THIS is apropos of the news item ‘Minor offloaded’ (March 14). The FIA has arrested 12-year-old Akhtar Ali at Peshawar airport when he was about to board a Sharjah-bound plane.
The boy was provided passport by Pakistan and granted permission to work in Sharjah by the UAE. Sadly, the FIA treats such children as offenders and criminals, though the law of the land says that such children have to be treated as victims of exploitation and trafficking.
Some months ago, I had an opportunity to meet 16-year-old Mohammad Toheed at juvenile ward in district jail, Quetta.
Toheed travelled from Punjab to Iran in search of a job.
His brother had paid Rs20,000 to an agent. Toheed was arrested in the Kunruk area of Iran and was later deported.
In Pakistan, Toheed spent four days in the FIA lock-up in Quetta and was produced before the magistrate who awarded him 15 days’ sentence under Section 17 (border crossing) of the Emigration Ordinance 1979.
Toheed should have been sent to his family as he was received by the FIA in Pakistan.
Instead, the main culprits behind his travel to Iran should have been traced and sentenced because Toheed was a victim of exploitation.
In 2002, the Prevention and Control of Human Trafficking Ordinance was promulgated and in 2004 the rules of the ordinance were framed. The law aims at controlling human trafficking and providing effective measures for preventing offences related to human trafficking and to protect and assist victims of such trafficking and exploitation.
The FIA is supposed to deal with cases of trafficking between the countries.
But, unfortunately, neither the FIA nor the judicial officers have ever given a child the status of a victim who is sent by agents to other countries.
It has been observed that not only in district jail, Quetta, but children caught from Dubai, Muscat, Iran and Bahrain are also found in FIA detention centres at different locations in Balochistan.
These children, sent by agents or relatives to other countries, are not considered victims by both the FIA and the courts.
Children are incarcerated when they are deported from other countries back to Pakistan.
Even if they are considered offenders, the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance 2000 says that child offenders must be rehabilitated and provided proper counselling and support rather than being sent to jails.
I hope the FIA will not put Akhtar through the same incarceration process which Toheed and many other children have passed through.
ABDULLAH KHOSO
National Programme Manager, Juvenile Justice
Islamabad
http://www.dawn.com/2011/04/12/offenders-or-victims-of-exploitation.html
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Kids act in suicide bombing video, for fun
By Carol Grisanti, NBC News
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- It’s the game-playing that draws the attention: A group of young boys are acting out the last moments of a suicide bomber, for fun.
In a disturbing 84-second video, posted on YouTube, one boy, perhaps 12 years old, is dressed in black, his face covered by a black scarf. He is the one who gets to blow himself up. Beforehand, he hugs the other kids in what appears to be his final farewell. Some of the younger children find the whole charade rather funny and giggle in the film.
All the children, some looking as young as 5 or 6, are dressed in baggy pants and long tunics, the traditional dress of Pakistanis and Afghans. Some are wearing brown, others white, possibly to represent the different roles they have to play.
The bomber walks over to the boy in white who could be acting in the role of a government official. That boy holds his hand in the air in a gesture that is meant to try and foil the alleged bomber’s movements. The bomber then lifts his shirt as if to show a vest laden with explosives. He kicks up a cloud of dust to depict the bomb that he has set off. The three boys dressed in brown and the one wearing white -- all appearing to be security or government officials -- fall dead.
The portrayal of a suicide bombing has sparked concern and outrage. While the video has been posted on YouTube since early January, there’s no information on who posted it, where the event took place, and what was the motivation behind the piece. It’s been viewed more than 500,000 times.
Children play suicide bombing 'game'
Why?
Abdullah Khoso from the Pakistani “Society for the Protection of Children” (SPARC) said the video should be pulled from the Internet. “Why is this on YouTube,” he asked during an interview with NBC News. “Why does YouTube allow something like this that obviously exploits children and distorts the image of these children? Who benefits from watching this? The recruiting targets would be the kids and families from the border areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan but they would not see this video because they don’t have access to internet,” he said.
The Taliban militants have often recruited teenagers and trained them to be suicide bombers. When the Taliban first occupied the Swat Valley two years ago, many teenagers were inspired by their ruthlessness in rooting out the local criminals and the armed gangs, who were terrorizing the local population. They started to play street games emulating them, not that far-fetched in a tribal society and not that far removed from kids elsewhere who play games of cops and robbers and cowboys and Indians. Later, many of those same kids joined the Taliban.
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“Why aren’t there videos on YouTube of kids playing soldier games or paying violent internet games?” Khoso asked. “Whose purpose is this video serving?” Khoso thinks the video was put out for one of two purposes: either to show the West how evil kids from the border areas are, or to reinforce a picture of the Taliban as evil in recruiting children as future suicide bombers.
The music in the background is a Taliban jihadi song. The lyrics are in Pashto. “Throats are cut, bombs go off and then you can go to a nice place," meaning heaven, although the word is not used.
The Pakistani Taliban denied making the video, saying it was Western propaganda aimed at defaming their image in the eyes of their countrymen.
“This video has nothing to do with us,” said Ihsanullah Ihsan, one of the group’s spokesmen. “We did not ask these children to copy us in their games but it is clear that they are impressed with our cause and now want to imitate our brave fighters.”
Khoso feels the wide circulation of the video is dangerous. “If it is to recruit children, if it is to use children as a tool to motivate and inspire evil, then why does YouTube help facilitate this.”
Mushtaq Yusufzai in Peshawar contributed to this report.
http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/03/25/6342735-kids-act-in-suicide-bombing-video-for-fun
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- It’s the game-playing that draws the attention: A group of young boys are acting out the last moments of a suicide bomber, for fun.
In a disturbing 84-second video, posted on YouTube, one boy, perhaps 12 years old, is dressed in black, his face covered by a black scarf. He is the one who gets to blow himself up. Beforehand, he hugs the other kids in what appears to be his final farewell. Some of the younger children find the whole charade rather funny and giggle in the film.
All the children, some looking as young as 5 or 6, are dressed in baggy pants and long tunics, the traditional dress of Pakistanis and Afghans. Some are wearing brown, others white, possibly to represent the different roles they have to play.
The bomber walks over to the boy in white who could be acting in the role of a government official. That boy holds his hand in the air in a gesture that is meant to try and foil the alleged bomber’s movements. The bomber then lifts his shirt as if to show a vest laden with explosives. He kicks up a cloud of dust to depict the bomb that he has set off. The three boys dressed in brown and the one wearing white -- all appearing to be security or government officials -- fall dead.
The portrayal of a suicide bombing has sparked concern and outrage. While the video has been posted on YouTube since early January, there’s no information on who posted it, where the event took place, and what was the motivation behind the piece. It’s been viewed more than 500,000 times.
Children play suicide bombing 'game'
Why?
Abdullah Khoso from the Pakistani “Society for the Protection of Children” (SPARC) said the video should be pulled from the Internet. “Why is this on YouTube,” he asked during an interview with NBC News. “Why does YouTube allow something like this that obviously exploits children and distorts the image of these children? Who benefits from watching this? The recruiting targets would be the kids and families from the border areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan but they would not see this video because they don’t have access to internet,” he said.
The Taliban militants have often recruited teenagers and trained them to be suicide bombers. When the Taliban first occupied the Swat Valley two years ago, many teenagers were inspired by their ruthlessness in rooting out the local criminals and the armed gangs, who were terrorizing the local population. They started to play street games emulating them, not that far-fetched in a tribal society and not that far removed from kids elsewhere who play games of cops and robbers and cowboys and Indians. Later, many of those same kids joined the Taliban.
advertisement
advertisement
advertisement
“Why aren’t there videos on YouTube of kids playing soldier games or paying violent internet games?” Khoso asked. “Whose purpose is this video serving?” Khoso thinks the video was put out for one of two purposes: either to show the West how evil kids from the border areas are, or to reinforce a picture of the Taliban as evil in recruiting children as future suicide bombers.
The music in the background is a Taliban jihadi song. The lyrics are in Pashto. “Throats are cut, bombs go off and then you can go to a nice place," meaning heaven, although the word is not used.
The Pakistani Taliban denied making the video, saying it was Western propaganda aimed at defaming their image in the eyes of their countrymen.
“This video has nothing to do with us,” said Ihsanullah Ihsan, one of the group’s spokesmen. “We did not ask these children to copy us in their games but it is clear that they are impressed with our cause and now want to imitate our brave fighters.”
Khoso feels the wide circulation of the video is dangerous. “If it is to recruit children, if it is to use children as a tool to motivate and inspire evil, then why does YouTube help facilitate this.”
Mushtaq Yusufzai in Peshawar contributed to this report.
http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/03/25/6342735-kids-act-in-suicide-bombing-video-for-fun
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Easy prey for the Taliban
By Abdullah Khoso
“I HAVE come,” said the 13-year-old boy before blowing himself up at a security picket at the Urdu Bazaar intersection of Lahore, killing and injuring a number of people last month.
Children in the settled and tribal areas of the northwest are commonly used to carry out suicide attacks in Pakistan. In one case in 2009, the army detained 20 boys from the Swat valley and nearby areas apparently being trained by the Taliban to become informants, fighters and suicide bombers. Eleven among them were as young as seven years. According to a report in the Washington Times, there is a big price tag on child bombers, ranging from $7,000 to $14,000.
In January 2010, the CNN reported that Pakistan`s military had revealed that the former Taliban stronghold of Nawaz Kot, South Waziristan, was used to train Pakistani children between the ages of 12 and 18 years as suicide bombers.
According to the report, the parents of such children send their offspring to school for a better education and free food, whereas written material available there showed details of the preparation of suicide jackets, the handling of weapons and ways to ambush; the walls carried artwork depicting a glorious afterlife for suicide bombers.
In October 2010, in Karachi, the police arrested a 16-year-old `would-be suicide bomber`. The boy told the media that the Taliban had warned him that if he refused to carry out the attack or told anybody about it, they would slit his throat. It was the fear of being slaughtered that led him to agree to carry out the suicide bombing.
Conversely, a 16-year-old boy detained at the Youthful Offenders Industrial School in Karachi believes that the Taliban are good people and are dispensers of justice. The boy was the only survivor of the Saeedabad blast in Karachi in January last year, which took the lives of six people believed to be militants. He was also wounded, and kept in solitary confinement separate from other minors.
The boy believed that the Taliban in his hometown of Miranshah in North Waziristan were killing robbers and murderers. He was a student at a madressah in Karachi, and had received extensive training in North Waziristan. Apparently, afterwards, the boy was given no psychological counselling as he held on to his pro-Taliban views.
In addition to children, the Taliban are also using young women of the tribal areas for such attacks. Last December, a young burka-clad woman carried out a suicide attack at the World Food Programme`s food distribution centre in Bajaur Agency and killed over 40 people. It is believed that she was less than 18 years. It has been learnt that in Swat the Taliban have targeted young women and girls who are socially marginalised and keen to take part in the movement, doing whatever they can including cooking and cleaning.
Local human and child rights activists of the area believe that the Taliban are working in an organised manner and have easily influenced women through sermons on the radio. Besides social deprivation and the lack of proper religious education, illiteracy has been reported as a major factor that has contributed to the growing numbers of children and women falling prey to the Taliban. Beyond Madressahs: Assessing the Links between Education and Militancy in Pakistan
The analysis in a 2010 report by the Brookings Institute and titled , has shown strong linkages between education and civil conflict. The report states that the lower the enrolment rates at the primary and secondary levels the more likelihood there is of the eruption of conflict in the country.
The phenomenon of suicide bombers including child suicide bombers striking in Fata and the rest of Pakistan has its roots in the draconian Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) 1901 which is applied in the tribal areas. Even the Supreme Court of Pakistan has abandoned interventions to stop human rights violations in Fata which are perceived as being committed under the FCR.
The FCR has not regulated the lives of the tribal people and, in fact, has brought miseries to the lives of innocent women and children under the collective responsibility clause. The actual culprits remain free. Consequently, a big administrative, economic and political vacuum exists, one which has never been filled for decades and thus serves the interests of terrorist groups which neither the judiciary nor the police nor any other agency has been able to bring to justice because of constitutional restrictions.
With much of Fata controlled by militant groups, there is increasing lawlessness and poverty in the region and a greater chance of young people, including adolescents and children, joining militants groups and engaging in armed combat and suicide attacks.
The uprooting of the seeds of extremism sown by these terrorist groups is a long-term agenda but one that is indispensable to the survival of the country. Only through bringing the rule of law to Fata and repealing the FCR immediately can this agenda be implemented.
Meanwhile, there is a pressing need to reverse the damage done to thousands of children who are both victims and agents of the Taliban, many being programmed to commit acts of terrorism.
Children in the custody of the military and police should be given social support, education and other services resulting in their reintegration into society. A strategic national policy is required to prevent children from falling into the hands of militants.
The writer works for the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child.
http://www.dawn.com/2011/02/19/easy-prey-for-the-taliban.html
“I HAVE come,” said the 13-year-old boy before blowing himself up at a security picket at the Urdu Bazaar intersection of Lahore, killing and injuring a number of people last month.
Children in the settled and tribal areas of the northwest are commonly used to carry out suicide attacks in Pakistan. In one case in 2009, the army detained 20 boys from the Swat valley and nearby areas apparently being trained by the Taliban to become informants, fighters and suicide bombers. Eleven among them were as young as seven years. According to a report in the Washington Times, there is a big price tag on child bombers, ranging from $7,000 to $14,000.
In January 2010, the CNN reported that Pakistan`s military had revealed that the former Taliban stronghold of Nawaz Kot, South Waziristan, was used to train Pakistani children between the ages of 12 and 18 years as suicide bombers.
According to the report, the parents of such children send their offspring to school for a better education and free food, whereas written material available there showed details of the preparation of suicide jackets, the handling of weapons and ways to ambush; the walls carried artwork depicting a glorious afterlife for suicide bombers.
In October 2010, in Karachi, the police arrested a 16-year-old `would-be suicide bomber`. The boy told the media that the Taliban had warned him that if he refused to carry out the attack or told anybody about it, they would slit his throat. It was the fear of being slaughtered that led him to agree to carry out the suicide bombing.
Conversely, a 16-year-old boy detained at the Youthful Offenders Industrial School in Karachi believes that the Taliban are good people and are dispensers of justice. The boy was the only survivor of the Saeedabad blast in Karachi in January last year, which took the lives of six people believed to be militants. He was also wounded, and kept in solitary confinement separate from other minors.
The boy believed that the Taliban in his hometown of Miranshah in North Waziristan were killing robbers and murderers. He was a student at a madressah in Karachi, and had received extensive training in North Waziristan. Apparently, afterwards, the boy was given no psychological counselling as he held on to his pro-Taliban views.
In addition to children, the Taliban are also using young women of the tribal areas for such attacks. Last December, a young burka-clad woman carried out a suicide attack at the World Food Programme`s food distribution centre in Bajaur Agency and killed over 40 people. It is believed that she was less than 18 years. It has been learnt that in Swat the Taliban have targeted young women and girls who are socially marginalised and keen to take part in the movement, doing whatever they can including cooking and cleaning.
Local human and child rights activists of the area believe that the Taliban are working in an organised manner and have easily influenced women through sermons on the radio. Besides social deprivation and the lack of proper religious education, illiteracy has been reported as a major factor that has contributed to the growing numbers of children and women falling prey to the Taliban. Beyond Madressahs: Assessing the Links between Education and Militancy in Pakistan
The analysis in a 2010 report by the Brookings Institute and titled , has shown strong linkages between education and civil conflict. The report states that the lower the enrolment rates at the primary and secondary levels the more likelihood there is of the eruption of conflict in the country.
The phenomenon of suicide bombers including child suicide bombers striking in Fata and the rest of Pakistan has its roots in the draconian Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) 1901 which is applied in the tribal areas. Even the Supreme Court of Pakistan has abandoned interventions to stop human rights violations in Fata which are perceived as being committed under the FCR.
The FCR has not regulated the lives of the tribal people and, in fact, has brought miseries to the lives of innocent women and children under the collective responsibility clause. The actual culprits remain free. Consequently, a big administrative, economic and political vacuum exists, one which has never been filled for decades and thus serves the interests of terrorist groups which neither the judiciary nor the police nor any other agency has been able to bring to justice because of constitutional restrictions.
With much of Fata controlled by militant groups, there is increasing lawlessness and poverty in the region and a greater chance of young people, including adolescents and children, joining militants groups and engaging in armed combat and suicide attacks.
The uprooting of the seeds of extremism sown by these terrorist groups is a long-term agenda but one that is indispensable to the survival of the country. Only through bringing the rule of law to Fata and repealing the FCR immediately can this agenda be implemented.
Meanwhile, there is a pressing need to reverse the damage done to thousands of children who are both victims and agents of the Taliban, many being programmed to commit acts of terrorism.
Children in the custody of the military and police should be given social support, education and other services resulting in their reintegration into society. A strategic national policy is required to prevent children from falling into the hands of militants.
The writer works for the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child.
http://www.dawn.com/2011/02/19/easy-prey-for-the-taliban.html
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