“We must never have people standing while children are beaten and killed.”
Ruthless violence against children seems to have become a recurrent concern in today's Bangladesh. While the extent of the cruelty seems to have taken a different, more horrendous form, the lack of immediate, effective response from the government as well as concerned authorities point toward an unsafe, unfriendly environment for children. Michael McGrath, Country Director of Save the Children, a UK based development organisation which works for children's rights, spoke to Tamanna Khan of The Daily Star about possible ways to fight this evil.
Could you tell us a bit about Save the Children's work in Bangladesh in relation to reducing violence against children?
Our biggest programmes are in education, health and livelihoods. We have a substantial programme for working children, providing them with basic education, life skills and vocational skills that will enable them to get out of the poverty trap. Most of the children under our coverage are street children, who face violence from police, fellow street children, from everybody. If you can give them skills to get out of streets, they are less likely to be victims of violence. We also work to prevent child marriage, the form of violence which facilitates illegal activity such as sexual abuse of under-aged girls.
The recent incidents of violence against children have shaken the country. . .
When I heard about Rakib's torture and killing I became physically sick. What was shocking is that the person who carried out this act, was not part of a child abuse ring or mentally ill or a hardened criminal. He was a garage owner and he, in the presence of his mother, committed this torture on a child! If a foreign intelligence agency did this, there would be global outrage. How could somebody devise such fiendish torture, destroying someone's organs from inside by blowing up them up? It is the sort of brutality that you would expect from regimes like North Korea or Idi Amin's Uganda back in the 70s. These crimes are not committed by normal human beings. But they are in Bangladesh. We have seen that here and we have seen that in Rajon's case.
Why do you think ordinary people are doing these horrible things?
Bangladeshis are good, honest, moral and caring people. It is not a country where people are evil or hard-hearted. I think there are different things happening in the society here. There is a process, perhaps, of breaking down of social bonds. Traditionally, Bangladeshis lived in villages and had obligations to everybody, stronger and weaker, be it family members, neighbours, village leaders, adjacent villagers or people in mosque. They had to carefully manage those relationships and nothing could be allowed to break. Otherwise the whole harmony would be destroyed and they could not afford to do that in a small village. With a move to the cities, it seems like people are forgetting their basic humanity and they are concentrating just on the people closest to them, what happens outside is none of their concern. Maybe that is how an employee or the mother of a garage owner can stand by or assist.
Besides, when things are tough - everybody is struggling for their survival - the strong dominate the weak. I see this happening everyday --- the rich treating the poor cruelly, rickshaw passengers beating up rickshaw drivers, the powerful oppressing the weak. The weakest in our society are the children. People feel that they can bring out their frustration and anger on a child. That's the rule of the jungle. That is where we lose our humanity.
So what can be done?
People have to exercise greater responsibility. They have to know they have a responsibility to others, meaning they need to intervene and stop it, when somebody is beating his wife, or harassing a girl. We must never have people standing while children are beaten and killed. We have to take responsibility for the actions of others. Otherwise we will all be at risk. If we do not reintroduce kindness and courtesy into our society then the social bonds will break down.
This is not a jungle. This is a human society where we have to respect and care for the weak, be it old people, the disabled, children or women. So there are two things here. First, we have the obligation to stop evil by others and secondly, it is the obligation of the powerful, the rich and the well-endowed, to cherish the weakest in our society. By bringing these two together we can protect our children.
Where do we start?
If you allow small evils then big evils will grow. If it becomes acceptable to cause pain to children in some context then it becomes acceptable in other context. So as a parent, if it is okay for me to hit my child so hard that they are in pain, then chastising children through pain becomes okay. I then must accept when a teacher does the same thing, or the next day when a garage owner puts an air hose up a child's rectum. It is only a small distance from one to the other.
We have got to stop the idea that it is okay to cause pain to children, be it your own child, pupil, employee or even a suspected criminal. If you stop that from the outset then you will stop the acceptance.
I call on the prime minister, because she is the leader of the country and she really has children's welfare at heart, to say that the most basic right of a child is not to have to physically suffer. No person should cause physical suffering to a child, not a parent, a teacher, an employer, a policeman or a bystander. It does not matter what the cause of violence is, nothing justifies violence against children. And the prime minister should say that.
Can you suggest any specific actions?
We need a police officer -- appointed specifically for women and children -- in every police station. This should be part of a trained cadre of police officers, whose job would be to actively go out and stop offences. I have seen this work in Indonesia. They have desks, special training and responsibility. They are often quite senior and have the authority to command a small taskforce of police to go out and investigate. They build database and gather knowledge about the causes of these problems and their solutions.