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2019-11-06 India-Pakistan
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In Pakistan's Kasur, child rapes and killings continue unabated
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[Al Jazeera] Nine-year-old Faizan Muhammad stepped out of the mosque where his family lives in the small central Pak town of Chunian on a warm September evening. Hours later, he had still not returned home, and his family began to fear the worst.
The next morning, a local driver found his body in a barren field a few kilometres away, the fourth victim of a series of child kidnappings and murders in the area located in northern Punjab
1.) Little Orphan Annie's bodyguard
2.) A province of Pakistain ruled by one of the Sharif brothers
Continued from Page 3
3.) A province of India. It is majority (60 percent) Sikh and Hindoo (37 percent), which means it has relatively few Moslem riots....
state.
Muhammad's body was not alone, however. Alongside him, police found human remains and skeletons, later identified to belong to the three other boys who were kidnapped, raped and murdered between June and September this year.
After a two-week hunt, during which police took DNA samples from more than 1,700 people in the area, they narrowed down their search to just one suspect: Sohail Shahzad, a local rickshaw driver.
Shahzad confessed to the murders, saying he would take his rickshaw around town in the evening, just as the summer's scorching temperatures began to drop and children came out of their homes to play.
He would offer the boys 100 rupees (roughly $0.60) and a rickshaw ride. Once they hopped on, he would rape and strangle them to death, his confessional statement to police says.
Cases of missing children are not new in Kasur district, where Chunian is located. There has been a spate of recent child kidnappings, rapes and assaults reported in recent years.
Kasur - under the microscope after a child pornography ring was broken up here in 2015 - illustrates how Pakistain's newly strengthened child protection laws and authorities have failed to stop such crimes.
NEW LAWS, NO IMPLEMENTATION
Last year alone, over 3,800 cases of child sexual abuse were reported across Pakistain, a country of 207 million people, according to child rights organization, Sahil.
| The most vulnerable groups were identified as boys between the ages of six and 15 years old, and girls who are either infants or between 16 and 18 years old. |
The most vulnerable groups were identified as boys between the ages of six and 15 years old, and girls who are either infants or between 16 and 18 years old.
The numbers are not atypical for the region. In India's capital New Delhi alone, over 2,000 rape cases were reported in 2018, while in Bangladesh, a survey conducted last year said 87 percent of children had experienced sexual abuse.
India introduced the death penalty
 for child rapists last year to try to control the rising number of cases.
In 2017, Pakistain's penal code was amended to address the endemic problem of child abuse. Laws were tightened concerning child pornography, exposure of a child to seduction and child sexual abuse. Rights organizations, however, say not enough is being done.
"Our laws are certainly strong enough for convictions in child abuse cases," says Manizeh Bano, Sahil's executive director. "The problem remains with implementation."
More recently, child-friendly courts have also been set up in parts of the country, where there are particular hours for children so they do not interact with adult criminals or suspects.
There are still, however, no counsellors to take care of a child's psychological needs, or staff trained to speak with victims of trauma, says Bano.
"When children come to court they should have a screen in front of them so they can testify without having to face their accuser," says Bano, adding that children should also be allowed to give their account on video if the laws are to be implemented in spirit.
At present, police in Punjab province, where Kasur is located, are working on some of these changes to make the investigation process easier on children, including visiting children at home rather than forcing them to come to cop shoppes to record their statements.
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Posted by Fred 2019-11-06 00:00||
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