January 14, 2018

Millions of Pakistanis left for prey

located:	Pakistan
editor:	Shadi Khan Saif

As dust settles after days of angry agitations against the gruesome rape and murder of a minor girl in the biggest province of Punjab in Pakistan, the lack of accountability on the part of the government, as well as the society’s overall criminal negligence towards child rights spark fears about recurrence of such tragedies.

The minor girl named Zainab, 6, is believed to have been abducted from the religious tuition centre near her house in the Kasur district of Punjab last Thursday (January 4). Her parents had been in Saudi Arabia performing Umrah (Islamic pilgrimage), according to her family, and she had been living with a maternal aunt. On Tuesday (January 9), a police constable deputed to trace the girl recovered her body from a heap of trash.

Unfortunately, this is not the first incident of this sort. On February 25 last year, a seven-year-old girl was allegedly raped and then strangled to death in the same district. Prior to this, in August 2015, the country's biggest child abuse scandal was unearthed in Ganda Singh Wala area of the same Kasur district, where around 400 objectionable videos were made of 280 victims of abuse by a gang of over 25 criminals.

What is even more alarming, is that the reaction and tolerance to such heinous crimes of abuse are not yet set in place; the society seems to be confused as to how it should proceed in response. Some so-called intellectual figures with a large following are blaming the ‘nudity’ and ‘westernised’ lifestyle in Pakistan for the alarming levels of rape and murder of children. While on the other hand, the government officials in the Punjab province were quick to save their own image rather than taking responsibility and addressing this pressing issue on war footings. Rana Sanaullah, the provincial law minister, expressed anger and elitist attitude when confronted by journalists with pressing questions related to the previous and current incident of rape and murder of minors in his jurisdiction.

Orya Maqbool Jan, one such ‘intellectual’ has publicly said on a private television channel that men obsessed with pornography – for which he does not blame the particular group of men, but everyone else and everything else for enticing such behaviours – would ‘naturally’ lead to these acts under such circumstances. Maqbool Jan labelled the rape and murder of this minor in Kasur as a natural enticement caused by vulgarity in the society.

Perhaps it is the tradition of sending their affluent children to study abroad that has produced a generation of Pakistani elite who are immune to the pain and suffering of their nation's poorest. But it is crucial Pakistan's poorest don't become forgotten, that the country fights for the rights and the protection of its youngest and most vulnerable.