Rape is the crime of choice for me. Yes! You read it right. If only I live in a third world country like Bangladesh and were a politically influential criminal who didn’t have to worry about the justice system, then being a rapist would be at the top of my list. “Why!?” You may ask. Well, the answer is “Rape is convenient”.
Convenience 1: First of all, rape is a crime which has equal participation of both the victim and the culprit. Think about it (Banani incident). If the rapists took two men/boys instead of the women that day and mugged their phones and wallets at gun point, would anyone say “What were those guys doing at a hotel at such late hours? Decent boys do not stay out late. Who cares if a couple of party going brats get mugged?”
Would anyone think of the scenario as stated? I don’t think they would have. Want to know why? It’s because mugging is scary for all of us. We hear about a mugging and we instantly start feeling up our beloved phones and wallets. Well, Bengali men don’t really have to be concerned about being harassed in broad day light or on an empty streets. But it won’t be like that forever I guess.
Convenience 2: Rape is the only form of crime where the culprit can blackmail the victim with the evidence. You are never going to see a bunch of kids posing on camera and confessing how they beat someone up and how it was arousing(!) for them.
Bengalis, who have deemed pornography hideous and ungodly, have a different type of pornography for themselves which is neither. This new and rather unconventional form of pornography is a brain child of our true Bengali intellect and was employed by our very own “Xunayed”. The concept was very simple really, “To embarrass Nur-Ullah by posting videos of him (Nur) getting beaten up”. It didn’t work though cause half the country sympathized with Nur and the other half wanted Xunayed three feet underground. Just a mobile clip got the country talking about things like teenage gangs and where the gangster training and the money came from.
But, when the fact was revealed that the act of rape was recorded in a similar fashion and with similar intentions. The only responses “erected” were “Got the link,dude?”
Convenience 3: Rape is the only romantic crime in Bangladesh. How so? Well, consider yourself to be a “decent” Bangladeshi young man. Maybe your father is an honest earning “Billionaire” or You are a simple-minded student “politician”. One fine day you start to feel passionate feelings towards a young woman you saw in the street. But she isn’t really into you. Well you should just go and Rape her you know. Bangladesh government urges parents to get the victim married to the rapist. So you’d get the girl with no questions asked. And the whole society will praise you for the generous act of accepting a victim of rape.
These social standards of Rape set by the government and society are the real reasons for it being so convenient. Rape is the only crime that one can simply grow out of. It’s not a big deal if a young guy had lost control of his adolescent urges and did something a lot of people do.
Well, that right there is the problem folks. A lot of people are doing it. Just out of adolescent urge people do things like- whistle, a pull on the scarf, make sexist remarks, and touch women inappropriately on a crammed bus. Give the people with these indecent urges a form of immunity through the social, economic or political institutions they will all become rapists.
All that being said, we need to understand that the arrest of the rapists(Banani) is not something to be happy about. Because for every rapist arrested there is a Tonu who got raped and murdered in a maximum security compound, there is a Hazrat ali and his daughter Ayesha who committed suicide on the railway after being deprived of justice, there is a daughter of a veteran who demanded justice for it and was subjected to it all over. We have to remember the thousands who never got the attention and millions more who couldn’t even come out and admit the atrocities committed on them. Only by remembering these things can we truly realize who are the rightful citizens of this country and choose the direction of its progress.
It is not enough to protest rape or rapists anymore. The protest has to be taken to the doorstep of those who promote and nurture this heinous crime. It is assuring that our fists have finally risen against Rape, but the fight is yet to be fought.
Translated by: www.neonaloy.com