“Nearly 25,000 Bangladeshi women and children are illegally trafficked into neighbouring countries and the Middle East every year, according to a Bangladesh National Women Lawyers Association survey recently released. Traffickers have lured the women and children to migrate on false promises of employment.
Ninety percent of women victims are illiterate and only five percent have primary education. A survey conducted recently in 10 villages found that 33 out of 51 victims were still missing. Others returned home on their own or with help from human rights organisations. . Estimates are that about 25,000 women and children are trafficked out of the country every year and many of them remain missing, according to the Women Lawyers Association. They rescued 400 women and children from India, Pakistan and Middle East countries over the last few years.
Lack of enforcement of proper prosecution, use of children as commodities, powerlessness and vulnerability of women, corruption and bribery at all levels are the main causes of trafficking of women and children. Police said most of the trafficked women end up in brothels while the children are used in crimes and for cheap labour.”
BANGLADESH: ACID ATTACKS ON WOMEN INCREASING
UN WIRE (Nov. 4, 1999): http://www.unfoundation.org
“Three to five women per week are being burned with sulfuric acid in Bangladesh, ‘and the numbers are increasing at an alarming rate,’ ABC’s 20/20 reported beginning of November, calling the phenomenon ‘the barbaric crime of the century.’ ‘In 1996, there were perhaps 50 cases. There were 100 cases the year after, and 200 cases last year,’ said John Morrison, executive director of the Acid Survivors Foundation. ‘So it appears to be doubling, and therefore there’s a need for urgent action.
Sulfuric acid, which literally melts away skin and muscle, leaves many victims blind or deaf. Some are killed in the attacks. ‘Most of the victims are too ashamed to show their faces, so they hide behind closed doors and curtained windows,’ reported ABC’s Connie Chung.
She said hundreds of young women are being attacked ‘simply because they dared to say no to men.’ Many of the victims are teenagers from very poor families who are attacked after rejecting a man’s marriage proposal, she said. According to one woman activist, ‘Most men actually look at women as property, and you’re not supposed to have an opinion about whether you want to be with him or not.
Chung spoke with three convicted acid throwers at a Bangladeshi prison and noted their ‘contempt for women.’ One of those convicted of burning a woman with acid said: ‘Why should women have equal rights? We feed them, they don’t feed us. We provide for them. All they do is just sit at home and eat.’ Acid throwing was ruled a capital offense in 1983. . . In 1998, there were 145 reported incidents of acid attacks, 87 cases filed and 14 men sentenced to life in prison, according to the Bangladesh National Women Lawyers Association. Only 10% of attackers are ever brought to trial.
Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said: ‘This is really something very heinous. Every criminal should be punished, but sometimes they try to use their influence [to avoid conviction]. But we are determined . . I will not accept it.’
The Dhaka Medical College Hospital is the only public hospital in Bangladesh with a burn unit, but it has only eight beds, almost no modern equipment, few trained nurses and a shortage of clean sheets. . . The doctors can do only the most basic reconstructive surgery. A one-hour operation costs several hundred dollars in a country where the average income is about $25 a month. Most victims need several operations, each of which takes four to five hours.
Prime Minister Hasina said she ordered a new 50-bed burn unit to be built within a year to help he increasing number of women suffering from acid burns. But even then, doctors at the hospital say there isn’t enough money in the budget to purchase all the necessary equipment.
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