Women in our police service are doing well

Razzak Raza

The history of civilisation has seen successful sovereigns like Empress Sultana Razia in the East and Queen Victoria in the West, but the existence of a woman police was not even in one's imagination during their reign and afterwards. Not only the common man of prejudice but also the police bosses found it unnecessary to include women officers in police departments. A retired police chief of a British county police, former Chief Constable Lionel Lindsay of Glamorgan, UK, in 1924 commented: "I have very carefully considered the question of the employment of police women in the County of Glamorgan from every possible standpoint affecting the administration of a large County Police Force, and I unhesitatingly declare that I am unable to subscribe to the opinion expressed that their employment would be of any advantage to the County."
   Some newspapers were also against the female police officers. They rebuked the police departments attempting to recruit woman police and warned that the woman police will be absent from duties whenever a mouse will be known on the beat.
   Women were first employed on police duties during the First World War. These women working in the police were called police matrons, and they did not work outside like a regular police constable. Women organisations in Britain such as "National Council of Women of Great Britain", "London Council for the Promotion of Public Morality" put pressure on the police authorities to recruit women in the police departments. But the pressure of these women organisations was not sufficient. The Metropolitan Police of London wanted to recruit women of submissive character. They were very much worried that women in the police would get involved in sexual scandals.
   But the necessity of the Second World War forced the world to change the attitudes towards women. Serving police officers were being sent to the battle fields. The able males departed for the military, millions of persons, obviously the males, lost their lives making the world a female dominion. So, women had to fill the gaps of men in every sector, and, so in the world of policing. It is, in fact, the war which established women in the police force.
   
   Gender inequality in the West
   Women in the police service were later called 'police women'. Police women were not promoted to the supervisory posts in the New York Police Department up to 1964. They were confined to work only in the women police department and were not assigned to go on patrol duties. Women could only be promoted within their own bureaus because they were told by their police superiors that they had not had the full police experience of being on general street patrol. It was, of course the same male police administration that had refused over the years to assign women to general patrol and thus had blocked police women's access to the required experience.
   In 1973 the terms 'police men' and 'police women' were dropped adopting the common term 'police officers'. Now police officers include the officers of both sexes and no discrimination, on principle and by law, is acceptable with respect to posting, promotion and day-today duties.
   Gender inequality shows the worst manifestation in the police service. Women were treated differently for many years in the police service. The prejudice about women police is still prevailing universally in the police departments. At an international conference on women and policing held in Amsterdam and sponsored by the European Network of Policewomen a workshop was convened on the role of femininity on police work. Women police from over twenty countries around the world shared information on the discriminatory treatment that they suffered at the hands of their male colleagues. Women receive, at best, a cool reception from male officers and, at worst, a hostile reception.
   Women in the Western countries are always ahead of time compared to the women of the Eastern countries. The first police matrons appeared in the nineteenth century and in 1905, the first documented appointment of woman with police powers took place. In 1910 the Los Angeles Police Department in the USA appointed the first women with full police power. Since then, the women community has gone a long way towards equality with their male counterparts. In 1972, the USA amended Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibiting state and local government from discriminating on the basis of race, ethnicity, or gender. Police department, like other employment agencies, had to comply with this law abandoning their reservation about women police. In 1970, only 02 per cent of all police officers in the USA were women, but by 1991, 9 per cent members of the police were women. Now the USA has 9.5 per cent percent of all police personnel women. But the percentage is not satisfactory to the women leaders. They are making relentless effort to make it 50 per cent.
   The British found no logic in recruiting women for Indian police; the Pakistani regime viewed it as a deviation from the Shariah law, and, even in independent Bangladesh the authorities did not adopt a progressive policy of recruiting women in Police deparetment. It was only in 1974 when 12 women police were recruited in the Special Branch of Bangladesh police. Four years later the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) recruited women in 1978. However, no women were recruited in the supervising posts in those days.
   The first women in the post of the ASP were recruited in 1986 (6th BCS). Ms. Fatima Begum was the pioneer woman joining supervisory post in the history of Bangladesh Police. She has made her way up to the rank of DIG. In 1988 four women joined the Bangladesh Police through the 7th BCS examination.
   Wrong policy of Ershad
   However, though the subsequent years saw women police in the subordinate ranks, women were barred form joining supervisory posts. The experiment of the Ershad regime stopped the women becoming police supervisors. The then Minister of Home Affairs, Major General (Retd) Mahmudul Hasan found women "incapable of doing police job".
   In his presentation titled, "Law and Order Evaluation and Reform, Reconstruction and Modernisation of the Police Force" on 10 December and 24 December, 1989 to President Ershad, Mahmudul Hasan severely criticised the idea of recruiting women in the senior posts and suggested that only Bangladeshi "male citizens would apply for the post of an ASP".
   President Ershad approved the presentation keeping the commas and semicolons untouched depriving women from joining the police supervisory posts. Though the Ershadian era came to an end soon after the presentation, the wrong policy of depriving women remained unchanged. From 8th to 17th BCS no female officers were recruited. In 1999 (18th BCS) another eight women joined the police service as ASP making the headway. Since then women are joining the Bangladesh Police through every general BCS exams. Today there are more than 90 women holding supervisory posts in Bangladesh Police. Ten percent quota preserved for the female candidates is also contributing much to augment the number of women in Bangladesh Police.
   Today, although women consist of only one per cent of the total police force of Bangladesh, the number of women is on the rise. There is a proposal to raise a battalion populated only with women officers for the Dhaka Metropolitan area. Women are doing all sorts of police work in the country.
   In Bangladesh police women are not meant to do auxiliary duties only. In addition, they are posted to the traffic duties, detective duties and pacifying and dispersing unlawful assemblies. Women in Bangladesh Police secured the position of the parade commander in the passing-out parade of the Bangladesh Police Academy (in 2007) and deputy parade commander in the ceremonial Police Week Parade in 2008.
   
   Success
   Women in Bangladesh Police put their marks of success not only in the country, but also in the UN Peace Keeping missions. They are working in the civil police (UNPOL) as well as Formed Police Unit (FPU). Women are working smoothly as deputy battalion commander, liaison officer, monitor and staff officer in the United Nations Peace Keeping Missions in East Timor, Sudan, Congo, Ivory Coast, Liberia and Kosovo.
   Policing is a regimented public agency rendering community services. It demands people with firm determination. Like women police of developed countries, Bangladesh women have proved their worth as police personnel. The international trend of modern policing has just made its way to Bangladesh. With a considerable number of women, the Bangladesh Police have been advancing towards gender equity.

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Valentine Day in our country

Shah Abdul Hannan

We in Bangladesh did not know or observed the Valentine day even 10 years before. It is a newspaper and a group of business houses who are promoting the observance of the day. The purpose of that newspaper was obviously to introduce another western value. The purpose of the business houses was of course sales of more cards and merchandise, and increase of business in terms of hundreds of millions of taka and billions of dollars in many other countries. It is the commercial interest which is ruling the matter and the common people can not go deep into such matters. For the fashionable youth fun is more important than value.
   What is the history and origin of this festival, known as "Valentine Day" or "Festival of Love": The Festival of Love was one of the festivals of the pagan Romans, when paganism was the prevalent religion of the Romans more than seventeen centuries ago. In the pagan Roman concept, it was an expression of "spiritual love". There were myths associated with this pagan festival of the Romans, which persisted with their Christian heirs. Among the most famous of these myths was the Roman belief that Romulus, the founder of Rome, was suckled one day by a she-wolf, which gave him strength and wisdom. The Romans used to celebrate this event in mid-February each year with a big festival.
   One of the rituals of this festival was the sacrifice of a dog and a goat. Two strong and muscular youths would daub their bodies with blood of the dog and goat and then they would wash the blood away with milk. After that there would be a great parade, with these two youths at its head, which would go about the streets. The two youths would have pieces of leather with which they would hit everyone who crossed their path. The Roman women would welcome these blows, because they believed that they could prevent or cure infertility.
   Saint Valentine is a name which is given to two of the ancient "martyrs" of the Christian Church. It was said that there were two of them, or that there was only one, who died in Rome as the result of the persecution of the Gothic leader Claudius, c. 296 CE. In 350 CE, a church was built in Rome on the site of the place where he died, to perpetuate his memory. When the Romans embraced Christianity, they continued to celebrate the Feast of Love mentioned above, but they changed it from the pagan concept of "spiritual love" to another concept known as the "martyrs of love", represented by Saint Valentine who had advocated love and peace, for which cause he was martyred, according to their claims. It was also called the Feast of Lovers, and Saint Valentine was considered to be the patron Saint of lovers.
   One of their false beliefs connected with this festival was that the names of girls who had reached marriageable age would be written on small rolls of paper and placed in a dish on a table. Then the young men who wanted to get married would be called, and each of them would pick a piece of paper. He would put himself at the service of the girl whose name he had drawn for one year, so that they could find out about one another. Then they would get married, or they would repeat the same process again on the day of the festival in the following year.
   The Christian clergy reacted against this tradition, which they considered to have a corrupting influence on the morals of young men and women. It was abolished in Italy, where it had been well-known, then it was revived in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when in some western countries there appeared shops which sold small books called "Valentine's books", which contained love poems, from which the one who wanted to send a greeting to his sweetheart could choose. They also contained suggestions for writing love letters. (The above quotation is excerpted, with slight modifications, from www.Islam-qa.com)
   Focusing more on the question in point, we can say that there are forms of expressing love that are acceptable in our culture and religion , while there are others that are not acceptable .We do recognise happy occasions that bring people closer to one another, and add spice to their lives. However, we are against blindly imitating others regarding occasion such as Valentine's Day because of its history and practice which generates indecency and promiscuity.

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Nehal Adil

President Sarkozy was known as Sarakozy Le American, now with his popular rating plunging he is called Sarkozy Le Circus. Even the American press which hailed his victory as an American one has turned against him. There are lots of reasons but most predominant one is his personality.
   Son of a broken immigrant family, he hardly knew his father valued the American classlessness. But that was it. He sees French interest as supreme. The Americans had supported socialist leader Fabius in the anti-EU constitution referendum. The defeat for EU constitution was not only a devastating blow for EU integration but it also paralysed the Chirac government.
   As his fast step in the government he worked out an EU charter instead of the constitution that re-launched the EU. The Polish veto which was a Trojan horse in EU, was successfully dismantled with his close cooperation of Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor. Then he took up the issue of EU defence independent of NATO. He strengthened the French defence industry and re-launched independent French foreign policy initiative in the Middle East and Africa. His foreign minister, a one-time Castro follower who believes like Che Guevara that the national frontier does not exist in the fight for the oppressed (he has strangely readjusted it to American human rights initiative and earned the name neo-con from the left.) visited Iraq on his own and declared Maliki government illegal. The Americans first thought his visit was positive but it made a tremendous backlash.
   Then Sarkozy did not deviate from the Chirac initiated triangular relations between Paris Berlin and Moscow. Sarkozy rather extended it with his cosy relations with Beijing and Delhi. He won billion dollar deals with India and China by his successful visits.
   He has opposed Tehran's nuclear programme but he is paddling his nuclear technology to the Muslim countries of the Middle East -including cash rich Saudi Arabia and Arab Emirate though both Sarkozy and Kouchner are of Jewish origin.
   But most explosive is his relations with Gaddafi and Chavez. France is making new inroads in Africa and Latin America. The Americans were shocked to see Gaddafi and Chavez in Elysie palace.
   Then came the drama in his personal life. He took a private holiday in the United States without the invitation from White House thus defying Bush. It was American style. But his wife fell in love with an American who moved to New York. Defiant Sarkozi married an Italian super model Bruno -- just American style. Bush later officially invited him to the US; there he told the Congress that France was America's friend not puppet.
   A complex personality like Sarkozy is more than a circus. His advent in the world history has happened in a juncture when there exists an ideological vacuum.
   Clerte, the leftwing journal and Liberation, the leftwing daily with which his so-called neo-con foreign minister Kouchner was associated, were voices of protest against the so-called traditional left which saw the world divided in two. As one connected with the Liberation, I felt that the shackle of ideological incoherence had to be broken. Sarkozy moved to the right as did Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. They brought Soviet Union down. Was it not the liberation of working class?
   Obviously Sarkozy speaks about 'notre mission de civilisation,' which sounds conservative but it is in fact Marx's historical materialism. Hegel's unity in contradiction - thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis.
   The globalisation and modernisation is turning the whole world into working class - since the forces do not allow any privileged class. The poorest by competition takes over the richest. But it does not eradicate conflict. And these conflicts today are globally extended.
   Sakozy wants to eradicate it with the cooperation of Chavez and Gaddafy, the spontaneous revolutionaries. Unless poverty is eliminated and the deprived are empowered, there would be never end of terrorism. Sarkozy the child of Paris knows it best.
   Sarko, the Catholic discovers a new image of Jesus, that he lectured the other day in Ryadh and Delhi. The revolutionary image of God unites Sarkozy,
   Chavez and Gaddafy.
   However contradictory it might appear to an intellectual moulded in the 19th century thoughts it is a brazen reality in 21st century. Was it not that intelligentsia which divided the working class in communists, socialists, fascists and anarchists and thus caused the Second World War and prolong the Anglo-Saxon Empire? The Jews blame the Nazis but do not pardon that empire for slaughter of six million of them. Here we can find an analysis of the mind set of Sarkozy who seeks new relation of Europe with Asia and the past.

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