Bangladeshi Women Refuse to Be Intimidated by Militants’ Threats

Kamran Reza Chowdhury
2015.12.03
151202-bangladesh-women-620 Bangladeshi women are not intimidated by Islamic militants’ calls to quit their jobs and start wearing veils. A group of activists celebrate the government’s decision to execute two war criminals, Nov. 22, 2015.
AFP

Bangladeshi female journalists and lawyers say they won’t be intimidated by recent threats from militant Islamists telling them to quit their jobs, stay at home or start wearing veils.

“This is not Afghanistan, Pakistan or other countries. Maybe a handful of women may be afraid, but the majority must overlook the threats,” Ayesha Khanam, president of the Bangladesh Mahila Parishad (Bangladesh Women’s Council), told BenarNews.

Millions of women have joined the workforce through economic opportunities created by the government and private sector, she said. Non-governmental organizations including BRAC, believed to be the largest NGO in the world, and Grameen Bank, have helped Bangladeshi women join the workforce by distributing billions of dollars for creating jobs.

Bangladesh, a 44-year-old nation with a secular constitution, has seen a wave of violent acts by Islamic extremists carried out this year, including the murders of four secular bloggers and a publisher, as well as attacks on foreigners and members of the country’s small Christian and Shiite Muslim communities.

Bangladeshi women have not been insulated from such Islamist threats.

In May, unidentified militants sent letters to the women lawyers’ association, telling them to quit their jobs and start covering themselves. In October, the banned militant outfit Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT) sent letters to the media outlets, ordering them to fire female journalists and not publish women’s photos if they were not veiled.

“The militants’ objective of subjugating women would never succeed. Women now serve every sector of Bangladesh. The government should immediately crush the militants. They want to make Bangladesh into Afghanistan or Pakistan,” said Rita Sultana, a lawyer who practices before the Supreme Court. “It will never happen; the women will march forward.”

A pair of journalists said they would not quit.

“I have come to this profession keeping in mind that risks are associated with journalism. I am not so bothered at the threat, but what I do now is, while working, I look around to see whether anyone is following me. I am a little bit careful,” Sultana Rahman, an award-winning journalist working with Independent Television, told BenarNews.

TV talk-show host Saju Rahman told BenarNews: “Hundreds of women have been working in media and the number has been going up every day.”

Women who work in factories are taking similar stands against terrorists’ threats.

“We know their Islam. What will we eat if we do not work? Who will fund my brothers’ education and manage money for my father’s daily medicine? I do not bother [with] what they are talking about,” Fahima Khatun, 22, a ready-made garments worker at a factory in Mirpur, told BenarNews.

More than four million women work in the country’s ready-made garment industry that fetches around U.S. $30 billion every year of Bangladesh’s U.S. $205.3 billion gross domestic product. The industry constitutes 80 percent of Bangladesh’s total exports, making it the second largest exporter of the ready-made garment items in the world after China.

“If they kill me for earning my bread, I am ready to die. I cannot afford staying at home. My father says Islam has not forbidden women to work,” Khatun said. “You talk to all us women working in garments, they have huge economic burden back home.”

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