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Category: Violence against women

  • Outrage as Turkish President Erdoğan Withdraws from the Istanbul Convention

    “Turkey’s sudden and unwarranted withdrawal” from the Istanbul Convention said U.S. President Joe Biden “is deeply disappointing”  and “ is a disheartening step backward for the international movement to end violence against women globally.”

    In the early hours of Saturday, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan issued a surprise decree withdrawing Turkey from the European treaty on preventing and combating violence against women. The Council of Europe treaty is known as the Istanbul Convention after the city where the treaty was opened for signature in 2011.  No reason was given for the action.

    The withdrawal is a devasting blow to Turkey’s more than 40 million women. A coalition of women’s groups described the withdrawal as a “nightmare,” but one that is just beginning. “It is obvious this withdrawal will empower murders, abusers, and rapists of women,” the coalition statement said.

    Turkey’s women speak from a long history of violence against women. In a country where the official statistics are not available, women’s platforms have begun publishing their own numbers—numbers, which they readily admit are likely materially understated.   According to CNN, three femicides occur a day in Turkey as compared to one femicide every three days in the UK.

    The brutality and public nature of this gender-based violence against women has horrified the nation.  For example, the Washington Post reported on the attack against Reyhan Korkmaz, who had a restraining order against her husband. According to local media reports, her husband cut Reyhan’s throat on March 7 in Ankara in front of the couple’s four children. This is not an isolated incident and hundreds of other brutal murders of women happen each year.

    Marja Pejcinovic Buric, secretary general of the 47-nation Council of Europe whose members prepared the Istanbul Convention said of Turkey’s action, “This move is a huge setback…and all the more deplorable because it compromises the protection of women in Turkey, across Europe and beyond.”

    On Friday, mere hours before his post-midnight decree, Erdoğan spoke with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council head Charles Michel ahead of an EU leaders’ summit next week where Turkish -EU ties are set to be discussed.  In a statement summarized by the Turkish Daily Sabah, Erdoğan told EU leaders that he expects the EU summit to yield results on Turkey-EU ties, paving the way for concrete action.  It is hard to see how rejection of a European treaty designed to protect the fundamental right of women to live a life free of violence will contribute to EU-Turkey relations.

    Erdoğan’s withdrawal is being challenged as unconstitutional. The women’s coalition, EŞİK – Women’s Platform for Equality with which The Advocates is presenting at the NGO CSW65 Virtual Forum on Tuesday, March 23 at 11:30am CST, agrees.  Because international agreements on human rights and freedoms, like the Istanbul Convention, are ratified by the Turkish Parliament, they cannot be nullified by executive action. EŞİK consists of more than 310 women’s and LGBTQI organizations and enjoys support from more than 150 non-governmental organizations, trade associations, and trade unions.

    Upon learning of the withdrawal, the executive boards and party caucuses of the opposition CHP Party and its Nation Alliance partner Good Party held extraordinary meetings Saturday.   CHP’s women executives then held a joint press conference where they dismissed the move as “unconstitutional.” “We don’t recognize and will not recognize the decision taken by Erdoğan by disregarding the law and the Parliament,” CHP Secretary-General Selin Sayek Boke is quoted as saying by Daily Sabah.  Kerem Altiparmak, an academic and lawyer specializing in human rights law was quoted by an AFP news agency, “What’s abolished tonight is not only the Istanbul convention, but the parliament’s will and legislative power.”

    The irony is that Erdoğan and his AK Party initially endorsed the Istanbul Convention. Turkish representatives were active in its drafting. Turkey was the first country to sign the convention in 2011 and to ratify it in 2012—the only measure in the Turkish parliament to be adopted unanimously that year. Since then, Erdoğan’s policy measures have become increasingly hostile to women’s equality. Initiatives include proposals like the “marry your rapist” law and to reduce the ability of women to secure alimony. They have eliminated gender equality from the curriculum of the national education system and limited access to contraception. And Turkey’s laws on violence against women, passed in the wake of Istanbul Convention ratification, have not been effectively implemented.

    It was not until last summer, however, that Erdoğan and the AK Party became serious about withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, with some commentators speculating that he was moving further to the right to shore up support from ultra-conservative forces as his traditional support appeared to be eroding.[1] Opposition forces spread falsehoods that the Istanbul Convention promotes homosexuality and is a Western import that undermines the traditional family structure and will promote divorce.

    Conservative women within Erdoğan’s own AK Party rose in support of the Istanbul Convention (while simultaneously pointing out that no one had ever accused them of being feminists).  KADEM, a woman’s organization formed and supported by Erdoğan’s government on whose board an Erdoğan female family member has always sat (currently one of his daughters) issued a statement that condemned withdrawal and “demonization” of the Istanbul Convention. “At a time when there is no connection between the Istanbul Convention and the rise in the number of women’s murders”, the KADEM statement declared, “it is not rational to declare the convention which aims to prevent women’s murders as a scapegoat.” A day later, the other large influential government sponsored nongovernmental organization on whose Board Erdoğan’s son sits, opposed the convention and supported withdrawal. Women throughout Turkey protested withdrawal.  Two polls showed the majority of Turks are against withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention.

    Erdoğan and his AK Party backed away from issuing a decision on withdrawal but refused to keep the possibility off the table.  It is unclear what triggered Erdoğan’s decree announcing withdrawal in the early hours of Saturday.

    We support the statement by Women’s Platform for Equality, Turkey (ESIK), which declares the Presidential Executive Order signed by the country’s president to be unconstitutional, and therefore null and void. The Istanbul Convention was adopted and ratified unanimously by the Turkish Parliament in 2011. By its own laws, Turkey cannot leave an international treaty to which it is a party, and which concerns  fundamental human rights. The Advocates for Human Rights calls on the Government of Turkey not to withdraw from this crucial treaty to combat violence against women.

    https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86178021823?pwd=RGdRUk5MQnowS1NjSXluT1dtcGFodz09

    Moreover, leaving the Istanbul Convention, which is a Council of Europe Convention that aims to prevent and combat violence against women and domestic violence, has dire consequences for women in Turkey, a country that has seen an alarming escalation in femicides.

    [1]

    Margaret Grieve is a board member and a volunteer for The Advocates for Human Rights.

    The Advocates for Human Rights is a nonprofit organization dedicated to implementing international human rights standards to promote civil society and reinforce the rule of law.

    Curious about volunteering? Please reach out. The Advocates for Human Rights has an opportunity for you.

    Eager to see change? Give to our mission, our vision, our work. Your gift matters.

    This post was originally published on The Advocates Post.

  • A Woman Is Afraid

    Fear and rage can be an entry point into the rejection of violence against women but not the termination or sum of our collaborations. 

    This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.

  • Deploying undercover officers to ‘protect women’ is just making us more outraged

    CONTENT WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS REFERENCES TO VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN THAT SOME PEOPLE MAY FIND DISTRESSING

    It should possibly come as no surprise that the government is seizing upon the murder of Sarah Everard to roll out more Stasi-like undercover policing, all in the name of protecting women. Boris Johnson has announced that the government is going to send plain-clothes police officers to spy on people in bars and clubs around England and Wales. It’s part of a pilot scheme, Project Vigilant, which was launched by Thames Valley police in 2019, and is now going to be rolled out nationwide. The mainstream media is calling it a “drive to protect women“, and a scheme “to catch sexual predators“.

    Spy cops abuse women. They don’t protect them.

    But we’ve seen time and time again that undercover police abuse their powers, deceive women into relationships, and wreck their lives. More than 30 women have been tricked into relationships with spy cops. The exact figure is likely to be higher, because the government likes protecting the identities of undercover policemen who have infiltrated women’s lives. And they don’t like telling us whether the police are still doing it now.

    This latest announcement about deploying undercover police makes a mockery of the Undercover Policing Inquiry that is currently taking place, which should be investigating the disgraceful actions of undercover officers and their bosses. It’s a kick in the teeth to the women participating in that inquiry whose lives were torn apart by police spies.

    People have taken to Twitter to vent their frustration:

    The police aren’t here to protect women

    A serving Metropolitan police officer has been charged with Sarah’s murder. And the subsequent police violence towards protesters on the streets, showed the world that the police are definitely not here to protect women.

    And Sarah’s murder was just the tip of the iceberg. A document called #194andcounting shows that at least 194 women have been murdered by the police and prison system in England and Wales, either in state custody or in prison, since the 1970s.

    The Canary’s Steve Topple reported on statistics which show that between January 2009 and September 2020 there were:

    • 11 murders [of women] involving serving or ex-police officers. Eight were convicted. Three cases are ongoing. But nine of the 11 victims were police officers’ wives or girlfriends.
    • Over 90 charges of, or convictions for, rape among [employees of the criminal justice system]. The majority were against women and children. Several of the offenders committed multiple crimes. Dozens of these were serving police officers.

    And there are a number of other disgusting misogynist incidents involving police officers. I will list just a couple. On 15 March, the Sun reported that a Metropolitan policeman, who was guarding the spot where Sarah Everard was murdered, sent out a meme “containing six images of a uniformed officer abducting a woman”. In 2020, Metropolitan police officers took selfies of themselves next to the bodies of murdered women Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman.

    Also in 2020, a police officer from Avon and Somerset was found guilty of gross misconduct for his treatment of a domestic abuse survivor whose ex-partner broke into her house and “punched her head into a wall”. The policeman described the survivor as “anti-men”. The Canary spoke to the woman, who said:

    When you call the police, you expect to be treated with respect. You don’t expect to be treated with prejudice by an officer who clearly has an issue with you as a woman. Misogyny has no place in any police force. Misogyny kills.

    Giving the police more powers to act with impunity

    It’s all too clear to women that the police are institutionally violent towards us. But instead of addressing this, the Tory government is giving them sweeping new powers. The recently passed Covert Human Intelligence Sources Act legalises the criminal activities of undercover officers and agents working for the police, MI5, and other state agencies. The Act doesn’t prohibit murder or torture in the name of undercover work. So, essentially it means spies and their agents will be able to act with impunity.

    Meanwhile, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill currently being rushed through parliament will give police officers even more powers. Sisters Uncut argues:

    As the actions of police at peaceful vigils this weekend show, police abuse the powers that they already have – and yet the government plans to give them more powers in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill.

    The death of Sarah Everard must be seen in context of the structures of violence against women in this country, which include the police who brutally manhandled grieving women on Saturday, and the routine failures of the police to investigate rape cases as well as their own record of domestic abuse against women.

    It continues:

    The police are institutionally violent against women. Handing them more powers will increase violence against women.

    We need systemic change

    While the government pretends to care by promising to provide us with undercover cops and better-lit streets, the reality is we need complete systemic change. Women are unsafe, whether they’re walking home or already in their house. In fact, 62% of women murdered between 2019 and 2008 were killed by men who were currently, or had previously been, in an intimate relationship with them. No amount of spy cops or street lighting will protect us from the misogyny and patriarchy within our society, ingrained in boys from an early age.

    We don’t trust the police, or the criminal justice system, to protect us. The number of successful rape convictions is at an all-time low.  The Centre for Women’s Justice’s Harriet Wistrich has argued that rape has virtually been “de-criminalised” because it’s so rare that a man will be convicted of the crime. It’s therefore unsurprising that, according to the Office for National Statistics, “less than one in five victims of rape or assault by penetration reported their experience to the police”.

    We are tired Johnson and Patel’s crocodile tears. We are tired of our behaviour being policed, of being told that we must not walk alone at night, just because we’re women. We are tired of being victim-blamed for being assaulted. Together we must fight for radical change.

    Featured image via a Bristol activist, with permission

    By Eliza Egret

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • We need to grieve all women murdered by men. Not just those deemed worthy by the mainstream media.

    Women across the UK continue to grieve the loss of Sarah Everard, murdered while she was walking home. Her alleged attacker is a Metropolitan police officer: a cog in a system that claims to keep women safe, but in reality does very little to protect us.

    While all of us know Sarah’s name, how many know the names of Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman? Or of Wenjing Xu? Or Geetika Goyal and Blessing Olusegun? How many news headlines have they taken up? And why aren’t we just as outraged by their murders, also committed by men?

    Sadly, Sarah’s death is a stark reminder that not only do we live in a misogynist society, but that we also live in a white supremacist one. You see, Bibaa, Nicole, Wenjing, Geetika, and Blessing were Women of Colour. It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that mainstream media coverage didn’t get to anywhere near the same levels. After all, these news outlets are racially-biased and are essential in upholding a racist society. As I’ve reported before, the experience of the white person has always been the default front page story to cover, while narratives of People of Colour are too often dismissed.

    But it’s not just the media. As white women, we should also reflect on why, if we see a story about a Black woman who was murdered, we are saddened, but we continue to go about our daily lives. But the murder which sparked our nationwide unrest was that of a white woman.

    Please don’t get my intention wrong: I don’t mean to insult Sarah’s memory in any way, or disrespect those grieving for her. Nor do I want to take anything away from the women who have faced police repression while protesting on the streets these last few days. I would like us to collectively reflect upon how, when we say nothing about the murders of Black women, we are complicit in upholding a racist society. I would like us to think about how our white silence is, essentially, life-threatening to Women of Colour.

    Bibaa and Nicole

    Sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman had been celebrating Bibaa’s birthday when they were stabbed to death in a park in Wembley in June 2020. But the news went largely unnoticed by the UK population. Their family even had to search for the women themselves after receiving no immediate help from the Metropolitan Police. Their mother, Mina Smallman, said of the police:

    I knew instantly why they didn’t care.

    She added:

    They didn’t care because they looked at my daughter’s address and thought they knew who she was. A black woman who lives on a council estate.

    Mina was told that when the police did finally come, officers took selfies of themselves with Bibaa and Nicole’s dead bodies. Yes, that’s right: they took selfies. Mina said:

    Those police officers dehumanised our children.

    She also said:

    If ever we needed an example of how toxic it has become, those police officers felt so safe, so untouchable, that they felt they could take photographs of dead black girls and send them on. It speaks volumes of the ethos that runs through the Metropolitan Police.

    There were no nationwide vigils for Bibaa and Nicole. And I can’t help but suspect that if it were white women who had been dehumanised by the police in such a way, there would have been nationwide outcry. Surely it would have made every newspaper’s front page.

    Wenjing Xu and Geetika Goyal

    16-year-old Wenjing Xu was murdered on 5 March, just two days after Sarah went missing. She was stabbed to death near her family’s Chinese takeaway. One man has been arrested for her murder, and for the attempted murder of another man. Wenjing was studying for her GCSEs and was described as a “very gentle soul”.

    29-year-old Geetika was stabbed and then left to die on a street by a man in Leicester on 3 March, on the same day that Sarah disappeared.

    It’s telling of the society we live in that Wenjing and Geetika received next-to-no mainstream media headlines or even mentions on social media, even though they were murdered in the same week as Sarah.

    Bennylyn Burke

    25-year-old Bennylyn Burke, from Kingswood, Bristol, was reported missing from her home, along with her two children, on 1 March. A 50-year-old man has been charged with the murder of both Bennylyn and her two-year-old daughter Jellica, while her other daughter was found alive inside the arrested man’s home. It’s thought that the man murdered Bennylyn using a hammer.

    Blessing Olusegun

    21-year-old Blessing was found dead on a beach in Bexhill on 18 September 2020. No-one has been charged with her murder. Sussex police has treated the case as “unexplained” but not suspicious, with a postmortem stating that she died by drowning. But her family want more answers, and a petition is being circulated, calling for justice for Blessing. Joshua Mellody, who started the petition, argued:

    Her death IS suspicious and we will not let it be left “unexplained”. Something happened that night that left blessing lifeless on the beach. The police need to investigate it. The system needs to do better. #justiceforblessing #blacklivesmatter #justiceforwomen

    The mainstream media is now making comparisons between Sarah and Blessing, as they were both caught on CCTV, walking at night. But it has taken Sarah’s death for many of us to learn about Blessing for the first time.

    Say all of their names

    I’ve mentioned just a fraction of the women who’ve been killed by men within the last year. “At least 31 women have been killed by men” just three months into 2021. And according to Karen Ingala Smith:

    Since 2009, at least 1,691 women and girls aged 14 and over have been killed by men.

    We need to keep the momentum going on the streets, outraged by the death of every single woman, and not just the women singled out by the mainstream media as worthy of us mourning. Someone on Twitter summed this up beautifully:

    So, as we raise our voices, not just against men’s violence, but against police and state violence towards women, we need to be shouting the names of all the women we have lost. Sarah, Geetika, Blessing, Wenjing, Bennylyn, Bibaa, Nicole. The list goes on and on. Let’s grieve all of their deaths with outrage, and let’s make sure that we continue to fight for systemic change.

    Featured image via a Bristol activist, with permission

     

    By Eliza Egret

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • This is Anna Campbell. She fought and died for the liberation of all women.

    This is the revolutionary Anna Campbell. Monday 15 March marks three years since she was murdered by the Turkish state in Rojava, north-east Syria.

    Anna was an anti-fascist, feminist and queer internationalist. She joined the women’s revolution in Rojava in May 2017 during the fight against Daesh (ISIS/Isil). Turkey invaded Rojava’s Afrin region in 2018, and Anna joined the YPJ’s armed resistance against the invasion. She was murdered by a Turkish missile strike in March 2018, along with her friends Sara Merdin and Serhildan, as they tried to help refugees flee Afrin.

    Fighting for a “free and dignified life for everyone”

    Rojava is a region of around 3 million people, organising themselves using a model of direct democracy, attempting to give power to the grassroots. It is a society that centres on women’s liberation, religious tolerance, and minority protection as key. According to Anna’s friends:

    It was anti-fascism, peoples’ democracy and women’s liberation that first attracted Anna to Rojava.

    But, like all of her comrades in Rojava, Anna wasn’t just fighting for direct democracy in that region. She was fighting for a free and dignified life for everyone, and she was fighting for women’s liberation everywhere. The people of Rojava don’t see their struggle as separate from here. They see it as a small part of a global struggle.

    Organising in the UK

    Anna was an anarchist and anti-capitalist organiser, working tirelessly before going to Rojava. Her friends say:

    [Anna was] involved in every type of resistance in the UK and Europe, from distributing food, protecting the environment, resisting detention and deportation of refugees and immigrants, to prison abolition.

    In the UK, Anna stood on the streets against fascists. The Canary’s Tom Anderson recalls:

    We both stood our ground alongside fellow anti-fascists one day in Dover, as the National Front lobbed bricks at us. The Front was trying to hold a racist march through the city.

    Her friends say that Anna:

    knew how to fight fascism, but that fight was not limited to street punch ups or macho posturing. Anna was humble and she gave meaning to every action, serving the people.

    “Her loss leaves a legacy”

    If Anna were alive in the UK today, she would no doubt be outraged by the systematically misogynist UK state, which fails to protect women and, in many cases, doesn’t even bother to investigate their murders. She would be disgusted by the fact that a man murders a woman every three days in this country, and that 62% of these victims were murdered by a spouse or former-partner. She would be using her education in Rojava to build a different society in the UK: one that actually tackles patriarchy and misogyny head on, and one that ensures that women are actually safe in their own homes.

    Her friends say:

    Remembering those we have lost in the struggle against capitalism, fascism, and patriarchy reminds us of the need for revolutionary commitment, grief and love. The present is born in every moment from the past, and we walk in the paths trodden by those who came and left before us.

    We miss Anna every day, not just at the time of this anniversary. Her loss leaves a legacy; we must keep revolutionary fires burning…

    They continue:

    Let’s keep the momentum going in 2021, in the name of Anna Campbell, of Sara Merdin, of Serhildan, and of every person who has fallen in our struggle for freedom and dignity.

    We have the power to create a society where gender liberation is at the forefront. But we can’t rely on our government to do it for us. The majority-Kurdish women’s struggle in Rojava and Bakur (within Turkey) is perhaps the strongest women’s movement in the world right now. Let’s learn from these revolutionary women so that Anna, Sara and Serhildan, and all of their comrades haven’t died in vain.

    Featured image via Anna’s friends, with permission

    By Eliza Egret

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • BANGLADESH: Ensure Women’s Empowerment by Achieving Gender Equality

    A joint statement by AFAD and Odhikar on the occasion of International Women’s Day 2021

    Violence and discrimination against women are widespread in Bangladesh. Moreover, due to rampant human rights violations such as enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, deaths in custody due to torture, majority of women from victim families face trauma, insecurity and financial difficulties. In Bangladesh, along with the repression by the authoritarian regime, women face a deep-rooted patriarchal power system. Moreover, female participation in politics in Bangladesh is hindered by reprisals, persecution, insecurity and by the violation of the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association and of expression and opinion. The draconian Digital Security Act, 2018 and other repressive laws gag voices of dissent.

    AFAD and Odhikar believe that without upholding human rights and ensuring participative democracy and basic freedoms, and the scrapping of repressive laws, women’s empowerment and gender equality in Bangladesh will remain elusive.

     

    Joint-Statement_Women’s-Day_8-March-2021 (full text in English, PDF)

    This post was originally published on News – Odhikar.

  • Establishing the Death Penalty for Rape in Bangladesh Does Little to Protect Victims of Violence Against Women

    16 Days of Activism – November 25 through Human Rights Day, December 10

    This October, a wave of protests and rallies spread across Bangladesh following several high-profile sexual assaults. In response, Bangladesh amended the Women and Children Repression Prevention Act to allow the death penalty for rape. This response from the government does not protect women victims of sexual assault, but rather deters them from reporting and decreases conviction rates. It also represents an impermissible application of the death penalty, giving rise to additional human rights violations. As in many other nations that have made capital punishment available for rape, this response is merely a smokescreen to avoid meaningful reform and temporarily quell calls for change.  

    The first of these assaults occurred on 5 January when the rape of a second-year student from Dhaka University sparked a widespread day-long protest led by thousands of University students. In response to this outcry, the High Court of Bangladesh ordered the law ministry to form a commission within 30 days to address the rise in sexual assaults. Nine months later, this commission has yet to be formed. The second assault occurred on 25 September. Six members of the Bangladesh Chhatra League- the student wing of the governing party in Bangladesh- were arrested and charged following the crime, a gang-rape of a woman in the city of Sylhet. Tensions in Bangladesh finally peaked when news of the earlier  gang-rape of a woman in Noakhali district, which took place on 2 September, went viral in early October. Footage of the attack circulated on Facebook after her attackers released the video. Although eight people were arrested in direct connection with this assault, the resulting protests and social media movement had a significant impact. Hundreds of Facebook and Twitter users changed their profile photos to an empty black space and social media platforms were utilized by demonstrators to organize human chains, rallies, and demonstrations in cities across Bangladesh.  

    Sexual assault in Bangladesh is a pervasive and systemic problem. According to Ain-o-Salish Kendra, a Bangladeshi human rights organization, over 907 women and children were raped in the first nine months of 2020 alone. Of these reported assaults, more than a fifth were gang-rapes. These numbers only capture a small fraction of the true number of sexual assaults in Bangladesh, as most survivors face significant hurdles to reporting and accountability. Bangladeshi women and children who are victims of sexual assault face widespread social stigmatization, threats, and a systematic barring of access to justice and accountability. Survivors of sexual assault who go to the police often face reluctance to file cases, gender-based bias, victim-blaming, and humiliation. Minimal access to legal aid, medical care, safe shelter, witness protection, or psychological and social counseling characterizes Bangladesh’s typical response to assault survivors. Additionally, the Bangladesh government has yet to pass long promised and expected sexual harassment and witness protection laws.  

    Adopted in Bangladesh in 2000, the Women and Children Repression Prevention Act [“Act”] outlined punishments for sexual offenses, the trafficking of women and children, murder for dowry, sexual oppression, and other sexual violence crimes. Instead of creating a system for accountability, this Act has produced little change in Bangladesh. About 3.5% of cases filed under the Act have ended up in court. Altogether, the conviction rate for rape in Bangladesh is below 1% according to information gathered by Human Rights Watch. The wave of October protests prompted the Bangladesh Cabinet ministers to approve an Amendment to the Act on October 12. Whereas the Act previously stipulated life in prison as the maximum sentence for a rape conviction, the Amendment affirmed that anyone convicted of rape would be punished with “death or rigorous imprisonment for life.”  

    Imposing the death penalty for rape fails as a deterrent and as a mechanism for justice for sexual assault survivors. Stricter punishments are proven to have an inverse correlation with criminal convictions. Taqbir Huda, a research specialist at Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust, cautioned that allowing capital punishment for sexual crimes may result in lower conviction rates. Societal and governmental ambivalence toward rape and its victims is expressed through a high maximum penalty, such as the death penalty, which decreases the possibility of convictions or the imposition of any punishment. The introduction of the death penalty for rape also does nothing to address the core societal issues that lead to high rates of sexual assault in Bangladesh.  

    The Bangladesh Government should instead work to combat harmful stereotypes that make women and children more vulnerable to sexual assault, increase training on sexual assault for police and prosecutors, and establish protection measures and adequate remedies for victims.  

    The ramifications of the Amendment allowing for the death penalty for rape are already apparent. On October 15, in the first conviction since the introduction of the death penalty for rape, a Bangladesh special tribunal sentenced five men to death for the 2012 gang rape of a 15-year-old girl. The death penalty for rape in Bangladesh serves no meaningful legal, procedural, or social purpose. As best stated by Sultan Mohammed Zakaria of Amnesty International, “executions perpetuate violence, they do not prevent it.” 

    To learn more about the effects of establishing the death penalty for rape, please join us next Thursday, December 10th, at 7:00pm CST for a presentation with panelists Amy Bergquist, Kaarin Long, and Zaman Ashraf. Click here to register: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_H-M15xkHRTKLKSGsCzy4mw 

    By Anna Conrad, law student at St. Thomas University and legal intern with The Advocates’ International Justice Program 

    Anna Conrad, law student and legal intern with The Advocates for Human Rights

    This post was originally published on The Advocates Post.

  • BANGLADESH: Violence against women on the rise amid COVID-19 and rampant impunity

    A Joint Statement by the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances, Asian Human Rights Commission, International Federation for Human Rights and Odhikar on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women 2020

    BANGLADESH: Violence against women on the rise amid COVID-19 and rampant impunity

    Dhaka/Manila/Hong Kong/Paris, 24 November 2020: November 25 marks the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, numerous reports have emerged that all types of violence against women (VAW), especially domestic violence, have intensified worldwide. UN termed the upsurge in VAW the “shadow pandemic “and emphasized the need for a global collective effort to stop it.

    In Bangladesh, during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, along with domestic violence (dowry is one of the major causes of domestic violence), rape against women and children (i.e. girls below the age of 18), has increased. According to information gathered by Odhikar, between January and September 2020, a total of 919 women and children were victims of rape. Among the victims, 325 were women and 569 were children. The rape of children is nearly two times higher than that of adult women – a worrying matter. Among those 919 women and children, 21 women and 18 children were killed after being raped. During the same period in 2019, a total of 834 women and children were raped, according to Odhikar documentation.

    Rule of law and human rights are being grossly violated in Bangladesh. The restrictions and measures put in place by the authorities during the COVID-19 pandemic have worsened the overall human rights situation. When the government announced a “general holiday” (its term for lockdown), many workers lost their jobs, and, as a result of such protracted lockdowns, the number of people staying at home has increased. Financial loss and close quarters have increased frustrations and tempers. The patriarchal mindset of society has created more pressure on women. In many households, women are being pressured to do the majority or all domestic work – including the extra work resulting from demands by husbands and children staying at home. In addition, frequent conflicts and violence in relation to dowry demands due to various reasons, including loss of income, have been reported.

    Regardless of the pandemic, perpetrators of acts of VAW frequently enjoy rampant impunity, due to the lack of implementation of relevant laws, an ineffective criminal justice system, corruption in the law enforcement and administration sectors, and political protections for perpetrators. On 12 October 2020, the Cabinet approved an amendment to the Women and Children Repression Prevention Act to introduce the death penalty for individuals found guilty of rape, which Parliament eventually passed on 17 November 2020 ensuring death penalty as the highest punishment for rape. This came after a series of nationwide large street protests in response to an increase in cases of rape and lack of justice for the victims. However, we believe that the death penalty will not stop VAW as long as the ineffective, highly politicized, and corruption-prone criminal justice system is not reformed. Furthermore, we are concerned over the risk that this new legal provision may be used to take action against innocent people, with irreversible and fatal consequences. What is urgently needed is a reformed, effective, independent criminal justice system to combat the increasing rates of VAW and the impunity for the perpetrators. Ultimately, without a democratic people’s government, women’s rights and all other human rights cannot be enjoyed in Bangladesh.

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     The Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD) is a federation of human rights organizations working directly on the issue of involuntary disappearances in Asia. Envisioning a world without desaparecidos, AFAD was founded on 4 June 1998 in Manila, Philippines. AFAD was the recipient of the 2016 Asia Democracy and Human Rights Award conferred by the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy.

    The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) works towards the radical rethinking and fundamental redesigning of justice institutions in order to protect and promote human rights in Asia. Established in 1984, the Hong Kong based organization is a Laureate of the Right Livelihood Award, 2014.

    The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) is the world’s oldest non-governmental human rights organization. Founded in 1922, FIDH federates 192 member organizations from 117 countries. Its core mandate is to promote respect for all the rights set out in the UDHR.

    Odhikar, meaning ‘rights’ in Bangla, is a registered human rights organization based in Dhaka, Bangladesh established on October 10, 1994 by a group of human rights defenders, to monitor human rights violations and create wider awareness. It holds special consultative status with the ECOSOC of the United Nations.

    2020 Statement_Odhikar_VAW (full text in English, PDF)

    This post was originally published on News – Odhikar.