Thinking of Ratna, Aduri, Happy

In developing countries like Bangladesh, using young girls as domestic workers is not a new phenomenon - it has continued for generations and remains a common practice. Poverty is the key driving factor as to why under-aged girls become domestic helps in the households of middle income or well-to-do families. The uneducated and underfed young girls are sent by their parents to a supposedly "safe" environment to work as domestic workers.
But from the moment they walk into the homes of their employers, many are faced with insurmountable workloads. They are not trained to perform heavy amounts of domestic work - 14 to 18 hours a day, with very few rights and freedom to enjoy. They are required to care for young children, while cooking, cleaning, washing clothes and running endless errands for their employers.
Most likely, some of these inhumane practices are going to change now. Bangladesh government's decision to limit the minimum age of domestic workers to 14, announced this past Monday, has to be applauded. The Cabinet meeting was chaired by the Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. "The move implies domestic work will be recognised as a profession under the Labour Act and female domestic helps will get four months of maternity leave along with public holidays."
THIS APPROVAL TO THE DOMESTIC HELP AND WELFARE POLICY HAS BEEN A LONG TIME COMING: I am sure many of you remember the 14-year-old Ratna, and 11-year-old Aduri and Happy. They all had endured brutal abuse at the hands of their employers in 2008, 2013 and 2015 respectively. All three horrific stories had garnered massive media coverage. In between, there were hundreds more who had faced similar fate and thousands more will continue to suffer even after the law is passed.
But the government's resolution to limit the age of domestic help to a minimum 14 is a step in right direction. This perhaps will reduce the torture of the minor children who are suffering unimaginable pain in the name of employment and better living.
Since the announcement, I have seen a couple of tweets by people who are griping about the minimum age being 14 instead of 16 or 18. Though such concerns are legitimate, these "wise" people fall short in giving any other viable solution to the problem of underage domestic workers who are unfortunate victims of poverty.
Being unable to care for their preteen and teenage daughters, the poor parents send them to the homes of affluent people to work. Other than poverty, many other factors such as abandonment, family break-up and physical abuse are also common catalysts for the young girls to leave home to become domestic workers. More often than not, these girls follow their mothers, elder sisters, cousins and neighbours as they serve as a vehicle for them to enter the world of domestic work.
Ratna was one of them. She had suffered multiple injuries inflicted by her employer Wahida Akhter Shanta, the wife of Sylhet's chief judicial magistrate, Rafiqul Alam. Readers had received a graphic account of how she was systematically abused. There were many photos that had accompanied all the news stories of her torture marks on her thighs and hands. Those were made with a hot iron spatula.
How can one forget about Aduri and the way she had demanded punishment for her torturer at a press conference in Dhaka? According to her: "Nodi madam cut my throat with a blade. She signed my skin with a hot iron. You people please bring her to justice. Nodi used to give me rotten rice to eat. She also put fire in my mouth and burnt my tongue. I hope no other girl has to go through this."
Aduri was severely beaten and tortured and was left in a city dustbin for dead until police recovered her battered and bruised body. The photo of a skeletal Aduri on a bed in Dhaka Medical College Hospital haunted me for days.
For intensely inhuman treatment towards domestic workers, very little has been done to prevent it or to bring the perpetrators to justice. This past September, Bangladesh cricket team's pacer Shahadat Hossain and his wife Jasmine Jahan Nritto had fled their Dhaka home after their domestic help Happy was found with extensive injuries. After physically torturing Happy, the cricketer and Nritto had left her on a street in Dhaka. She was found by police with multiple dislocated body parts and swollen eyes from Pallabi area.
Nritto was arrested from her hideout on October 04 and Shahadat surrendered to the court of the Dhaka Metropolitan Magistrate on the same day. On December 01, a Dhaka court gave Nritto an interim bail until January 07 and Shahadat also got 3-month bail from the High Court. However, such gross VIP treatments to the alleged criminals send a wrong message. If it were you and I, we would most certainly be rotting in jail awaiting trial.
It is commendable that the media nowadays is much more vocal about such horrific crimes in protecting the rights of the most vulnerable and exploited group of world's child labourers.What happens after the story is printed? The following day, the newspaper pages are filled with different stories. Young girls like Ratna, Aduri and Happy become yesterday's news and forgotten.
In many cases, the domestic workers are employed under false pretences, convinced by employers that their life will be better from the one they had before. The unthinkable pain and suffering of an empty stomach compel them to come out and take employment in others' homes. Thousands of Ratnas, Aduris and Happys endure punishment at the hands of brutes like Shanta, Nodi and Nritto disguised behind the mask and beautiful outfits of a "bhadramahila."
It may have been Ratna, Aduri and Happy's fate to be born into a poor family where their parents could not feed them properly. Ratna's father was near blind and the mother alone couldn't provide for the family. She had no choice but to send the daughter away by trusting the household of a law officer without having any idea what fate had in store for her daughter.
What I had found inexcusable after the Ratna case broke was how the 'Shushil Shomaj' (civil society) reacted to the Ratna story coverage. Some were outraged and objected to the media reports on the ground of a convoluted conspiracy theory of class resentment from the domestic workers. In short, it was implied that domestic helps often exaggerate their plight because of a latent hatred for their employers. Such a claim is absurd and very transparent to an objective viewer.
Ratna, Aduri and Happy's cases are not an over-amplification. The pictures that were printed were proof enough. As the old adage says, "A picture is worth thousand words."
Not letting any abusers face the consequences can be seen as a flagrant manipulation of the law (which is poorly enforced as it is) in the name of elite entitlement. Some pervert the argument, diffusing the situation into a quibble between the haves and have-nots, distracting public focus from the serious, inhuman cruelties committed by women like Shanta and Nodi by abusing their household helpers. Shahadat and his wife's case is pending trial.
Such people's desire for special treatment and censorship is antithetical to the heart of a democratic society.
Twenty years ago, society turned a blind eye to the abuse of household workers - maids, cooks, farmhands, ayas and part-time buas; no one protested. One said and did to them as they pleased. Even today, they are often scolded and beaten for the slightest infraction - some imagined some real.
I often wonder when I read about domestic help abuse cases - how a person lives with herself/himself after causing such pain on another defenceless child? What are the reasons behind such monstrosities? The live-in situations of many underage domestic workers make them very dependent on their employers for their every need. Such dependencies make them susceptible to routine physical and psychological abuse and exploitation.
My own analysis would be: a lot of women, who become housewives, end up abusing their domestic helps because they feel like prisoners themselves in gilded cages and often torment other less fortunate prisoners in their control. By that line of reasoning, then, in today's society, educated career women would not carry on such atrocious acts behind closed doors, as they would be "liberated" and "enlightened". They wouldn't need to inflict their own anguish on others.
Yet, today, women continue such mind-boggling abuses because they enjoy the protection that comes with being from a certain class. They suffer no actual retribution, above a mild censor by media (if found out). As a result, they frequently resort to more and more violent methods.
In a civilised society when such stories of abuse get out, the culprits first should be arrested and be punished to the fullest extent of the law. Social status and position should not exempt those with privileges from being punished after causing inconceivable pain on other human beings.
Are we not all children of this universe? If so, then no one should decide that a certain class should go unpunished.
Abusers abuse because they lack conscience and for the most part they get away with it. If society took a stronger stance then such cases would be few and far between. Ultimately, it falls on the conscientious citizens to keep the vigil alive.
We must write about the underage domestic workers without stripping them of human dignity, and rendering them into a grotesque circus show to entertain people over their morning tea and biscuit.
I hope this article will in a very minimal way bring some vindication to Ratna, Aduri, Happy and thousands more under-aged domestic workers who, astoundingly, still have no voice in Bangladesh. There is a huge demand for young domestic workers as they can be hired with very nominal pay and are too young to stand up for their rights.
At this juncture, it is praiseworthy that the Bangladesh government is paying particular attention to child domestic work by enforcing the minimum age requirement to be 14. Now, we will have to wait and see what kind of changes the new government policy will bring in protecting the rights of the young domestic workers, so that they are not abused and thrown into the dumpster like garbage.
The writer is a freelance
contributor.
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