DHAKA, 9 March 2005 — Babli, five years and three months old, will never be able to speak. Not because she was born deaf and dumb, but because her father decided that is the way it should be...only because she is a girl.
Her father, Bakhtiar Rana, poured acid on Babli’s mouth when she was only seven months old. His apparent aim was to kill the baby because she was born a girl.
“He wanted to be the ‘proud’ father of a son,” says Parul Akhtar, Babli’s mother, as she attends to her daughter who is undergoing treatment at a privately-run medical center in Dhaka.
Narrating Babli’s story at Jibantara, the hospital run by the Acid Survivors Foundation, Parul broke down in tears saying it all happened because of the misconception that a girl is a burden on the family and the society.
Bakhtiar was arrested for his action, but managed to get bail soon after.
Three baby girls were killed by their fathers between October and December last year, according to a report by a non-governmental organization Manusher Jonno. Also, a man killed his wife for giving birth to a girl child in Akkelpur village in Jaipurhat district.
According to statistics available with UNICEF’s Steps Towards Development and the Bangladesh Shishu Odhikar Forum, in 2002 alone 686 female children were raped, 83 murdered after rape, 32 murdered for dowry, 69 were sexually harassed, and 358 trafficked.
Badiul Alam Majumder, the convenor of the Female Children Advocacy Forum, told newsmen in Dhaka yesterday that the nature of repression against female child includes physical torture, acid attack and murder.
Girls are deprived of their rights in the family and society and are treated unfairly — be it food distribution at home, medical facility or education, he said.
He said there are many more cases than reported about parents abandoning, aborting or killing girls.
The Bangladesh government, with the assistance of NGOs, has conducted many campaigns to stop the brutality.
Minister for Women and Children Affairs Khurshid Jahan Haque said the government is making efforts to end violence against girls and women.
The government has launched a program, Jagaran, in several districts to create awareness about the rights of a girl child.
MSI Mullick, associate professor of psychiatry at the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University, said: “It is not easy to dispel the age-old belief, especially in rural areas, that a son is a productive member of the family.”
Steps to improve the situation through creating awareness will no doubt work but perhaps a deterrence through greater enforcement of laws against dowry, child repression and acid attacks will be more effective. And perhaps then criminals like Babli’s father would not go unpunished.
