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Case BGD 070208.CC.VAW
VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / CHILD CONCERN
Acid attack / Risk of impunity
The International Secretariat of the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) has received information and requests your URGENT intervention in the following situation in Bangladesh.
The International Secretariat of OMCT has received information from Odhikar, a member of the SOS-Torture Network, regarding the case of Ms. Rasheda Khatun, a 40 year-old widow and her daughter Ms. Salma Khatun, 17 years old, in Ullapara Upazial, Sirajgong district.
According to the information received, on the night of 4 December 2007, while Ms. Khatun and her daughter were sleeping, Mr. Akter Hossain and Atiqul threw acid on them through the window. The two victims were severely burnt. Allegedly, the reason of the crime was to take revenge on Ms. Khatun who had previously filed a complaint against them seven months earlier.
Atiqul and Salma used to have a love affair and were once caught having intimate relations. After that influential villagers convened to settle the issue between the two families, ordering that Atiqul pays a fine of 50,000 Taka to the victim’s family and marries Salma. Atiqul’s brother-in-law Akter Hossain later convinced him neither to pay the compensation nor to get married. Following that Salma and her mother filed a complaint against Atiqul and Akter Hossain, which then motivated the acid attack.
After this attack, influential people from their community tried to prevent the victims from filing a complaint. Despite that, the victims managed to file a report on 8 December 2007 under section 5 (kha) of the Acid Crime Control Act 2002, but the officer-in-charge of Ullapara Thana, Syed Shahid Alam, and Sub-inspector Rejaul Islam found it to be a fabricated case. Also, at the Sirajgong Sadar Hospital, the victims were denied medical care. The doctor requested that they provide a large amount of cash, which led them to sell their house, and gave them a treatment for no more than a day. They have eventually been taken care of at the Sirajganj General Hospital from 6 to 30 January 2008.
After information about their case was issued thanks to a joint action of Odhikar and some newspapers, an officer-in-charge was instructed to investigate the case which is to be tried by the District and Session Judge’s court in Sirajgong. However Akter Hossain and Atiqul still have not been arrested. Meanwhile the victims have been threatened by the aggressors but they have not reported this fact to the police due to fear of further reprisals.
OMCT is concerned by the gravity and frequency of acid attacks that plague Bangladesh[1], bearing a strong gender component, and hopes the State will improve measures to fight against them and make sure perpetrators are accordingly punished. OMCT is also concerned by the lack of action of State authorities, police and doctors, especially concerning the inadequacy of medical facilities for victims of such abuses and the difficulty the victims faced in receiving medical care.
OMCT also recalls that the UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women states in its article 4(c) that all States must "exercise due diligence to prevent, investigate and, in accordance with national legislation, punish acts of violence against women, whether those acts are perpetrated by the State or by private persons."
Please write to the authorities in Bangladesh urging them to:
Please also write to the embassies of Bangladesh in your respective country.
Geneva, 7 February 2008.
Kindly inform us of any action undertaken quoting the code of this appeal in your reply.
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