Violence breeds violence. It is no exception in case of violence against children. In this country, the trend of violence has been typical. Immediately after the first case of acid throwing had been reported, a spate of the crime took the country by storm. Before it stoning women to death by burying half the body for adultery on pronouncement of fatwa (so-called religious indictment) had almost started doing its rounds. Mercifully, this type of barbarity of Middle age was rejected by the country's people. However, the notorious and loathsome rape and killing of Yasmin and Seema by the members of the police had an overpowering negative impact on the psyche of the young generation. Rape has since then taken an ominous spectre. About 150 girls and women have fallen victim to sexual predators in July alone.
Notwithstanding the horrendous nature of sexual crime, another type of outrage against humanity has made louder screaming headlines. This is the extreme form of cruelty to children. It all began with the horrific torture of an 11-year boy named Rajon in Sylhet. So severely was the boy beaten while he was tied to a tree that the little boy succumbed to the injuries he sustained. He was falsely accused of a theft of a rickshaw van.
Before the countrywide protest could die down, another such incident of torture of two boys was reported. However, investigation later revealed, and to most people's relief, that it was a stage-managed picture. The story was generated courtesy of a local correspondent who instigated the parents of the boys to give a false statement in order to teach a lesson to their neighbour with whom they had a land dispute.
However, in another incident to draw media attention -albeit about three months later -was the killing of a teenage boy from Mirpur on charge of a pigeon theft. The video of the gruesome killing was released in July most likely by someone under the influence of the Rajon case. In this case also the boy was subjected to mind-boggling brutality.
On Monday, Rakib, a 12-year old boy was done to death by his former employer, an owner of a motor cycle repair shop, in a most outrageous and bizarre manner. The high-pressure mechanical pump was pushed into his rectum and the gas swelled his tiny body beyond all proportions. His internal organs including lungs were torn apart. When he was taken to hospitals, doctors could do nothing to save his life.
In yet another tragic incident, parents became the killers of their daughter on the same day. In this case, the parents had taken a loan from a non-government organisation but had no means to repay. So they devised an ingenuous way of making money. They started telling neighbours that the girl's mother was given special power of healing by a spirit. To impress onlookers, they started beating their daughter and said the healing power would not make the girl cry. But as a result of the beating, the girl breathed her last on the sixth day of the practice of false power on her.
Surely, this society has gone crazy. Insanity has taken the better of rationality. Human feeling has given way to the awful monstrosity of man. Or, else people cannot be so devoid of feeling for children. How civilised a society is best measured by the extent of its care for its children. The spate of violence against children exposes the monster in man. Actually a civilised society is the best guarantor of protection for women and children considered vulnerable to violence.
Particularly children win hearts by their innocence. But it seems there are hardened souls in Bangladesh society, who derive sadistic pleasure by torturing young boys and girls. The country has outlawed physical punishment in schools but still this form of punishment could not be eliminated altogether. Rather, there are reasons to be further concerned about the spread of the recent spate of violence against children. There is reason to think that after each such incident, people all across the country come to know about the cruelty. The arrest of the perpetrators and the popular protests ignited consequently should have a deterrent effect. But why does the opposite happen? Are the media to blame to some extent for depicting the picture so graphically?
These are some of the question media people and sociologists and experts in relevant issues must ask themselves in order to get an answer to the question. It is a dangerous bend of mind that is driving people to commit a crime that is no less blood-chilling than the sacrifice of infants or children before the temple of gods or goddesses, a practice prevalent a few centuries ago in the Indian subcontinent and in Greece in the ancient times.
At a time when physical abuse of children has taken its extreme form in Bangladesh, the member states of the United Nations have endorsed the final text of "Transforming Our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development". The document to be adopted at the UN Summit in September in New York envisions 'a world free of fear and violence' with the rallying call to get into urgent action for ending all forms of violence against children. As a member of the UN, Bangladesh should know how to respond to the call and be equal to the task of ending cruelty to children.                       Â
nilratanhalder2000@yahoo.com
Ending violence against children
Nilratan Halder | Published: August 07, 2015 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2024 06:01:00
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