The Kasur incident was shocking. Nowhere do children deserve to be treated with such brutality. That the children, both girls and boys, in Hussain Khanwala village in district Kasur had been sexually molested for the last eight years gives some clue of a state deprived of any sensibility of real governance. The debate about the federal government and after the 18th Amendment about the provincial government’s negligence in providing education to the children of this country has fallen on deaf ears. Even the methodology of explaining the importance of education over building roads and bridges has since lost its rigour. Now that we know that some children in a remote village of Punjab have been raped, sodomised and filmed for this gruesome act, does it tell anything about the general behaviour of the state and people towards children in this country?
Parents do not know how to react and where to report if any of their children become victims of sexual harassment or brutality as domestic workers. Sure, the police are out there, supposedly created to protect the citizens against any unrest, illegality or deprivation of their rights. The police, by all means, have been created under a constitutional provision, the safety of citizens being the prime responsibly of the state. A few parents did go to the police to get protection and to rescue their children from the paedophiles in Kasur. The police, adorned in uniform, sitting in sparsely furnished police stations and having at their disposal enough mechanism and authority to arrest the culprits, chose to look the other way. They, being the protectors of the legitimate rights of the citizens have since forgotten their constitutional obligation. For the state this amnesia is what works perfectly well to turn the tide of events to whatever direction suits it. The police instead intimidated the parents and reported the incident to the paedophiles with the result that the victims were brutalised more, the parents blackmailed even to a greater extent and the audacity of the accused doubled. As the police fell silent and shamelessly complicit in the act, the parents resigned to their fate considering it the will of Allah.
Of late, the police have become suave at interacting with the media. From the District Police Officer (DPO) to the Chief Police Officer (CPO) and the Inspector General (IG), the police chose not to become harsh despite all the somersaults they attempted to mitigate the impact of the crime. First, the burden of the crime was thrown, as is conveniently done, on the shoulders of a ‘property dispute’. As criticism was hurled at the government’s apathy to hide behind this time tested excuse, some good sense prevailed and the matter was reported as a gross violation of human rights. A judicial commission was appointed and a few accused were arrested. The police have withstood criticism and the IG has taken no step to either remove, dismiss, suspend or arrest the police officers ostensibly involved in assisting the criminals with getting on with their ghastly acts. We have rarely seen the IG taking any such steps. It is always the Chief Minister (CM) of Punjab’s call. The sign of a compromised police force perhaps. Since the killing of the Pakistan Awami Tahreek’s (PAT’s) activists, the Punjab police has only learned to take a few spankings in a mob, just as it took some when the Kasur incident began to unravel. The police’s brutality inside prisons or elsewhere when victims are away from the glare of the camera remains intact though. With the Lahore High Court’s (LHC’s) denial to form the judicial commission, the ball remains in the court of the police. One can only hope that the ball does not keep shifting from one court to another to disappear eventfully into the dust of history.
The children of this country are the worst victims of the state’s insensitivity towards human rights. The Kasur incident takes precedence for its sheer scale. Boys and young girls working in homes and other workplaces are subjected to sexual abuse without qualm. According to the estimates provided by UNICEF and the International Labour Organisation (ILO), 10 million to 12 million children in Pakistan work as labourers and some of them are slaves. Ashraf Khan Sohna was once the minister for labour and manpower Punjab (from June 2008 to March 2011). I caught him at various seminars and gatherings arranged to condemn child labour. He would even shed tears over the lamentable situation but he never resigned for being unable to make any difference as a minister. However, he did resign when in the twilight of his political career he found himself eclipsed by the PPP’s wrong political policies in Punjab. So much for the selfless democracy we hear about every now and then. Article 25 A of the Constitution of Pakistan that makes the state responsible for providing primary and secondary education to its children is just another article of faith in the scheme of things.
The faceless politicians, the equally faceless elite and the middle-class will forget the Kasur incident as the inevitable destiny of the poor. Twitter will soon become the abusing hub for another incident that rubs either side the wrong way. Soon there will be the demand for another judicial commission to probe another incident without making any difference in the lives of the lesser gods.
The writer is a copywriter and freelance journalist with an academic background in public policy and governance. She can be reached at [email protected]