Unbelievable!

[Gaybutton]

Only 14, Bangladeshi Girl Charged with Adultery was Lashed to Death

By Farid Ahmed and Moni Basu, CNN
March 29, 2011

Shariatpur, Bangladesh (CNN) -- Hena Akhter's last words to her mother proclaimed her innocence. But it was too late to save the 14-year-old girl.

Her fellow villagers in Bangladesh's Shariatpur district had already passed harsh judgment on her. Guilty, they said, of having an affair with a married man. The imam from the local mosque ordered the fatwa, or religious ruling, and the punishment: 101 lashes delivered swiftly, deliberately in public.

Hena dropped after 70.

Bloodied and bruised, she was taken to hospital, where she died a week later.

Amazingly, an initial autopsy report cited no injuries and deemed her death a suicide. Hena's family insisted her body be exhumed. They wanted the world to know what really happened to their daughter.

Sharia: illegal but still practiced

Hena's family hailed from rural Shariatpur, crisscrossed by murky rivers that lend waters to rice paddies and lush vegetable fields.

Hena was the youngest of five children born to Darbesh Khan, a day laborer, and his wife, Aklima Begum. They shared a hut made from corrugated tin and decaying wood and led a simple life that was suddenly marred a year ago with the return of Hena's cousin Mahbub Khan.

Mahbub Khan came back to Shariatpur from a stint working in Malaysia. His son was Hena's age and the two were in seventh grade together.

Khan eyed Hena and began harassing her on her way to school and back, said Hena's father. He complained to the elders who run the village about his nephew, three times Hena's age.

The elders admonished Mahbub Khan and ordered him to pay $1,000 in fines to Hena's family. But Mahbub was Darbesh's older brother's son and Darbesh was asked to let the matter fade.

Many months later on a winter night, as Hena's sister Alya told it, Hena was walking from her room to an outdoor toilet when Mahbub Khan gagged her with cloth, forced her behind nearby shrubbery and beat and raped her.

Hena struggled to escape, Alya told CNN. Mahbub Khan's wife heard Hena's muffled screams and when she found Hena with her husband, she dragged the teenage girl back to her hut, beat her and trampled her on the floor.

The next day, the village elders met to discuss the case at Mahbub Khan's house, Alya said. The imam pronounced his fatwa. Khan and Hena were found guilty of an illicit relationship. Her punishment under sharia or Islamic law was 101 lashes; his 201.

Mahbub Khan managed to escape after the first few lashes.

Darbesh Khan and Aklima Begum had no choice but to mind the imam's order. They watched as the whip broke the skin of their youngest child and she fell unconscious to the ground.

"What happened to Hena is unfortunate and we all have to be ashamed that we couldn't save her life," said Sultana Kamal, who heads the rights organization Ain o Shalish Kendro.

Bangladesh is considered a democratic and moderate Muslim country, and national law forbids the practice of sharia. But activist and journalist Shoaib Choudhury, who documents such cases, said sharia is still very much in use in villages and towns aided by the lack of education and strong judicial systems.

The Supreme Court also outlawed fatwas a decade ago, but human rights monitors have documented more than 500 cases of women in those 10 years who were punished through a religious ruling. And few who have issued such rulings have been charged.

Last month, the court asked the government to explain what it had done to stop extrajudicial penalty based on fatwa. It ordered the dissemination of information to all mosques and madrassas, or religious schools, that sharia is illegal in Bangladesh.

"The government needs to enact a specific law to deal with such perpetrators responsible for extrajudicial penalty in the name of Islam," Kamal told CNN.

The United Nations estimates that almost half of Bangladeshi women suffer from domestic violence and many also commonly endure rape, beatings, acid attacks and even death because of the country's entrenched patriarchal system.

Hena might have quietly become another one of those statistics had it not been for the outcry and media attention that followed her death on January 31.

'Not even old enough to be married'

Monday, the doctors responsible for Hena's first autopsy faced prosecution for what a court called a "false post-mortem report to hide the real cause of Hena's death."

Public outrage sparked by that autopsy report prompted the high court to order the exhumation of Hena's body in February. A second autopsy performed at Dhaka Medical College Hospital revealed Hena had died of internal bleeding and her body bore the marks of severe injuries.

Police are now conducting an investigation and have arrested several people, including Mahbub Khan, in connection with Hena's death.

"I've nothing to demand but justice," said Darbesh Khan, leading a reporter to the place where his daughter was abducted the night she was raped.

He stood in silence and took a deep breath. She wasn't even old enough to be married, he said, testament to Hena's tenderness in a part of the world where many girls are married before adulthood. "She was so small."

Hena's mother, Aklima, stared vacantly as she spoke of her daughter's last hours. She could barely get out her words. "She was innocent," Aklima said, recalling Hena's last words.

Police were guarding Hena's family earlier this month. Darbesh and Aklima feared reprisal for having spoken out against the imam and the village elders.

They had meted out the most severe punishment for their youngest daughter. They could put nothing past them.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/0 ... =obnetwork

[thaiworthy]

Another classic case of overzealous religious practices held against an individual who should have been considered a victim. This is horrific. What kind of belief system is this that upholds fear to remind its followers to obey religious laws? At least in Christianity, the thought of everlasting pain in hell was frightening enough, but that's just for the soul and the living being is forgiven. This is absolutely barbaric to have happened in these modern times anywhere in the world. As far as I am concerned the whole religion ought to be condemned for allowing this to happen. Have people no conscience, no sense of fairness, no forgiveness or empathy?

How did Mahbub Khan escape? Did he simply run away? I see they finally arrested him, and now Hana's family needs police protection.

I am glad this case has been brought to light. I hope it splits wide open and exposes what is an outrageous travesty of justice, with a means in place to prevent it from ever happening again. But somehow, I think the tradition will continue. This only speaks volumes in my mind for the thought processes of people willing to abide by threats and fear.

[Bob]

Religion sure can be lovely at times, huh? Not only doesn't the religious leader not advocate against harming a 14-year-old child, the god-damned (words chosen intentionally) so-called religious leader actually authorizes it.

When you think that the big god in the sky demands that you brutalize children (or, for that matter, when you actually think you'll get to fuck your brains out after strapping a bomb to yourself and blowing up a bunch of men, women, and children), you need to be culled from the human race yourself.

[bao-bao]

Yes, I know the two topics most likely to cause disagreement are religion and politics - and this is both in one - but while I'm both horrified and repulsed by the actions some people take in the name of their religion, such as the murder of the girl, I'm not at all sure it's our place to step in and stop them because of OUR beliefs. Our judicial system is a corrupt sham and results in the murder of innocents on occasion, too. I don't have a solution, but as a "civilized" country I wish we could come up with one.

Religious thinking and beliefs have caused more misery worldwide throughout history than almost anything else - including a rainbow of discrimination, gay bashings and Planned Parenthood clinic bombings. We're entitled to be outraged but I'm not altogether sure we're entitled to be the Cops of the World when it comes to the beliefs of others we find less than distasteful.

If the bible were followed to the letter - and how many times have YOU heard some nut case swearing it's "The Word Of GOD!" - there would be people stoned to death on a daily basis all across the U.S. and elsewhere.

Sorry to kick a hornet's nest, but that's my first thoughts on it.

[RichLB]

but while I'm both horrified and repulsed by the actions some people take in the name of their religion, such as the murder of the girl, I'm not at all sure it's our place to step in and stop them because of OUR beliefs.

It's tempting to argue for the acceptance of others' belief systems, but when that dogma interferes with other people's right to exercise personal choice my feeling is we must step up. Tolerance too often masks either cowardice or apathy. If we don't stand up in support of our beliefs, who will?

[Jun]

Religious extremism is utterly despicable. We know which religions have the worst problems, yet all over the world we bend over backwards to tolerate their nasty repressive intolerance.

[bao-bao]

It's tempting to argue for the acceptance of others' belief systems, but when that dogma interferes with other people's right to exercise personal choice my feeling is we must step up. Tolerance too often masks either cowardice or apathy. If we don't stand up in support of our beliefs, who will?

I didn't mean to imply tolerance. I truly despise their actions against this young woman. I agree that it's difficult to know where the line needs to be drawn when such horrific things are done in the name of a religion or culture, but my line of thought was that even though I strongly disagree with their beliefs and practices I recognize that some of different lands believe WE (as the infidels we're called) must be stood up to because of their beliefs... and if the situation was reversed and we in the USA (for example) were stood up to and told we had to toe the line, my guess is we'd go psycho.

It's a matter of perspective, I suppose. I abhor extreme practices (female circumcision, hanging gays, etc.) in the name of religion or cultural norms, but I try to avoid condemning them because of their beliefs - regardless of how strongly I disagree with them.

I'm not planning a trip to Bangladesh anytime soon, though.

[Bob]

It's a matter of perspective, I suppose. I abhor extreme practices (female circumcision, hanging gays, etc.) in the name of religion or cultural norms, but I try to avoid condemning them because of their beliefs - regardless of how strongly I disagree with them.

I can agree with that (versus how you first said it). It seems to me that everybody ought to be able to believe what they want (hey, you wanna worship the moon, go for it!) but the world community has every right (and has through the UN and other organizations) to set down basic behavior guidelines as to how governments act towards its citizens. One such international rule is you don't execute minors for alleged criminal behavior.

And in this case we have an adult married man having sex with a 14-year-old girl which most societies might treat as simply a case of criminal sexual conduct by the adult. I can't seem to find what happened with the adult offender here (although some stories seem to say he received some lashes too) but we do know what happened to the young girl. Absolutely neanderthal in my view, a breach of international and basic human standards of conduct, and continuing evidence that Darwin had it backwards.

[bao-bao]

Good points, Bob - and I agree that what we do in the name of decency as opposed to what we do for petroleum should be different - but that line keeps getting blurred. I, too, would like to see some sort of standards established by something like the UN that could be agreed upon by all nations, but that calls for the need for agreement by such a divers group of peoples that it probably won't happen in our lifetimes, sad to say.

There's no question we're in agreement that what happened to the 14 year old after what had already most likely happened to her is deplorable. What's most discouraging may well be that similar horrific things are happening somewhere at this very moment. I wish I had a solution.

[thaiworthy]

I wish I had a solution.

You do. You have a blog. You speak your mind and it influences many who read it. So mebbe it doesn't affect everything on a global scale, but in our little corner of the world it definitely has a polite and respectable space. Don't let anyone affect your thinking with their crass and jealous opinions. You have a lot of notable things to say and I for one enjoy reading about your life and observations. Keep up the good work!