Dhaka, Apr 03 (News Network) - Mithila Rahman, a university student in her early 20s, recently had a bus journey she cannot forget. She was travelling to her home district of Narsingdi from Dhaka.
“I was going home sitting by a window seat. I didn’t know when I dozed off. Suddenly, I woke up feeling a press on by breasts. There was a man over 50 sitting next to me. I found the man pressing my breasts while spitting through the window. The perverted middle-aged man started doing it repeatedly. Even he kept on pressing my breasts with his elbow,” she recalls.
Mithila (not her real name) goes on: “At one stage, I told him to sit nicely. But he got angry and said he has a girl of my age. After that I had nothing to tell him. I think younger men behave with women with much more civility than middle-aged ones. It’s very dangerous to sit with middle-aged people.”
Rinvi Haque (not her real name) is a student of Dhaka City College. She says, “One day, I was coming from Uttara in a bus. I was travelling standing, as there was no seat left. There was a man aged approximately 40-45 standing behind me. And, he was intentionally pushing me repeatedly from behind. As I asked him to stay aside, the impolite man said some pushing is inevitable in a bus.”
Like Mithila and Rinvi, Zahura Parveen and Mila Hossain also had the same bitter experiences.
Zahura (name changed to protect privacy), a former accountant of a private firm, says, “I was the only female official at the account section. Whenever the office peon asked one of my over 50 male colleagues whether he would like to have lemon tea, he used to reply ‘ask the sister if she has milk’. My other middle-aged male colleagues used to make indecent gestures. Having failed to put up with the mental torture, I ultimately quit the job.”
Mila Hossain, a third year student of Political Science at Dhaka University, had a bitter experience involving police who are supposed to protect people from any sort of harassment.
“One day I went to our local police station seeking remedy to a particular problem, but the way the officer on duty behaved with me that was highly objectionable. If police behave like this where would we go? We don’t expect such behaviour from the law enforcers,” says disgusted Mila (not her real name).
Ataur Rahman, assistant public prosecutor of Dhaka Metropolitan Session Court, says a conclusion can be drawn on the basis of the review of cases relating to sexual harassment that women are sexually harassed mostly by middle-aged men.
While preparing the report, the News Network correspondent talked to 25 females aged between 18 and 30. Seventeen of them said they have been sexually harassed in one way or the other by middle-aged men in buses, roads, workplaces and families.
According to them, the younger people behave reasonably well with women at least out of fear. But many middle-aged men who are considered to be safer harass women whenever they get chances.
About sexual harassment by middle-aged men, Rokhsana Sultana, senior programme coordinator of NGO ‘Breaking the Silence’, says, “Many women in our country fall victims to sexual harassment in their own families as most of the guardians prefer aged males to youths to take care of their daughters while they are out of their homes. And the middle-aged perverted men take the advantage.”
Dr Abdul Hakim Sarker, former director of Dhaka University’s Social Welfare and Research Institute, says a section of men are always unsatisfied, as in Bangladesh there is little scope for them to mix with women other than marital relationship. And this dissatisfaction makes them eager about other women and they make sexual advances whenever they get chances.
He also says, “Don’t blame the men only. There are some women too who respond to such indecent persuasions. As some respond, they (men) tend to take the chances with other women.”
Dr Hakim further says, “To deal with the problems, workshops and seminars should be organised for open discussions. The issue should be discussed in every office. Proper working environment should be created in workplaces. Such behaviour is a crime. Women will have to be careful about it.”
Some human rights activists say that they are aware of some incidents where women have been sexually harassed in the families by uncles, maternal uncles, even fathers. And, sadly the families concerned do not accept such allegations. Therefore, most of the victims keep it to themselves.
- News Network
