Womens insecurity in public transports
The government needs to bolster laws and law enforcement agencies to capture the culprits within the least possible time
Sayeed Ovi
The safety of the people shall be the highest law.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Every individual dwelling in a state nothing but wants proper security of lifeof food, accommodation, wealth and physical safety. If the authority is failed to provide so, s(he) must feel feared, hapless, and thereafter alienated. In the evening of this 27 October, a 23-year old woman, who is a readymade garment worker, was ravished in a public bus by two menthe bus driver and his assistant, in the way of her returning to home. The driver as an assailant suddenly intimidated her with a knife while she was the only passenger left in the bus, snatched her phone, stifled her with scarf, and then rape along with his assistant. Owing to her instant wit, police after a few days able to capture those two culprits.
Such scenarios and rape stories are not unusual to us from several years and becoming more familiar with our everyday lives. We drink tea or have breakfast in the very morning with holding and reading the newspaper, come to know about violent sexual attack on women, silently express our grievance with long exhales, and afterward get busy in our own selfish world. We love to think that a change should happen, but no one comes forward with the right initiative, rather we want someone to do or prevent such heinous crimes on behalf of ours. The weak and dysfunctional law enforcement agency too often seems either unwilling or apathetic to take necessary measures in most of the cases of sexual violence where victims are women.
Who are the perpetrators?
Why women are being molested and sexually harassed in public transports can be explored by analyzing a few facets of behavioral and social psychology as well as patriarchic social construction. In the context of Bangladesh, most often the driver, assistants and some of the passengers are from lower educational and social background belonging lower status in social hierarchy. These factors cumulatively can be identified as the possible reasons and forces to minify their self-esteem with desperate sexual desire to mitigate by any possible ways.
To define the sexual harassment and rape assault on women in public transports, we need to consider Donald Symons. In his tremendous book The Evolution of Human Sexuality, he demonstrates that in random rape crimes, the victims are most likely to be young and physically attractive women, and the alleged rapists are the disadvantaged men with low social status quo who probably do not get desirable partners to have enjoy with. Similarly, in Bangladesh, we have seen (and will see later in this article) a number of assaults and rape incidents took place in public transports those are committed by the bus-men.
Why violence on women?
Traditional and backward, basically the rural society of Bangladesh, is fostering variety of myths on gender issues, such as a man must have sex to prove his masculinity, husband has all rights to do with his wife whatever he wants to or thinks right etc., which facilitate and legalize the chronic oppressions on women by men, and prepare a stage to establish male supremacy over female. Professor Md. Abdul Mannan in his writing presents evidences of male domination even over womens body and wish of copulation; there a respondent stated with heartache: Man only throw away woman right after fulfilling his lust.
These patriarchy-made scopes of sex crime and inadequate judicial system of Bangladesh offer the culprits to create a fearful atmosphere around women, and conduct sexual violence on them. In the era of economic development in Bangladesh, women are starting to come out from home to join the men to accelerate the total workforce of production and service, which is preparing a way onward development. Along with the increment of womens participation in the job sectors outside of home, the harassments in public transports are also in acceleration.
A valley of dead dreams
On 13 February 2014, a girl was raped in a moving bus in Manikganj. A readymade garment worker was raped and threw out of the bus on 12 May 2015. Two sisters were brutally raped on 23 January 2016. A teenage girl was ravished on 3 January 2017. All of the mentioned crimes were performed by the bus drivers and the assistants. A recent phenomenon that has become a public discourse and criticized heavily in social media is about some malefactors who are cutting womens clothes in absence of their knowledge with sharp knives. This is most probably an abominable act of fetishism, or to restrict womens movement outside of home.
In most of these cases, the victim women try to conceal the agony, fearing the future situations. The fundamental reason behind this is a large number of people frequently tend to find out easier but improper ways to again victimize the victim by raising questions on her character, feminine nature, dress, loyalty and religiosity. Criminal psychology says that such expressions bear the signs of potential rapists, and also patriarchic hegemony, which nothing but to encage women within an invisible boundary created by male-dominated social structure. The attempt of naturalizing the rape crime is not so uncommon in Bangladesh nowadays.
Leaping out of the crisis
A pathetic event of gang rape in a moving bus by six men took place on 16 December 2012 in Delhi. Jyoti Singh, a 23-year-female was brutally beaten, tortured and raped which later caused her demise. After this mournful incident, a huge mass-protest took place around India and the world in support of the elimination of the criminals and to stop sexual violence on women. She became the symbol of womens struggle and called as Nirbhaya (fearless). Even after that, almost every rape violence faces intense public protests and demonstrations there, which is somewhat absent in Bangladesh. We learn about the rape incidents and do nothing, not even a mass-remonstrance or upsurge to enforce the authority to take greater initiative to minimize the harm.
To leap out of the ongoing rape culture in Bangladesh, we need proper social integrity against all the predatorsnot only the assailants and rapist but also who act in support of these inhumane crime. It is assumable that no magical force in the world could sweep away all the delinquents and socialize the potential rapists at once, but necessary measures must have to be taken to prevent the aggrandizing number of sexual violence on women, not only in the public transports but also across the country.
In this respect, the government needs to bolster laws and law enforcement agencies to capture the culprits within the least possible time, the proprietors of buses could vest some efforts to appoint the employees by careful selection, and the citizens to become more conscious about any sexual harassment nearby.
The writr is a researcher and columnist Email: [email protected]
