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Fighting for respect

Z.A.M.KHAIRUZZAMAN
It was a quiet, muggy day in Agargaon BNP slum in the capital when police began demolishing the slum in an attempt to evict poor slum dwellers. Like her local guardian Phul Banu and other neighbours, teenage garment worker Monira (not real name) decided to flee.
The 16-year-old girl, who hails from Fatehpur village of Chandina
upazila, Comilla, raced from her slum house to the street, where she thought she would be safe. But she later realised, when she could not find her companion Phul Banu, that she was all alone with no place to go.
Monira sufferings only multiplied when a stranger came to her, offering his sympathy. Promising her a safe place, the man took Monira to a tin-shed house at Mirpur Section-1, where he lived alone. But there he appeared in his true form: he attacked her like a beast and raped her the entire night.
Monira fled the next day, abandoning herself to the city streets. From then on, the former garment worker turned into a 'comfort girl'.
It was not until she met a worker of Incidin Bangladesh, an organisation rendering counselling service to floating sex workers and vagrant women, that her life began to change.
Under his guidance, Monira enrolled herself in his organisation, where she began to learn a trade. With growing awareness of new possibilities, she grew more and more disgusted with the flesh trade. She finally told the Incidin worker that she wanted to end her shameful way of life.
The Incidin worker contacted officials at Dhaka Ahsania Mission (DAM), a prominent NGO that runs a shelter home at Bhekutia in Jessore for sex workers and women rescued from trafficking. DAM offered Monira a beacon of hope by making her an inmate of the home on May 31, 2003. There she learnt the art of embroidery work along with reading and writing over the course of two years.
On conclusion of the two-year course, she was granted a new lease of life. She was recently offered a job at a garment factory in Dhaka on May 5 with the help of DAM officials.
Monira says the new opportunity has given her newfound hope. "Since then I have been accepted and honoured by people in society," said Monira.
Monira is just one of the 120 women that DAM has rehabilitated from despair and alienation since 1998. An orphan like Monira, who lost her parents at the age of only nine years, might otherwise have been lost to oblivion had DAM not come to her rescue. At present 22 inmates are taking training at the DAM shelter home.
Even a few years ago, cruelty to women, in the form of rape, acid throwing, trafficking and physical torture, was prevalent in a Third World country like Bangladesh. The rate of violence against women has reduced to a great extent in Bangladesh and women are gradually becoming self-sufficient economically, according to a recently published annual report of the US Senate. It has been possible due to necessary legal reforms undertaken by the government.
Under the framework of law, many organisations, including Bangladesh Jatiya Mohila Ainjibi Samity, a women lawyers organisation, as well as DAM are relentlessly working to recover the self-respect of hundreds of women like Monira.