Social movement against rape a must: Obaidul

Awami League general secretary Obaidul Quader on Tuesday said that collective social movement was needed against rape and the AL activists were working to launch such a social movement against rape and other violence against women.

He also asked anti-rape protestors to keep patience as the government was ensuring justice.

Obaidul Quader said that there was no need of street movement for seeking justice when the government itself  ensuring justice and trying to bring the offenders to book, Quader, also road transport and bridges minister, said at a meeting of AL secretaries at the party’s central office on Bangabandhu Avenue in Dhaka.

‘Rape is a social disease and one kind of hooliganism. The government did not any reluctance to take action against the rapists,’ Quader said.

He said that trials might be intercepted if rape incidents were tagged on the political connection of the offenders.

A criminal should be judged irrespective of their political identities, Quader said adding that anti-rape protests should not be used as political movement.

He said that AL president Sheikh Hasina had given an instruction that the offenders should not be spared.

He also said that many ministers and lawmakers of AL were faced trial at courts for various issues.

About the Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s criticism over the issue, Quader said that none of the BNP activists faced trial for rape in their regime.  BNP then blamed the opposition parties for such incidents, he added.

Protests against unending incidents of rape, sexual harassment and violence against women across Bangladesh flared up in Dhaka and elsewhere in the country since Monday as a video of a 37-year-old woman getting sexually assaulted and tortured by a group of youths in Begumganj upazila in Noakhali went viral on social media.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net