“]

Rumana Monzur Hema [Photo credit: UBC

[This article was published in The Forum magazine of the The Daily Star, July 2011 issue]

When Zobaida Nasreen called me up to tell me what had happened to Rumana, I was on a busy street in Dhanmondi and I thought I had heard her wrong. I kept asking her to repeat. She must be talking about someone else, I thought.
But she wasn’t.

It was Rumana Monzur Hema, one of my childhood friends with whom I had intermittent interactions after we grew up and finally reunited last year when her daughter was admitted to the same school as my son.

When I heard about what her husband did to her I was in disbelief and shock.

We had looked up to her as the girl who always came out either first or second in her class. She had come out First in her Masters finals from the International Relations department of Dhaka University and had started teaching right away. Last year she was elated when she won a scholarship to the University of British Columbia. She had been unsure whether to take her four-year-old daughter Anushe with her. In the end she decided to leave her daughter with her mother.

She never discussed what was going on between Sumon and her. He was a graduate engineer who was involved in some business, that’s all we knew.

And that’s why the brutality of the story along with the identity of the victim seemed overwhelmingly unbelievable.

Eyes gouged out. Nose bitten off. Lip bitten off. Dragged by the hair and attempted to be strangled. Saved by maids with an extra key to the room. Of course we presume that if a so-called ‘emancipated’ woman is threatened with abuse, she would have the support mechanism to walk out of that marriage, that she would not care what her family and relatives or those meddlesome people in our society say, that if she is financially independent she did not have to worry about her and her children’s future.

All those assumptions and presumptions fell apart when we heard the sadistic brutality of what happened in Rumana’s room on June 5, 2011.

I couldn’t understand why someone like Rumana, with whom I had a discussion about Barbie dolls and feminism on her daughter’s birthday last year, had put up with assaults from her own husband for so long. Now I look at those birthday photos and shiver when I see the face of Sumon behind his daughter and all the other children, knowing what was going on behind the scenes.

Then, as the media discussions spilled out into the open, I slowly began to realise why Rumana had still not left the monster that was her husband for so very long.

The reasons are visible on Facebook, on the blogs, in the distasteful innuendos poured out of the inks of journalists’ pens, in the subject lines of emails filling up my inbox through various mailing lists and as mass spam to Rumana’s Dhaka University colleagues.

The realisation surprisingly also came from what was said from between the lines of the ‘character certificate statements’ from her well-meaning friends from British Columbia, Canada.

Sumon’s fraternity group
When the story first broke, the media reported the facts of the attack, the brutality and the family’s reaction and her educational and family background. But as soon as Sumon ‘briefed’ the press about what he described as ‘the torture done on him’, some in the media turned around and started giving frustratingly large spaces to allegations made by Sumon about how he had been ‘wronged’. And of course the Internet, apart from its milieu of advantages also provided an excellent platform, through Facebook, for the one too many insecure misogynists, very much like Sumon, to unleash their anger at the loss of control over ‘their’ women through a much-feared word called ‘emancipation’.

Some bloggers aired their concern about how everyone was so ‘one-sided’ about the incident. There is a reason behind everything that takes place, someone said in an e-group. Can anyone honestly say that they have never done anything wrong in their lives, asked another commenter in a discussion group? Discussions revolved around how ‘too much freedom’ for women always ended up in such tragedies and that ‘western dresses and attitudes’ always caused problems for women. Women needed to maintain their ‘modesty’, some pointed out. And if they didn’t, the men should not be blamed for going around on a rampage of harassment, acid attack, rape and domestic violence. Another spammer who claimed to know Rumana ‘very well’ sent a mass-mail to many university teachers complaining about some women teachers, mainly those who teach feminist studies, at the university, and threatened that “either the women-kind will preserve our values or we man-kind will start exercising our rights” and asked that “every man-kind should come forward and let Sayed talk openly”. The anonymous hate-mailer was trying to form a misogynists’ solidarity group, a group that many men were openly happy to join.

The press conference where Rumana bravely faced the media to demand justice for herself and her family invited some members of this ‘solidarity’ group. One TV journalist walked off in a huff muttering, loudly enough for everyone to hear, that these kinds of incidents don’t just occur out of the blue and there must be more to this. Another, whose appetite for gossip needed to be whet, asked Rumana what she had to say about the allegations of extra-marital affair made by her husband. That’s right Mr Journalist — it’s so much more important to write about the gossip that make your papers sell than to write about a brutal crime that has blinded a woman forever.

The “good girl”, “pobitro bondhon” and why Rumanas really stay
And it was not only the misogynists but Rumana’s well-meaning friends from British Columbia who sent a disturbing ‘character certificate’ about Rumana. Disturbing not because of what it said but because of what the underlying assumptions were. What it said was that they were extremely impressed with the way Rumana was leading her life in Canada, which included saying her prayers five times a day, eating halal food and opening the door with her head covered among other things. One friend said, “Rumana is a pious woman.” Another pointed out that she “was surrounded by her female friends all the time.” Another ‘testified’ on her “flawless reputation”.

So she was a wonderful person and did not ‘deserve’ to be attacked was the argument they were implicitly making.

But what if she had not been the embodiment of what some believe is ‘good’, would she then have ‘deserved’ to be tortured by her husband? Are women who deviate from the norm not deserving of the safety and security as a human being?

As long as we continue to use the ‘good’, ‘pious’ and ‘modest’ arguments to certify women, it will cripple them into staying in abusive relationships and marriages. As long as divorce remains a scandal-word, even ‘emancipated’ women like Rumana will hide from their family and friends what they are going through. As long as ‘character certificates’ are needed to debunk justification of attacks on women, we will only let the misogynists’ fraternity group grow and defend their agenda, their so-called ‘right’ to control, injure and kill women.

Photo: SK ENAMUL HAQ

The ‘holy’ union that ends in blood
According to Ain O Salish Kendra, in the period of January to March 2011 there were already 104 reported cases of domestic violence throughout the country. There were 116 dowry-related attacks during this time (which included those perpetrated by husbands and/or in-laws), 18 acid attacks (some by close partners), and seven fatwa-related violence (some on the pretext of extra-marital affair by a woman). In 2010, out of the 397 cases of domestic violence, 225 women were killed by their husbands. Out of the 395 reported dowry-related violence cases, 224 were killed by their husbands and/or in-laws and 18 took their own lives after torture. Bangladesh ranks one of the highest in the world with respect to violence against women and, in terms of domestic violence, 50-70% of women in the country report being abused by their male partners.

The Domestic Violence (Resistance and Protection) Bill-2010 was passed recently but perhaps it’s time to take a look at how its implementation is going to be ensured. Also, a more holistic approach needs to be taken to prevent domestic violence and all other violence against women. Laws are inadequate where the society plays such a big part in ‘allowing’ violence against women to take place until it’s too late.

***

Rumana stayed because she was afraid of Sumon’s revenge on her and her child.

She stayed because people would tell her to forgive Sumon, they would tell her that marriage was a pobitro bondhon (‘holy union’) and women had to sacrifice a lot of things to maintain that holy union.
She stayed because some people would not believe she was being physically abused.
She stayed because there had been so much gossip about divorced, single women, she did not want to be part of that gossip and bring ‘shame’ to her family.
She stayed because people would call her a ‘bad mother’ who did not think of the trauma to her child for being from a ‘broken’ home.
She stayed because Sumon would splatter the media with tall tales about her and with all parts of her body intact they would write about her to their hearts’ content and bring her teaching career to ‘shame’ and become a source of gossip for her students.
It is not only Sumon, but all of us who are part of her social fabric that are accomplice to this and the thousands of other violence against women by their husbands and their families every day.

Hana Shams Ahmed is a member of Drishtipat Writers’ Collective. She can be reached at hana@drishtipat.org

Andrea Carmen, Director, International Indian Treaty Council speaking at a rally for the implementation of the 1997 CHT Accord outside the United Nations during the 10th session of the UN Permanent Forum. Photo by: Ben Powless

The Bangladesh government’s continued failure to protect its indigenous peoples has forced them to seek international help. 

Hana Shams Ahmed

[This article was published in the Web Exclusive of Himal Southasian on 15 June, 2011 and shorter version for Himal magazine was published in its July, 2011 issue]

This year, Bangladesh was a subject of heated discussion at the tenth session, held between 16-27 May, of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII). The starting point was a report commissioned by the Permanent Forum.  Written by former member of the Permanent Forum Lars-Anders Baer, who went to Bangladesh last year as a Special Rapporteur, the report entitled ‘Study on the status of implementation of the Chittagong Hill Tracts Accord of 1997’ received statements of solidarity from the delegates.

The Permanent Forum, established in July 2000 by the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), is a high-level advisory body that deals with indigenous issues related to economic and social development, culture, environment, education, health and human rights. This is the first UN Forum where indigenous peoples directly represent their own interests. It consists of 16 members, half of whom are nominated by the government and the other half by the indigenous peoples, who advise and report directly to the ECOSOC. It reports and makes recommendations to the ECOSOC, raises awareness and promotes coordination of activities relating to indigenous peoples within the UN system, and prepares and disseminates information on indigenous issues. The members meet once each year for ten working days. Governments, UN bodies and agencies, intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations, and organisations of indigenous peoples participate as observers. In 2010, at the ninth session of the Forum, Chakma Raja Devasish Roy was selected, from the Asia region, as one of the 16 indigenous expert members for the period of 2011-2013.

From the very beginning, indigenous peoples’ representatives from Bangladesh have been participating at the Permanent Forum sessions. However, this is the first time that the 1997 CHT accord has been a focus of deliberation and dedicated discussion. After the presentation by Special Rapporteur Baer, observer countries, international human rights organisations, including Amnesty International and International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA), and other national and international human rights organisations voiced their support to the recommendations proposed by the study and urged the government of Bangladesh to accelerate its efforts in implementing the CHT Accord.

Political concoction

Although representatives of the Bangladesh government, including the state minister for CHT affairs, and other indigenous members of the parliament were scheduled to participate in the Forum discussion, they cancelled at the last moment, and Iqbal Ahmed, the First Secretary of the Bangladesh mission to the UN, responded to the report. The thrust of Ahmed’s argument was that there were ‘no indigenous peoples in Bangladesh’ and as such the implementation of the Accord should not have been a topic for the Forum to discuss. He then went on to discuss the structural work that had so far been done by the government, including setting up of the Regional Council, the Hill Districts Councils, the Land Commission and the National Committee for Implementation of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) Peace Accord. He concluded by saying:

This statement has been delivered for better understanding of everyone present here on the issue which is clearly ‘non-indigenous’ in nature.  This effort, hence, should not be misconstrued as a recognition of the authority of the Forum to discuss the issue of CHT affairs.  We urge upon the Forum to dedicate its valuable time to discuss issues related to millions of indigenous people all over the world and not waste time on issues politically concocted by some enthusiastic quarters with questionable motives.

Despite one of the members of the Forum, Raja Devasish Roy, being an indigenous person from Bangladesh, it was rather surprising for the first secretary to say that there were no indigenous peoples in the country. Of course this argument has been used before. Although both Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia have used the word ‘adivasi’ (indigenous) in their commemorative statements, and many older government laws use the phrase ‘indigenous hill-men’, the present government has categorically refused to recognise the existence of indigenous peoples in the national and international platforms. In April 2010, Foreign Minister, Dipu Moni, following a declaration made earlier by the Bangladesh National Party (BNP)-led government, stated that Bangladesh did not have any indigenous population. The Ministry for CHT Affairs also reflected this denial on a memo, in which it instructed district-level officials to stop using the terms ‘adivasi’ or ‘indigenous’ in government documents; replacing the terms with the word ‘upajati’ (sub-ethnicity) instead.

Although in their election manifesto, 2008, the Awami League (AL), which now leads the government, had promised to implement the 1997 CHT Accord in full, the Chittagong Hill Tracts continue to be a militarized area, where arson attacks against the indigenous people are frequent. The security forces including the army, police and the Border Guards Bangladesh (BGB), are alleged to be covert supporters of these attacks. In the face of such hostility by a government that was initially seen as secular and minority-friendly, the next option for the indigenous population has been to take their issues to the international community through the UN Permanent Forum.

In response to the government’s disavowal of the existence of indigenous peoples in Bangladesh, indigenous expert member Roy said:

It is important to bear in mind the asymmetry in the status of the two parties to an accord: the state party and the non-state party. If the state reneges on its promises, what can the non-state party do but approach the United Nations? The Permanent Forum is mandated to deal with issues of indigenous peoples, irrespective of terms the governments use to refer to their indigenous peoples: ‘tribes’ or ‘ethnic minorities’ or otherwise.

Military bias

The first secretary in his statement had objected to two specific recommendations Special Rapporteur Baer made in his report, calling them ‘out of context’. Both of the recommendations were in regards to the UN peacekeeping forces from Bangladesh. While section 56 of the study recommended that the Department of Peacekeeping Operations of the UN Secretariat (UNPKO) ‘develop a mechanism to strictly monitor and screen the human rights records of national army personnel prior to allowing them to participate in peacekeeping operations under the auspices of the United Nations’, section 58(a) recommended that it also ‘prevent human rights violators and alleged human rights violators within the security forces of Bangladesh from participating in international peacekeeping activities under the auspices of the United Nations’. Bangladesh has been sending troops as part of the UN Peacekeeping Operations since 1988 (the year the UNPKO won the Nobel Peace Prize) and is currently the top Troop Contributing Country (TCC). It has participated in 46 UN peacekeeping missions in 32 countries with approximately 100,000 uniformed personnel. This has been lauded both abroad and at home, and has been a source of considerable pride for the military, the state and citizens.

At the same time, however, indigenous peoples in CHT continue to bring allegations against the Bangladesh Army of its biased stance and actions against them, and of abetting or tolerating human rights violations in the area. For example, in February 2010, settlers burned more than 400 homes of indigenous people in villages across Baghaihat, Rangamati to the ground. The army personnel, who were present in the area in the Baghaihat zone, are accused to have done nothing to stop the arsonists and working instead as a ‘shield’ to protect the settlers. Non-cooperation from the government meant that no independent investigations were conducted into this case. Apart from biased views and actions, the army is also accused of displacing indigenous people from their lands to increase requisitioned land for military garrisons in the CHT.

In the CHT Accord of 1997, an agreement to dismantle all temporary military camps, apart from the six designated cantonments, from the area was reached. A promise to form a functioning Land Commission, which would resolve all land disputes, was also made. However, the present Land Commission and its Chairman’s blatant ‘pro-Bengali’ bias, combined with the continued racial and communal bias displayed by the Bangladesh government and regional administration has meant that the leaders of the indigenous peoples have run out of hope that the Accord will ever be implemented.

Time too is running out for the implementation of the Accord during the tenure of the present AL-led government. The Permanent Forum has provided the Jumma (collective name for the indigenous hill peoples in the CHT) with a platform to reach out to indigenous peoples from different parts of the world and put pressure on the government to implement the accord. However, first, the Government of Bangladesh should recognise that it is its own failure that it could not take concrete steps to execute the clauses of the fourteen-year-old accord and that it could not alter its continued anti-indigenous peoples attitude – which led to the internationalisation of the issue in the first place. Overused statements containing phrases like ‘politically concocted’ will not succeed in shifting the blame.

Hana Shams Ahmed is a member of the Drishtipat Writers’ Collective. She can be reached at hana@drishtipat.org

Photo: Amirul Rajiv

Hana Shams Ahmed
[This article was published in the 20th Anniversary special issue of The Daily Star in March 2011]

Sometimes a comment from a perfect stranger can have a profound effect on a person’s life. When I was about 13 years old one such comment was made over the phone to my parents. The caller was anonymous and told my father that if I continued to wear ‘western’ clothes in public I would be stripped of my clothes and paraded naked in public. When my mother told me about this caller, her tone never indicated that this was a wrong being done to me, that I should not let something like this bother me, and that they would protect me from such harassment. My father’s complete silence on the matter spoke louder than words. I remember having felt that I had brought shame to my family and my mother followed up by becoming more vigilant about the way I dressed outside. As part of the bhodro middle class, I was powerless to resist at that age. That was almost two decades ago.

Things have changed now. Women in general have more freedom, there is greater social awareness of sexual harassment, especially after the Jahangirnagar University movement and subsequent actions and public revelations of sexual predations of many university teachers, and greater media exposure of such incidents. One of the biggest achievements came when the High Court in May 2009 issued a set of guidelines defining sexual harassment to prevent it at workplaces, educational institutions and public places.

Unfortunately, despite all these progresses, 2010 saw some of the most violent crimes perpetrated by men, labeled in the media sometimes as ‘eve-teasers’ and sometimes as ‘stalkers’. Murder, acid attack, suicide, violence on parents and other family members, abduction, rape, gang rape and every other kind of violence took place on girls and women of all ages and backgrounds.

Odhikar reveals the findings of a research on violence against women in Bangladesh. The research was based on 3000 incidents of human rights violations in 61 districts from 2006 to 2009. The study found that rape was the most frequent crime against women, which accounted for 31 percent of incidents of human rights violations, followed by murder (25 percent), acid throwing (15 percent), suicide (12 percent), physical torture (eight percent) and attempt to rape (seven percent). It added that 50 percent of the rape victims were aged below 15 and 59 percent of the girls under 15 years have become victims of attempt to rape . When the data for 2010 becomes available, I fear the picture painted will be even worse.

The incidents were so frequent and so alarming that even the Prime Minister expressed her concern. But her advice for fighting sexual harassment and analysis of the causes behind it turned out to be the women’s rights activists’ worst nightmare.

The PM was handing out awards on Begum Rokeya Day at the Osmani Memorial Auditorium on 9 December 2010. The title of Rahnuma Ahmed’s article published on the same day for Begum Rokeya’s birth anniversary (“Begum Rokeya is probably turning in her grave” ) kept repeating over and over in my head when I thought about the PM’s comments about how to tackle stalkers in our society.

“Why will you choose such an extreme course [suicide]? You must learn self-defence,” she said at a function marking the distribution of Begum Rokeya Award 2010 at the Osmani Memorial Auditorium in the city.

She blasted a section of women for showing extreme attitude in choosing their attires and also in their demeanor.

“One section of women wears too small clothes while another section covers their whole body, even their face and eyes… both are unacceptable. We’ve to maintain our culture and tradition,” she said.

Addressing the function, the prime minister said it seems that the so-called ultra-modern women “don’t bother to keep their modesty.”

Criticising the other section for covering their whole body with clothes in the name of religion, she said: “Our religion never told us to do so.”

The prime minister said she has been doing everything keeping to the local traditions and also of Islam. “I never encountered any obstacles.”

She also asked the women to strive to realise their rights as rights are never given automatically and hardly realised by mere placing of demands.

It’s great for women to learn self-defence or fencing, or cricket or any kind of sport for that matter. But one should not have to learn something because the state is unable to protect the individual from violence. It is an indication that the redress for such violence is not deterring further such attacks. It’s akin to asking a home owner to put electrified bars around a house to protect it from robbers. If the state mechanism were working properly, one would not have to have taken such extreme measures to protect oneself.

The PM also talked about women who “show extreme attitude in choosing her attires and also in her demeanor”.

Again, the responsibility of sexual harassment seems to have been put on the women, the victim a classic male attitude. When men talk about “extreme attitude” they usually refer to women who exude extreme confidence, something that is easily accepted in men but is seen as arrogance in women. And women must not show such attitude otherwise men feel threatened and start going on a rampage of sexual harassment to protect their ‘territory’ and their ego.

Does the PM also mean that some women are starting to show a kind of demeanor that is only expected from men? Isn’t it contrary to what she should be advising women, who look up to her for leadership and guidance?

Even if some women have a problem with “extreme attitude”, how is that related to sexual harassment? Is a woman ‘inviting’ sexual harassment by not conforming to what is expected of her? Isn’t it somewhat of a Stone Age generation expectation from women to conform to ‘cultural’ and ‘social’ norms?

As our leader, shouldn’t the PM be telling us to break those norms? Didn’t Begum Rokeya already address this issue of breaking gender stereotypes in her story of role reversal, ‘Sultana’s Dream’?

The memory of Badhon’s public stripping and torture on a new year’s eve while on-duty police officers became bystanders is still raw in our memory. Even the fiercest Jet Li-like karate chop could not have saved her that day. That particular incident also highlighted the patriarchy and victim-blaming attitude of our society. What was she doing out so late at night? Why did she go there in the first place? What was she wearing?

The double standards that our society has created go all the way up and down the echelon. Men are given the right to abuse and harass women by the collective eyes on the women’s presentation of herself. By saying that women should dress in a certain way and behave in a certain manner, the PM is simply adding to the already existing negative propaganda of the ‘bad woman’ who solicits sexual harassment.

In addition, the PM repeats the ‘bad woman’ rhetoric once again with the use of the term ‘ultra-modern woman’. What is the definition of an ultra-modern woman? And what does too few clothes or too much clothes by anyone’s standards have to do with sexual harassment?

Shifting the debate towards changing the ‘behaviour’ or attire of women by itself is a form of psychological violence on women. And in a patriarchal, conservative society, it is easy for both men and women to perpetrate such violence on victims of sexual harassment. No one speaking in public should hand over such powerful weapons to stalkers and harassers.

Or else, year 2011 will be a repeat of year 2010.

Sexual harassment and related etymology
Although the media did a good job of regularly monitoring sexual harassment, the etymology used to describe it betrayed ingrained and callous patriarchy. For months the media kept on reporting about serious sexual harassment cases under the label of ‘eve-teasing’.
Photo: Amirul Rajiv

The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary online defines ‘teasing’ as “to laugh at somebody and make jokes about them, either in a friendly way or in order to annoy or embarrass them” and “to make somebody sexually excited, especially when you do not intend to have sex with them”.

Clearly, neither of these two terms is in any way appropriate to describe the kind of unacceptable violence that was being described in the news reports. The harassers are neither making jokes of their victims in a friendly way nor is either party seducing the other in a consensual way. The 81 percent of the women population becoming victims to such acts are hardly a tease .

Using the term ‘teasing’ was a way of trivialising this horrible form of violence.

As if not being happy that the term ‘eve teasing’ was getting such a bashing from women rights activists , our elite force of crime fighters came up with an even more innovative, and objectionable, term to further trivialise sexual harassment, by code-naming its anti-stalking campaign, “Operation Romeo Hunt”. To label such criminals ‘Romeos’ is further evidence that the male-dominated law enforcement agencies and policy makers are only treating such violence as insignificant irritations, not the serious crimes that they are.

Sexual harassment is a serious crime with far-reaching consequences. The consequences are not just the immediate embarrassment or fear of something short term. Sexual harassment is a way to control women’s public participation and can cripple or confine a woman’s freedom to live a normal life and her sexuality. Sexual harassment is a way to ensure that a woman’s role is restricted to the family and reproductive spheres. This control is achieved through moral codes of conduct for women, hence the whole “attitude and clothing” discussion. The assertion of moral superiority is nothing but a patriarchal, male strategy.

Sexual harassment reached pandemic levels in recent times. It is difficult to say whether the harassment has actually increased in real terms or that its reportage increased due to an increase in media awareness as a response from women’s rights activists. In any case, it is a positive sign that some action seems to be taken against the perpetrator and it is no longer a silent burden over a woman’s life cutting her off from public participation and causing her to live with shame and stigma. At the same time the public discourse does not seem to recognise the seriousness of the issue, bringing the blame back on the woman and trivialising the very act by those responsible actors of the state institution.

A truly secular state is a necessary condition to ensure women’s human rights and secularism has to be present at all levels. If the state fails to do so then boasting of having successful women leaders will just be banging on an empty drum. Patriarchy does not only use men as instruments, it can be so omnipresent in the whole psyche of the nation that in our case, it is sometimes delivered through the hands of our respected women leaders.

The writer is a member of the Drishtipat Writers’ Collective (www. drishtipat.org/dpwriters) and can be reached at hana@drishtipat.org.

Hana Shams Ahmed
[This paper was presented at a consultation with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women Ms. Rashida Manjoo. The consultation was arranged by the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD) and Women's Aid Organization (WAO) in Kuala Lumpur in January, 2011.]

Introduction

To understand the discrimination faced by indigenous women in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), it is very important to understand the geopolitical background of the CHT in the larger context of the Bangali Muslim majority of Bangladesh. Pahari women are among the most marginalized and vulnerable groups of people in Bangladeshi society. They live as quadruple minorities under present social and political institutions. In a patriarchal and male-dominated society, they are a gender minority. In a Muslim-dominated country they are a religious minority. In a nationalist, Bangali-dominated society they are an ethnic minority. Within their own patriarchal community they face marginalization, exploitation, and increasingly, violence. A strong political movement exists to resist these multiple marginalization, but it has not been able to create enough resonance within the wider political structure.

This paper looks at the various sources of discrimination and violence faced by the indigenous women living in the CHT and looks at how and why the indifference from the state and the majority civil society further detaches them from the mainstream women’s movement in Bangladesh. Society and the infusion of religion into societal norms already play a huge role in the discrimination and marginalization of the majority Bangali women. In a Muslim majority Bangali society, indigenous women have a further factor of violence against them. Discriminatory family laws, along with discriminatory national laws, add a new dimension and further marginalize women within their own communities. Militarization and the presence of Bangali settlers have been terrorizing Pahari women since the beginning of the insurgency. The insurgency is over but CHT still remains fully militarized and the politically motivated violence against women still continues.

The information for the paper was collected through secondary documents and a series of interviews with grass-roots level women activists in the CHT, activists involved with NGOs and Pahari political groups and Pahari men and women lawyers.

A primer on the CHT

The Chittagong Hill Tracts [CHT], covering 13,189 square kilometers of land, is in the south-eastern corner of Bangladesh. It shares borders with the Indian states of Tripura, Mizoram and with Chin of Myanmar to the south and south-east. To the west is the Bangladeshi district of Chittagong. The region comprises of three districts: Rangamati, Khagrachari and Bandarban. The Hill Tracts are covered with hills, forests, valleys and lush vegetation.

There are more than 50 different indigenous communities living all over Bangladesh today and the CHT is home to Pahari indigenous people from at least 11 different communities – Chakma, Marma, Tripura, Bawm, Mro, Tanchangya, Khumi, Lushai, Chak, Khyang and Pankho. In 1872, 98 percent of the population of the CHT was indigenous. By 1951 indigenous people were still the majority, with only nine percent [1951 census - 26,150] Bangali people living all over the CHT. By 1991 Bangalis became the majority representing 49 percent of the population of the CHT and the rest represented by the 11 different ethnic communities.[1]

Although in terms of land mass CHT is said to cover about 10 percent of Bangladesh, most of it is uncultivable hill and forests. As such Pahari people were, and still many are, mostly involved in jhum [swidden] cultivation. The Pahari people’s political struggle began with the building of the Kaptai Dam in 1960 which submerged 40 percent of, mostly cultivable, land in the CHT and displaced approximately 100,000 Paharis. Some took refuge in India and many remain internally displaced till today.

After Bangladesh gained independence from Pakistan in 1971, the Pahari people’s struggle took a new turn. On 15 February 1972, a delegation of indigenous people led by M.N. Larma MP [a Pahari member of parliament], called upon Prime Minister Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and demanded that indigenous people of Bangladesh be given recognition in the Constitution. Sheikh Mujib categorically rejected this demand and instead called for indigenous people to be assimilated into the majority ‘Bangali’ nationalist construct. Larma walked out of parliament and in March 1972, formed the Parbatya Chattagram [CHT] Jana Samhati Samiti [PCJSS]. The armed struggle for regional autonomy began for the Paharis when the Shanti Bahini, the insurgent wing of the PCJSS was formed.

The nationalist movement of Bangladesh also took another different turn after the assassination of the then President and founder of the Bangali independence movement Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1975.

From secular nationalism the country took a turn towards Islamic nationalism; and the military assumed the central role in the decision-making process of the state. The military bore an animosity towards India. The change had its impact on the politics of CHT as well.[2]

In the late 1970s President Ziaur Rahman began a migration program of Bangladeshi settlers into the CHT, providing land grants, cash and rations. This program was not made public at the time, and its existence was denied by government representatives. Around 400,000 Bangali landless people were settled in the CHT. This caused the single biggest shift in the character of the CHT in its history. Bangalis have since become the majority population of the CHT. It was seen as a counter-insurgency measure that not only caused a restructuring of the population ratio but also used poor, landless Bangalis as shields in the army’s war strategy. As the Paharis’ facial structures are quite distinct from the Bangalis’, they became easy targets for the army who carried out many rapes during the insurgency period. The lack of documentation at that time and the impunity that is still enjoyed by the army makes it an almost impossible task to prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes. The army and settler presence in the CHT has changed the lives of Paharis, particularly the women, almost irreversibly.

The PCJSS, the political platform of the Paharis signed a treaty with the government of Bangladesh on 2 December 1997 to end insurgency in the CHT. The CHT Accord recognizes the CHT as a ‘tribal inhabited area’. Under the Accord a ‘Peace Accord Implementation Committee’ is to have taken responsibilities of overseeing the strengthening of the district administration and regional authority was to have been handled by a majority Pahari-represented administration. Land disputes were to have been settled by a Land Commission and internally displaced people and refugees rehabilitated. Unfortunately, there has not been satisfactory progress in the implementation of the Accord and the army presence along with the continuing in-migration of Bangalis is alienating the Pahari indigenous people of the CHT from their land of generations.

Land-grabbing and militarization of the CHT

Militarization currently takes place in the CHT through ‘Operation Uttoron’ (Upliftment), details of which are not available for public scrutiny. The military in CHT has been known to involve itself in the civil administration activities. The CHT Accord calls for gradual dismantling of all military, para-military and other security camps except for six specified cantonments but currently there are still more than 300 temporary army camps in the CHT. Out of the total of 64 districts in the CHT, it is only in the three hill districts of CHT that vehicles moving in and out of the district have to be registered at an Army check-post. Also, to have an access to these three hill districts, non-Bangladeshi citizens have to give advance notice to the local authorities before entering the district. The presence of army in the CHT is only seen in a positive light by the Bangali settlers who view them as their ‘protectors’ who allow them to remain on the illegally occupied land of the Paharis. One of the biggest challenges of human rights advocates in CHT is the lack of access to justice in cases of murder, torture, rape, unlawful arrest and detention, oppressive persecution, inhuman and degrading treatment. Almost all of these cases have never been properly investigated, or prosecuted.  Nor has any kind of punishment ever been meted out.

The Pahari women of CHT are the most marginalized sections of Bangladeshi society. In terms of numbers they are very small and account for only a fraction of the population of the country. They are both religious and ethnic minorities, which means they are discriminated by the extremely patriarchal, Muslim Bangali majority society. In the past, this discrimination was only faced by women who lived in Bangali-majority communities outside of the CHT. This piece by Muktasree Sathi Chakma, a law student from Chittagong University captures the feeling faced by Pahari women:

‘Do you have bathrooms?’ ‘Do you use salt and oil in cooking?’ ‘Hey! I have heard that you eat cockroaches alive?’ ‘Don’t you face any problem socially if you choose to live with your partner?’ were among the many questions I have faced in the past five years. The experience is the same for all indigenous boys and girls on campus. .Just go through the above questions again. Do you think any of these questions are made with any respect for them? How would you feel if you were asked, ‘Do all males in your community have four wives?[3]

[Referring to the generalization that Muslim men are allowed to have four wives]

However, the overwhelming number of Bangali settlers in the CHT has resulted in harassment and violence against Pahari women within the once secure neighborhood of their homes. With no control over land dispossession and the non-functioning of the Land Commission to blame for this, and no sign of the army’s loosening its grip over the CHT, it is indeed a worrying trend. There is no documentation of the exact number of women physically assaulted or sexually harassed or raped by the army and Bangali settlers in the CHT. Before the CHT ‘Peace’ Accord was signed there were reports of mass rapes by the army, some of which were documented in CHT Commission’s report ‘Life is not ours’ and Amnesty International’s reports ‘Unlawful Killings and Torture in the CHT’. But there have been no investigations and no subsequent legal redress. And this impunity still continues even after insurgency ended 13 years ago.

The biggest concern in rape and other violence against women in the CHT now is the lack of access to justice and absolute impunity that perpetrators enjoy.

On 8 March 2009, while the world celebrated International Women’s Day, a four-year-old child was raped by a Bangali settler in Dighinala in Khagrachhari district of CHT. The settler was arrested but till the writing of this paper a chargesheet has not been submitted and women’s rights activists from the CHT have informed that the perpetrator who has been in jail for the last 20 months is now seeking bail.[4]

In rape cases, the victim ends up going through further harassment from the side of the administration and law enforcers – there have been instances where doctors at hospitals have refused to give Pahari women physical check ups or delayed the physical check ups so that the evidence disappears; the victim’s family is asked to produce a ‘witness’ by the police; there is intimidation from the security forces, in one case at least the raped girl was further molested by the physical examiner himself, one victim who did not know any Bangla and had to ‘act out’ the crime in front of the court; there have been complaints about police delaying/refusing to take the case and many have been too afraid to file a case in fear. These and many other administration-led intimidation and harassment ultimately results in the perpetrator getting away with his crime. The bias by the administration is revealed in this rape case of a young disabled girl in Khagrachhari.

On 31 July, 2009 a physically challenged 16-year-old Chakma girl was raped by a Bangali man who worked at a micro-credit bank in Dighinala, Khagrachhari. He took away her stick and grabbed her from behind and forcibly took her to her bedroom. Without her stick she did not have any strength in her body to fight back. A case was filed against the man. However, he managed to flee from the CHT and till today there have been no reports of his whereabouts. When a group of lawyers from two NGOs went to investigate the case, the bias from the administration was obvious. There was a new Investigating Officer on the case and without even speaking to the victim he claimed that the bank official was not guilty and it was a false case by the Chakma girl and it was politically motivated by a local Pahari women activists’ group.[5]

Lawyers in CHT lament about how difficult it is to ‘prove’ rape in a court of law. An essential requirement to adjudicate a case as rape is a medical test of the victim to find semen from the rapists’ body. From the moment a rape takes place a girl is placed under immense social pressure from the stigma surrounding it. Although this stigma may be the same or more in the Bangali culture, in the hills another kind of pressure is put on the victim and her family – pressure from the administration. Women’s rights activists have reported that the attackers are usually Bangali settlers and the administration, both civil and military, support in establishing impunity. Lawyers from BLAST (Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust) have reported that many girls avoid making complaints or do so too late, by which time the evidence of rape from her body will have disappeared. Many times people from the administration threaten the girl and her family even if they do complain or try to mediate the matter by offering the poor victim’s family financial benefits.

Medical tests, which provide the essential evidence for rape cases are not so straightforward to collect either. This is true for rape all over the country, but especially so in the CHT. Many women, unaware of the consequences wash themselves off before going to a police station. When going to a medical examiner, there is always some form of red tape involved in all rape cases but because of the militarized situation and the Paharis lack of bargaining power this is worse in the CHT according to lawyers who work in the CHT.

The bias in rape cases is also clear when an eye-witness account is asked to be produced in a rape case. In the hill tracts, homes in remote villages are not located very far from each other and it is impossible to hear what is happening in one home from the next. This bizarre problem was recently faced by the mother of a 10-year-old raped girl.

After the mother made the complaint the police station kept pressuring the mother of the child to produce a ‘witness’ to the crime. The mother was unable to produce anyone as a witness as no one had actually seen the crime taking place. Some locals who had seen the girl lying on the ground in a pool of blood said that they had not seen how this had happened and refused to give evidence. In the latest update to this case, the government lawyers have filed a case against the girl’s mother for filing a ‘false case’.[6] The mother is being accused of filing a false case because she could not produce an eye-witness.

Perpetrators of violence against women often manage to evade being identified, located, arrested and tried, let alone be punished. Many crimes against women take place over land disputes in the CHT. In the absence of prosecution and punishment there is less deterrence against any future offences.

On the night between 3-4 September 2009, a 50-year-old indigenous woman, Ponemala Tripura was killed in Sindukchari of Khagrachari district. Her dead body was recovered from their Jhum field by the villagers in the morning on 4 September. She was staying alone as in a small jhum cottage to protect her crop from wild animals as she usually did in turn with her husband. She inherited the land from her father but in the 1980s four Bangali men had been given settlement on that land by the government-sponsored trans-migration program of counter-insurgency. The dispute was never settled and the locals suspected that this was an act carried out by these four men to revenge her non-cooperation to hand over her land to them.[7]

In the 1950s, 98 percent of the population of the CHT was Pahari. With the building of the Kaptai hydroelectric dam, 100,000 families were displaced. Some went to India as refugees and others remain internally displaced. With the arrival of the settlers in 1970s/80s during insurgency the population ratio changed and the Paharis became minorities in their own land. These Bangalis brought with them their culture and social norms. With the backing of the military they grabbed land of the Pahari people and with the nature of customary ownership, this was easily achieved. Rape, sexual harassment, intimidation by Bangali men still continue today along with land grabbing. The extensive building of madrasahs (Muslim religious schools) and mosques, and to a lesser extent Christian missionaries, has changed the unique socio-cultural face of the CHT. Clothing of Pahari women had to become more conservative to ward off unwanted attention from fundamentalist Army and settlers. It is also quite common for Army/settlers to use derogatory names to call Pahari women which intimidates and restricts the freedom of movement of women. A pahari women’s rights activist narrates here the everyday harassment that women in remote parts of CHT have to face on an everyday basis. This report is from Jurachari, but relevant to all remote areas of CHT.

The freedom of movement that existed before is not there anymore. Earlier, a lot of women used to be involved with selling vegetables and other necessities in the bazaar, the number of women doing that kind of work has come down. In our culture we don’t wear blouses and when we go out not fully covered up the army and the settlers look at us in an odd way and make us feel uncomfortable. Not only that the army and settlers regularly harass us by deliberately pushing and touching the women’s bodies in the bazaar. The women can no longer independently roam about in these places. Also when the army travel through the roads and come across women going to pick up firewood or taking their domestic animals to be fed they harass them by calling them names or winking at them. Sometimes they even touch their breasts, but the girls are too scared to report these incidents.

1961                                                                                  40                                 2

1974                                                                                200                               20

1981                                                                                592                               35

The Bangladesh Army before the Accord was signed carried out numerous massacres in the CHT [please refer to the table on page 5]. Many of the massacres included mass rapes. Along with rape, proselytism of Pahari men and through marriage, many women has added a new dimension of assimilation. Based in Rangamti, a Saudi and Kuwait funded NGO has carried out many conversion of Paharis. Another NGO, the Tribal Muslim Welfare Association also works to convert Pahari people by giving them food and land incentives. A Tripura man talks about his experience of becoming Muslim.

We have become Muslims, because this is a Muslim majority country.  My parents were not Muslims.  Nor were my wife’s family. But I left my community and became a Muslim.  Many tribal women marry Bengalis and become Muslim.  But a year or two after marriage, they are often divorced.  Many of them commit suicide. Every year 12 or so such divorce cases occur.  But under Muslim law, they should be getting compensation when divorced.  I advise these women not to get married unless they agree to terms of the Muslim marriage contract.[8]

Lack of government policies and legislations

The Awami League-led government has expressed its desire to go back to the secular spirit of the Constitution; there is a renewed movement from the indigenous and progressive Bangali civil society to get recognition for people from different ethnic origins. Currently article 28(4) of the Constitution says: “Nothing in this article shall prevent the State from making special provision in favor of women or children or for the advancement of any backward section of citizens.” Section 10 [participation of women in national life] of the Constitution says: “Steps shall be taken to ensure participation of women in all spheres of national life”. Articles 27-43 allows citizens to enjoy equal opportunities with regard to public employment or education, to life, liberty, personal security, and freedom of movement, assembly and association, expression, religion, profession and occupation and property, and to the protection of home and correspondence.

Out of the 345 seats in the national parliament, 45 are reserved for women to increase representation of women in the political process. None are reserved for any special women’s group in Bangladesh. After the signing of the CHT Accord in 1997, no Pahari woman has been nominated as a Member of Parliament (MP) in the reserved seats for women. Prior to the Accord, there had been two Pahari women MPs.

Both the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the 1995 Beijing Declaration recognize women’s equal participation in political activities. Bangladesh also ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in 1984. It still has reservations on Article 2 and 16.1(C). The withdrawal of reservation on Article 2[9] would be particularly favorable to frame special laws and policies to end discrimination against indigenous women by the state. Article 16.1(c)[10] would also help give Pahari women equal rights in their customary laws.

The Government of Bangladesh has also endorsed many more international treaties like the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). They all talk about ensuring equal rights to men and women to enjoy civil and political rights and prevent discrimination.

United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) has provisions for security and protection of indigenous women, to free themselves from discrimination and to empower them to assert their rights and preserve their culture. However, the Government of Bangladesh has refused to recognize indigenous people in the Constitution and the Foreign Minister in April 2010 was quoted as saying that Bangladesh did not have any indigenous people.[11] The government asserts that the Bangali ethnic communities have been living in the country for longer than the other ethnic communities and as such are the original inhabitants (i.e. the ‘adibashis’, the Bengali equivalent of ‘indigenous’) of the country.

This year the country passed the ‘Small Ethnic Communities Cultural Institute Bill 2010’ for indigenous people as a further assertion to non-recognition of indigenous people. Although the Paharis assert themselves as ‘indigenous’ (with exception from one political group UPDF – United People’s Democratic Front which uses the term ‘ethnic minorities’), the government now uses the term ‘small ethnic minorities’ for them.

Furthermore, the Government of Bangladesh’s National Policy for the Advancement of Women, 1997 does not address the unique position of the indigenous women or those indigenous women living under military-led administration in the CHT.

Bangladesh has ratified the ILO Convention on Indigenous and Tribal Populations (Convention No. 107) in 1972 which gives protection to indigenous women but there has not been implementation of this convention. The progressive Convention No. 169 is yet to be ratified by the government. This Convention recognizes the aspirations of indigenous peoples to exercise control over their own institutions noting that in many parts of the world they are unable to enjoy their fundamental human rights given that indigenous people have their own social, cultural and economic conditions. Article 3.1 of the Convention (on Fundamental Rights) says, “Indigenous and tribal peoples shall enjoy the full measure of human rights and fundamental freedoms without hindrance or discrimination. The provisions of the Convention shall be applied without discrimination to male and female members of these peoples”. Article 20 also talks about equal remuneration, equal opportunities, and equal treatment for men and women and protection from sexual harassment. Part five of the Convention discusses social security and health of indigenous men and women.

Bangladesh has an obligation to respect international laws and standards according to Article 25 of the Constitution which states “The State shall base its international relations on the principles of respect for national sovereignty and equality, non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries, peaceful settlement of international disputes, and respect for international law and the principles enunciated in the United Nations Charter…”.

Physical violence and marginalization within Pahari communities

The CHT ‘Peace’ Accord failed to safeguard the women of CHT. Although women took part in the armed struggle during the insurgency in various ways, they were not allowed to participate in the peace talks that resulted in the CHT ‘Peace’ Accord in 1997. As such the Accord has kept no provisions for giving compensation in the form of rehabilitation or counseling to the raped and physically abused and tortured women [or men].

Although Pahari societies are much more liberal than the majority Muslim-Bangali society, their customary laws and family roles are just as patriarchal and discriminatory. Women are still expected to take all responsibilities of household work and child rearing. Domestic violence against Pahari women, according to women’s rights activists, is increasing.

In terms of customary law, the most discriminatory is that most Pahari women are not entitled to inherit land from their parents. Women from the Marma community are an exception and are entitled as women to inherit land, but only from their mothers. If parents want they can choose to leave land for their daughters. Many Pahari men resist change to this law by saying that Bangali men would then marry Pahari women to dispossess them of their land. Others say that the overall marginalization of Pahari people must be dealt with first by implementation of the CHT Accord, before the case for women can be taken up. Pahari women strongly protest these justifications by the men. The Pahari women activists who gave their analysis for this paper, have said that both these reasons are a way to further marginalize women.

The traditional structure of the Pahari community is also very male-dominated and patriarchal. Men are by default the circle chiefs (or king) of the three circles (Chakma, Mong and Bomong). Only in the absence of any men, can a woman become a circle chief or queen. The headman or mouza chief [a mouza is a group of villages] is next in line in the traditional hierarchy and karbari [a village chief] thereafter. Currently there are less than 10 women headmen an karbaris out a total of 300 headmen and more than a thousand karbaris in the CHT. Recently, a woman who had been made a ‘karbari’ because her brothers were not adult yet is set to lose her post because her brothers have come of age and are claiming this post.

The number of men and women as Headmen and Karbaris in the CHT:

Resistance politics and the women’s movement in the CHT

The women of the CHT have been actively involved with the movement for emancipation from since the 1970s insurgency. The CHT Mohila Samity, the first political organization of the hill women, was formed on 21 January 1975 by PCJSS. Talking about what gave rise to this group, a researcher writes, “the society of the hill communities is based mainly on the feudal and patriarchal ideology and system. So the struggle of the hill women of the CHT is a double struggle – on the one hand, against the feudal, imperial and extremely communal rule, exploitation and oppression; and against the patriarchal exploitation in their own society on the other”.[12] They started training in armed conflict during the insurgency. Women, during that time played their dual role of being involved in the insurgency and taking care of their homes in absence of the male members of the family.

Apart from the Mohila Samity, there are now the Hill Women’s Federation of both the UPDF [the breakaway group from JSS that opposed the signing of the CHT Accord] and JSS. They are very actively involved in field level protests and with the arrival of the Internet and other technology acts of violence against women are quickly disseminated to a network of human rights activists. Not very many mainstream women’s rights organizations are involved directly with indigenous women’s rights. There are some like the Bangladesh Nari Pragati Sangha (BNPS), Nari Paksho, Durbar Nari Network and Nijera Kori which are worth-mentioning[13]. Ain O Salish Kendra and BLAST offer legal aid. Even with those that have received a lot of media attention, there has been little result. A case in point is the Kalpana Chakma case.

The case of the kidnapping of Kalpana Chakma, the organizing secretary of the Hill Women’s Federation (the resistance movement by Pahari women), still remains unsolved. Just before the 1996 General Elections, Kalpana was picked up, allegedly by the army, in presence of her family members. No case was ever filed against the alleged perpetrator although there are witnesses to this crime according to several news reports.[14]

In cases where the Pahari women’s rights activists have carried out demonstrations and other activities, they have only been faced with retaliation from the army and administration.

In November 2009 it was reported that an army officer attempted to rape a woman in Ghilachari in Khagrachhari district. Women’s rights activists staged a rally to protest the alleged attack and demand punishment of the army officer and also made a demand that the army camp in the area be withdrawn. About a thousand women in the area participated in the protest. Army and police personnel including policewomen tried to intimidate the participants of the rally, but the women chased them away with sticks.

The women under the banner of “Ghilachari Committee for Guiding Movement against Women Repression” also blocked the road between Khagrachhari and Rangamati. At one point during the chase and counter-chase between the army and the Pahari women the army baton-charged the women and injured about seven women protestors.[15]

Protest by women’s rights groups regarding rape and other human rights violations have been countered with further violence by members of the joint forces. Resistance against army and settlers in Sajek in the form of Sajek Nari Samaj (Sajek Women’s Society), which was formed last year, was met with fierce attempts to repress through physical assaults on the women (who are not part of any political group) by army.

Internally displaced Pahari families have been living along the Kassalong reserve since they were evicted from their original lands during the counter-insurgency period.[16] Many Bangalis have been brought in here on the excuse of building roads there. The settlement first started with a few khupri homes of Bangali settlers being strategically located near the houses of the Paharis. This has been leading to increasing tension between Paharis and Bangalis in the area and culminated in an arson attack by settlers which gutted down 70 houses of Pahari people in the area in April 2008.

By 2009 the tension between the Bangali settlers/army and Paharis started gathering momentum. A lot of false cases were filed against the Pahari men in the area.  Relatives of Paharis outside the Bagaihat area stopped coming because of the harassment they would face from the Army. The Sajek Nari Samaj (SNS) was formed on 26 December 2009 to protest against the harassment and torture by the Army and settlers. These women consisted mainly of family members of those men who were harassed in some way by the army or settlers. On 5 January 2010, the SNS submitted a memorandum to the then Baghaicahri Upazila Nirbahi Officer Humayan Kabir with a six-point demand which included stopping army repression in Sajek.

In late January in a further raid the army picked up two Pahari men and took them away to the army camp instead of giving them rice. The mothers, wives and sisters of the two men (who were also members of the SNS) along with other women of SNS went and rescued the two men from the camps.

The army retaliated by beating up the women of Sajek indiscriminately in the market place. But the ultimate retaliation towards the Sajek women’s movement took place on 19 and 20 February 2010, when around 434 Pahari and 29 Bangali homes in 12 villages in Baghaichhari upazila of Sajek Union in Rangamati district were burnt down in what turned out to be the worst violence since signing of the Accord.

The women of Sajek say that there is no security of their lives there and the army continues to intimidate the Pahari men and women of the area.

Conclusion

Vijay Nagaraj, Research Director at the International Council on Human Rights Policy, in an interview with Cassandra Balchin said[17], “…although bigotry and prejudice is often at the core of religious intolerance; religious fundamentalisms encapsulate very conscious political projects. While religion itself might be invoked in support of a whole host of claims that are being made, it is important to understand that fundamentalisms are about power, and not just about prejudice.”

The roots of discrimination of indigenous women of the CHT start with British colonialism when India and Pakistan were divided along religious lines. When East Pakistan realized their alienation along language and ethnic lines, their secessionist struggle began. Unfortunately the struggle for independence of Bangladesh was fought along the Bangali nationalist ideology with a ‘state-sponsored political project aiming at the cultural homogeneity of its entire population with the Bengalis.[18]’ The Bangladesh Army then used a similar roadmap to maintain ‘national sovereignty’ as was used by the Pakistan Army before Bangladesh’s independence. And the CHT is still suffering the gendered impacts of fundamentalist-nationalist militarization and conflict.

The political struggle, the state discrimination and army/settler harassment meant that women had to become strong for their own survival. However, survival is still an uphill battle for Pahari women in more ways than one. They are the least educated and farthest away from access to justice. The first Mro woman is said to have just enrolled into university. Militarization has also opened doors to national and international fundamentalist forces to achieve its target of nationalist, cultural and religious assimilation of the Pahari indigenous people. There has been little or no discourse within the media to resist these fundamentalist forces.

The Bangladeshi state first needs to get over its nationalist insecurities and communal outlook and accept indigenous people as inhabitants of this land and then take special measures for indigenous women if it truly believes in human rights, democracy and rule of law as manifested in the UN and other international ideologies. Unless the state recognizes and welcomes indigenous people, its people will still look at people of other ethnic origins as ‘other’. The Awami League led government needs to fulfill its 2008 election pledge to completely implement the CHT ‘Peace’ Accord, and through dismantling of all temporary army camps and land dispute settlement assure the rest of the world that it is committed to giving the highest priority to human rights.

Kabita Chakma, an ex-member of the HWF wrote this poem about women’s struggle in the CHT…

Why shall I not resist!

Can they do as they please -

Turn settlements into barren land

Dense forests to deserts

Mornings into evening

Fruition to barrenness.

Why shall I not resist

Can they do as they please -

Estrange us from the land of our birth

Enslave our women

Blind our vision

Put an end to creation.

Neglect and humiliation causes anger

the blood surges through my veins

breaking barriers at every stroke,

the fury of youth pierces the sea of consciousness.

___ I become my own whole self

Why shall I not resist!

(Chakma, 1992.7)

[Translated by Meghna Guhathakurta]

Photo: Naeem Mohaiemen

Hana Shams Ahmed

[The Forum, The Daily Star, September 2010]

The Constitution of Bangladesh has been brought under the microscope for the 15th time since 1972. With the annulment of the fifth amendment of the Constitution through a judgment by the Supreme Court this year, the Constitution is to revert to some of the core values behind the formation of the original 1972 version, whose four main pillars were democracy, socialism, nationalism and secularism.

The latest judgment by the Supreme Court gives us a chance to look closely at the Constitution, which was adopted soon after the liberation war ended in 1971, in the aftermath of the emotions and ideology that led the nation in the struggle for identity and existence. While the 1972 document had an equal vie towards citizens of all religions, ethnic, cultural and linguistic pluralism were patently absent from the document. Thus, while the 1972 constitution was even-handed to all religions, it did not recognise the fifty or more indigenous peoples and their distinct identities, who still remain as second class citizens of Bangladesh.

When the draft of the Constitution of Bangladesh was presented to the Constituent Assembly in 1972, Manabendra Narayan Larma (founder general secretary of PCJSS) refused to endorse a Constitution that did not recognise the existence of people of other ethnic origins than Bangali . He had protested: “Under no definition or logic can a Chakma be a Bangali or a Bangali be a Chakma… As citizens of Bangladesh we are all Bangladeshis, but we also have a separate ethnic identity…”

Thirty-eight years after MN Larma’s protest, the time has finally come to correct a basic flaw in our national constitutional framework. The formation of the current special parliamentary committee to review and recommend constitutional amendments is a welcome move by the government. Its recommendations must include remedies to a Constitution that is still ethnically communal in nature, putting people from non-Bangali groups outside our definition of nation.

The 1997 CHT Accord and the 2008 AL election manifesto
One of the objectives of the Constitution review and amendment committee is “implementation of ruling Awami League-led grand alliance’s electoral pledges”. One commitment that the Awami League government has so far not fulfilled is implementation of the CHT Accord. The 2008 election manifesto promised: “The 1997 Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord will be fully implemented. More efforts will be directed towards the development of underdeveloped areas, and special programs on priority basis will be taken to secure rights of the ethnic minorities, indigenous peoples and other communities, and to preserve their language, literature, culture, and unique lifestyles.”

However, by the second year of the Awami League government, the Pahari people are still waiting for positive steps towards implementation of the Accord. In fact, instead of implementation, in April of this year the CHT Accord received a setback when a bench of the High Court Division of the Supreme Court declared the CHT Regional Council (RC), set up under the Accord, as unconstitutional. The RC was formed, among others, to coordinate and supervise the activities of the three Hill District Councils, and to oversee general administration, local council and NGO activities. The court decision is currently being appealed against by the government and the RC, pending which the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court has stayed the High Court Divisions’ s judgment.

The Bangali hegemony
Article 3 (The state language) of the Bangladesh Constitution states, “The State language of the Republic is Bangla.” In November 1999, UNESCO declared February 21 as the International Mother Language Day, paying respect to the fight to preserve the mother tongue of the millions of Bengali-speaking people in Bangladesh. Unfortunately the Bengali people have failed in the post-1971 period to acknowledge the existence of other mother tongues, such as those of the fifty or more indigenous peoples of Bangladesh. In fact, the only acknowledgment of an “other” is through the problematic and derogatory phrase “backward section of society.” It is important therefore, for the Constitution review committee to confront this exclusionary idea of nationhood, and expand the mandate of Article 3.

Although the Constitution talks about equal rights and freedom from discrimination, because of the discrimination historically faced by indigenous people, which remains largely unacknowledged by the majority, true equal right is yet to be enjoyed by indigenous people. Unless special measures through affirmative action are taken, indigenous people will not be able to freely exercise their fundamental rights as citizens in a non-discriminatory manner. Providing procedurally identical treatment to all citizens, including those that are disadvantaged with regard to representation in decision-making processes, in access to education, healthcare, livelihood, drinking water, electricity, market access and communications is itself an act of discrimination by the state.

Historically, indigenous people have not been given the opportunity of being involved in the process of decision-making at national, or even local level. Even now their roles in these processes are marginal. Unless firm affirmative actions are taken, the discrimination against marginalised people will still remain.

Unfortunately a section of the population benefits from the continuing marginalisation of indigenous people and so oppose all efforts to provide affirmative action, such as through the adoption of an indigenous policy by the government. Even the very word “adibashi” (indigenous) has made several quarters uncomfortable. There have even been instructions to officially use the word “upojati” (literal meaning “sub-nation,” but when writing in English, the term ‘tribal’ is used) instead of “adibashi.” This is so in spite of the fact that the word “upojati” is rejected by indigenous groups in Bangladesh. There is an attempt to limit the word “indigenous” to “original inhabitants”, and not the internationally accepted meaning referring to a peoples’ distinctiveness from the dominant majority in terms of custom, religion and culture, and their exclusion from the mainstream political processes, which have historically resulted in marginalisation and a deprivation from state-led development.

This year the parliament also passed the Small Ethnic Groups Cultural Institutes Act, 2010, but the indigenous peoples were not consulted regarding the terminology to be used and only 27 “small ethnic groups” were recognised across the country. Interestingly, the law states that “small ethnic groups” in the Act referred to the “adibashi” (indigenous people) of the country!

It’s very unfortunate that despite both Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina (2009) and Former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia (2003) having used the word “adibashi” in their commemorative statements on World Indigenous Day (as did Caretaker Chief Adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed), representatives of the Government of Bangladesh declared at the United Nations this year that Bangladesh did not have any indigenous population but rather had several ethnic minorities and tribal groups. The Ministry for CHT Affairs (MoCHTA) also issued a memo instructing district-level officials to not use the terms “Adivasi” or “indigenous” in any government documents, and instead to use the word “upajati.” At the World Indigenous People’s Day on August 9 this year many senior government officials including the Food and Disaster Management Minister Abdur Razzaq and Information Minister Abul Kalam Azad acknowledged the importance of using the term “adibashi.”

International treaties
Only six months before the 1972 Constitution was framed, Bangladesh had ratified ILO Convention No. 107 on Indigenous and Tribal Populations, 1957. Unfortunately there was no reflection of this ratification on the Constitution. Since 1972 the government has endorsed many more international treaties like the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). About the indigenous people, Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP)-II says:

Ensure their social, political and economic rights; ensure security and their fundamental rights; and preserve their social and cultural identity. It envisages that indigenous communities will not be subject to any discrimination in social, political and economic activities. They will be ensured of access to education, health care, food and nutrition, employment and protection of rights to land and other resources (p.143).

Two very significant treaties related to this debate are ILO Convention No. 107 and 169. Convention 107 covers a range of subjects, including land, recruitment and conditions of employment, rural industries, social security and health, and education and means of communication. Particularly it has specific wide coverage definitions regarding land, territories and resources, and are similar to those of Convention No.169

Convention No.169 has been ratified by 22 countries, including Nepal. But Bangladesh has so far not ratified it. It is functioning as a global reference point for basic standards on indigenous peoples’ rights. The fundamental concepts in Conventions No. 107 and 169, are consultation and participation. This implies that indigenous peoples have the right to par-ticipate in policy, legislative, administrative and development processes, and to decide their own priorities for development. The key principle of ILO Convention No. 169 (an updated version of Convention No. 107), which relates to the current debate about the Bangladesh Constitution are self-identification; non-discrimination; special measures; recognition of the cultural and other specificities of indigenous and tribal peoples; right to decide priorities for development.

Constitutions in other countries
Recently the Kenyan Constitution underwent a reform to incorporate rights of indigenous peoples and marginalised communities. They have used the term “marginalised community” rather than backward (used in Bangladesh, which is a derogatory term and gives supremacy to Bengaliness over other ethnic origins). Samburu Women for Education & Environment Development Organization (SWEEDO) reports that the new Constitution defines a “marginalised community” as one that “out of need or desire to preserve its unique culture and identity from assimilation, has remained outside the integrated social economic life of Kenya as a whole…”

The indigenous people of Nepal have made the following demands for the new Constitution of their country, after a new interim constitution was put in place in 2007 — “realisation of a secular, federal state system; recognition of indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination, ethnic and linguistic autonomy; affirmative action: and guarantees for proportionate representation for indigenous peoples.” Unlike Nepal though, Bangladesh has not ratified ILO Convention 169 but it has been reported that its ratification is under consideration at high policy levels.

However, although Bangladesh abstained from voting when it was adopted by the General Assembly, Prime Minister Hasina, Law Minister Shafique Ahmed and other senior leaders have pledged their support towards the implementation of the provisions of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples). UNDRIP recognises the right of indigenous peoples right to self determination (while respecting the territorial integrity of states), autonomy, land rights (including restitution and fair dispute resolution), treaty rights, customary law, language rights, education (in mother tongue and in culturally-appropriate ways) and so forth.

Although the Indian Constitution does not specifically mention the word ‘indigenous’; it does recognise Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and has provision for preservation of their distinct culture and even subjects the freedom of movement of citizens to regulation in the interest of protection of the concerned tribes. Seats in the state and federal legislatures are reserved for tribals as are special autonomous councils with legislative, judicial and land administration autonomy.

In the case of Mizoram and Nagaland states, even the federal parliament cannot legislate on land rights, and on social and religious customs of the tribes concerned, without the concurrence of the state legislative assemblies of Mizoram and Nagaland states. In the section on “Cultural and Educational Rights” (Protection of interests of minorities), the Constitution states, “Any section of the citizens residing in the territory of India or any part thereof having a distinct language, script or culture of its own shall have the right to conserve the same.”

Indigenous people make up a small fraction of the population of Bangladesh, but they are equal citizens of this country, and it is the responsibility of the majority to now create an atmosphere where all citizens have equal opportunities to practice their religion, maintain their distinct ethnic and cultural identities, get equal opportunities to health and education, and participate in the country’s decision-making process at all levels. And that has to begin with framing the document that underlies everything – the constitution of the country.

1. Mong Sa Nu, ‘A Glowing Tribute to a Leader’, Manabendra Narayan Larma’s Life and Struggle, M N Larma Memorial Foundation.

2. Staff Correspondent, “Special body sits today to review constitution”, The Daily Star, 29 July 2010.

3. Rakib Ahammed, ‘Most indigenous communities unrecognised’, The Daily Star, 31 July 2010.

4. Naeem Mohaiemen, “Connecting the visible dots: A post-Accord history”, 16 April 2010.

5. Raja Devasish Roy and John B. Henriksen, ‘Inclusion of Indigenous Peoples’ Rights in the New Constitution of Nepal’, a publication of ILO, February 2010.

Photo: Abeer Hoque

Hana Shams Ahmed

[Himal, June 2010]

At Partition, the Chittagong Hill Tracts, with an overwhelmingly non-Muslim indigenous population, were included within Muslim-majority East Pakistan. Yet the Paharis (indigenous hill peoples) were never really integrated into the Bengali nationalist movement for independence, which culminated in 1971. Discriminatory attitudes of the majority Bengali and ‘spoiler’ tactics by the central government prevented the Paharis from playing a substantive role in the movement. Following the formation of Bangladesh, the Paharis asked for constitutional recognition and regional autonomy, but were turned down. Marginalised throughout the period of British and Pakistani rule, the Paharis finally took up arms, and Manabendra Narayan Larma, their leader, a young lawyer and legislator, formed the Parbatta Chattagram Jana Samhati Samiti (PCJSS), the political wing of the insurgent Shanti Bahini guerrillas, to fight for the political rights of the Pahari people.

In 1997, the Bangladesh government signed a ‘peace’ accord with the PCJSS. But the United People’s Democratic Front (UPDF), a breakaway group of the PCJSS, and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), then (and now) the opposition in Parliament, fiercely opposed the accord. The BNP protested that it allowed the Paharis a separate administrative system and discriminated against the Bengalis, while the UPDF opposed it on grounds that the agreement failed to address PCJSS’s most important demand – full autonomy. Others criticised the accord for not addressing the hundreds of thousands of Bengali settlers who were moved into the Hill Tracts from 1979 through the 1980s as a counter-insurgency measure. Nor did the document give constitutional recognition to the indigenous peoples.

For most Paharis, the 1997 agreement did give them relief from conflicts between their own political groups, and with the Bengali settlers over land and political office. Yet 13 years after its signing, much of the accord remains unimplemented. In February, Bengali settlers, allegedly with support from the army, set fire to more than 400 Pahari homes in 11 villages across Baghaihat of Rangamati district (see Himal April 2010, ‘Manush Bachao’). As yet, there has been no independent investigation into these incidents. In April, the CHT Regional Council, chaired by Jyotirindro Bodhipriyo Larma, the leader of the mainstream PCJSS, was declared unconstitutional by a High Court (though the judgement has since been stayed). If the Regional Council ceases to exist, Paharis will essentially lose all significant influence over the CHT administration.

Raja Devasish Roy is the chief of the Chakma Administrative Circle, an official body, and the traditional raja of the ethnic Chakma community, which lives mostly in the CHT as well as India and Burma. He is also an advocate at the Supreme Court of Bangladesh, and was one of the lawyers fighting the case for the Regional Council. He recently spoke to Hana Shams Ahmed about the concerns and problems that continue to face the Adivasis of the CHT.

Insurgencies by indigenous minorities in Mizoram, the Naga Hills and Manipur have been partly helped by the fact that India is a federal state with a fairly ‘minority-friendly’ Constitution. How is the Pahari people’s movement in the CHT similar or different?

The Pahari movement for autonomy started in the early 1970s, when the Bangladeshi state had just been born. Therefore, although the Bangladeshi Constitution is unitary, the Pahari leaders at the time had hoped that their aspirations for Pahari rights would somehow be accommodated in the nascent state. The Pahari movement for autonomy was also inspired by the Bangladesh independence movement.

You have said that many feel that the success of the 1997 accord in bringing about lasting peace and socio-economic progress in the hill region is dependent on how land-related problems are addressed. But 13 years after the accord, there have been no concrete steps in this direction. How feasible would this be for the government, especially for Bengalis who were born on land allotted to their parents by the government?

The appointment of the chair of the Land Commission, which was set up to expeditiously settle land disputes, is a positive development. However, foot-dragging with regard to proposed amendments to the Land Commission Law – to make decision-making truly democratic and to clarify its jurisdiction, among others – is a disturbing trend. It is also unfortunate that land-dispute resolution is being linked virtually unilaterally, by the commission’s chairman, to the holding of a land survey. As mentioned in the accord, a survey could help in the formulation of long-term development plans for the region, but not before that. But it can hardly be expected to help clarify land claims based on customary law, which is the commission’s main mandate.

Voluntary rehabilitation of the government-sponsored Bengali migrants in the plains districts outside the CHT would be among the best and most humanitarian ways to do four things: one, help resolve the land disputes; two, offer viable livelihood support to the migrants in a land-pressed and un-industrialised CHT economy; three, rehabilitate Paharis on their own land; and four, remove the biggest cause of ethnic tension in the region. In 1979 and the early 1980s, the Bengali migrants were given titles to lands that are claimed by Paharis. Therefore, the most humanitarian and practical way to help the migrants would be to provide them with cash grants, vocational training and loans, to help rehabilitate them outside the CHT with proper livelihood security.

There have been allegations from Paharis that the government’s ‘transmigration programmes’ are still ongoing in the guise of road-building, tobacco-plantation work, etc. If true, what is the rationale behind the migration process today, and why do Bengalis agree to settle in such lands?

There is a difference between the directly government-sponsored resettlement programme of 1979-81 and current migration trends. The former was under formal governmental auspices. While recent migration may well be sponsored by government officials, as far as I know it is not backed by any formal policy. Of course, the end result, for the receiving population, may well be the same. In some cases, roadside settlements are known to have been backed by monetary and other inducements from certain quarters. In the case of tobacco, the issue is more one of unsustainable land use and environmental harm, rather than of the permanent settlement of plainspeople.

Why has there not been an independent investigation into the attacks in late February, or into the previous arson attacks and massacres that have taken place in the Hill Tracts?

I don’t know why there has not been an independent investigation into the recent events – perhaps it is just to avoid embarrassing truths. But of course it should happen. Regarding non-publication of former enquiry reports, I certainly do not agree with such a policy. Unfortunately, government officials in Bangladesh are yet to learn to accept disclosure of human-rights excesses by government officials, and remedial actions, as part of the normal functions of a democratic government in the 21st century. In addition to its leader, the current cabinet has several members who are respected widely across ethnic, ideological and party lines, and we would hope that their influence upon state policy on Adivasi issues comes to be felt more clearly.

Adivasis make up less than one percent of Bangladesh’s population, even though the CHT makes up 10 percent of the country’s land mass. Many fear that if the army is pulled out from this area, the country’s sovereignty would be at stake.

The CHT Accord calls for the dismantling of all temporary army and other security forces’ camps from the CHT, except for six specified cantonments. If this provision is implemented, six cantonments would remain in the three districts of the CHT, compared to about 15 in the remaining 61 districts. If the occasion arose, the army personnel in the six cantonments could easily be mobilised for border defence or other genuine national-defence matters – and, if necessary, supplemented by reinforcements from the rest of the country. What is being demanded, and has been expressly provided in the accord, is to dismantle the temporary military and other camps that are spread across nearly all 25 sub-districts of the three districts of the CHT.

If some parts of the border areas require more attention from our border-security forces, or even the army, that can be done – and, most importantly, with the support of the local population, including their leaders. There are actual instances of cooperation between local Pahari border communities and Bangladeshi border-security forces in dealing with crossborder security and law-and-order matters. The same can be repeated with the Bangladesh Army, as well. But what we should not do is to confuse the presence of the hundreds of temporary camps all over the CHT with border problems or other matters of national security and sovereignty. Since the ceasefire of the early 1990s until today, we have not heard of any organised armed attacks by Pahari groups against government security forces or civilian targets, only some intra-Pahari clashes of opposing political groups. Places from which camps have already been pulled out show no major law-and-order problems or ethnic tensions. The major acts of violence in the region involve intra-Pahari clashes, which cannot be resolved by military presence. These are at best police matters, which should be addressed by a professional, multi-ethnic police responsible to local authorities.

The Bangladeshi Constitution makes no room for any other ethnic group besides the Bengalis, and the state religion is declared to be Islam. Why have we not really seen a sustained movement for political and legal reform around these issues?

Recently, the Supreme Court declared the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution illegal, paving the way for the re-secularisation of the Constitution. Pahari and other Adivasi peoples have never felt comfortable with the relatively secular but mono-ethnic official ‘Bangalee’ identity, and even less with the Muslim-oriented ‘Bangladeshi’ identity. We would prefer a religion-neutral and ethno-linguistically and culturally pluralistic Bangladeshi identity. This could become a reality if progressive political and social leaders supported such a move, leading Parliament to amend the Constitution – after all, it is believed that the current progressive members of Parliament can muster the requisite majority.

The reason why necessary legal and political reforms have not taken place is due, among other reasons, to the absence of an Adivasi policy, either of the successive governments or of the major political parties. The Pahari and other Adivasi peoples’ political marginality is another major cause. Although progressive Bengali civil society has been increasingly supportive of Adivasi causes, and Adivasis are more united at the national level, their voice in Dhaka is still very faint, largely on account of financial and organisational challenges. Unfortunately, this has been the bane of almost all indigenous peoples worldwide: an absence of any substantive role in framing national constitutions, and consequent national laws and policies. Hopefully, the Adivasi Janajati peoples of Nepal will break this trend, when the future Constitution of Nepal is adopted, and become a role model for others.

The High Court has declared the Regional Council Act and several provisions of the Hill District Council Acts to be ‘illegal’ and ‘unconstitutional’. Is this a big blow for the security of the accord itself?

I am hopeful that the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court will disagree with the ruling of the High Court on the regional council and district council laws. But whichever way the Appellate Division rules, this raises the question of sustainable, direct constitutional recognition of the history, rights, dignity and identity of the Pahari and other Adivasi peoples of Bangladesh.

Hana Shams Ahmed is a freelance journalist and activist in Dhaka.

– A lecherous landlord (the character played by Abul Hayat in the film Third Person Singular Number)

Nick Henderson

Hana Shams Ahmed

[The Daily Star, 19th Anniversary Special Issue, February 25, 2010]

AN interesting debate popped up around Mostafa Sarwar Farooki’s film “Third Person Singular Number” when it was released late last year. It began in a Bangla newspaper and poured onto the English blog Unheard Voices. The newspaper reported that students of a private university had held a human chain to protest obscenity in the film — among others, the discussion centred around the concept of “living together” not being acceptable in our society, a scene showing someone purchasing a contraceptive device, and questions about the “character” of the film’s protagonist Tisha because she was living with a man she was not married to.

The main focus of the film was the portrayal of a woman who is single partly because of circumstances and partly so by her own choice. A “victim” because when her partner Munna (Mosharraf Karim) is put behind bars she is no longer wanted by his father’s family because she is not wedded to Munna and also can’t get back to her mother who is married to someone other than her father, which had earlier led to the alienation between mother and daughter.

She then makes a choice to be a strong woman and not break down in the face of these circumstances, and also not be afraid to confront those who sexually objectify her because of her single status. The plot ultimately shows that the single woman has to take help from other men to establish herself in society. She goes to live from one place to another, and after several failed attempts and tired of lecherous landlords wanting to only rent their apartment to her in exchange for sexual favours, she ends up taking help from Topu (her childhood sweetheart) to rent a luxurious apartment for herself. Also after several failed attempts to find a job without running into more lewd employers, she ends up taking help from her brother’s contacts (all men) to get a job. The film shows that no powerful position in urban Dhaka’s corporate world is occupied by a woman.

All the other notable women in the film — Tisha’s friend, who suspects her husband will sleep with Tisha if she is allowed to stay in their house, her female cousin who is a housewife and controlled by her mother-in-law, and the mother-in-law of her cousin who labels Tisha a bad woman because she does not have a husband — are all negative and weak characters.

Despite all the feministic expectations from Tisha’s character, she is ultimately shown to seek male protection, not independence.

But it was refreshing to see Farooki’s attempt to portray alternative lifestyles and a strong female protagonist that is not afraid to throw away her chastity belt to be accepted by society. Farooki does not judge Tisha with all her ‘mistakes/faults’ and shows the reality of a non-conformist woman in a society, which demands her conformity from all directions. And the discussion and the critique in the end seemed to come from those very conformist forces.

And all this critique is about a character in a film! What are all these men and women on their moral high horses afraid of? That it is wrong for a responsible filmmaker to endorse a single woman to go out by herself in the middle of the night and articulate her freedom to express her interest in someone sexually? Why is there such a reaction to such a seemingly innocuous plot, talking about a woman’s freedom by self-appointed morals police?

A few days ago I ran across a story in The Daily Star about a 15-year-old girl who after divorcing her abusive husband was now struggling for her life in a hospital. Her enraged ex-husband had stabbed and tried to kill her in broad daylight. There was however no human chains by anyone seeking justice for this poor teenager. It seems there are two separate groups when it comes to raising voice about social issues, and those who demand sanctimonious moral standards invariably never talk about ending violence against women.

How long is it going to take to change this system that forces a girl like Beli to get married at the age of 13 and what made her decide to get divorced at 15? The age at which Beli should have come home with her SSC certificates, what made her come home with a divorce certificate?

In May last year the High Court finally issued a set of guidelines to ban sexual abuse and harassment of women, girls, and children at their workplaces, educational institutions, and other public places. Years of campaigning, which started after a series of rapes carried out by a ruling party cadre in Jahangirnagar University in 1998, finally led to this ruling. Of course, in the process, a countless number of girls had to go through the fear and humiliation of being sexually harassed by their teachers, bosses, colleagues, employees, classmates, and any random person they came across in any random public place.

The guidelines that are there now are meant to work as an interim measure until new laws can be passed in the parliament. It gives a directive to concerned authorities to form a five-member harassment complaint committee headed by women at every workplace and institution to investigate allegations of any ‘mental, physical, or sexual harassment’ and recommend to the authorities for taking action against the accused persons. But in reality such a judgment may only prove to be a cosmetic remedy at most. Academic institutions and workplaces will be able to prove how gender sensitive they are by showing their “sexual harassment trump card.” In a country where women’s characters are judged by what clothes they wear, what is a committee full of possibly these very morals police going to achieve?

Even now when I speak among certain enlightened circles about the Jahangirnagar incidents many make comments like, “so what was that girl doing out all by herself when she knew there was an evening curfew for women” or when discussing a harassment someone faced on the street, “well, did you see the way she was dressed, she was asking for trouble!”

Anyone would think twice before approaching a committee composed of people with possibly these very views. Should she ask for justice for getting harassed by a man in her office who everyone is very good friends with and risk getting a “not guilty” verdict because of what she wore or her smile, or should she just keep it to herself and get on with her work? If she didn’t have enough friends at her workplace, she may just opt to do the latter.

In November last year, there was a case of sexual harassment at a very well-known private university in Dhaka. An English newspaper ran a story on it. The authorities were extremely reactive. Although they promised to punish the perpetrator, they were quick to put the blame on the girl and indirectly punish all the female students for it. The warnings ran, “…the authority has observed with great concern that many of the students attend the classes with dresses that look indecent. Therefore, they are advised to come to attend the classes in decent dresses with immediate effect…”

Samokal published a report on the rising rate of divorces. Above the title Bere Jachche Talaak is a photo of the back of a woman, looking away from the camera in shame. After all, a divorce is a woman’s shame, so is sexual harassment, so is domestic violence, so is rape, an accidental pregnancy, a secret footage of a physical relationship with a man outside marriage. She has to either get married to hide her shame away in small closet, or face the stigma forever.

Last year many legal battles were won on the feminist front. The government has accepted that a student can designate either her father or her mother as her legal guardian in registering for a public examination. Earlier only a father’s name was accepted. A Bangladeshi woman can now pass on her citizenship to her children if her children’s father is a foreigner (although she still cannot pass it to her spouse, whilst a man can pass it to her foreign spouse). And of course the sexual harassment guidelines, the shortcomings notwithstanding, were a historic win.

But the battles on the social front are going to be long and arduous. A girl child’s sense of self is greatly dependent on how others, especially her closest family members think, feel and behave towards her. External influences like mass media, the educational system and the society at large create the fundamental differences between identity formation of men and women. Until the foundation stones laid on women’s sense of self are strong, they will continue to be victimised, first by the perpetrator and then several times by several layers of our moral policing society.

Hana Shams Ahmed is a member of Drishtipat Writers Collective. She can be contacted at dpwriters@drishtipat.org.

Photo: Hasan Ahmed

By Hana Shams Ahmed

A bank’s billboard shows “achievement” as perceived by three groups – The child’s achievement is learning the skill of tying a shoelace, the man’s is taking his first step on the moon and finally the woman’s achievement is getting crowned in a beauty pageant.

Dhaka (Women’s Feature Service) – Dighi is the darling of the Bangladeshi media. She has long, beautiful hair and has just the right moves that will keep the viewers glued to the TV screen. There are life-size photos of her on big billboards in the city and big roles in films and drama serials already.

It was a commercial for a brand of henna that gave her the big break. In the ad, with a face full of pinkish makeup, she flaunts her translucent pearl-coloured hands exquisitely decorated with dark henna. Her on-screen friends gaze at her hands longingly, wishing they too could look like her.

Of course, this feeling is shared by thousand of girls who are on the other side of the television screen. Although Dighi’s hands look beautiful, one doubts whether that is what the viewers are focusing on. The attention is clearly on what she represents. As Anwara Begum points out in her book, ‘Magical Shadows: Women in the Bangladesh Media’ (AH Development Publishing House, 2008), “TV ads don’t only sell products, they sell attitudes.” At an innocent age of 10 years, Dighi is the nation’s favourite child model.

The ‘attitude’ sold in the henna commercial is the standard of beauty and mannerism, as defined by men – the fair-skinned, long-haired, bubbly girl. The consequence of the ad is the indoctrination of this attitude in girls who have not even reached puberty!

The ‘modernisation’ of the media culture over the years, with the arrival of private television channels and advertisement firms has had commensurate effects on the culture of patriarchy. Take for example, this set of ads. An earlier commercial shows a woman, who had come to be ‘viewed’ by a prospective groom, pleasing the family with her fine culinary skills, indicating that she remains within the four walls of the house. The next version shows a woman who is not domesticated, she does not know how to cook and her husband rebukes her for this. Hurt and distraught at her ‘failure’, she wins him back by whipping up a delicious meal with her discovery of readymade cooking spices. The next phase shows a man cooking. The readymade spices are so easy to use that EVEN a man can cook. Of course, he makes a mess in the kitchen, emphasising further that the kitchen is not really his place to be.

This shows that the camera almost always serves patriarchal interests. So the heavily made-up woman’s delight at getting the keys to a beautiful new apartment from her husband seems to be perfectly logical. It’s the wife, the mother or the children, who receive privileges, like living in a luxury apartment, from the ‘shonar chele’ (golden son). A man’s success in life is rated by what he brings for those who depend on him – the various women in his life.

In her book, Anwara Begum explores these relationships – like the phone which brings the man and woman together. The man leaves his wife to go to London for a work visit, the mother breaks down because her son has found a job in the city, the little girl asks her father to scold the mother for not believing her… Again, the father is in an office and the mother at home.

Of course, companies are aware that portraying the woman strictly in the home environment is no more acceptable. So out comes a phone package for women, the “Ladies First” for working women who have to talk a lot. Currently, there is a cement ad that proudly states: “Today’s mechanic, tomorrow’s engineer”, and shows two boys with hard hats pretend playing to be construction engineers, while their female counterpart pretends to be a school teacher. Not that it is any less respectable to be school teacher, but on screen some professions like teaching, nursing and fashion designing seem to be reserved for women, while engineering, politics and multinational business management are for men.

Advertising agencies are doing good business: A whopping US$215 million has been spent on advertisements by corporations this year so far. New money has been poured in to get fresh ideas from these advertising power houses. However, the general theme of the ads – be it romance, where the shy young woman is waiting to be swept off her feet by a handsome man; or marriage, where the wife, even if she is employed, is still in charge the family, are still very popular. The single, independent, successful woman is hardly represented.

Take the ad for an antiseptic soap that shows a child impressing his mother by showing her an excellent result sheet and no absence record at school. On cue the father comes home from work to tell the wife that he has received a bonus for not missing a day of work. He hands over the envelope to her because, of course, it was her conscientious care-giving that keeps the family healthy. The audience does not know what she does but the underlying assumption is that she is a housewife.

The stereotype continues.

It is with hair care products that women’s images are most objectified. Commercials do show clear signs of cultural change – the woman is no longer house bound, she is wearing trendy clothes and she is seen within the work space. The constant feature, however, is that she is embarrassed if every physical attribute of hers is not in perfect order and she is also forever seeking the attention of the man. The confident woman is the woman with the perfect hair. She has the best job, is the perfect wife and mother.

Anwara Begum talks about the effect that this desire for unattainable perfection has on women. She says, “This story of lovely heterosexual romance functions to cover up the harsh realities in relationships between men and women is a restrictive patriarchy where most suicides are committed by women.”

The electronic media does its own bit of social responsibility when covering events – from press conferences to art show openings. In a nod to affirmative action, they give equal screen space to men and women. But the TV camera operator seeks out the most attractive-looking woman in the press conference and focuses the camera on her for much more time than is necessary. This woman might not have any relevance to the story being told but perhaps the underlying notion is that it brings more viewers for the TV channel. Given that most camera operators are men, this kind of treatment is hardly surprising.

Someone once observed that the sure-fire sign of a more liberal and progressive Bangladeshi society was its ever increasing number of beauty pageants and catwalks. It was his firm conviction that a coy-looking model with perfect physical features walking down a ramp was a statement of the woman’s newfound independence.

A bank’s billboard reflects this thought. It shows “achievement” as perceived by three groups. The child’s achievement is learning the skill of tying a shoelace, the man’s achievement is making his first step on the moon and, finally, the woman’s achievement is getting crowned in a beauty pageant.

Source: Women’s Feature Service

Anwara Begum’s new book takes a look at women in the Bangladesh media. She argues that TV ads don’t only sell products but also attitudes and in the process set standards of beauty and mannerism, as defined by men. Hana Shams Ahmed reflects on the stereotyping of women.

[OneWorld South Asia, 8 October, 2009]

Dhaka: Dighi is the darling of the Bangladeshi media. She has long, beautiful hair and has just the right moves that will keep the viewers glued to the TV screen. There are life-size photos of her on big billboards in the city and big roles in films and drama serials already.

It was a commercial for a brand of henna that gave her the big break. In the ad, with a face full of pinkish makeup, she flaunts her translucent pearl-coloured hands exquisitely decorated with dark henna. Her on-screen friends gaze at her hands longingly, wishing they too could look like her.

Of course, this feeling is shared by thousand of girls who are on the other side of the television screen. Although Dighi’s hands look beautiful, one doubts whether that is what the viewers are focusing on.

The attention is clearly on what she represents. As Anwara Begum points out in her book, ‘Magical Shadows: Women in the Bangladesh Media’ (AH Development Publishing House, 2008), “TV ads don’t only sell products, they sell attitudes.” At an innocent age of 10 years, Dighi is the nation’s favourite child model.

The ‘attitude’ sold in the henna commercial is the standard of beauty and mannerism, as defined by men – the fair-skinned, long-haired, bubbly girl. The consequence of the ad is the indoctrination of this attitude in girls who have not even reached puberty!

The ‘modernisation’ of the media culture over the years, with the arrival of private television channels and advertisement firms has had commensurate effects on the culture of patriarchy.

Take for example, this set of ads. An earlier commercial shows a woman, who had come to be ‘viewed’ by a prospective groom, pleasing the family with her fine culinary skills, indicating that she remains within the four walls of the house.

The next version shows a woman who is not domesticated, she does not know how to cook and her husband rebukes her for this. Hurt and distraught at her ‘failure’, she wins him back by whipping up a delicious meal with her discovery of readymade cooking spices. The next phase shows a man cooking.

The readymade spices are so easy to use that EVEN a man can cook. Of course, he makes a mess in the kitchen, emphasising further that the kitchen is not really his place to be.

This shows that the camera almost always serves patriarchal interests. So the heavily made-up woman’s delight at getting the keys to a beautiful new apartment from her husband seems to be perfectly logical. It’s the wife, the mother or the children, who receive privileges, like living in a luxury apartment, from the ‘shonar chele’ (golden son). A man’s success in life is rated by what he brings for those who depend on him – the various women in his life.

In her book, Anwara Begum explores these relationships – like the phone which brings the man and woman together.

The man leaves his wife to go to London for a work visit, the mother breaks down because her son has found a job in the city, the little girl asks her father to scold the mother for not believing her… Again, the father is in an office and the mother at home.

Of course, companies are aware that portraying the woman strictly in the home environment is no more acceptable. So out comes a phone package for women, the “Ladies First” for working women who have to talk a lot.

Currently, there is a cement ad that proudly states: “Today’s mechanic, tomorrow’s engineer”, and shows two boys with hard hats pretend playing to be construction engineers, while their female counterpart pretends to be a school teacher.

Not that it is any less respectable to be school teacher, but on screen some professions like teaching, nursing and fashion designing seem to be reserved for women, while engineering, politics and multinational business management are for men.

Advertising agencies are doing good business: A whopping US$215 million has been spent on advertisements by corporations this year so far. New money has been poured in to get fresh ideas from these advertising power houses.

However, the general theme of the ads – be it romance, where the shy young woman is waiting to be swept off her feet by a handsome man; or marriage, where the wife, even if she is employed, is still in charge the family, are still very popular. The single, independent, successful woman is hardly represented.

Take the ad for an antiseptic soap that shows a child impressing his mother by showing her an excellent result sheet and no absence record at school. On cue the father comes home from work to tell the wife that he has received a bonus for not missing a day of work. He hands over the envelope to her because, of course, it was her conscientious care-giving that keeps the family healthy. The audience does not know what she does but the underlying assumption is that she is a housewife.

The stereotype continues

It is with hair care products that women’s images are most objectified. Commercials do show clear signs of cultural change – the woman is no longer house bound, she is wearing trendy clothes and she is seen within the work space.

The constant feature, however, is that she is embarrassed if every physical attribute of hers is not in perfect order and she is also forever seeking the attention of the man. The confident woman is the woman with the perfect hair. She has the best job, is the perfect wife and mother.

Anwara Begum talks about the effect that this desire for unattainable perfection has on women. She says, “This story of lovely heterosexual romance functions to cover up the harsh realities in relationships between men and women is a restrictive patriarchy where most suicides are committed by women.”

The electronic media does its own bit of social responsibility when covering events – from press conferences to art show openings. In a nod to affirmative action, they give equal screen space to men and women.

But the TV camera operator seeks out the most attractive-looking woman in the press conference and focuses the camera on her for much more time than is necessary.

This woman might not have any relevance to the story being told but perhaps the underlying notion is that it brings more viewers for the TV channel. Given that most camera operators are men, this kind of treatment is hardly surprising.

Someone once observed that the sure-fire sign of a more liberal and progressive Bangladeshi society was its ever increasing number of beauty pageants and catwalks. It was his firm conviction that a coy-looking model with perfect physical features walking down a ramp was a statement of the woman’s newfound independence.

A bank’s billboard reflects this thought. It shows “achievement” as perceived by three groups. The child’s achievement is learning the skill of tying a shoelace, the man’s achievement is making his first step on the moon and, finally, the woman’s achievement is getting crowned in a beauty pageant.

Source : Women’s Feature Service

[Women's Feature Services, May 26, 2009]

At a public meeting in Noakhali district in the Chittagong Division of Bangladesh, Agriculture Minister Motia Chowdhury had a strange encounter. Throughout the proceedings, a group of men stood with their backs toward her. The men, as it turned out, were conservative Muslim clerics, who found it difficult to accept a woman as a leader, but at the same time could not pass up the opportunity of listening to her speech.

Chowdhury is a leading woman politician in Bangladesh. Her involvement in politics goes back to Eden Girls’ College in Dhaka where she became vice president of the students’ union in 1963. She served a jail sentence for political activities in 1964-65 and actively participated in the liberation movement in 1971. In 1990, Chowdhury also actively took part in the movement against the rule of the Ershad junta, which ultimately ended an eight-year military rule. After democracy was restored in 1991, she was one of the few women to win a non-reserved seat in parliament. (In the original constitution, 15 seats were reserved for women. By 2004, this rose to 45 seats.) Chowdhury served as the Agriculture Minister in the Awami League (AL) government from 1996-2001. And is heading the same ministry in the recently elected AL government. Her feisty personality and determination to break barriers in a patriarchal political set-up has earned her the title ‘Agni Konna’ (daughter of fire).

Such passionate involvement in street politics was certainly not conventional in the 1960s, when Bangalis were considered ‘lesser beings’ by the West Pakistani rulers. Now, the paradox is that the most powerful political position in the country has belonged to two women for the last 18 years. Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina, as leaders of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (centre-right and Islamist-leaning) and the Awami League (centre-left), have alternated as Prime Minister since 1991.

But this has not created a feminist-friendly Bangladesh, and has not made enough of a difference in the lives of women struggling to make it in politics. One can argue that Zia and Hasina first got their jobs by virtue of being the wife and daughter of murdered leaders, which is more about dynasty politics than women’s achievements. Even now, when politics is still mostly in the hands of men, it is actually Chowdhury’s tenacious stay that is an achievement looked up to by women politicians of this generation.

In the December 2008 election, AL won with an overwhelming majority. Considered the more progressive and secular of the two political parties, the promise of a trial of the 1971 war criminals and ‘a digital Bangladesh’ were two of the main factors behind their popularity, especially with young and first time voters. A record 85 per cent of the total eligible voters voted last year. What was also overwhelming was the number of women voters – a total of 4.12 crore – which is more than half of the total voters. The 2009 parliament has 63 women lawmakers, the highest number to date. The fact that women have won through direct elections shows that there is a change in the mindset of voters. Women voters certainly are hoping that mainstream politics scenario will change with more representation of their issues.

The government has promised to be a ‘government of changing the days’. Hasina’s choice of cabinet members was accepted as a bold and pleasant surprise among progressive circles. Three of the most important ministries are headed by women – Advocate Sahara Khatun, 66, a member of the International Women Lawyers’ Association and the International Women’s Alliance, was given the Ministry of Home Affairs; Dr Dipu Moni, a Johns Hopkins graduate medical doctor and also an Advocate of the Bangladesh Supreme Court, was appointed as the first woman Foreign Minister of a South Asian country; and Chowdhury was once again appointed the Agriculture Minister. Another woman, Begum Munnujan Sufian, was given the portfolio for Labour and Employment.

This is not the first time that women have been ministers. The BNP-led coalition government of 2001-06 had four women cabinet ministers in an over-sized 62-member cabinet. The Minister for Women and Children Affairs, Minister for Cultural Affairs and the Adviser for Primary and Mass Education and the Prime Minister herself were the women in the cabinet. However, what is to be noted is the qualitative difference in the portfolios given to women. The women were only given development-related ministries, while the politically and financially important ones went to the men. By contrast, the current government has given powerful posts to women, which also has led to some challenges, as they are more under media spotlight.

In the four months it has been in power, the new government has already faced many acid tests. Prices of essentials have been on the rise and everyone has been wary about investing their money. Migrant worker remittances, which is the second highest foreign currency earner, has slowed down and may see a steeper drop, as the Middle East gets further hit by the global recession. Foreign Minister Dipu Moni recently visited Malaysia after the government cancelled the visas of 55,000 migrant workers. Home Minister Sahara Khatun has already faced calls for resignation over her handling of the massacre of 74 people, including 57 high-level army officers in the recent Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) mutiny. Certain right-wing groups have already blamed her poor handling of the negotiations on the fact that she is a woman (apparently hostage negotiations are a “man’s job”). In spite of these setbacks, it is still hoped that the female ministers will prove their worth and stay in the government.

Despite having women politicians and women in leadership positions, domestic violence and sexual harassment continue to be part of daily life. There are still many discriminatory laws in Bangladesh that need urgent amendment. The reservation on some clauses on CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women) is a case in point. Successive governments have failed to address the discrimination in the laws of inheritance, citizenship and family laws. Religious groups have always successfully objected to any discourse on changing these laws. Male politicians have never made any serious effort to bring about gender equity.

The hundreds of thousands of women who lined up last December to vote for their leaders did so with hope of change. While there is still a long way to go before participation of women in politics is at a significant level, the new cabinet marked a small but significant shift. Feminists must fight to make sure there is no looking back from here.

Womens Feature Service covers developmental, political, social and economic issues in India and around the globe. To get these articles for your publication, contact WFS at the www.wfsnews.org website.