sexual harassment
SC forms 5-member committee to prevent sexual harassment
The Supreme Court has formed a five-member committee to receive complaints of sexual harassment, investigate those and make necessary recommendations.
Justice Krishna Debnath, a High Court judge, has been made the chairman of the committee.
Other members of the committee are- High Court division judge Justice Kazi Zinat Hoque, Md Badrul Alam Bhuiyan, Registrar of the Appellate Division, Advocate Fawzia Karim and Assistant Attorney General Advocate Tamanna Ferdous.
Read: ASK seeks implementation of HC guideline on preventing sexual harassment
The committee has been formed following a High Court order issued in 2009, said a statement issued by Md Ali Akbar, Registrar of the Supreme Court on Wednesday.
On August 7, 2008, a writ petition was filed with the High Court seeking its directive to prevent sexual harassment of women and children at workplaces and educational institutions.
Following the writ petition, the HC on May 14, 2009, issued an order to form a committee to prevent sexual harassment of women, girls and children in all institutions, including educational institutions, government and non-government organizations and media houses in the country.
ASK seeks implementation of HC guideline on preventing sexual harassment
Ain O Salish Kendra (ASK), a human rights body, on Thursday filed a writ petition seeking implementation of a decade old order of the High Court on prevention of sexual harassment of woman and children at workplaces and educational institutions.
On behalf of ASK advocate Md Shahinuzzaman and Sayeda Nasrin submitted the writ against the Public Administration secretary and 42 others.
The bench of Justice Md Mojibur Rahman Mia and Justice Md Kamrul Hossain Molla is likely to hear the petition next week, said court sources.
In 2009, the HC passed a guideline with direction to form a five-membe committee at every organization for preventing sexual harassment.
The direction was not implemented and even the Supreme Court Bar Association has no such committee to prevent sexual harassment, said ASK’s lawyer Md Shahinuzzaman.
On August 7, 2008 advocate Salma Ali, director of Bangladesh National Woman Lawyers' Association (BNWLA) filed a writ petition before the High Court in public interest seeking directions to put a stop to sexual harassment at educational institutes and workplace.
On May 14, 2009, HC passed the order to form a ‘Sexual Harassment Prevention Committee’ at all organizations including educational institutions, media organizations, national and private institutions.
In compliance with the order, University Grants Commission (UGC) issued a guideline and directed all the government and private universities to implement it.
“But it was not implemented and stricter direction to form such committees at the secondary to higher educational institutions is needed to prevent sexual harassment,” said advocate Shahinuzzaman.
Sexual Harassment Prevention Committee
According to the HC order, the committee will consist of at least five members and most of its members will be women. Two members will be appointed from outside the institution and a woman will have to be made head of the committee if possible.
The order also directed all the educational institutions to hold orientation with the students in this regard at the beginning of each academic year followed by at the end of every month.
It directed to publish the direction on gender equality and sexual harassment stated in the constitution as a book.
The court said until these directions are not transformed into a law it will act as a law according to paragraph 111 of the constitution and guidelines will be effective at the educational institutions accordingly.
Definition of sexual harassment
The HC in its order said, both physical and mental torture will be included in sexual harassment. Disturbance through e-mail, SMS, telephone, pornography, obscene images, comments, complementing someone in a suggestive way will also be concluded as sexual harassments, it said.
The court mentioned such acts outside the organizations will also be considered as sexual harassment.
Threatening, pressurizing or making false promises to form sexual relationship with a woman, obscene image, offending acts and writings on the wall will also be counted as sexual harassment, said HC in its order.
Khulna University suspends teacher on sexual harassment claims
Khulna University has suspended an assistant professor with the Mass Communication and Journalism department after a female teacher levelled sexual harassment charges against him.
Prof Taslima Khatun, head of the Khulna University sexual harassment prevention committee, said that assistant professor Choton Debnath has been placed under suspension pending an investigation.
"We are already probing the allegations and the first hearing on the same took place on Wednesday," she said.
Read: OC, Inspector suspended for ‘sexual assault’ during remand in Barishal
University sources told UNB that Choton called the woman to his rented house on January 26 and sexually harassed her over some issue. Later, he pressurised the woman to tender an apology.
Recently, Choton tried to blackmail the woman colleague over the issue, prompting her to submit a written complaint to the sexual harassment prevention committee.
When contacted, Choton said, “The committee did not inform me about the charges against me."
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo resigns over sexual harassment
Governor Andrew Cuomo resigned over a barrage of sexual harassment allegations Tuesday in a fall from grace a year after he was widely hailed nationally for his detailed daily briefings and leadership during the darkest days of COVID-19.
The three-term governor’s decision, which will take effect in two weeks, was announced as momentum built in the Legislature to remove him by impeachment. It came after New York’s attorney general released the results of an investigation that found Cuomo sexually harassed at least 11 women.
Investigators said he subjected women to unwanted kisses; groped their breasts or buttocks or otherwise touched them inappropriately; made insinuating remarks about their looks and their sex lives; and created a work environment “rife with fear and intimidation.”
Also read: Cuomo’s top aide resigns as governor faces harassment furor
Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, a 62-year-old Democrat and former member of Congress from the Buffalo area, will become the state’s 57th governor and the first woman to hold the post.
The #MeToo-era scandal cut short not just a career but a dynasty: Cuomo’s father, Mario Cuomo, was governor in the 1980s and ’90s, and the younger Cuomo was often mentioned as a potential candidate for president, an office his father famously contemplated seeking. Even as the scandal mushroomed, Cuomo was planning to run for reelection in 2022.
Cuomo still faces the possibility of criminal charges, with a number of prosecutors around the state moving to investigate him.
The string of accusations that spelled the governor’s downfall began to unfold in news reports last December and went on for months.
Cuomo called some of the allegations fabricated, forcefully denying he touched anyone inappropriately. But he acknowledged making some aides uncomfortable with comments he said he intended as playful, and he apologized for some of his behavior.
He portrayed some of the encounters as misunderstandings attributable to “generational or cultural” differences, a reference in part to his upbringing in an affectionate Italian American family.
As a defiant Cuomo clung to office, state lawmakers launched an impeachment investigation, and nearly the entire Democratic establishment in New York deserted him — not only over the accusations, but also because of the discovery that his administration had concealed thousands of COVID-19 deaths among nursing home patients.
The harassment investigation ordered up by the attorney general and conducted by two outside lawyers corroborated the women’s accounts and added lurid new ones. The release of the report left the governor more isolated than ever, with some of his most loyal supporters abandoning him and President Joe Biden joining those calling on him to resign.
Also read: New York Gov. Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women, probe finds
His accusers included an aide who said Cuomo groped her breast at the governor’s mansion. Investigators also the governor’s staff retaliated against one of his accusers by leaking confidential personnel files about her.
As governor, Cuomo touted himself as an example of a “progressive Democrat” who gets things done: Since taking office in 2011, he helped push through legislation that legalized gay marriage, began lifting the minimum wage to $15 and expanded paid family leave benefits. He also backed big infrastructure projects, including airport overhauls and construction of a new bridge over the Hudson River that he named after his father.
At the same time the behavior that got him into trouble was going on, he was publicly championing the #MeToo movement and surrounding himself with women’s rights activists, signing into law sweeping new protections against sexual harassment and lengthening the statute of limitations in rape cases.
His national popularity soared during the harrowing spring of 2020, when New York became the epicenter of the nation’s coronavirus outbreak.
His tough-minded but empathetic response made for riveting television well beyond New York, and his stern warnings to people to stay home and wear masks stood in sharp contrast to President Donald Trump’s brush-off of the virus. His briefings won an international Emmy Award, and he went on to write a book on leadership in a crisis.
But even those accomplishments were soon tainted when it was learned that the state’s official count of nursing home deaths had excluded many patients who had been transferred to hospitals before they succumbed. A Cuomo aide acknowledged the administration feared the true numbers would be “used against us” by the Trump White House.
Also, Cuomo’s administration was fiercely criticized for forcing nursing homes to accept patients recovering from the virus.
The U.S. Justice Department is investigating the state’s handling of data on nursing home deaths. In addition, the state attorney general is looking into whether Cuomo broke the law in using members of his staff to help write and promote his book, from which he stood to make more than $5 million.
The governor had also increasingly come under fire over his rough and sometimes vindictive treatment of fellow politicians and his own staff, with former aides telling stories of a brutal work environment.
Cuomo has been divorced since 2005 from the author and activist Kerry Kennedy, a member of the Kennedy family, and was romantically involved up until 2019 with TV lifestyle personality Sandra Lee. He has three adult daughters.
He gained political experience early on as his father’s hard-nosed and often ruthless campaign manager, and went on to become New York attorney general and U.S. housing secretary under President Bill Clinton before getting elected governor in 2010.
New York has seen a string of high-level political figures brought down in disgrace in recent years.
Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned in 2008 in a call-girl scandal. Rep. Anthony Weiner went to prison for sexting with a 15-year-old girl. Attorney General Eric Schneiderman stepped down in 2018 after four women accused him of abuse. And the top two leaders in the Legislature were convicted of corruption.
84% of women facing sexual harassment
Despite lots of laws and campaign, people's perceptions on sexual harassment are still wrong in our country and a huge part of our total population is ignorant of its laws, leading to an increase in gender based violence. About 84% of women in Bangladesh are constantly being sexually harassed on the road, in vehicles, in educational institutions, at work, and even at home.
In this context and the occasion of 'Sexual Harassment Awareness Month' - ACTIONISTS organized its 17th episode of the “Dialogue for Action” series on 29th April, 2021. The topic of this webinar was "Prevention of Sexual Harassment in Bangladesh: Socio-legal Perspectives".
The invited speakers were respectively SK Jenefa K Jabbar, Director of Human Rights and Legal Aid Services (HRLS), Social Compliance and Safeguarding at BRAC; Taslima Yasmin, Associate Professor at Department of Law, University of Dhaka and Najmul Islam, ADC of Cyber Crime Investigation Division, CTTC, DMP. The program was hosted by Mohammad Golam Sarwar, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Dhaka and Coordinated by A.N.M. Fakhrul Amin Forhad, Founder of ACTIONISTS.
Also read: Most sexual harassment through technology perpetrated by close ones
According to the Supreme Court's 2009 definition of "sexual harassment", unwanted sexually explicit behavior (directly or in gestures), displaying pornography, sexually explicit comments or gestures, indecent gestures, sexual harassment or comments, stalking or stalking someone. Going and mocking or ridiculing using sexually suggestive language will also fall into sexual harassment.
Jenefa Jabbar says, “It is difficult to find a number of ladies in our country who have not been sexually harassed in her lifetime. Most cases, harassment and abuses begins at home, family by any family member or relatives. Abuse can happen anywhere, also in online platforms. Malicious activities in social media has increased.”
Taslima Yasmin speaks about laws regarding this sexual abuse issue,mentioning. “ though there are laws about women and gender violence in our country, the term of sexual harassment is sitll vague. There is a prominent discrimination in labour sector with women, but labour laws could not reflect enough concern about this issue of sexual abuse. And while the making and implementing policies the terms and conditions of the victim society should be brought in spotlight.”
Also read: Moral, sex education needed to prevent sexual harassment: Speakers
ADC Nazmul says, “I receive around 15-20 complains of sexual abuse every day, and most of them are cyber crimes. Every social media user needs to be conscious about this risk. You must not click on any fishy link, or any unauthentic website. We all need to know the privacy policies of the app we use and use two-factor authentication system. If anyone faces such problem, they must not delay in informing the legal cell.” ACTIONISTS is a youth-based organization that has long been involved in raising awareness through social media through the Action for Dialogue series. In addition to social awareness, various activities to establish the rights of disadvantaged people, they also provide free online mental health services.
Most sexual harassment through technology perpetrated by close ones
Some 69.48% victims of sexual harassment through spreading exclusive private pictures and videos in internet is being perpetrated by their close ones.
Of them, 33.77% cases have affairs between the victims and offenders while in 35.71% cases the offenders are familiar with the victims.
This was revealed on Sunday in a research paper of Cyber Crime Awareness Foundation.
Dhaka University chapter of the Foundation prepared the research paper titled ‘sexual harassment through misuse of technology in Bangladesh’. The report was prepared analysing some 154 crimes collected from national and regional newspapers during the period of January-December of the last year.
The Foundation organised a webinar on the occasion of releasing the report.
Also read: Moral, sex education needed to prevent sexual harassment: Speakers
President of the Foundation presided over the webinar where chairman of psychology department of Jagannath University Prof Dr Noor Mohammad, chairman of Criminology Department of Dhaka UniversityKhandaker Farzana Rahman, computer network engineer Syed Zahid Hossain, senior assistant commissioner of of cyber security and crime unit of Dhaka Metropolitan Police Sayeed Nasirullah and lawyer of Supreme Court Tanzim Al Islam took part.
Research cell convenor and East-West University senior Lecturer Monira Nazmi Jahan presented various parts of the research.
The research finds that 92.20% of the victims are women, of them 56.49% are the age range of 18-30 years while 32.47% are under 18 years.
Top Dems call on Cuomo to resign amid harassment allegations
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo confronted a stunning series of defections Friday amid allegations of sexual harassment that left the high-profile Democrat fighting for his political survival, angry and alone.
Don’t reveal identities of sexual harassment, rape victims: HC
The identities of victims of rape and sexual harassment cannot be revealed in the media, no matter whether they are alive or deceased, the High Court said Monday.
S. Korean-born Olympic short track champion applies for Chinese citizenship
Lim Hyo-jun, who won South Korea's first gold medal at the 2018 Winter Olympics in short track speed skating, has applied for Chinese citizenship, a source close to the athlete said Saturday.
Indian journalist acquitted of defamation in #MeToo case
A New Delhi court on Wednesday acquitted a female journalist of criminal defamation after she accused a former editor-turned-politician and junior external affairs minister of sexual harassment.