Bangladesh woke up to the nightmare of homemade deshi porn in 2001 when Sumon, a bangladeshi born American, came to the country and videod his sexual acts with three local women. Unaware of the presence of the camera, the women fell into Sumon's love trap and were shot in compromising postures. the CDs which hit the market later on carried a commentary that degraded the women. A general diary was lodged, but by that time Sumon and his lone accomplice had fled the country; the CDs started to be sold in the shopos; of the three women, one has left the country, the other two still bear the shame of being exposed publicly in such a way.
Sumon's is not the only scandal to plague the country's CD scene. Taking the advantage of cameras in mobile phones, intimate details of individuals are videoed, sometimes with the consent of willing female friends, only to be leaked into the market. A ninth grade studen at a reputed English medium school in Uttara Bangladesh, was caught at school with a CD. It contains explicite scenes of some of the male and female students of the school.
As moden technology, like a double-edged sword, has has both good and bad sides. In our country we should have baned cell phones at school, but parents sometimes complaines that without the cellphone at school it becomes impossible for them to contact their children in times of need. One of the non-government oeganization has conducted an extensive survey in the country on child pornography. Its report says that watching naked picture through mobile phone is found to be a common trend among the children. According to some children, they enjoyed bad songs by mobile phone. Also children are found to exchange porno pictures through mobile phone. One of the owner of a cyber cafe said that a boy and a girl of a reputed school of Dhaka recorded their own sex act and sent it to others by MMS. It is high time to save the children of Bangladesh from child abuse of cyber world by implementing new and effective laws. The government must come forward to take necessary action so that children of the country do not get derailed by the usage of internet. Alsos family awareness is a must to save the children from the curse of pornography.
Pornography is spreading among the children mostly by the friends though chatting, drawing curiosity on sex or by peer pressure that insist them to view porno picture or movie considering it as a part of their smartness and adulthood. Some times they simply follow their seniors at schoolm or college. It is noticeable from their discussion that considering growing demand porno movies are prepared in large scale inside the country too and the children are awar about these websites. The children who indulge themselves in such activities just for the fun of it know little about the ramifications of their actions. One of the boys of them says that he got the videos through the blue-tooth of his friends' mobiles and has made a CD of all the videos because he wants to see them together.
Some of these videos hardly remain a private affair. One of the dealer in porn said that there are several ways a video tape can be leaked. They mostly get the porn from computer repair shops, where people send their PCs to be fixed. He also include that most of his clintele include 13 year ole school goers to 70 year old retired civil servants and also said that his collection of the CDs mostly show Bangladeshi men and women having sex, the rest contain scense where children as young as 14 are either shown nude or are making love to each other.
There is another story that few months ago pornography has taken the life of a young women in Gazipur. The girl fell in love witha young man of her age and they had sex in a hotel room. Little did they know that the hotelier runs a secret racket of pornographers who kept a hidden camera in the room. Soon the video made its way into the internet and within days it became the talk of the town. The girl committed suicide by hanging herself from the celling fan. Her family has not yet filed a case with the police, as it will expose its members to further humiliation. Her famlily said that after the video was uploaded onthe net, her friends started to avoid her. There were whispering on the streets.
Her suicide and attemped to suicide of another girl have prompted the police to request the ban on 84websites carrying nude photographs and sexually explicite video clips of Bangladeshi girls. In fact there are certain websites on the Internet, which are solely dedicated to Bangladeshi child porn. Few students shared that they and their friends searched for porno pictures through Internet and visited porno websites. They mostly visited cyber cafe and downloaded pictures through their pen drive and later it installed them in their personal computer to watch secrately at home. At present days mobile phone is being used commonly to download porno pictures because it is easy to install.
As the internet is not easily accessible for most young adults, some go to the cyber cafe only to download nude photographs and videos from adult sites. Sometimes they go through social networking sites to download revealing photographs of girls. Some of them even upload their own photos on these web pages and anyone can download and use them. There is no cyber cafe in the city that monitors the activities of its clients, neither do they track the activities of their under aged customers. Exposure to porn at any early age can wreak havoc on a child's psyche. A child can grow up being aggressive, he might grow to degrade women and can see them merely as sexual objects. Psychologist believe that watching porn at an early age can give a child twisted ideas about sexuality, harming his sexual life when he grows up.
Existing law of the country are not adequate to deal with pornography, let we alone help the children who have fallen victim to porn. In Bangladesh the law that directly deals with porn is 149 years old, and there is no wonder that it does not cover the internet or multi-media messages. The Children Act 1974 does not cover child pornography and the act which does: Information and Communications Technology(ICT) Act 2006; does not specifically mention any offence committed by or against the juveniles. The ICT Act carries sever punishment with a prison sentence of up to 10 years and a fine of up to Tk 1 crore. But the law is not clear enough to cover the situation that we are dealing with nowadays.
There has another incident where a girl is threatened by her ex-boyfriend that he is going to publish all her photographes online as their relationship has broken up. It has become so rampant that new laws need to be enacted. According to the 57/1 of Act a person will be considered guilty if he willingly publishes or transmits anything untrue or vulgar on the internet or anyother electronic format or after reading or hearing of wich a person becomes inspired to become corrupt or dishonest or anything that can cause defamation; deterioration of law and order or can harm the image of a person or state or hurt the religious sentiments or can give incite against any individual or organizations. If the law of the country's are stong, the criminals would have thought twice before starting their dastardly acts. A stringent law that will curb cyber crime with an iron hand is the demand of the time.
Except for the blessings part, mobile phone is also a curse in disguise. Social movement is needed to make people aware against child porn. At the end of the day only a social movement can raise awareness against child porn, as law enforcers we can only kill the source, but if the demand is there the many headed monster of porn can creep up again in a different form.
