Violence against women and children

Hardly a day goes by without reports of torture and oppression of women and children covering the main spaces of the media. A few days ago we had to suffer the shocking spectacle of a pregnant woman in Nilphamari tied to a tree and tortured until rescued by the police. Her fault was that she had refused an out-of-court settlement with the alleged killers of her father. And to add injury to the wound, the child she was carrying was aborted a day later because of the cruelty she had undergone. On Wednesday, an act of similar barbarity was perpetrated, in Kushtia, on a boy of seven who was also tied to a tree and mercilessly beaten up. He was suspected of stealing a mobile phone.

Regrettably, instances of violence against woman and children are occurring with distressing regularity. When one talks about society rising together against it, the stark reality is that in many cases the perpetrators are well-linked with the powerful which restrains the public from standing up to the culprits for fear of reprisal. Both these features were clearly evident in these two instances where in one the ruling party men were alleged to have been behind the torture of the woman. And in the second case people had refrained from intervening fearing reprisal since the alleged culprits were linked to the powerful, as was apparent from the lack of reaction and statements of the onlookers.  

Some of the alleged culprits have been arrested and we hope that they would be subject to the legal process unaffected by any political influence. They should be tried in the special tribunals speedily so that not only do the victims get due justice, but also that the punishments work as deterrence.