By Ashik Kabir

In what agony we should react when a father finds his daughter’s dead body after being raped and killed by predators. It has happened in our country, it will be happening again in our society until and unless, we don’t change our mindset. In a country like ours, women are always suppressed and undermined. In most of the cases they are considered as subservient to men. They don’t even get proper treatment in their own house, then what will we expect from outsiders.
In the latest case, Tonu who was nineteen years old and a student of history fell as a victim to brutal gang rape. Tonu who was a bright student and a talented theatre actor too, never could have thought what kind of cruel consequences waiting for her. In one of the most safest places of the country, inside the cantonment this kind of heinous crime has taken place, then rest of the places can be assumed as unsafe as well.
Tonu who used to wear veil and was religious too, what was her crime to be treated like this. Just because the women are physically weaker than men, men are not entitled to do whatever they wish for. It’s the education system of our society , it’s the religious systems and it’s the unequal treatment by the society towards women that are making the part of the society much more vulnerable towards the patriarchal norms.
Women are always taught how to dress, how to walk and how to hide your face from the outsiders. But as men we are not by the family that we should not have any pervasive thoughts towards the sex which are gifted with the power to give life and are the first teachers of the children. It’s not their dressing sense that we should worry about, it’s the question of how much we are going to change and control our minds. It’s the question of how much we should wait to see justice . Where our judicial system is so powerful that after being raped and killed, the culprits will get death sentence. But still the criminals have the courage to attempt the crime.
Today the youth of Bangladesh are united to show solidarity against the Tonu murder and fighting for Justice. My request to them, fight for equal rights for women and fight for full freedom women, otherwise justice is not possible at all. My heartaches when I talk to friends who are well educated and has already became doctors and engineers, the future of the country. They still feel like women get raped just because of their dressing sense. They gave me examples of rapes in India are in huge numbers just because girls wear revealing clothes. But I am here to defend them, women are free to wear anything, they are free to do anything in their discretion. Nothing can stop them from being total independent. It’s us the men folk should stop making them as sex objects and stop treating like savages. It’s high time Justice should earned for Tonu and earned in a way that no one will have the courage to ill treat women again.

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