Bangladeshi women carried flaming torches through the streets of Dhaka on Monday, marching to demand justice and political representation ahead of general elections in Bangladesh.
Bangladeshi women took to streets of Dhaka on Monday, to demand justice and political representation in the coming elections on February 12.
The women carried flaming torches, to raise concern about the growing injustice against the women and being excluded from the political arena.
Women candidates make up fewer than four per cent of the election hopefuls, while 30 of the parties contesting this week’s race put forward male-only tickets.
‘No representation of women’
A Supreme Court lawyer and protester Priya Ahsan Chowdhury said, “Whatever regime is in place, repression of women appears in many different forms.” She joined around 100 women chanting slogans and singing in front of parliament.
“In some places, we haven’t seen any representation of women at all — only men. That is what drove us to come out and speak up,” she added as quoted by AFP.
The march began at the midnight of Sunday and ended in the early hours of Monday, came as a backdrop of rising incendiary rhetoric targeting women at public rallies and criticising them by not allowing to participate in the political activities and pushing them out of public life.
‘Being erased from public sphere’
The February 12 vote will be the first election since the overthrow of the autocratic government of ousted PM Sheikh Hasina.
Head of the Tech Global Institute think tank and protester, Sabhanaz Rashid Diya said, “The aspiration of the mass uprising was to build a country based on justice and equality — but women are slowly being erased from the public sphere.”
“And now, when we are once again dreaming of building a new country, political parties where women once played key roles have largely sidelined them in the electoral race,” she added.
Earlier led by women
Bangladesh was earlier led by powerful women leaders, including Hasina and late three-time Prime Minister Khaleda Zia.
Zia died in December after leading the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) for four decades and serving three terms as premier.
“I used to be proud that even though my country is not the most liberal, we still had two women figureheads at the top,” first-time voter Ariana Rahman, 20. told AFP.
The members of Bangladesh’s largest Islamist political party, Jamaat-e-Islami have suggested that society is not ready for women in politics and the party has not fielded any women candidate this time.
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