On February 11, 2010, Yasmin, a 15-year-old girl was allegedly burnt by her employers in Okara and died five days later in a hospital in Lahore. Her father weeping at the memory of his young daughter revealed later that this was not the first instance of violence at the hands of Yasmin’s employers. “They used to occasionally beat her up over trivial issues and she would often complain about it. I think we should have just told the police before anything like this happened,” he moaned.
On June 3, 2010, Shahzad, 14, a domestic labourer at the residence of a doctor in Gujranwala was found dead on the rooftop. Tania, 18, a child domestic labour was killed in July 2010, in Lahore by her employers in the area of Model Town. In August, Kausar working as a domestic helper in Lahore died after vomiting blood. Her parents claim that she was tortured and poisoned by her employer. Lahore would not be the only place where minors who are employed for work at houses are tortured, abused, sexually assaulted or murdered.
The case files, as collected by the Society for the Protection for the Rights of the Child (SPARC), show that most of these cases exist in Punjab, while these crimes are not strange for areas in the rest of the country.
As children are mostly employed in urban areas for house keeping, and as helpers in households, they are usually found to be attacked in these areas also. Most of these crimes are not immediately treated as crime, by either the minor or his or her family, because the employers pose to be giving the child some discipline by beatings or other forms of corporal violence. On March 22, 2011, 14-year-old Khalida was raped and murdered by her employers Rab Nawaz and Maqbool in Depalpur, Punjab.
SPARC’s research of case studies from January 2010 until March 2011 (15 months), has shown that over 12 children have been killed and several others reported injured by their employers only in Punjab. These are those cases which are reported. Countless cases even go unreported, sometimes because of a lack of awareness and sometimes because of pressure on the victim’s family by the employers themselves.
Nida, 14, a resident of Nandowal, Gujrat, was raped by her ex-employer in February 2011, along with some of his relatives. Subsequently, after this brutal act was over, she was killed. An even more shocking discovery took place recently on March 28, 2011, when 16-year-old Iqra, was found dead in the house of former city nazim Gujranwala. Her family found severe torture marks on her body which were apparently the cause of electric shock. It was later revealed that the nazim’s son had abused and killed her.
One of the more devastating cases was of Shazia Masih. This 12-year-old girl was allegedly tortured to death by her employers in Lahore. Shazia’s family claimed that her body was severely wounded; with her right arm and ribs fractured, skull damaged and her nails plucked out. “In Pakistan, domestic work done by children is usually not considered a dangerous or hazardous occupation,” explains Abdullah Khoso from SPARC. “Maybe that is why this work is not banned under the Employment of Children Act (ECA) 1991.”
Under the ECA, 34 processes and 4 occupations are declared hazardous but not child domestic work. Unfortunately, these cases have been happening and often go unreported or unnoticed. They are clumped together with crime of other kinds, but never given attention to as crimes against minors, in the premises of a household, in the presence of a family system. Part of this reason lies in the fact that employers themselves try to show the crimes as “suicide cases”, or they pressure the families to such an extent that they change their statements in court or go for out of court settlements.
“Our demand is that we must make a law that says that this kind of work for children be declared illegal,” says Rashid Aziz, also a SPARC worker. “If this is declared a crime, we can easily report it too. Otherwise what happens is that we see a child being treated with cruelty, and we cannot even report it because we have no section under which the abuser can be filed for criminal charges.” He says there is a section under the Destitute and Neglected Children’s Act which says that “intentional cruelty” can be punished but the penalty is meager and no one can prove what the benchmarks of cruelty are and whether they were intentional or not. As mentioned before often beatings are depicted as disciplinary action by the employers.
“The presence of a family system does not prove anything,” says Aziz. “We go out to eat at restaurants and we see children act as baby sitters for other children who are roughly their own age. Those children sit and eat at the table with their parents, while the child-helper stands or sits aside and watches them eat. Is that not cruelty? These people don’t think,” he says. The reason often lies in the fact that families feel that because the child is a vulnerable and weak element of society, they own him or her. This is a feudal mindset and psychological manipulation and physical or sexual abuse all stem from this.
Although under the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) 1860, all acts taken against the child are considered offence but not under Section 89 in which the PPC allows guardians or other persons having lawful charges of the child (under the age of twelve) to beat or punish in benefit of the child. Since domestic work is hidden and the child is innocent and silent sufferer, therefore, it is difficult to maintain against the abuse and exploitation happening with a child inside the home.
Also there is no coverage of internal trafficking under any of the laws. Children are trafficked from one district to another in which middlemen are involved; the nominal wages are either received by the middlemen and then after some deduction are given to the parents of children. In other cases, children are kidnapped to be trafficked later on. Social and political factors: Besides the feudal mentality that prevails all over Pakistan, Punjab has the highest number of these incidents that are reported, but these may well be because of population factors.
However, child domestic work, which should technically fall under child labour, is a social phenomenon mainly with roots into poverty and greed of parents. Even the governments of the judicial system have little political will to fight, ban, or deter these cases from increasing. Judiciary, Aziz explains is often disinterested and pressurised by influential families or are bought. Meanwhile, often there are children working in the houses of government officials themselves. “Crime is an issue that is really huge,” says Aziz.
“This is the age for these children to be studying, and even under this, both the employers and parents can be given penalty for letting the child be working while he or she should be studying, under the Punjab Compulsory Education Act 1994. We are still waiting for the government to take some interest in implementing this at least,” he says.
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