Tuesday, October 12, 2021
#Pakistan - Child beggars
Kishwar Enam
A FEW years ago, as I parked my car in a public parking lot, two child beggars came running to get their pack of cookies which I used to keep for them. Returning to the car a few hours later, I saw the vehicle’s lights blinking, the windows broken, and the audio system stolen. One of the little girls I had befriended was eyeing me from a distance. I waved for her to come over and asked if she knew who was responsible. She said no but her expression gave her away. She was the little messenger who knew how much time I spent away from the car. Later, I found out that the two belonged to a group of professional beggars, who, when arrested, were not only instantly freed, but escorted in a big, shiny four-wheeler.
Child beggars at busy traffic signals are a common sight in most big cities in Pakistan. They are often a heartrending sight and we impulsively succumb to their plea for money. In reality, the money we give is not so much for the child as it is for the pleasure of seeing the young beggar smile, or self-pride at our charitable act, or, to fulfil our sense of religious duty or to combat our own feeling of helplessness at the child’s situation.
It is no secret that beggary in Pakistan is a racket operated by professionals who control territory. Beggars pay rent to reserve a particular area for themselves and the busier the site, the steeper the rent. Child beggary involves a complicated process. Most of the time, adults accompanying the children are not parents but their handlers. From the handler who takes advantage of parents’ poverty and the trafficker who abducts children to the peddler who needs to sell drugs and others who stand to financially benefit, the one who is exploited is always the child. Often the limbs of these children are amputated or they are disfigured to attract sympathy. They are also physically and sexually abused and kept in miserable conditions. Emotional neglect and non-provision of basic necessities including healthcare, food, clothing, education and shelter impact their psychosocial development.
Studies in Pakistan have shown an association between begging and developing an inferiority complex, lack of self-confidence, loss of self-respect, and poor social skills. These children remain in a cycle of poverty. Their future is bleak. They develop mental health problems, become drug addicts and keep poor health. In short, the money we give them only pulls them deeper into the abyss.
There’s no visible change in the number of young beggars.
The anti-vagrancy law of 1958 prohibits a child from receiving alms at public places or exhibiting wounds, injuries, deformities or disease. The Sindh cabinet in 2018 imposed a ban on beggary. Shortly after, the chief minister directed the social welfare department to pick up child beggars and rehabilitate them. The Sindh Child Protection Act includes child beggars in the list of children who need special protection measures. Additionally, amendments made in 2021 added street children to the act. It also allows for child protection officers to take a child requiring special protection measures immediately under their custody and present them to the magistrate within 24 hours.
Despite the several anti-beggary drives by the government and advertisement efforts of the 1121 helpline, there is no change in the number of child beggars seen in Karachi. The drowsy and sleeping infants in the laps of their so-called mothers have been tested on several occasions and were found to be drugged. The result of the Sindh Police’s project to test the DNA of children and adult beggars on suspicion of abduction is still awaited.
When police pick up child beggars, they are dropped at an Edhi Centre. However, it only takes a few hours before the parents or handlers pick them up after paying a minimal fine. Last year, a huge shelter was inaugurated by the Sindh Child Protection Authority with sufficient capacity to accommodate and rehabilitate the beggars and street children. Unfortunately, the police and the authority are still confused about their roles. While the laws are self-explanatory, it requires determination to get the new system up and running; and we are definitely lacking in that.
The answer is not straightforward in a low-/middle-income country, where the poverty ratio is estimated to be 39 per cent by the World Bank and where over two million people have fallen below the poverty line over the last few years. We must delineate clearly between begging due to poverty and begging on account of the mafia. The law is clear: the mafia and handlers should be identified and punished. It is the government’s responsibility to provide support to the parents of child beggars. If parents do not stop exploiting their children after being warned, they should be punished too. These children have the right to receive an education and to live their life.
Next time before giving money to a child beggar, please consider whether you are really helping them or pushing them deeper into misery.
#PashtunsAreNotTerrorist - Pakistani Pashtuns have a message for Imran Khan—‘we are not Taliban’
ANGANA CHAKRABARTI
Last month, Imran Khan said at the UN that all Pashtuns living in Pakistan ‘had affinity and sympathy with the Afghan Taliban’.
From Malala Yousafzai’s father Ziauddin Yousafzai to columnist Mohsin Dawar, Pakistani Pashtuns are saying — ‘I am Pashtun but I am not Taliban’. And these messages are for Prime Minister Imran Khan.
PM Khan has become the centre of controversy over his 24 September statement at the United Nations General Assembly where he said that all the Pashtuns living in Pakistan “had affinity and sympathy with the Afghan Taliban”.
“Then all along the tribal belt bordering Afghanistan – Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal belt – where no Pakistan army had been there since our independence, people had strong sympathies with the Afghan Taliban, not because of their religious ideology but because of Pashtun nationalism, which is very strong. Then there are three million Afghan refugees still in Pakistan- all Pashtoons, living in the camps…They all had affinity and sympathy with the Afghan Taliban,” Khan had said.
On Monday, MP Mohsin Dawar submitted a resolution in Pakistan’s National Assembly in which he condemned Khan’s remarks at the UN and demanded an apology. In the resolution, Dawar wrote, “The PM’s unfounded and false assertions are an insult to Pashtuns who had suffered the most at the hands of Taliban. Thousand of Pashtuns and Pashtun leaders and political activists have lost their lives to acts of terror perpetrated by the Taliban”
In September, Khan had also drawn controversy over an interview in which he said that the terrorist organisation Haqqani network is a Pashtun tribe living in Afghanistan.
Twitter responds
On Monday, several Twitter users took to social media to denounce Khan’s statement.
Ziauddin Yousafzai, who is the father of Pakistani activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai, wrote, “Let me insist and remind the world: I love peace, democracy, and education. I believe in women’s freedom and equality. I love art and music. I am Pashtun & I love Pakistan.”
Columnist Mohammed Taqi, hit back at Khan by calling the Taliban an “anti-Pashtun project of the Pakistan army”. “Neither is every Pashtun a Talib nor every Talib a Pashtun. Taliban is an Islamist terrorist anti-Pashtun project of the Pakistan army designed and deployed to counter Pashtun nationalism #PashtunsAreNotTerrorist,” he said.Criticising the PM for defaming Pakistani Pashtuns, a Twitter user like Shagufta Noorzai tweeted saying, “He (Imran Khan) said that the Pashtun nation attacked the state, so what could be more unfortunate for us now that the Prime Minister of my own country presented me to the world as a terrorist doing.”Another Twitter user, Nadeem Askar, said, “Shocked at how the puppet PM of Pakistan connecting Taliban with Pashtun. Taliban is a project of Pakistan’s Generals for using against Pashtun nationalism. Stop Pashtun profiling.”
Who are the Pashtuns
Also known as Pushtans, Paktuns or Pathans, the Pashtuns are the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan. A large number of Pashtuns, who are mostly Sunni Muslims, live in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan province that shares a border with Afghanistan.Criticising the PM for defaming Pakistani Pashtuns, a Twitter user like Shagufta Noorzai tweeted saying, “He (Imran Khan) said that the Pashtun nation attacked the state, so what could be more unfortunate for us now that the Prime Minister of my own country presented me to the world as a terrorist doing.”
Another Twitter user, Nadeem Askar, said, “Shocked at how the puppet PM of Pakistan connecting Taliban with Pashtun. Taliban is a project of Pakistan’s Generals for using against Pashtun nationalism. Stop Pashtun profiling.”
Who are the Pashtuns
Also known as Pushtans, Paktuns or Pathans, the Pashtuns are the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan. A large number of Pashtuns, who are mostly Sunni Muslims, live in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan province that shares a border with Afghanistan.
A significant number of Pashtuns have also settled in Balochistan, where they comprise up to 20 per cent of the population and a small number live in the highlands of Pakistan’s semi-autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).Several within the Pashto community in Pakistan have often criticised the current dispensation in the country for alleged human rights violations. The Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), a civil rights group, was founded in 2014 and has since been taking up the cause of the Pashtuns.
A significant number of Pashtuns have also settled in Balochistan, where they comprise up to 20 per cent of the population and a small number live in the highlands of Pakistan’s semi-autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).
Several within the Pashto community in Pakistan have often criticised the current dispensation in the country for alleged human rights violations. The Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), a civil rights group, was founded in 2014 and has since been taking up the cause of the Pashtuns.
Differences over ISI chief's appointment a test for Gen Bajwa
By Namrata Biji Ahuja
‘Your armed forces shall never let you down,’ said Gen Musharraf after the coupOn October 12, 1999, it took just 17 hours for Pakistan chief of army staff Pervez Musharraf to overthrow the Nawaz Sharif government in a bloodless coup. Sharif had kept intelligence chief General Ziauddin by his side, appointing his new head of the military, but was soon defeated, put under house arrest before being forced into exile. On this day, the military rule set in for the third time in Pakistan. “ Your armed forces have never, and shall never, let you down,” Musharraf told Pakistanis in a late-night address that night. As Pakistan commemorates the 22nd anniversary of the military coup on Tuesday, Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan was huddled with the incumbent chief of the Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa to iron out the differences over the appointment of incoming ISI chief Lt General Nadeem Ahmed Anjum. Imran Khan's dependency on his predecessor Lt General Faiz Hameed is well known in Pakistani security circles. Imran Khan is fighting polarisation within the political arena where opposition like Pakistan People's Party (PPP) are sniping at his heels. Like some of his predecessors, he had been looking at Lt General Hameed to bail him out. But when Gen Bajwa met the prime minister last week and told him that Lt Gen Hameed has to be posted out as Commander of Peshawar-based Corps XI, Khan wasn't happy. Lt Gen Hameed was removed as ISI chief and sent as Commander of Peshawar-based Corps XI on the instructions of Gen Bajwa. The only time a prime minister in Pakistan appointed an ISI chief of their choice was when Benazir Bhutto brought in Lt Gen (retd) Shamsur Rahman Kallu, using her powers to appoint the ISI chief to replace the hawkish Lt Gen Hamid Gul in 1989. But history bears testimony to Bhutto's fate when she was shown the door a year later and it was a helpless Lt Gen Kallu whose own units defied him and were used by the military to topple her government. Once again, a controversy over the change of command at ISI has hit home and security experts view it as an indicator of the growing rift between the civilian government of Imran Khan and the chief of the Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa. Gen Bajwa has made it clear that the institutional interest of the Pakistan army has to be protected at all costs. The difference over the ISI chief's appointment is a test case for the Army General. Top officials said if the Pakistan army backs out now, it will be a huge setback to Gen Bajwa, the chances of which are extremely unlikely unless Pakistan is plunging into the making of another military coup which it can ill afford. Traditionally, civilian governments in Pakistan have had little say when it comes to the affairs of the army. One of the reasons being cited for Lt Gen Hameed's posting is that all the three generals before him had been posted as corps commanders and the requisite experience would help Lt Gen Hameed to be in contention for the next army chief when Gen Bajwa retires in November 2022. ''But more than that it is Bajwa's decision to send him out that has to prevail over Khan's political needs or convenience,'' said a top security official. Security sources said Lt Gen Hameed's visit to Kabul and the international attention on the ISI chief at a time when the world was watching the Taliban -Haqqani takeover of Afghanistan, had not also gone down well with Gen Bajwa even though it has scored political brownie points for Imran Khan government for its strategic victory in its neighbourhood. For Imran Khan, the simpler way out is to avoid a deadlock and issue a clarification about the delay in issuing a formal order on the appointment of the new ISI chief. His predecessors have done it in the past when they have defied the army's will or diktat. In 2008, when Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani was en route to Washington, ISI chief Lt Gen Nadeem Taj was waiting anxiously for his plane to land midway in London to convey a message. The message was that Gen Ashfaq Kiyani, then chief of army staff, was miffed after Gilani had issued an order that the ISI, which focusses on external intelligence, will be brought under the Interior Ministry. The army had not been consulted. Within minutes of Gilani's plane landing in London, the Pakistan government issued a ''clarification'' that the earlier notification was a ''misunderstanding''. This time, Imran Khan and Gen Bajwa are holding talks and whatever decision is taken, the will of the Pakistan army is expected to prevail.
https://www.theweek.in/news/world/2021/10/12/pak-commemorates-22nd-anniversary-of-military-coup-that-led-to-musharraf-leaving-the-country.html
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