are not willing to help. The problem here is the social upbringing based on excessively reserved values, which, in the end, prevent many women from going to complain. It is widely believed that filing a case of harassment often tarnishes the image of the girl more than that of the criminal. For this, a demoded social outlook is to be blamed. Conservatism to a limit is acceptable but it becomes a paralysing element when it starts to rob women of their self-esteem and confidence. Perhaps, it is also time to review our social outlook and adjust it according to the global values. Ironically, we want a global life but promptly shy away in a shell when some of our traditions are put to question. At the seminar arranged by CARE and ActionAid, Flavia Agnes, of Majlish, an India human rights organisation, said to minimise and eventually eradicate violence against women, there needs to be political mobilisation along with a massive social awareness facilitated by the media. ‘In India, the VAW legislation was in the manifesto of the Congress and when the party came to power all women groups exerted on the government to act on it,’ she said. ‘There has to be a massive media backing too because once the media took up the cause in India, social reaction became inevitable,’ she added.
In Bangladesh, too, the media is vocal but what we need at the moment is a united effort by all media houses on the issue and that means touching all aspects of violence against women: physical abuse, sexual abuse, psychological abuse, emotional abuse and economic abuse. A woman may have a sound understanding of family life but if her economic power is limited and, if the running of the house is dependent on the wish of the husband, she is being deprived of economic liberty.
In educated families, the dowry in the sense that we know does not exist but giving gifts during marriage is a custom. And, it is often seen that in a large joint family the wife who brings in better gifts during marriage is treated differently than the other wives. Maybe there are not any direct incidences of abuse but this difference in treatment falls within violence against women.
At the seminar, it was voiced time and again that more awareness is required and, for this, we need to have one huge drive. The HIV movement with regular TV and radio ads has passed on the message and now we need papers, satellite channels to come up with the violence against women issue. That means the persecution of women for dowry in the villages to the throwing of vulgar lines at young girls in the city – all have to be covered. For logical reasons, we must be more open to talk about matrimonial rape – the forced sexual intercourse by husband when the wife is temporarily incapable or is unwilling.
A presentation by Dr Faustina Pereira on the present status of work on domestic violence legislation in Bangladesh states that, a study conducted by One-Stop Crisis Centre on 120 sexual assault survivors between August 2001 and August 2003 found that 67.5 per cent of sexual abuse suffered by women occurred within their own homes.
Violence against women has many faces and all the manifestations of this evil need to come out. If necessary, we must also revise our social outlook and reject those which in the name of giving us a halo steal away our self-worth.
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