When I lifted the most adorable two-year old in the world to sit her on my lap, she started screaming “Amar lengtu! Amar lengtu!” with an angry and disturbed look on her face. I didn’t realize I had accidentally pulled her dress upto her waist. Perplexed and alarmed by her premature recognition of her ‘shame’ zone that would in a few years evolve into her ‘fear’ zone, I worried about what grounds her intuition was building up on. As I fixed her dress, she lightly slapped my arm to ‘punish’ me for revealing her shame. She seems to be perfectly fine with bare arms and legs. I was as disheartened as I was resentful to see how aware she is of the hierarchy of fear/shame attached to different parts of her body. Why has it arrived so soon – her terrorized conscious?

Her five year old sister wanted to show off how her little sister is able to identify different parts of her body.

“Tomar chul dekhao toh!”

The little one pulled on one of her curls, “Eita amar chul.”

“Aar tomar chokh?”

She pointed at the corner of her eye, “Eta amar chokh.” Then she took over. “Eije amar naak! Eita amar kopaal …Eita amar gaal.” Extending her arms she said, “Egula amar haath.” Then she lifted her frock, and said, “Eita amar pet … aar eije amar dudu…” Right then, a male staff of the house walked into the room to get something. Before I knew it, I quickly pulled down her dress, pulled her close, and asked her to tell me that story about two girls and their tea-drinking cockroach friend that she had made up a few days back. “Ekta telapoka aar duita meye boshe acche…” Why did it creep up on me without any warning – my terrified conscience?

This Ramadan, a bunch of friends and I would go to Dhanshiri for post-iftaar tea quite frequently. There we befriended a group of kids – approximately 10 years old, who live in Korail, but hover in the area ‘collecting’ money after school everyday. As soon as we got there, they would come shake our hands, sing for us, ask us to sing, tell us about their lives, inquire about ours … you get the picture.

Interacting with children is always refreshingly cathartic until that one jolting moment, when a manufactured adult befalls their persona like it did when this one little girl, out of the blue, told my friend Afrina that her black scarf which she had carefully wrapped over her t-shirt, was too thin. She then pointed at my cotton orna dangling from my right shoulder and approvingly used that as an example to demonstrate what kind of fabrics she should be looking out for.

She proceeded to grab a side of my scarf and pulled it to cover my chest ‘properly,’ and then pointed at Afrina, who she was dissatisfied with just a few moments ago, to illustrate how I should be wearing my scarf. Afrina and I were exchanging surprised and awkward glances when another kid, with her scarf over her head, pulled mine and lightly jumped in an attempt to place my scarf over my head. Simultaneously, she reminded us of the decorum inscribed in the invisible TOR of being ‘Bangali’ and ‘Musolmaan.’ “Mone rakhben Apu, amra hoilam…” I turned to Afrina and said “this is so weird! These are kids!” “Yeah,” she responded, “makes you wonder who has been teaching them this stuff.”

Their parents? Relatives? Neighbours? Friends? Teachers? That man who kept on interrupting our conversation by trying to hand us a flyer with some religious ‘baarta’ and asking for donation for a madrasa? No, that’s too convenient a coincidence. Maybe it’s no one in particular, but everyone in general that they imbibed this from. I don’t know…

Trying to divert the conversation, I told her I wish I too had played in the rain seeing that she was wet, while all her companions were dry. She said she didn’t play in the rain. “Then why are you wet?” “Oi betaye paani maarse amar gayer upor,” she pointed at one of the shop-keepers at a slight distance. There were quite a number of them, so I don’t know exactly which one she pointed at.

Generally distrustful of adults around kids, and feeling queasy about the picture of an adult splashing water at a child, I immediately started correlating why she felt it important to advice me and my friend to take shopping and wrapping advice from each other, and her super-conscious realization of being ‘Bangali’ and ‘Musolmaan’ with her need to protect herself from her seemingly predatory surrounding.

What has this identity done for her apart from fraternizing her with a remote, unyielding and superficially homogenous community? Does she already know that if the water had made her clothes translucent, fingers raised would have pointed towards her? Is that why she tries to ensure that there are no ‘loopholes’ in her presentation of herself? Am I giving her too much credit?

Probably not. Her fear/consciousness is probably not based on intuition solely, but also knowledge and God forbid, experience. If 1 out of 3 children in Bangladesh is a victim of sexual abuse, then children everywhere – streets, shacks, houses and mansions – better forego thoughts of unicorns and kittens playing on a rainbow made by Fairy Godmother, and buckle up.
**********

I still shudder at the recollection of that harrowing story of a working mother who walked in on her father-in-law dipping his penis in his infant grandson’s mouth while babysitting him.

I feel chills down my spine every time I remember the story of that one girl who was molested by her mama (maternal uncle) as a child, and had known it to be the only form of sexual interaction. So much so that she went through a series of boyfriends, all of whom she addressed as “mama,” and after the first physical contact, dumped them.

I feel my skin spike up like thorns when I think of that boy who would be raped by his uncle everyday that he took his herd to graze.

I feel my gut tie up in knots when I think of that 7 year old girl regularly raped by her uncle for a year. I want to choke that female relative of hers who blamed her maturity and ‘exposure to the world’ as props used to provoke the poor, helpless, grown man.

I feel my blood boil when I recall the story of that boy who would breakdown everytime his parents coaxed him into studying with his (male) home tutor. Later they discovered the child was subjected to groping on a regular basis and was threatened into keeping mum.

I feel I might pop a vein everytime I remember the little girl who had the same experience with her Arabic teacher.

I however find it slightly funny when I remember my “mohila hujur,” who would flash me her chest every chance she got. Back then, she masked it as education – showing me what I would look like when I grew up. I was never explicitly threatened into silence, but I intrinsically knew to not complain and blindly accept everything the “woman of God” taught me. Come to think of it, she wasn’t that well-versed in Arabic. I discovered later that she had taught me a bunch of Surahs incorrectly.
**********

Sexual abuse of children is a harsh reality which is more common that realized. It comes in varying degrees of every form – physical, emotional, verbal and visual. Some surveys say at least 1 out of 5 adult women and 1 out of 10 adult men report having been sexually abused in their childhood. BSAF studies reveal that though there is no safe age for boys and girls, vulnerability tends to be at its peak between10-15.

The long-term emotional and psychological damage caused by sexual abuse can be devastating to a child. No child is conditioned to cope with sexual stimulation. Even an infant with no concept or awareness of sexuality or sexual development, will develop problems resulting from the inability to cope with the over-stimulation.

Mullen and colleagues (1996) found that women with histories of sexual abuse as children, have had over five times the rate of physical abuse, and were three times less likely to also report emotional deprivation. There tends to be a considerable overlap between physical, emotional and sexual abuse, and children who are subjected to one form of abuse are significantly more likely to suffer other forms of abuse (Briere and Runtz 1990; Bifulco et al. 1991; Mullen et al. 1996; Fergusson et al. 1997; Fleming et al. 1997).

Then there are children who are more often than not subjected to one or all three forms of abuse. I would like to focus a bit on the situation of child domestic workers since they tend to be more marginalized than other children, even other working children, as a result of being confined within household premises with no or extremely limited mobility.

Since there is no formal jurisdiction to protect working children from abuse, child workers, particularly child domestic workers lead lives of shadow citizens. There is of course no acknowledgement of their role as economic actors or their role in harnessing domestic discipline.

Their parents are often not aware of where they are working or under what conditions. Generally informal verbal agreements are reached between the employers and the guardian responsible for linking up the child. In a lot of cases these agreements are ignored, and there is no institutional accountability measure for them to fall back on. A lot of domestic employments occur via intermediaries – relatives, acquaintances, “bua suppliers,” etc. This further dissolves the already bleak transparency regarding the children’s conditions.

**********

Almost every family of lower middle class and up has domestic help, and the number reaches about 2 million approximately. Statistics published by UNICEF in May 1999 showed that 45% of the children working as domestic help did not receive wages.

There are frequent reports of abuse towards child servants. Remember Ratna? The 15 year old brutally tortured by wife of the Chief Judicial Magistrate of Sylhet? She was kept under lock and key and tormented. Despite there being visible marks of persecution on her chest, back, thigh and tongue, the police refused to file her case. What happens when the umpire goes to bed with the batsman? This happens.

Remember the 9 year old Tanjina Akter tortured by a doctor’s wife, daughter and two sons? The one who was regularly caned and harder if she cried? Ratna and Tanjina are 2 out of hundreds of similar stories. James Melik and Duncan Bartlett reported on One World South Asia that in Bangladesh, over 300 deaths of child domestic workers were reported between 2001 and 2008.

Though not termed so, these shadow citizens are in a manner of speaking, child soldiers – churning the economic wheel, greasing the societal pedal, fending for themselves and their families, sacrificing their rights and their lives before they even get a chance to conceive or embrace them.

And there is an army of them. ILO estimates that of 218 million working children around the world, 7.4 million (BBS, UNICEF and DSS Baseline Survey) Bangladeshi children are economically active between the ages of 5-17 years. Out of them 400,000 are child domestic workers (CDW) in Dhaka alone, and are between the ages of 6-17 years. Another survey found that 38% of them are 11-13 years of age and 25% are 5-10 years of age. In 2004, the Financial Express found that out of 1181 child workers in Maghbazar alone, 770 were domestic workers.

Sexual abuse of CDW is extremely prevalent. In Bangladesh, over 25% of CDW report that they have been raped.

Breaking the Silence (BtS) reported the case of 10 year old Mukta who worked as household help in an urban area. One day she left her tasks undone and ran home to her mother. Her mother’s effort to explain the risks of living in a slum seemed to fall flat on its face. Eventually she revealed that her private parts were frequently touched by the old man of the house.

Her mother dismissed the allegation on grounds that such behaviour was sinful, and therefore could not be happening. She apologized to Mukta’s employers and returned her. She didn’t mention Mukta’s complaint to them, but requested them to not send her out to shops.

The extent of abuse aggravated and became more unbearable over the next couple of weeks. Mukta`s mother contacted BtS who were preparing to bring her back. However, shortly after, the mother reported that the employers had reprimanded her for her daughter’s absconding. Despite wanting to, the mother did not tell them why Mukta was so desperate to leave since her husband earned a good salary as a guard at their house.

Their desperation for economic security made her send Mukta back to that house.

Ratna Yasmin reports on Ayesha. This 15 year old girl would be raped by the man of the house whenever the wife was away. When she got pregnant, as expected, her character was slandered and she was thrown out of the house. She sought refuge in her relative’s house in Kamrangirchar and eventually gave birth to her daughter. When she returned to the Mohakhali house where she used to work to demand her and her daughter’s rights, she was brutally tortured by the family.

Studies show that both male and female CDW are subject to frequent sexual abuse. Generally in these cases, boys tend to be more marginalized than girls as a result of gender stereotyping, social denial, underestimation of sexual victimization of males, and the relative inadequacy of research on sexual abuse of boys. I remember asking a group of women in Bauniabadh if they thought boys were vulnerable to sexual abuse at all. After a minute’s silence one of them said, “Chhele manushder korleo, kototukui ba korbo?” It’s all about visible-tangible eventualities. That’s why when asked if women can be perpetrators, I got the same answer, “Mohilarao omon hoito pare, kintu mohila toh, korleo kotutuki ba korbo?”

**********

Sometimes I wonder if children are viewed as people. I see them treated as angels, toys, monkeys, entertainers, assets, liabilities … all out of affection of course (except the liabilities part), but I rarely see them treated as people. Above every child’s halo dangles a tong that would pick it up and throw it out the second the child exhibits anything ‘unchildly.’

Yes it’s true that perpetrators of sexual abuse attribute educational value, sexual pleasure (the child’s) and even provocation to their actions. Yes it’s true that they subtly or aggressively threaten the child into remaining silent. But let’s not forget to acknowledge where we falter.

Can a child’s silence be entirely attributed to the threat of the abusers? Have we not set-up an inarticulate, but deep-seeded decorum on how to behave as a child? Are there no unsaid rules about what a child is allowed to know, think or talk about?

Even the most “haba-goba” child can intrinsically identify ‘adult’ content, and will refrain from talking about it. They know that the repercussion of certain articulations will earn them the infamous “ichre-paaka,” “mitthuk,” “spoilt,” and “noshto” titles, and possibly bear corporal repercussions.

So are we not partially responsible for the silence by denying them a platform where they will be heard, trusted and dignified; by putting so much romantic weight on “innocence,” that being a child becomes a burden?

If we can’t protect the child from impure adult infiltrations, why try to prevent them from acknowledging and articulating them? Is it the uncanny suicidal knack for denial that makes us do this or a conscious pretence of perfection? Who is the audience? Are we all Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca?

Think about the child domestic workers. It’s as if they have avatars. They are bearers of double-gaggers these doppelgangers; shoulderers of many burdens – of innocence, of all-encompassing deprivation, and of obligation (“amra toke ja dei tor baap dite parto?”). They also bear the burden of bitter colonial brine smothered all over them.

The ruthless treatment of child domestic workers mirrors the irrational power-trip of colonizers. It seems these legal slaves are pawns in the quest for vendetta against an almost-forgotten offender, but a resented and lamented, yet (on a certain level) sadomasochism-friendly offense; dormant punching bags for exhaling inner doormat frustrations.

We have warped illusions of loyalty. If a domestic worker wants to switch houses for a higher salary, their loyalty is questioned, though it is perfectly alright for someone with a ‘proper job’ to switch between organizations for more lucrative incentives. Not that we needed further proof of domestic work being in the grey zone between employment and new age slavery, but here it is.

And if there is a trace of any kind of ‘disloyalty’ in a child worker, then lo and behold! Not only has s/he betrayed the owner/employer, but also the sanctity of being a child – the obligation of not having agency.

The treatment of child domestic workers reminds me of the only lesson I retained from my 8th grade Bangladesh studies class. We were taught the concept of ‘maatshonnay” a metaphor explaining feudalistic mistreatment of subjects and how the assertion of power of the higher echelon swallowed that of the lower the way a big fish swallows a smaller one.

This is probably where our obsession with ‘kochi’ (tender) is rooted – kochi daab, kochi shosha, kochi bou, kochi shishu. When asked what kind of a girl she was looking to employ, the lady asked for one within 10-12 years of age. Placing her hand about 3 feet off the ground she said, “shundor size.” The rational behind this is parallel to the rational behind propagation of early marriage for girls – “naile poray adjustment problem hoy … manaye cholte parena.”

Yes, I understand. The more ‘kochi’ they are the more modest they will be; and modesty here is systematically equated with subservience. The more “tender” they are, the more conducive they would be to “shokto haathe domon” measures; the more susceptible they are to succumb to a manufactured reality born out of historical suppression leading to aggressive or repressive behaviour (e.g. most physical abusers of CDW are female, though sexual abusers are of both sexes), vertically founded upon suffocating propriety, stringent social decorum, persistent practice of denial and a lively game of guilt-torch relay.

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“Egula toh oder deshe hoy,” is something you have probably heard almost every time something taboo, especially if sexual in nature is brought up. The establishment of a dogmatic culture of silence is generally justified by an “us vs. them” disposition. It is common and convenient thinking that all things sexual (deviant and otherwise) are a Western phenomena

Then you bring up real life deshi examples and the jealousy and conspiracy theories begin to flow. You press a little harder. You bring it closer to home, and then comes the full-throttle west bashing.

“Tomra bidesh giye and TV dekhe eshob shikhso. Nijer deshke kokhono chhoto korbana. Amader ki history!” We have given our lives for our language, we have fought for our land twice! “Aar ora khali rights rights kore! Oder ki aar emon acche? Khali jeans, beer aar burger!” Then proceed to gush over our clothes and food and CULTURE.

Yes culture, it’s a beautiful thing. It provides with diversity, identity, unity and security. But it becomes the justification for pushing people (particularly girls) into blind marriages. It sent Humayra Abedin to a mental institution for no clinical reason. It justifies domestic violence. It springboards coercion of the weaker. It made that 16 year old girl marry her rapist. It gave that influential father the license to throw his daughter’s boyfriend in jail for no reason so he can get her married to the boy of his choice. It made it alright for the mistress of the house to deprive the child worker of a meal. It allowed the father to stop his son from studying astronomy so he can become an accountant. Who needs to find the Holy Grail when you have found culture?

Therefore, it’s also a bipolar thing that contradicts and counter balances its pretty counterparts by forcing homogeneity; by undermining diversity, but catalyzing dispersion and disconnect by upholding feudalistic hierarchy; through identity-jacking via value imposition and infringement; and lastly, but most horrifyingly, by causing insecurity by instilling a fear of losing culture and thereby the security it allegedly provides.

“Uff! Eto dhoro keno?”

I’m sorry, but I’ll take a culture of bacteria over a culture of phantom barbed wire around my throat, pisciculture over P.C. culture, any day.

If you pitch Tagore’s western prize for his eastern book as compensation for Mukta’s abuse; if you sing “khelicche jolodebi” to overshadow Ratna’s screams, you could not have found a hasher way of disrespecting the artists.

So, it’s not my desh or my culture I am belittling, it’s some deshis and their culture that I am stabbing.

My intention is not to highlight where others are better off, but to emphasize what we need to work on. This is not a “whose mobile is more expensive?” competition.

The tragedy behind the struggle to preserve and respect culture while using it as a shield is that, the harder you press it on, the more likely the receiver is to distance him/herself. If kids today seem to have sold out to “their culture,” a huge part of the reason might be shackles placed around their ankles in the name of culture and demand for blind acceptance and obedience in the name of respect. That’s when B-Grade Hallmark Channel teenage heroes/heroines with their juvenile revolts, teenage pregnancies and erratic driving, the One Tree Hill kids, the OC characters, etc. begin to look more liberated. Chuck Norris and Ali G are not the enemies stealing your child’s culture. The kid loses his/her culture – one gag at a time.

Gross and indiscrete rejection of western or universal values has become a convenient scapegoat for harnessing predatory abusiveness.

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“Meyeta khub bod, barir shaheber shathe shuito. Chhoto hoile ki hobe? Ajkalkar gorib manush aar ager moton shorol nai. Tandor shob.” Hmm the girl “shuito” with the shaheb, but didn’t the shaheb “shuito” with the girl?

“Bhabi, ei boyoshe nanan dhoroner fantasy hoy.”

“Ei class a ei dhoroner fantasty amader niye beshi.”

“Ei class khub chalak … eshob bole fashaite chaye … dhurondhor! Kichhuina shudhu taka chaye!”

Yes dear, blame the hormones, not the hubby. Yes, it’s your family lineage and bank balance that was so irresistible to the 10 year old. Yes, the 12 year old provoked the 55 year old to make sexual advances. Ah! The conclusions of the suspicionist class!

Why do a people with a history and concurrent reality of oppression and violence find it so difficult to digest that victims can be just victims without being instigators?

Seduction is for lovers, not perpetrators and predators.

Verticality based on age, class, geography has created a circle of cannibalistic devouring spree. We are eating ourselves. It’s like an intense acid trip en masse where we are eating our own arms thinking them oranges.

“Hoise! Eto eshob niye kotha bola lagbena. Amra baba conservative Muslim desh. This is not America.”

You’re right. This is East India Company in brown skin instilling a culture of “respect” and “modesty” (P.C. pseudonyms for gags and travesty), placing romantic weight on innocence and feudalistic weight on silence; not defying the metropolis to provide a platform to the satellite…

…the pangs of being a child, especially a ‘backup-less’ one. Where is their independent Bangladesh?

The Raj hasn’t been repatriated, it has been renovated. Tragic that after all these years the colonial traces are not residual but sedimentary, so brushing off is not an option – we need to scoop it out. Maybe that explains why there is more fear attached to report cards than question papers.

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There is something I need to tell you in private.

Sweetheart, you have been possessed by what you think you exorcized. You have become what you claim to have defeated. You are what you escaped.

With translation:

Zehal-e miskin makun taghaful,

Duraye naina banaye batiyan;

Kitaab-e hijran nadaram ay jaan,

Na leho kaahe lagaye chhatiyan?

(Do not overlook my misery

Blandishing your eyes, and weaving tales;
My patience has over-brimmed, O sweetheart,
Why do you not take me to your bosom?)

– original by Hazrat Amir Khusrau, translation by “Unknown”

Borsha* did not know she had no right to fall in love. In fact, she did not even know, she had no right to be. She was one of the many floating prostitutes of a mazaar area, who existed, but not really. She was a fool who made the mistake of falling in love, an imbecile who forgot she was not a human-being, and tricked herself into believing the promises her customer-turned-lover made of marrying her.

She was a dweller of a mazaar, the place where hundreds of people flock on a weekly basis to conduct wish-fulfilling rituals. And apparently they work. So why wouldn’t her wishes come true when she lived amidst all that magic?

She forgot magic wasn’t for her either.

So her eyes were pulled out, and she was killed by her lover in the Shaheed Minar area. An unfit awakening for fitness freaks who workout there early in the morning and discovered her dead body dangling from a tree.

She needed to exist to cater to our needs, but she had no right to exist. Her story is the perfect example of filth permeating through what we would like to believe is our holy and untainted society. Not the filth we accuse her of diffusing, but the filth we create and conveniently shove under the rug. Borsha lived her life to hone our selfishness, and died at the hands of our nonchalant cowardice.

One for All, But None for One

Group work is usually a part of any orientation process as it has proven to be an effective ice-breaking and team-building technique. That is probably why most of the women I spoke to when I went to a mazaar area mentioned that when they landed there for lack of places to go seek refuge in, or were tricked and brought there,  gang rape and blade cuts were an integral part of their induction process. Some of them, like Meena,* also made the colossal mistake of ignoring her mother’s advice and took a candy-pill from a stranger. She and many like her then found themselves in a brothel upon regaining consciousness. Some of them like Meena, fled brothels and upon being rejected by their homes, came to the city to find work and ended up in mazaars as homeless, floating sex slaves.

“Slaves” may seem like an exaggerated way of labelling them because as commercial sex workers, they do in theory, get paid. But given how invisible our society has rendered them, when a customer refuses to pay for a service, there really is no agency or organization that will fight on their behalf to get them their remuneration. And it’s not as if their customers just don’t pay and leave, they are often subjected to unbelievable amounts of violence for asking for their dues.

The state of the floating sex workers – battered, beaten, and banished – brings to question our sense of community. That we live in a community and we are responsible for each other only seems to be realized when we want to quench our thirst for butting into other people’s businesses. But when it comes to fighting, to protecting, there is no one.

How is it that 15 year old Laila* feels the need to tie her infant of several weeks around her waist while napping, that even in the afternoon when the mazaar premises are abuzz with people, she wakes up to find somebody is trying to cut the rope to steal her baby? Why is it that they are forcefully taken away and raped at anybody’s will and no one in the vicinity steps up or steps in?

Babies being stolen and babies being bought are common practices within these premises. When I asked Laila why babies are sold, she admitted that just this morning, she sold an abandoned infant to a childless woman who came to the mazaar to buy a baby. She said in the future she might even consider selling her baby to a rich family so at least she can feel safe about him being free from the kind of life she has to lead. I don’t know if she is that naïve or if she was pretending to be so, but we all know that not all babies go to fill voids in the laps of childless parents. Especially not the stolen ones. They go on to become camel jockeys, involuntary organ donors, sex slaves, heroin money…Their mothers never get a chance to warn them against taking candy from strangers; they become the currency for strangers’ candy.

Razia* said she would be better off giving her baby away because if he ever asks her about his father, she would not know what to say. “Mukh rakhbo koi?” (Where should I keep my face?) is not a question on the lips of just this one person.

The way we have laid out our social infrastructure is phenomenal. The state and we fail to protect women falling into communities we go on to stigmatize later. We fail to dignify them as women and mothers. We deprive mothers of their right to raise their children, and children of the right to be raised by their mothers. We push them into a hole, step inside and use them as we need and please, and climb out to point fingers at them. We really give them no spaces for their faces. Mukh raakhbe koi?

As our sense of community degenerates at a fast pace, we have found a stupendous way of safeguarding the undeserving and relaying responsibility onto unknown actors. When my friend got into a chain accident very recently, a motorbike rider who was most hurt in that accident, and was just a victim of the situation, was blackmailed by the investigating officer into paying a bribe or else he would have filed a case against him. What were the hospital personnel doing while this was going on?

How is it that another friend gets mugged and dragged along the street by the infamous muggers-in-cars on the evening before Eid in a busy shopping area, and everyone is a spectator? It is because perpetrators know that everyone is too scared or nonchalant to step in, or is relying on someone else to do it, that they gather the courage to act in public spaces. There really is no difference between an empty, dark alley and a crowded street anymore.

We do, however, have an amusing culture of redundant compensation. My first field trip after I joined BRAC was to Mymensingh. Between field visits, the local staff took me and two other colleagues to the Muktagachha Palace. Well now hardly a palace, but more a skeleton of a once palace. Its last inhabitant had fled during partition, following which the locals came to strip the place of all things of value. So what we saw was a spooky, naked frame.

The layout of the place was quite mind-boggling for me. The jalsaghar area in particular was eerie. A huge space in the centre, cabins for baijis at its foot, a puja mandap by its head, the zamindar’s main bedroom to its left, and torture cells for fathers who refused to send their virgin daughters to the zamindar to its right. Between the jalsaghar and the torture cells was a well with a chopper installed, where dead bodies would be dumped to be cut up and transported to the river to which the well was connected. I could go on to draw metaphoric parallels between then and now, but I am sure you can read between the lines and do that yourself.

Coming back to the culture of compensation, the last zamindar who inhabited the palace was allegedly the cruellest of all “jodio uni shikkhar jonno besh kichhu kore gese” (though he has done a lot for education). The consumers for Muktagachhar monda were he and his family, his favourite elephant and his Baijis. Anyone else having or even trying to have those mondas was penalized. For some reason, feeding his Baiji mondas reminded me of people who feed beggars on Fridays, Borsha’s lover who distributed jilapis among all homeless people  in the mazaar after killing her, dancers on stage compensating for a lack of steps by waving bright-coloured fabric, corrupt officers who distribute food, clothing and other forms of charity on Fridays to partially whiten their black money, cook show hosts making up for their inability to make clever comments about the food by repeating “bachchara-o khub pochondo korbe,” writers’ over-usage of  “and then s/he lit a cigarette/ took a long drag,” TV dramas filling up the space left by lack of crafty dialogues with “ei na maane, bolchhilam ki … yeh … maaaannneee … umm yeh aarki…” Excuse me, what?

Then there are more brutal compensations, compromises rather – these mothers selling their children with hope for a better future for them, cleaner identity; that one woman who took her 3 year old son to her slum’s goon-squad to pour acid onto one of his arms so he can show that off and make some money. “Dui haath diya ki korbo, jodi pet-a bhaat na thake?” (“What’s he supposed to do with two hands if he can’t find rice for his stomach?”)

Putting and Pudding

Around the world, across cultures and throughout history, prostitution has ubiquitously provided societies with an ambivalence of necessity and fecundity. Despite the diverse underlying complexities in its nature as per varying socio-cultural contexts, one universal attribute of prostitution is that it is, and has always been, the filler that has catered to lust and compensated for the gap between desire and avenue for satiation.

Though criminalized, it has always been (even if implicitly) acknowledged to be a tolerable and often relieving counter to emergence and increase of sex crimes. As much as there is an unscrupulous amount of moral policing surrounding prostitution and even porn, studies have shown that they have to a large extent, served as alternate and alternative ‘solutions’ to rape and other forms of harassment.

Minus the need-fulfilment function which has been a consistent consumption for all classes within a society, prostitution has also been nuanced enough to make status statements. Tawaifs and Baijis were the ‘shaan’ of the aristocracy back in the day. I suppose a contemporary parallel can be elite escorts, though this niche is more subdued and barely flaunted.

Dear bonedi poribaars, khandaani ghors, shikkhito Bangalis and bhodrolok shomaj, I know you would like me to believe that theirs is a parallel reality so far removed from yours that the two will never intersect. I agree. But only because just from one fragmented brush with a small segment of theirs, and a lifelong membership in yours, has made me aware of how you and I will never be able to fathom how they survive in theirs.

Yes, we will never intersect.

Funny though, since even from within separate peripheries we feed into each other’s realities. Even funnier is how everywhere the ones below stand to cater to needs of the ones above. As much as ‘gentlemen’ would like us to believe consumers of commercial sex are rickshawallahs, truck-drivers, durwans, day-labourers, goons and the likes, the fact that the prostitution market itself is so nuanced and classified, is statement enough that there are consumers in every strata of society. This is not a recent paradigm shift or stretch, it’s just a paradigm exposed.

For simplicity’s sake let’s assume that the clientele of the homeless floating prostitutes in the Mirpur and High Court mazaar areas are restricted to aforementioned, local goons, slum-dwellers, rickshaw-pullers, bus and truck-drivers and homeless men in the vicinity, and not people of higher classes who frequent and inhabit the area, but who are the prostitutes frequenting and residing in mid-range apartments and second-tier hotels for?

So if the girls I see standing on street corners of Gulshan-Banani-Baridhara tri-state area only cater to drivers, durwans, rickshaw-pullers, etc. why do they approach SUVs when they pause for even a brief moment? Don’t they know their clientele? And why have I seen ‘those bad type of women’ in 5 star hotels? That 15 yr old girl in a bright red t-shirt, skinny jeans, obnoxious and messy make-up, poorly bleached hair and a severely underweight body, who walked into the lobby with her colleagues – straight into the gluttonous eyes of our fellow brothers – why was she there? Just for the foreigners? What about the two giggly ones in the bathroom of another hotel, fixing their make-up and teasing each other about how many directions each can bend in?

It’s time to fold up and throw away the scaffold. Class can be a shield, but not a mask. So please, do continue to keep your eyes shut, but do not assume you’re invisible as a result.

Comedy of Terrors

A while back, when we were still useless teenagers, a peer shared one of his most relished experiences with a few of us. He and some friends had gone out for a drive pretty late (in the tri-state area) and pulled over when they spotted prostitutes. As expected, one of them approached the car and the stud on the driver’s seat rolled down his window. Expecting high-fives and pats on the back, he told us his friend pulled the woman by her hair and started driving. Yes, while dragging her. And that is not all. Whoever was sitting next to him was throwing eggs at her. Egging prostitutes, as I learned from others later, was apparently a routine practice during midnight fun ‘n frolic ventures for some of our peers.

Yes it is infuriating, ridiculous, stupid, despicable and anything else you are probably (hopefully) muttering. Those kids probably found it amusing to brutally brush against these forbidden females and found it a sufficient scope to power-trip at the expense of their powerlessness. They also thought, while having fun they were teaching ‘bad people involved in bad things a good lesson.’

Of course the kids are to bear a hefty chunk of the brunt of the rage this has invoked, but let’s not forget that this attitude is not innovated, but rather inherited – be it from their parents, extended family or greater society. Everybody is out to play prophet; to denounce and penalize whoever and whatever is contaminating their pristine surroundings in their own little way.

Prostitution is dirty, and we janitors have set out to clean with whatever props we have at hand (read eggs).

What is most frustrating is that while writing pieces like this, there are juvenile moments when the obvious needs to be stated. What makes prostitution “dirty” is the process in which it operates. It is the deceit, the victimization, the abuse, the exploitation, the insecurity, the vulnerability and the exclusion of the prostitutes that accumulate to the filth we so shamelessly take stabs at.

Our society has become a network of cheeky monkeys standing on play … I mean high … moral grounds and slathering dirt on these people and their profession we either pushed them into, or failed to protect them from falling into. Then we defiantly turn around, point, cringe and call it ‘dirty’. A naïve bluff of calling a spade, spade; a perverted bluff of calling the killed, killers.

But I guess it’s ok to treat these ‘maagis’ like dirt. They ain’t no Anarkali or Umrao Jaan. If you can’t use them to make ostentatious statements, wring them and make pretentious judgements.

Zakia*, approximately 20 now, was sent off to the city to find work. After working as domestic help for a while, she could not bear the torture inflicted upon her by her employers at the time, so she fled. She came to seek refuge in the mazaar, and as per ritual, was gang-raped by the local goon-squad (syndicate) and inducted into the world of prostitution. She once went back to her village, but was disowned by her family because of the kind of work she was involved with. The family could not bear that their economic crutch had now morphed into a moral burden. She returned to Dhaka – to the same place and same life.

Tara’s* story is similar. After she and her baby were abandoned by her husband, she was tricked into the trade by a phoney well-wisher who promised to set her up with domestic work. She left her baby with her family back home. The ‘agent’ sold her to a brothel in Faridpur. After a while she ran away from there and went back home, only to face rejection. She then came to Dhaka in search of work, and before she knew it, the woman who was helping her find work, led her to the mazaar area. In a jiffy, she went from being an organized slave to a floating slave.

Theirs are not the only stories. There are many like them pushed into the quicksand of this isolated world, and kept there to make us look clean. It is as if they cold-shouldered us and walked into that life, when in fact it is the double whammies from four different directions – state, which failed to protect them from falling into this profession and cannot make up its mind about whether or not to criminalize or legitimize them¹; family, which cannot bear their economic or moral burdens; extended society, which is too busy acting clean, playing under the sheets and extending concern about ‘society’s moral fabric’; and umbrellas of religious credo, which don’t accept them unless it’s time to act like basket-cases and make charity cases out of them to earn tickets to personal mission fulfilments (read food or money distribution for ‘mannats’) – that keep them quarantined.

It’s how Rokeya* put it, “poolisher dhakkaw khawon laage, mainsher mair o khawon laage baap-maa’r gaali-o khawon laage. Eida ki kono mainsher jaga?” (“The police pushes us, people beat us and parents chide us. Is this a place for humans?”)

It’s like that Mollah Nasiruddin story. Remember the one where the king went hunting one day and ran into Mollah in the forest? Declaring him an ‘opoya,’ (bad omen) the king summoned for Mollah to be subjected to 20 whip-lashes. His hunting trip that day however, turned out to be phenomenal. When the king called in Mollah to apologize, the latter said, “Hujur, you call me an ‘opoya,’ but you see my face and your hunting goes well, but I see yours, and I get a beating. Who is the real ‘opoya’ here?”

Sages and Savages

As I was speaking to these women, at one point I got really overwhelmed and just went numb. They started laughing at me and asked if I was feeling bad. They endearingly called me “shorol” and “bhalo.” I was taken aback by their laughter. I could not decide whether to read that as strength, optimism, conditioning or desensitization. What have become of these women? What will become of them and their children? The M-word and the ch-word drop out of their breath like splinters drop of a termite-infested shelf. The age and stage of consent?

We talk about giving business and development interventions a “human face,” but in that process we neglect to acknowledge, let alone dignify, the ones suffering the most at the hands of inhumanity. Typically risk-averse, we are so busy playing safe; so absorbed in generating multifarious responses to mono-dimensional issues; so caught up with feeling good and being right, we forget about doing right.

“Human face” will not come with discussing Amartya Sen’s Capabilities Approach over a glass of white wine or devising a better, more-inclusive microfinance system that can cut through/penetrate and capture the ones furthest down the socio-economic echelon, nor does it come with reviving 1952 and 1971 sentiments for the purpose of boosting SIM card sales.

In these attempts, we are not giving a “human face,” we are just wearing a human mask. To assume that face, we need to face the faces we forcefully keep buried; to shed our prophet-skins and expose our own faces first.

As I was speaking to these women, I was jostled by a million thoughts coming at me from every direction. I was thinking of what kind of rehabilitation measures would be most effective, how our society needs to step up and seek redemption by assuming responsibility, and an overall need for the revival of humanity. But I was all of a sudden interrupted by Tara*: “deen raat jai koshto houk na ken Apa, chawa khali ektai, ghoom-ta jani shanti moton ghoomaite pari. Raate bela mazaar a ek ghor a amra 250 jon chapachapi koira thaki. Tao ashpasher polapain aisha jalaye. Khali ekta ghor koira den Apa, aar kono chawa nai.” (Come what may throughout the day, sister, all we want is to sleep peacefully at night. 250 stay packed up in one small room in the mazaar. Even then miscreants from the neighbourhood come bug us. Just give us a place to stay Sister, we have no other demands.”)

Jotsna,* who hadn’t uttered a word the whole time smiled as she said, “Manusher jonno koy manusher jibon, kachhe ashle kaachkola.” (“Supposedly people live for one another. Come close, and nothing.”)

(*real stories with altered names)

“Oh Sister when I come knock on your door

You should not treat me like a stranger

……………………………………………..

And is our purpose not the same on this earth?

…………………………………………….

Don’t turn away you’ll create sorrow”

                                                                   -“Oh, Sister,” Bob Dylan

Role Call: “Girly Girl…” “Present, Please!”

I don’t wake up to Sultana’s Dream everyday. I wake up to my own very rose-tinted, idealistic, maybe even immature daydream of a perfect, balanced, free, equal and generally hatred-free world, where disparities are eradicated, and battles are fought in unity.

Wow, that made me queasy the way bubble-gum pop music does. But the good thing is, there are many interruptions to my day-dream. Or should I call them reality-checks?

So what are they?

Many human (usually acknowledged to be men), institutional and socio-cultural sergeants of suppression, actually. The demoralization, exhaustion and dehumanization propelled by the turbines of these stifling underpinnings are as tacky and have become as normal as caveman tactics. Fighting them is a given. They don’t shock me. The tiff with them is old and consistent. In that regard, they are quite sincere

The ones who intrigue me are the ones who devalue themselves. The ones who sadden me are the ones who degrade others of their own. The ones who anger me are the ones who just don’t know how to stay out of the way. The ones who crush me are the ones I have accepted as comrades without asking or being asked. The ones who shock and sabotage me the most, are these serpents in my sorority.

For example just a couple of months back, the research department of a very well established development organization that regards women as principal agents of development, conducted a study among the organization’s female staff members to gauge how successful they have been in making the work environment “gender-friendly.”

At their presentation I felt a little, actually very, sabotaged by one of the findings. A number of women, (I can’t remember the exact statistic, but I remember it being fairly substantial), claimed that the organization should have flexi hours for women.

“…But it does…” I thought to myself.

As it turns out, these respondents actually meant that women should be allowed to work lesser hours, not flexible hours as we understand.

“Why?” if you ask,

“Because we are women. We need/deserve such flexibilities,” they will say.

Just the way, they say, fieldwork for women should be limited to areas of close proximity.

Women apparently, should not be asked to go too far, some (women) say.

Yes it is difficult. Yes women have a lot to juggle physically and mentally, on both the professional and domestic fronts, but this battle is not to press you more than you need to be pressed, but to make sure you are no longer pressed. Equality is not, and has never been a consequence of playing victim or V.I.P. (and in this case, there is no robust delineation between the two). Our claim over equality will remain uncatered to if we can’t prove ourselves equals.

Therefore, my clash with such deliberations is that whether you bat your eyelashes when saying “because we are women,” or bang your fist on the table, you are negating the achievements of many, undermining the struggle of more, and are egging on the devaluation of women’s status with self-sabotage leading to unintentional, but nevertheless substantial self-dehumanization overall.

Beauty in Trash

I often tend to blame the saas-bahu TV serials with their grandiose, trite, and implausible portrayal of domestic harmony for the ‘matha noshto’ of mothers who choke their children, particularly daughters, even if out of fear or concern – a paranoid prevention of the seemingly unchallenged and allegedly ‘all-engulfing’ infiltration of western values through western or even westernized media, that is feared to eat away at our tradition, culture, and cause us (particularly the youth), to get derailed.

I will only emulate the benarasi-wearing-vegetable-chopping “ideal woman” or mother-following-husband-seeking demure single girl, if every time I emote, my face turns blue, green and pink, and there is an appropriate background score. Otherwise, I’ll keep drinking copious amounts of coffee mixed with green tea as per Oprah’s recommendation.

But should these serials bear the brunt of all my rage? At the end of the day, they are only being made because there is a market for them. Unfortunately and surprisingly, the core audience is not just housewives, but young people (including young adults) – both male and female, and even more frighteningly, children.  

The media’s role as I see it, is three-pronged: it informs, often leads (sentiments), and at other times delivers (organically and/or artificially generated) catharsis. When I was growing up, we were referred to as the MTV generation for the most part. As much as the young adults today can be generalized as the facebook/twitter/Godknowswhatelse generation, in our part of the world, a disturbingly large chunk of young’ins also fall under the saas-bahu-drama-chomping generation.

Being the murubbi that I am, I find myself drawing a comparison between teenage girls today and my teenage self. Naeem Mohaiemen talks about Taslima Nasreen before she went all “batty”. He says she “was unique and necessary, in that Bangladesh of that time (“Street Defenders,” The Daily Star).” Yes she was. She brought a 14 year old me and many others to different levels of understanding, opposing and appeasement. I wonder why she isn’t necessary to “kids” today. If products of a time reflect intrinsic demands of that time, then the kind of products we endorse and consume today sing a sorry song. I am apprehensive about the avenues in which we seek cathartic solace.

So in retrospect, at the end of my self-righteous banter against this convenient scapegoat, I see futility in my (misdirected) rage. There is pointlessness in this finger-pointing, just the way there is pointlessness in blaming fairness creams. Simply put, they exist because there is a demand for them. Of course the demand is the result of a warped socio-ideological construct, but the pickle is with the fact that it is largely generated and harnessed by women. I have heard more women complain and criticize dark skin on themselves and other women, than men. Some try to redeem themselves with “shyamla holeo sweet” comments, but really, calling a pretty girl pretty despite her complexion is not the same as finding beauty in trash. 

Bottom line, there is no point in blaming the delivery-boy. The flaw is in the customer’s order. And let’s not try to justify that with arguments of brainwash and other conspiracy theories, or even a sympathetic/pitiful acceptance of the need to find utopian harmony in Tulsi or Parvati’s homes amidst impending chaos in almost every corner of our psycho-physical reality. (Yes, some people do argue that.)

It’s time to take a break from self-righteous intellectual masturbation and hold people accountable. Sometimes it’s not “the Man above” or “the System’s” fault. It’s just us. Yes experience, fear, conditioning, or even victims’-vengeance-syndrome may all be reasons, but they are not adequate excuses. If challenging ‘the System’ was impossible, then there would not be traces of revolt or change in any history.

Get up, stand up! It’s time to fight it right.   

Perverted Pyramid

As much as we see and/or like to believe times have changed, coy, demure and obedient girls float an Aunty’s boat like placenta floats a baby in a womb. And if that girl is one who let go off her aspirations to uphold the Bangladeshi Dream of “sh”-s (shami, shontan, shoshurbari, shongshar), then Bingo! Nothing spells perfection like c-o-m-p-r-o-m-i-s-e.

I have witnessed bride-hunting women ‘reject’ girls who have lost their fathers on grounds that “struggle kore boro howa, challu/oversmart hobe.” This “struggle kore boro howa” phrase is also used to blacklist small-town girls who have moved to the city and “made it.” They are, “ektu onnorokom.” Had they not made it, they would be alright. Their failure would testify to their good character. “Bechari, khub bhalo toh, parlona.” But alas! Their success becomes their kryptonite.

Then there are the girls from the upper echelon, who are plagued by their own, or their families’ reputation consciousness and multiple paranoia. Their struggle, where there is one, is nuanced on a different level. Their affluence becomes their kryptonite. Their need/want for freedom often renders them to greedy princesses. A generally protective upbringing doesn’t help their cause either. Need/hardship sometimes becomes a catalyst for liberation by warranting a lot of exposure and toughening, and since at the outset they have none, the ‘feisty’ ones are just looked at as ungrateful trouble-makers. 

Every class bears with it hoards of assumptions. Though at the end of the day every woman struggles for the same end, their rationale and means of attaining that end vary. Due to this difference and due to assumptions associated with unfamiliarity, unity among women often gets the short end of the stick. Every woman’s struggle is nuanced and unfortunately estrangement and moral policing (by women themselves) within each class downplay their overall battle and cause.

Besides the socio-economic class, women have themselves created another class system of their own, constituting gung-ho gals (quite self-explanatory), chicken chicks (mentally weak) and bimbo babes (intellectually bleak). Allotment in each of the categories is often arbitrary and presumptuous, therefore leading to existential clashes. For example, a woman who has declared a pursuit of self-actualization may raise an eyebrow at the woman who works without passion. The latter in turn, may deem self-actualization to be nothing but flair. But such clashes are expected at the face of concentric spheres of wishful thinking hinged upon simultaneous, but incompatible realms of expectations. Everyone is out to feel good, to hold on to the scrap of unadulterated identity they may have endowed upon themselves.

Because We Are Women   

Women paralyze women.

That is not to say patriarchy has subsided, but reducing an opponent to a punching bag or pinning cushion by not holding other proponents accountable is not only unfair, but also self-destructive. Don’t feel betrayed by my acknowledgement of the many men who believe in and work for women’s rights harder than a lot of women do. Overtly demonizing a kind, and over-assertion of a portion of a truth dilutes its entirety, and truth by tenacity can be a dangerous by-product of self-sabotage.

That patriarchy is intricately embedded in foundations of our functioning is a given, but this is not a valid excuse for letting things slide. And it is most definitely not a legitimate scapegoat for harbouring gag and victimizing others of your kind with the excuse of being a victim. ‘Oppressed Turns Oppressor’ stories are now really cheesy, boring, and not to mention, lame.

In a nutshell, the root of my bitterness is this: women’s struggle is that of attaining equality. It is a petition for rights, not a requisition for privileges. The claim over rights should not be based on the presumed benevolence of a generous giver. It’s not anyone’s to give. The question is why has it been taken away? The bigger question is, why are YOU allowing it?

“Let’s get together and feel alright.” We are not in this rink for the consolation prize; we are here to co-host the show. We are not squabbling over wheelchairs or crowns, we are battling for air.  That becomes difficult if some of our assumed comrades turn on us. In the struggle for existential validity and due dignity, there is no room for undue glorification or self-inflicted weakening. The more some women uphold gaps, the more others will fall through them. The aim is to demand our rights, not request for them; to rise in victory, and not fall prey to cannibalism of the soul (-sisters).  

Battles are won in unity.  The unison comes with demand, the hiccup with requests and the fall with animosity. Maybe I am taunted by immature irrationality, but as a part of this sorority, I am entitled to hold you accountable with questions, screams and tears.

We are all in this together…because we are women…

Sexual abuse of children is a harsh reality, which is more common that realized. Some surveys say at least 1 out of 5 adult women and 1 out of 10 adult men report having been sexually abused in their childhood. Perpetrators of such abuse are usually familiar faces (members of family/extended family, neighbours, teachers, etc.), with some authority over the child, who can exert power over them.

The number of unreported instances is far greater, because the children are afraid to tell anyone what has happened either because they are unable to fully grasp what has happened, or due to a fear of being disbelieved and reprimanded; and the legal procedure for validating such an episode is difficult. In Bangladesh, the number of reported cases is even lower since talking about sex is generally a social taboo. Even if parents are aware of abuse, they shy away from taking legal action in fear of risking the reputation of the family and the child.

The long-term emotional and psychological damage caused by sexual abuse can be devastating to a child. No child is psychologically prepared to cope with repeated sexual stimulation. Even an infant with no concept or awareness of sexuality or sexual development, will develop problems resulting from the inability to cope with the over-stimulation.

There is also a considerable overlap between physical, emotional and sexual abuse, and children who are subject to one form of abuse are significantly more likely to suffer other forms of abuse (Briere and Runtz 1990; Bifulco et al. 1991; Mullen et al. 1996; Fergusson et al. 1997; Fleming et al. 1997). Mullen and colleagues (1996) found that women with histories of sexual abuse as children, have had over five times the rate of physical abuse, and were three times less likely to also report emotional deprivation.

In Bangladesh the narrower definition of childhood (up to 14 or 16 years of age depending on the law), combined with gender discrimination has a negative impact on the female child, particularly when she reaches puberty and is more likely to become vulnerable to sexual abuse and exploitation.[1] It should be noted that most adolescents are also children (according to UNICEF and WHO definitions an adolescent is between 10 and 19 years of age).

Most adults who sexually molest children are considered to have paedophilia. “An adult who engages in sexual activity with a child is performing a criminal and immoral act that never can be considered normal or socially acceptable behaviour.” [2] Paedophilia is categorized in the DSM-IV as one of several paraphiliac (sexually deviated) mental disorders.  A rather normative description by DSM-IV regarding features of a paraphilia are “recurrent, intense, sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges or behaviours that generally involve non-human subjects, the suffering or humiliation of oneself or one’s partner, or children or other non-consenting persons.”[3]

According to the DSM-IV definition, paedophilia involves sexual activity by an adult with a prepubescent child. Preference of age, often varies with gender. For example, some individuals prefer females, usually 8- to 10-year-olds, while those attracted to males usually prefer slightly older children, and of course some prefer both sexes. Paedophiliac activity, as stated above, may involve undressing and looking at a child or may involve more direct physical sexual acts. In addition, individuals with paedophilia often go to great lengths to obtain photos, films or pornographic publications that focus on sex with children. The fact that society has such ‘revelries’ as options is another topic altogether.

These individuals commonly explain their activities with excuses or rationalizations that the activities have “educational value” for the child, that the child feels “sexual pleasure” from the activities or that the child was “sexually provocative.” However, child psychiatrists and other child development experts maintain that children are incapable of offering informed consent to sex with an adult. Furthermore, since paedophiliac acts harm the child, psychiatrists condemn publications or organizations that seek to promote or normalize sex between adults and children.

In Bangladesh, as is the case across South Asia, sexual abuse and exploitation are amongst the most prevalent types of violence that affect girls throughout her childhood and adolescence. Efforts to protect children from sexual harassment result in girls being isolated at home or married at an early age. Some young brides are eventually abandoned and forced into prostitution. Early marriage reflects the lack of acknowledgement of a period of adolescence and the belief that puberty is a marker of adulthood.

It is difficult to say whether the lack of exploration of sexually abused married children is due to negligence or because this topic entails excursions of whole new dynamics given that our society generally has a way of validating and legitimizing all things within a marriage.

As Rachel Kabir notes in a UNICEF report, there is a large age gap between married girls and their husbands. This sparks unequal power relations between the husband and wife, puts the girl at greater risk of sexual abuse and exploitation because she is unlikely to be able to choose when and if she wants sex.[4]

 In contravention of the law, early marriage of girls continues to be prevalent in many parts of Bangladesh and this too can be seen as a form of child sexual abuse. While less has been documented about the vulnerability of boys to sexual abuse and exploitation and its impact on their development, feedback from consultations held with boys and anecdotal evidence reveals that they too suffer in silence.

Girls and boys with disabilities, in institutions outside parental care and refugee children (especially girls) are at risk of sexual abuse and exploitation. Boys and especially girls are at risk of sexual abuse and exploitation in the workplace from both employers and coworkers. Girls are also at risk while travelling to and from work. “Street children,” who have no guardians and must fend for themselves are at greatest risk of both sexual abuse and exploitation by clients, mastans, police and others.

The difficulty of accessing justice is a further impediment to victims of sexual abuse and exploitation. According to a 1996 survey of 2,500 rural and urban households conducted by TIB, more than 96% of respondents said they could not get help from the police without money or influence and 89% said that quick and just settlement from the courts was impossible without bribes and influence.

For the above reasons, it is rare that parents will support their children to report such violations and seek prosecution of the offender. Rather, the victim her or himself may be blamed and cast out from the family. The perpetrator is also likely to put pressure on the victim and his/her family to withdraw a case in the rare case that it is filed.

Breaking the Silence (an NGO devoted to this cause) members said it is impossible to share a statistic on the extent of child sexual abuse in Bangladesh. Of 50 case studies of sexually abused children equally from urban and rural areas, literate and illiterate, Breaking the Silence found that principal perpetrators to be family members and friends of the family. A teacher and a tutor were identified as abusers as well. The study found that girls and boys between 10 and 14 years are equally vulnerable to abuse, however, in most cases boys become ‘safe’ when they are physically strong enough to defend themselves.

In one case in the Breaking the Silence report, a boy was raped by a distant relative when taking his family’s cows out for grazing. Upon returning home, he told his mother that he would no longer take the cattle out for grazing and when his mother asked why, he told her what had happened. Later that evening, his father was informed. They confronted the abuser and demanded an apology. Although the parents decided not to complain to the village elders, it was the only case amongst the 50 studies where the abused child fought back.

In a recent study on the state of children’s rights in Bangladesh, the Shishu Adhikar Sangjog wrote the following with regard to child sexual abuse:

“Bangladeshi culture sees children as largely passive, to be regulated and controlled by the adults around them. The understanding and awareness of child rights is almost non-existent, among wider society. Corporal punishment is widely practiced and accepted, and adult power over children is absolute. This fact, in combination with social morals which emphasize the need to cover up any source of “shame” e.g. sexual abuse, mean that children who are caught in situations of physical or mental abuse will be coerced into silence by not only the abusing adults, but also those who are supposed to be their protectors e.g. parents. As incidents that might involve public condemnation have an impact on other family members as well as the victim, it increases the pressure to cover up such violations. In most cases, the abusers are known adults, not strangers, and this heightens the sense of guilt, shame, betrayal and trauma experienced by their victims. In cases of incest or rape by family members, this is probably at its worst.”

There are no complete figures for the prevalence of children with disabilities, however, according to BBS 1996 figures, 12.6% of children up to 14 years of age have disabilities which range from mild to serious. Children with disabilities are frequently kept isolated and concealed which puts them at greater risk of sexual abuse. Such children, especially those with more serious disabilities, may not be able to understand and/or communicate what is happening to them. Society’s discriminatory and negative attitudes towards children with disabilities make such children easy victims of sexual abuse. Moreover, a survey of parents and family members of 95 children with disabilities revealed that some mothers did not believe their child could be sexually abused and were not taking steps to protect the child.

While sexual abuse undoubtedly takes place in institutions, there is not a lot of primary information about sexual abuse of girls and boys in institutions, including schools, shelter homes, Vagrants’ Homes and correctional centers.

Boys consulted about sexual abuse in and boys engaged in street-based prostitution said that those who are sent to residential madrassahs are vulnerable to sexual abuse and that teachers are the main perpetrators of abuse. Significant underreporting of sexual abuse of boys by both women and men is believed to occur due gender steoreotyping, social denial, minimization of male victimization, and the relative lack of research on sexual abuse of boys. Sexual victimization of boys by their mothers or other female relatives is especially rarely researched or reported.

Sexual abuse of girls by their mothers, and other related and/or unrelated adult females is beginning to be researched and reported despite the highly taboo nature of female-female child sex abuse.

Between cultural relativists and cultural universalists there is no consensus whether and which among different past or present cultural practices in Western or non-Western societies can be defined as abusing either general universalistic human rights or special universalistic rights of minors. As a result, there is no generally accepted definition which of them can be listed as child sexual abuse. This, coupled with the shame and stigma of sexual abuse, and the tendency to blame both the child victims and survivors rather than bring the perpetrator to justice lead to silence and cover-up.