Azar Balkhi notes again the terrible scourge of sex crimes in Afghanistan.
Recently some Afghan families have been encouraged to raise their voice against child abuse and seek justice for it. Traditionally in Afghanistan, victim of child abuse is the one to take the punishment, not the rapist. The victims of this horrific crime are forced to live in darkness, outcasts from society. Nobody will talk to her or him neither marry them. They will live a shameful life forever.
People used to keep silent for such a crime and never dared to speak out about what was done to their children but since there is a new theory called (Freedom of Speech), during the current couple months, 10-child abuse crimes have been reported to police and local medias from different city of northern Afghanistan.
The victims of child abuse, who face death thread by the rapist, now are daring to sit in front of video cameras and tell their nightmare story.
Throughout the present year, 25 child abuse cases have been reported to the office of Human Right Watch of Afghanistan.
The trouble is, speaking out doesn’t seem to get them anywhere:
The United Nations has lashed out at Afghanistan’s government for pardoning two rapists after serving only a fraction of their 11-year sentences.
The release of the men will send the wrong message to other perpetrators of violent crimes against women, Norah Niland, the U.N.’s chief human rights officer in Afghanistan, said in a statement this week.
Three brothers associated with a regional militia commander were convicted of the 2005 rape of a woman in the village of Ruyi Du Ab in the northern province of Samangan.
The three were sentenced in 2006 to 11 years in prison — a sentence the U.N. said was upheld by Afghanistan’s Supreme Court. But in March two of the brothers — the third died in custody — were freed by a presidential pardon, provincial Gov. Enayatullah Enayat said Thursday.
Karzai supposedly did this when mommy begged to have her sons back, the poor thing.
Previously:
The Thin Red Line
Ending the Exploitation of Children
End Child Sexual Exploitation
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1771 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor.