A few days ago, in Bangladesh (Pallabi, Dhaka), an 8-year-old girl named Ramisa Akter was found dead in her neighbour's home. She had been raped and beheaded.
An 8-year-old child. Raped and beheaded.
On the day it happened, Ramisa's mother had been in her room while her children were eating breakfast and getting ready to go to school. At around 10:30 am, she noticed that Ramisa was not in the flat. She began to search for her. Ramisa's father had already left for work by then.
Suddenly she heard Ramisa scream. The scream was coming from inside their neighbour, 32-year-old Sohel Rana's flat. She began banging on the door, but nobody responded. The other neighbours joined her and also began knocking on the door. Still, nobody responded. They had to break down the door.
Inside the flat, they found Sohel's wife, Swapna, and Ramisa's dead body lying underneath a bed, like a discarded piece of trash.
Ramisa's severed head was found inside a bucket in the bathroom.
There was no sign of Sohel. He had escaped by cutting a window's grille. His wife had helped him.
Ramisa Akter, a second-grade student at Popular Model High School, had been a bright, exemplary young student. The school had come to know of her murder just minutes before class started. She had had her entire life ahead of her.
After her death, her father has said to the press that he doesn't want justice. Because justice is something that he knows won't be delivered. Because there are thousands of more Ramisas, not only in Bangladesh but also all over the world, who have given their lives yet still have not gotten the justice that they deserve.
This is not the first time that this has happened. Nor, unfortunately, will it be the last. You can't have any faith in the judicial system. And people have an astonishingly short memory. 5 years from now, and that's being generous, I can guarantee you that almost no one will remember or be talking about Ramisa. But not her family. Her family will never be the same again. None of it is their fault, but how will they live with it? How will Ramisa's older sister live with it, knowing that she and her sister had had breakfast together just minutes before it happened? How will Ramisa's mother live with it, thinking that maybe, if she had kept an eye on her children, this would never have happened? How will her father live with it, having to deal with the fact that his daughter was taken away from him in this horrific manner, and that they might never get justice for it?
How many more Ramisas will have to die before there is any sort of actual change?