Innocent; Impressionable;
Vulnerable; These three words come to mind when one thinks of children. These
three words describe a human condition that should evoke every grown-up’s
protective instincts. The nurturing of the child through its period of
dependency is every adult’s sacred responsibility. We are naturally assuming
here that the world we live is rational and God fearing. If it were then we
would have found Utopia and established Paradise on Earth.
Unfortunately that is not the case, and the world we live in has in its midst a
larger than desirable number of undesirables, putting it very mildly. These are
people within whom the baser instincts of cruel exploitation dominate when
presented with innocence, impressionability, and vulnerability. These are the
perverts who, cloaked in the paraphernalia of respectability, thrill in abusing
their powers of seniority to extract their pound of unholy flesh by instilling
fear in those unable to fend for themselves.
In June 2014 Pope Francis, visiting a stronghold of one of Italy’s most
dangerous crime groups, comforted the jailed father of a three-year-old boy
killed in an ambush and condemned mob violence against children. The Catholic
Church has itself been scandalized for years by the phenomena of pedophilia
amongst its priests, something it is now beginning to acknowledge and apologize
for.
In another report Britain’s independent police watchdog says it is looking into
allegations that Scotland Yard covered up historic allegations of child abuse
from the 1970s to the 2000s. The Independent Police Complaints Commission said
it is investigating 14 referrals, including claims that the force suppressed
evidence and hindered or halted investigations because police officers were
involved. Scotland Yard is also investigating the allegations. Among the
allegations are claims that a Houses of Parliament document found at a child sex
offender’s address linked lawmakers and police officers to a pedophile ring.
In August 2014 a damning report came out that showed 1,400 vulnerable children
in Rotherham, UK, had been systematically sexually abused by gangs of men,
mostly of Pakistani origin, between 1997 and 2013. After similar scandals in
Oxford and Rochdale, as well as the Jimmy Saville case, the Rotherham scandal
has stirred up huge controversy in the United Kingdom. Not only had abuse of the
worst kind taken place, but the police and the Rotherham Council ignored the
victims’ pleas for help, thus victimising them further.
A more insidious form of child abuse is the phenomenon of the child prodigy. A
newspaper report talks of 10 years old Tanishq Abraham who, at an age when most
children are finishing fourth grade, he is graduating from a high school in the
United States. His parents celebrated the occasion with a large party at which
at least 200 people were invited. The young Tanishq, dressed in graduation garb,
was photographed and his pictures were splashed across newspapers in India,
which proudly proclaimed the Indian conquest of the American high school system.
13-year-old Sushma Verma was reported last year to be getting ready to enrol in
a Master’s programme in microbiology. Sushma graduated from high school in India
at the age of seven, beating her brother who accomplished that goal at the age
of nine. These kids have been denied a normal childhood under pressure from
pushy parents. If this is not child abuse, then what is?
The World Day against Child Labour brought the news that there was no official
data regarding the number of child labourers in Pakistan since the first survey
carried out in 1996, according to which there were 3.3 million child labourers
in the country. Some estimates put that number at 10 million children
In November 2014 the global report on Trafficking in Persons, released by the
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Vienna, said one in three
known victims of human trafficking is a child, and girls and women are
particularly targeted and forced into “modern slavery”. According to the report,
girls make up two out of every three child victims.
“We are uncovering the fact that children experience extreme violence in
everyday life, everywhere,” Susan Bissell, global head of child protection for
Unicef told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. In some countries, deaths from
violence are rolling back gains made in preventing childhood deaths from disease
or hunger.
In December 2014, on the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery, in his
message the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called on world leaders, businesses
and civil society alike to “banish the barbaric practices” of human trafficking,
sexual exploitation, the worst forms of child labour, forced marriage and the
forced recruitment of children for use in armed conflict.
Pakistan’s response has been in the shape of the Wafaqi Mohtasib announcing the
setting up of a `National Commission for Children’. Go figure.