Unfriendly nature of Pakistan towards children

Islamabad: The criminal justice system in Pakistan is "quite unfriendly to child rights", said a daily on Monday after a case was registered against a three-year-old child.

An editorial "Children Of Crime" in The Nation said that Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan suspended heads of two police stations of the federal capital on Saturday — one for registering a case against a three-year-old child, and the other for giving false information about arrests of civil society activists.

"The case of the child criminal exposes the extreme illiteracy and barbarity in the ranks of the police. The criminal justice system is quite unfriendly to child rights."

This is not the first time a minor was booked for a criminal offence. In April 2014, Pakistan made international headlines, when a nine-month-old baby had an FIR registered against him.

According to the FIR, the child and a co-accused tried to kill gas company workers and policemen accompanying them by throwing stones.

The daily said that let's not forget that the "mindset of the men who work in the police is not isolated from the general population".

In July 2014, three female members of the Ahmadi community, including a seven-year-old girl and a baby, were killed by a mob in Gujranwala. "For people who can kill children over religious squabbles, booking them for crimes is no large feat."

"In 2012, an 11-year-old Christian girl suffering from Down's Syndrome was arrested on blasphemy charges."

The daily noted that children, "it seems, aren't safe anywhere".

"We are a violent nation and the newest victims are our children- in all areas; terrorism, in the hands of the police, in terms of sexual and physical abuses, in forced marriages and conversions, in bonded labour… and the list goes on.

"As these issues were not been reported on or investigated in the past, we have assumed that child abuse in on the rise and is a new phenomenon. However, the moral crisis of the nation is much older and so is our history of child abuse."(IANS)