State security forces and armed Awami League (AL) supporters had abused girls and women sexually during the July Uprising to deter their participation in the movement, according to a recent report of the United Nations (UN) rights office.
"Physical assaults on female protesters often targeted specific body parts such as face, chest, pelvis, and buttocks, as the perpetrators aimed not only to inflict pain but also apparently sought to humiliate and degrade women specifically based on their gender," said the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) fact-finding report.
The Office of the OHCHR released its Fact-Finding Report titled "Human Rights Violations and Abuses related to the Protests of July and August 2024 in Bangladesh" from its Geneva office on February 12.
The report revealed that the violence targeting female protesters was often gender-based in its aims and means, reflecting abusive patterns specifically directed against women and girls.
Scrutinising interlocutors, it found that the perpetrators conducted gender-based violence as a tool to deter women's participation, undermine female leadership within the movement, and reinforce entrenched patriarchal norms.
Physical violence was routinely accompanied by gender-based insults, with female protestors frequently labelled as "whores," "sluts," and "prostitutes," among other such degrading terms.
The OHCHR highlighted that AL and Chhatra League men and police officers frequently issued verbal threats of rape, forced nudity, and other forms of sexual violence against women.
The UN rights agency claimed that it received credible victim accounts of assaults by the AL supporters involving physical sexual violence.
In one case, a group of men armed with bamboo sticks apprehended a woman in early August in Dhaka and questioned her whether she was a protester.
After searching her bag and phone and finding a Bangladeshi flag, they physically assaulted her, tearing her hair, ripping her shirt, and groping her breasts and buttocks while scratching her chest and hurling sexualised insults, according to the UN fact-finding report.
It showed that two Chhatra League supporters, in another case that occurred in July in Dhaka, threatened to rape a female protester, her mother, and all the women in her family, and physically assaulted her, including by groping her breasts and genitals while making sexually explicit remarks.
After the incident, the victim received threatening calls with further threats of rape against her and other family members.
Witnesses also reported Chhatra League men assaulting several women in Cumilla, including two female students whom they apprehended and groped before handing them over to the police the report read.
Victims in Bangladesh often refrain from reporting sexual violence due to the lack of effective state reporting mechanisms, fear of retaliation from perpetrators, especially if they are in law enforcement, and the pervasive social stigma.
They also often do not receive medical, psychosocial and legal services they require, and then, if they are willing to report, they are not sufficiently protected, respected and given agency, the UN rights body observed.
The OHCHR considered it therefore likely that substantially more incidents occurred than could be documented by it, and strongly recommended that sexual and gender-based violence be a particular focus for further, gender-sensitive investigation.
Bd-Pratidin English/ARK
