By Aasha Mehreen Amin
Feb 7 2020 (IPS-Partners)

One of the interesting perks of being a brown South Asian, travelling anywhere in the world, is the special attention you get from various official quarters. Getting a visa anywhere in the northern hemisphere, for instance, is like winning a lottery and could even count as a status symbol. Prior to such a windfall, if it at all occurs, it will mean filling out pages of a form that can ultimately be published as a booklet of your family’s ancestry and a mini biography of yourself. The unique complexities of being someone from the subcontinent makes the whole process a delightful conundrum—if, for example, your father was born during British rule and lived through the Partition, the independence of India and Pakistan, and then that of Bangladesh, how do you answer “Where is your father from?” Should it be British India, India, Pakistan, or Bangladesh, or all of the above?

Your special status becomes even more apparent when you actually travel and have to go through multiple security checks where you know you will receive extra scrutiny compared to people of any other nationality—well, besides being or even looking Middle Eastern, to certain eyes. Then you get royal scrutiny of a totally different level.

On the plane you know you shouldn’t linger too long outside the lavatories, especially not in front of the exit and definitely not with your partner—two brown people hanging around is much worse than one and can set of the alarm bells in many a paranoid passenger.

The conspicuous way in which a brown complexioned South Asian is treated makes you think you are the most important character among all the other passengers of uninteresting (as far as security personnel are concerned) ethnicities. In fact, sometimes you are so conscious of the extra attention that you may even start behaving strangely—like nervously tapping your leg, sporting an exaggerated air of nonchalance that actually makes you look like you’re hiding something, or worse, smiling at the immigration officer in what you think is a friendly way that proves your innocence but ends up as a sinister grimace that can only spell impending trouble.

Personally, I don’t know what I do to make security personnel be so drawn to me and it has been like this since long before 9/11, when the world didn’t think that every Muslim in the planet was potentially a closet militant. For whatever reason, whenever I travelled to the West I would be singled out from the queue and be subject to interrogation.

Decades later, the legacy has endured and thanks to the horrific terror attacks in the name of religion and a successful global campaign of Islamophobia, I find myself getting undivided attention from overzealous security personnel. When travelling especially to and from the US, it is with almost certainty that I will be picked out randomly among all the hundreds of passengers and then have the privilege of having a generous “pat down” (a euphemism for institutionalised groping) by a stern looking female security officer ominously wearing surgical gloves. The last time this happened was when I was just about to board the plane and the officer just stopped me at the gate and asked me if I would mind stepping aside.

Of course I mind, I wanted to say as my fellow passengers walked by with curious glances, but obviously didn’t, even when in a monotone she explained all the objectionable things she was about to do to me.

One of the weird things I do when embarrassed or, in this case humiliated beyond belief, is to start smiling in a slightly deranged manner which hardly helps matters. So, while being felt up and down in the name of a security check and as another officer went through the entire contents of my humungous bag, all I could do was make embarrassed chortling sounds resembling a duck choking on its own saliva. I am not sure, though, whether I was more mortified by the invasive touching (I almost wanted to tell her to massage my aching lower back while she was at it) or by the fact that the other officer was now going to discover the sachets of instant coffee, creamer, and sugar I had snagged from the airport hotel room along with the balls of tissue carrying discarded gum (I hate littering), chocolate wrappers, a crumpled bag with an extra pair of socks, crumbs from forgotten cookies, not to mention paper napkins with makeup stains, and a half eaten Snickers bar.

Security clearances at airports in present times have definitely managed to strip us of all vestiges of dignity and sense of privacy. Thus, woe betide if you are wearing loose pants that have been kept in place by a tight belt as you will most definitely be asked to take off the belt along with your shoes and jacket—oh your watch, earrings, keys etc. too—anything that may set the monitor off, which in my case could very well be the colour of my skin.

Only a few brave souls are unaffected by the bizarre stripping ritual at security checkpoints. Last year, a young man made news when he walked up to a security checkpoint at an airport in Detroit, removed all his clothes and accessories before approaching the metal detector. When he passed through in nothing but his birthday suit and with flying colours, the first thing he put back on was — his watch. Apparently, the police and the fire department responded but as he posed no threat the police did not arrest him. But then again, he was white and one wouldn’t recommend such flamboyance in the case of a brown South Asian.

Aasha Mehreen Amin is Deputy Editor, Op-Ed and Editorial section, The Daily Star.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

And those rows and rows of colourful huts—the stories they each hold are not pretty. They are stories of indescribable brutality, humiliation, hunger and hopelessness. Credit: UN Women/Allison Joyce

By Aasha Mehreen Amin
Feb 12 2018 (The Daily Star, Bangladesh)

As you enter Balukhali refugee camp for the first time all you will notice is the amount of dust that clouds your vision, settling on your hair, clothes, seeping into your shoes and even finding its way into your mouth. Through the haze an unbelievable scene is unravelled. It is a humungous labyrinth of little shacks—blue, green, orange, creating a pattern on the crudely cut reddish hills, a pattern that is not aesthetically unpleasing. But these are grossly superficial impressions and incredibly deceptive as you will soon find out.

The dustiness is actually a blessing in disguise, it means the weather is dry—dry enough for the makeshift shanties to stay in place and offer shelter to close to seven hundred thousand human beings described as the most persecuted people in the world. In a few months the rains will come; the possibility of mudslides is frighteningly high and has aid workers and government officials equally worried—an estimated 103,000 people are at immediate risk. Dust, is the least of their problems.

And those rows and rows of colourful huts—the stories they each hold are not pretty. They are stories of indescribable brutality, humiliation, hunger and hopelessness. You see men, of all ages, loitering everywhere, staring, gaping—their faces expressionless—as if everything, even the tiniest bit of emotion, has been drained out from them. You see little children scampering around and trying to play as is their nature no matter how harsh the circumstances, their thin, stunted bodies coated in thick dust, negotiating uneven roads crowded with grownups—people of their own community, local NGO staff, foreign aid workers and those big, shiny cars bringing temporary hope.

Then you see the women—all covered in veils, some even with gloves and socks—the preferred formal garb for women of this community, if they dare venture out that is. Which ironically they have to—to collect the heavy bags of relief, take their sick babies to the makeshift hospital, take part in small income generating initiatives like learning how to use the sewing machine.

Jahida Begum is the head of the 60 female volunteers recruited from the Rohingya community, who go from hut to hut to see how the women and girls are faring, what their needs are, how they are being treated by the male members of the family.

Intermittently constructed near clusters of huts are smaller ones which are the latrines. They are far from adequate and many are unusable and overflowing adding to the general lack of hygiene that threatens outbreaks of epidemics. Already diarrhoea and measles have taken their toll. And now diphtheria, a menace we thought had been eradicated for good, has made a shocking comeback infecting babies, children and adults—refugees and locals.

But there also things you don’t see. The thousands of adolescent girls, for example, especially the unmarried ones—they are not allowed outside their homes—the draconian rules of a community left in the dark ages for decades ensures that no young girl comes out to “dishonour” herself or her family just by appearing in public. They do not have enough clothes to wear, no proper sanitary pads during menstruation, not enough functioning latrines or enough areas to bathe. They also feel insecure with threats of trafficking or harassment looming too close to their miniscule makeshift homes. Privacy is nonexistent.

All this we gather as we trudge through the sandy path that may go uphill and downhill making the trek quite unnerving. We are a group of women of different professions accompanying the UN Women Executive Director and UN Under-Secretary-General Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka who is visiting the camps to assess the situation. At one of the “women friendly spaces”—a project by Action Aid, UN Women and a local NGO—IPSHA, we meet a few Rohingya women who are learning how to use the sewing machine that will help them earn some money. It is also a kind of refuge for women of the camps—a place they feel safe, comfortable, away from the intrusive male gaze and a sanctuary where they can block out the memories of murder, gang rape, dead babies and burning homes.

It is here we meet Romida, 30, a sewing instructor. Tall, attractive and quite friendly, she says she used to be a seamstress back in Burma. Her face is an open book, the grief harshly imprinted on her face. I talk to her through our interpreter Achia Islam Sabah and learn how she ended up in the camps. She came with her husband and two children: a ten-year-old daughter and a one-year-old son. Even before the military crackdown in Myanmar, her community, she says, had to live under extreme restrictions. The men of her village often bribed the military to go out to seek work. Often they would be arrested just for stepping out. Her husband managed to be a driver and eventually saved enough to own a car. “I used to live in a big house—my house was bigger than any house here. But they burnt down everything, even the car, my savings, I have nothing left.” The tears flow freely now and she keeps wiping them away angrily. So does she want to go back I ask. “Yes I do but only if our rights and safety are ensured”, she says mechanically. The other women, a few of them just teenagers watch wide-eyed. Two of the teenagers are already married. They all want to learn how to sew, so that they can earn something. They clearly look up to Romida who has skills that gives her some semblance of confidence.

Romida came to the camps with her husband and two children. Even before the military crackdown in Myanmar, her community, she says, had to live under extreme restrictions.

My curiosity is not satisfied and I ask Romida: “Was it always like this in Burma? Did you never live in peace?” She relates a macabre story—around 13–14 years ago when she was already married, some Muslim holy men had come from Rangoon to their local mosque to help set up madrasas for the children of the village. It was a special majlish and everyone wanted to go there to listen to their sermon. But after the majlish when the preachers and the preached were about to leave, the “Moghs” (Burmese) swooped on them, mercilessly slaying them all. That’s when it all started says Romida.

Back in the car we go further up towards Modhur Sura in Kutapalong Camp giving us a view of the sheer enormity of the crisis. I realise with dismay that the thousands of huts in these camps have been built by cutting the trees of the reserve forests. It used to be the home of elephants. But when it is a question of saving human lives, what else could Bangladesh do but open its doors, cut down its green hills and give refuge to these people who have somehow lived through the most horrific persecution imaginable?

Our next stop is to meet with three camp in charges (CICs) appointed by the government. They are Shamimul Huq Pavel who looks after Camp 3 and 4; Md Talut oversees Camp 8, 17 and 18; and ASM Obaidullah has taken on Camps 5 and 6. There are around 30 camps in total with 20 CICs and more being recruited according to Abul Kalam, Commissioner of Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commission. These three CICs and a head Majhi (head of the community) have been identified by UN Women because of their reputation of being the most proactive, especially in helping to protect the rights of the women. The visiting ED of UN Women pins on “He for She” badges to recognise the efforts of these men. Pavel is certainly an impressive CIC. He looks more like a commando than a BCS cadre whose previous post was in the land ministry. Perhaps that is what is needed in this bizarre scenario—a makeshift village full of displaced, traumatised, hungry and exhausted people who have no idea what fate holds for them tomorrow. Despite his flamboyance, Pavel displays a rare sensitivity towards the refugees he is responsible for and believes that the most important thing these people need is to be treated with respect. In response to the special needs of the women and girls he, with the help of his colleagues have formed an army of around 60 female volunteers, all recruited from the Rohingya community. They go from hut to hut to see how the women and girls are faring, what their needs are, how they are being treated by the male members of the family and then report back to the CIC. When cases of domestic violence or other offences are reported, the CICs intervene and call the men threatening punishment if they don’t treat their women better. The community in return, fear and trust the CICs and listen to them. Pavel admits that the task of controlling such a huge population who have lost everything in their lives and who have been “dumped into the dark ages for decades” is not easy. “In the early days all I saw was hopelessness in their eyes,” he says. “They had stopped believing in themselves…now at least they know that they are not in danger of being shot or attacked. Of course these are refugee conditions but we are doing the best we can to help.” The ultra-conservatism of the community, which tenaciously holds on to an orthodox interpretation of religion for solace, makes it all the more challenging for aid workers and government officials alike. Many of the refugees have never heard of basic things like immunisation, birth control, or even seen a doctor in their lives. According to Save the Children, more than 48,000 babies are expected to be delivered this year. Early marriages continue and stringent rules regarding chastity imposed by religious clerics make lives for the women and girls, even harder. While we are talking to people there is an announcement on loud speaker from one of the blocks uphill. Someone has announced that women who are not in full niqab which includes wearing gloves and socks will not be allowed back in the camp. The CIC is livid and has summoned the culprit. We hear a few minutes later, the self appointed moral policeman has bolted.

We manage to interview another interesting personality who has played a significant role in helping the women and girls in the camps. Jahida Begum, who looks much older than 27, is the head of all 60 female volunteers. She is from the registered camp and says she was born there. Confident and quite candid she recalls the early days after the August 25 crackdown, when almost every household had a survivor of sexual violence. “They were in a terrible state, bleeding profusely, physically and mentally weak. We took many of them to the hospital to get treated. Now things are much better.” What about the survivors of rape and gang rape who became pregnant? Most of them got abortions done at the makeshift hospitals set up by NGOs or international agencies says Jahida. “There was one woman however who had been raped once by the Burmese military—she had been married for only three months. They then killed her husband in front of her and gang raped her. She was pregnant when she came here but it was too late for an abortion. I asked her if she wanted to keep the baby or give it up. She said she wanted to keep it—’the baby has no fault, neither do I’ she said.”

Meanwhile there are still refugees coming, even if they are in smaller groups, they add to the already growing burden. There are over 7,000 orphans who have lost both parents, according to Abul Kalam, the RRR Commissioner. He is trying to get them adopted by foster parents within the Rohingya community so that they can be with people they can relate to. He and his ministry are also planning to relocate those families who are at greatest risk of falling victim to landslides which are inevitable if the rains are as heavy as last June in CHT that left over 160 people dead. Although families are being registered to facilitate the repatriation process, even the Commissioner is uncertain regarding the timeframe. Myanmar has done nothing to reassure the world that it is creating conducive conditions for a dignified, voluntary repatriation. The recent agreement lacks conviction especially with the refusal of the Myanmar government to give access to international aid agencies to monitor the situation. Mass graves are being uncovered. The latest Reuters report confirms the extent of the brutality committed by the army.

With more influx and Myanmar’s continuous intransigence regarding admission of the human rights violations committed by its army and civilians, repatriation does not seem to be happening any time soon. Meanwhile despite the laudable efforts and genuine sincerity to help, resources of the government, NGOs and aid agencies are overstretched, patience among locals, many of whom are also deprived of basic needs, is wearing thin. This is Bangladesh’s worst catastrophe—mainly because there seems to be no concrete solution—and the longer it continues the more cataclysmic it threatens to be.

Aasha Mehreen Amin is Deputy Editor, Editorial and Opinion, The Daily Star.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

It is easy to miss stories about child domestic workers being tortured and killed. Easy because stories of children being killed have become eerily regular. It is May 28 and there is the report of 14-year-old Konika Rani being hacked to death by a drug addict with three of her classmates also grievously injured by him. There is also the horror of having to read about a six-year-old being left critically wounded after being raped by her neighbour. Next to this is the news of 11-year-old Hasina Akhter dying in hospital from the fatal wounds inflicted on her, presumably by her employers.

It’s hard to choose which incident merits more attention – they are, after all, all children. But for now let’s just focus on the child domestic worker. Why? Because in the other two cases, such attacks, though heinous and reprehensible, are unpredictable. In the case of Hasina, however, the chance of abuse is uncomfortably high. Child domestic workers – a staggering 421,000 in number, according to Unicef (2015) – are possibly the most vulnerable to physical and sexual abuse mainly because they are confined to a house 24-7 and have little means of escape.

Extreme poverty forces families to send their children to homes of the more privileged. Once they are employed, they are at the mercy of their employers and their families. They are often made to do the work of an adult and paid a pittance. They work odd hours and are given hardly any time to rest, least of all play. School, for most, is no longer a part of their lives. But the worst part of their working environment is that they will be severely reprimanded in the form of verbal or physical abuse for making the smallest of mistakes. A Unicef study has reported as much as 60 percent of child domestic workers saying that they faced some kind of abuse during work, such as slapping and scolding; more than half received no wage at all.

The fact that Hasina Akhter did not even get a chance to say goodbye to her mother before her frail little body gave in to the injuries inflicted on her, is not surprising. Yet the extent to which her tormenters went will not fail to make one feel sick to the stomach: her hand and leg were broken, there were burns on her back and injuries on her head and other parts of her body, her face bloodied. This is how her mother Salma Begum found her when she rushed from her home in Mymensingh to Dhaka Medical College.

Salma, a domestic worker, had fallen ill and she sent her little daughter Hasina to her employer Shariful Islam’s house in Mohammadpur. She was to do some light housework and play with the children. For four months, however, Salma had no news of her child, until she got the ominous call from her employer that Hasina had typhoid and malaria and was in hospital. According to a news report, Shariful Islam had brought a severely injured Hasina to the hospital, telling the police on duty that he had found her lying on the street. After admitting her to the hospital, Shariful quickly left the scene. Later, when the police went to Shariful’s house, after Salma had spoken to them, the couple had already fled. They were later arrested from Sreepur while in hiding.

There may be all kinds of socio-psychological explanations behind such barbarity inflicted by people who otherwise appear quite ‘normal’. Think of the well-known cricketer and his wife who turned out to be sadistic torturers of their child domestic worker. We don’t need experts to tell us, however, why employers think they can get away with abusing child workers. Despite the Domestic Workers Protection and Welfare Policy-2015, which has been approved by the cabinet, there has been virtually no move to enforce this policy that would require all domestic workers to be registered as well as be guaranteed basic rights in terms of working hours, leave, benefits, health care and legal redress. Despite laws that serve the harshest punishment for physical torture, rape and murder of children, child domestic workers continue to be victims of all kinds of abuse.

The reason is simple. It is easy to beat and torture a child and get away with it. Child workers do not have a voice and there are no avenues by which they can get help when they are being victimised. The worst part is that in many cases the entire family collaborates in the torture. There is no one to speak out for the child domestic worker. Neighbours may hear their cries of help but few will try to intervene.

The idea of child labour is abhorrent in any society but it is a reality that we have done little to fix. Poverty compels families to send their children to the city to work in strangers’ homes in the hope that they will be fed, clothed and given some money to help them survive. This makes it a complex issue, one that cannot be solved with blanket bans without addressing the factors that push children into domestic work. But can we call ourselves a civilised nation if we continue to employ little children to work like adults who are vulnerable to abuse? It is hard to accept the truth that while employers shower their own children with love, caring and indulgence, when it comes to their child domestic worker, she/he is treated with contempt, neglect and sometimes brutality. Essentially, it is a class issue and the feudal mindset of society serves to perpetuate the idea that domestic workers are inferior beings with child domestic workers falling in the lowest rung of the ladder.

While we may wait for the Domestic Workers Protection and Welfare Policy-2015 to make any significant change in the lives of domestic workers in general, the state must work towards the total prohibition of employing children for household work, which can only be defined as hazardous child labour. This is because no matter how much we harp on having helplines, monitoring teams, mandatory schooling and enforcement of stringent laws to ensure the safety and wellbeing of child domestic workers, in the real world, human beings have a propensity to become monsters when no one is looking.

The writer is Deputy Editor, Editorial & Opinion, The Daily Star.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

There is no respect these days, say the old folks – no respect for the elderly, for teachers, for your older siblings, just no respect. If you are among these whining, disgruntled naysayers please be informed: Respect is not something to be earned, it is something to be extracted.

Is this a little too cryptic for your overtaxed brain? Well here’s how it goes. Contrary to conventional wisdom, gaining respect is not something that comes after you have done amazing good for humanity, say teaching underprivileged kids how to use a computer, or discovering a solution for village folk to get safe, drinking water. It is not about having a squeaky clean record of honesty, integrity, humility and generosity. These are old, archaic ideas that have no value in today’s reality. RESPECT is directly proportional to POSITION. In other words how much respect you will get depends on how close you are to the highest seat of power or to those who own half the town.

That’s not all. Sometimes, even though you have the right credentials – you are the nephew of the sister of the local MP but so what, not every Kamal, Jamal and Damal knows what you look like so you must have what is known in Bengali a bhaab – an attitude that exudes enough scorn and arrogance to make people think you must be someone important and hence worthy of respect. Puffed up hair seems to work as it gives the impression of tallness as well as affluence. The latter can be enhanced with gold chains around the neck and rings on every finger with stones one’s favourite fortuneteller has provided through paranormal means. Of course, the usual accessories are prerequisites – SUVs, a retinue of thuggish looking –ahem – ‘associates’ preferably wearing ominous bandanas and dirty grins while speeding along motorbikes harassing the local womenfolk.

But wait, aren’t we forgetting the main point of this thesis – the extracting respect part? You see that’s the most intriguing aspect. When all the paraphernalia linked with power and status fail to get lowly commoners to show respect – say they forget to salam or shower you with petals when you enter the vicinity of the primary school you are to visit – there is only one thing to do – give ’em a few blows. Let them know who’s Boss.

If you are looking for real life examples, look no more. Only a few days ago a UNO (Upazila Nirbahi Officer) was beaten up by the goons (sorry ‘associates’) of a local leader because he had not responded when a local MP asked him to pay his respects to the local leader. He had made a major boo boo: he had not shown respect. Hence the severe head injuries he was rewarded with.

In another incident, a traffic police was slapped by a member of one of the most respected echelons of society (one refrains from giving out details lest it’s interpreted as ‘showing lack of respect’) because he had been going on the wrong side, and the fool tried to be the goody two shoes type of protector of the law. He actually had the nerve to stop the person who must be respected ‘at all times under any circumstance’, and asked him to refrain from breaking the law.

So here are some new lessons we must learn and unfortunately impart to our children.

Behave in a thuggish way at all times – rude, uncaring, brash and irreverent.

Master the art of shouting like a death metal vocalist with the traditional refrain “DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?”

Sport your material possessions as loudly and crudely as possible – like driving a Hummer around the dug up roads of Banani and Gulshan, with blaring Bhangra music, and followed by a microbus full of mean looking men in dark glasses, bandying their rifles for everyone to see.

Randomly break rules – get your cronies (you must have a whole bunch of them to ensure you get uninterrupted ‘respect’ 24-7) to go to various individuals to teach them how to respect you. A small fee may also be extracted while ‘persuading’ the person to show proper respect.

You may be thinking these are just the usual tactics employed by gangsters of the underworld that we watch with such relish in movies where someone gets shot or knived every 37 seconds. Here’s an FYI – this is how it works in the real world. These are strategies adopted by those who hold the most respectable positions in society. Hey, hey do I detect a yawn? Being disrespectful, eh? Just you wait.

The writer is Deputy Editor, Editorial & Op-ed, The Daily Star.

This story was originally published by The Sunday Times, Sri Lanka