Every hour a child being sexually abused/raped is a national shame - and this is just a reported stat. A topic that is taboo in our society must be happening with much greater frequency. The after-effects of this tragedy linger in the family, neighbourhood and society forever. Zainab's incidence has caught the nation's heart as it reflects the utter disparity that exists in this society of those with voice and those without it. The completely innocent and unaware way she is walking with the beast to indescribable torture is unbearable and accepting it as part of social misbehavior is criminal. The terror that has gripped Kasur after the discovery that she was the 12th such child is almost tangible in the air of Kasur. The despondency is poignant; the anger is brimming; the resentment is boiling.
This incident has also revealed the false cover that was forcibly put on the horrific sexual abuse scandal in 2015 which afflicted 284 children. The children are still roaming around; they are afraid, they are disturbed, they are outcasts; yet they are still hounded physically, financially and socially by the same people who are offenders or their "influential" buddies. This social atrocity has existed for so long that hardly anybody believes that something will come of it. Most people feel that the government is waiting for the camera's eye to shift to more atrocious issues and Kasur will be an archive tragedy. That is what exactly happened to the most gory sexual abuse scandal in the history of Pakistan and that is what these power brokers of the area are certain will happen to Zainab's incident given time.
It is a well-entrenched system of the "influentials" who have planted their influence carriers in important law- making and law enforcement institutions. Child Protection laws are token and lip service. Child Protection education is non-existent and Child Protection law breakers are rarely caught and punished. Every single day electronic and social media splash the news of rich powerful government officials, their relatives, or even drivers and body guards crushing innocent people and then disappearing in the plethora of 'breaking' news.
Daily routine of a child being raped or disappearing are not news anymore. It took 284 children scandal to break out in Kasur to catch the attention of media, public and policymakers for a while. The media, especially social media, uproar has forced the authorities to pay attention to these scandals. The poor governance system driven by unfit and unmerited people in organizations has led to a lack of capacity and competence to handle these viral scandals. To cover this politicization of institutions the government has developed another "how to hush up the uproar and injustice" system. When the people affected by these heinous crimes protest and express their dissatisfaction of police and law enforcing agencies, the government sets up JITs or Commissions to investigate and file reports.
The advantages of these judicial investigation teams or judicial commissions are manifold especially to suppress the anger and scale down the scandal. Firstly, to pacify public an ex-judge is put as its head. The ex-Judge may be an honest man but perhaps too old or too weak to come out with direct actions against the culprit. The Model Town report very clearly points at the government being mainly responsible but fails to say it outright with names. Another advantage of forming a JIT is that it will take time and will ask for time extensions for proper investigation. Once a couple of weeks have passed the media would jump on to another topic and the matter will disappear from public notice.
This is what happened to the Kasur scandal. A scandal that is a terrible nightmare on a huge scale.
Consider the nightmare in Hussain Khanwala: a ring of pornographers raping children, then selling video footage to paedophiles on the internet, parents extorted for money in exchange for erasing recordings. After a bashing at the media and street protests the government constituted a JIT which took "a long enough time" for it to get muddled in the memories of the protestors and give space to the offenders and influential people to push down the proverbial files wrapped around by the red tape of Commissions and reports. This ring had been at large since 2006, involved in spinal injections, gang assaults, forcing children to have sex with each other, and abusing victims as young as six and despite being caught and some token arrests they benefited from an MPA's orders to the police of letting them go. Of course, all these facts never mentioned in the JIT reports.
Admittedly, Commission reports sometimes are pretty pointed and scathing as was the Quetta Commission report. However, their findings are not binding on the government and if they point at high-ups' involvement, the report that the government itself commissioned, is challenged and ridiculed by the government itself, as was the case of Chaudhry Nisar filing a petition in the court against the Quetta Commission report.
It is 15 days since Zainab was abused and killed and no signs of a culprit being caught. It is almost 730 days that as many as 284 kids porn abuse scandal came up and the real culprits are yet to be arrested. It has been almost 4015 days since this gang started its operations in 2006 in Kasur; and they still survive. In fact, such a shame that they thrive. The frequency of these events has increased. The atrocity has multiplied; the investigations have doubled; the reports have quadrupled. As a consequence, more and more children are being abused and more and more children, families and neighbourhoods are becoming victims of psychological disorders. As the fear increases so does the confidence of the offenders; as government, governance and law fail, crime flourishes; As Joseph Fouche said: "It is more than crime; it is politics".
(The writer can be reached at andleeb.abbas1@gmail.com)