Surya Akhter Risa's budding life has been cut short by her stalker, an employee of a tailoring shop. A student of class VIII, she was too innocent and immature to respond to the advances made by her unwelcome suitor. This cost her life following the stab injury she sustained at the hands of the irate stalker in front of the Willes Little Flower School, her educational institution. The end to her life came last Sunday and since then students of her school have been demonstrating for arrest of Risha's attacker.
Last Monday Sathi Akhter, also a student of class VIII of a Chandpur school committed suicide. She was compelled to do so, according to a report. On failing to pay an arrear of Tk 80 (her poor parents somehow managed the major portion of the exam fee), she had to suffer punishment of standing under the scorching sun for more than an hour. Assistant headmaster, in charge of administration in the absence of the headmaster meted out the punishment. Helplessness coupled with extreme humiliation led the girl to take the ultimate decision.
Yet another report has it that an abducted girl of class VIII from Feni was rescued by the police on Sunday from her 28-year abductor from the house of the latter's aunt. The underage girl had been picked up and hauled in an auto-rickshaw a week ago before abusing her sexually several times in different locations.
Then on Tuesday the police arrested from Moghbazar a sex pervert who used to playact romance and seduced girls one after another to have sex and snatch away their gold ornaments, cell phones, money and other valuables. The latest victim of his predatoriness, a girl who passed the higher secondary exam this year from Barisal's Hatem Ali College, lost her life at his hands.
These are representative incidents of a society suffering from a deep malaise. There is no reason to think that all three incidents involving sex crimes were the only ones to have taken place over the past few days. Crimes like these do not usually come to the light unless the worst happens. Teenage girls, in particular, have to regularly go through the humiliating ordeal and they keep the demeaning treatment to themselves as long as they can. Bringing the matter to the public only draws more questioning or leering eyes, they know.
The case of suicide in the school incident has nothing to do with sex crimes but it exposes the vulnerability of girls in poor and marginalised families. Even more significant is the attitudes of society towards such girls. If a teacher can be callously mindless thus far to the humiliation he had subjected to a teenage girl, this is likely to be much worse in case of sex perverts and stalkers.
The tale of girls like Risha has followed a pattern. Protests against their attackers continue for a few days and then yet another chilling crime takes place to relegate such incidents to the back burner. The reason such incidents take place repeatedly is not delved deep into. Will society continue to suffer the ignominy of repeated scandals and image crisis at the hands of rotten and sex-crazy elements? Risha was a moving light before the eyes of her parents. Her parents are neither highly educated nor were financially solvent. Yet they realised the importance of education. They hoped that their daughter would one day study at a medical college to become a doctor.
So this is not an attack only on a girl but also on a dream and the spirit that keeps burning in the bosoms of parents who failed to make the most of education in their lifetime. Education and all who pursue it sincerely are sacrosanct and when both come under such brutal and vile attacks, the essence of social cohesion and peace are deeply upset. Confidence in the system weakens and erodes to the extent that society misses the high spirit needed to overcome critical times.
Responsible for this is the many and varied aberrations at the top echelon of society. It is a brutal world where high ideals, ethics, justice and respect for precepts all but become a casualty. If this is true on the one hand, at the lower levels, on the other, deprivation, lack of education and culture have created some monsters who do not back out from committing any crime in the book. Many of them enjoy the blessings of political godfathers and rise up the hierarchy of criminal gangs and even politics.
The tendency of trivialising has set in as a result. Developments of utmost gravity are dismissed as something unimportant. Failures to appreciate the highest virtues on one extreme and treating serious issues lightly on the other have done enough damage to collective understanding and any stand against negative issues. It is because of this, people are no longer enough shocked by tragic and chilling incidents until or unless they themselves feel the heat or fall victim to. Empathy or fellow feeling has taken leave of citizens in general. Only in rare instances, someone holds the flag of humanity aloft. Social resistance, instead of such indifference and individual sacrifice, against all kinds of injustice is what can put things in order. In that task people need to be enough human beings first and then support each other in serving the cause. Â
nilratanhalder2000@yahoo.com
Girls\' vulnerability and social inaction
Nilratan Halder | Published: September 02, 2016 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00
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