Pakistan's Tortured Youth

Brutality against children in Pakistan isn't an anomaly, but rather the biproduct of a society refusing to change

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This weekend, the nation was appalled after an incident of shocking proportions in Lahore. A 12 year old maidservant Shazia, died from gross negligence and physical abuse from her employers. The girl was working for 8 months for Advocate Naeem Chaudhry, a respected lawyer, who has now admitted to beating Shazia up for stealing food from the fridge, and being too rowdy. Who would have thought that such minor infractions would claim her life one day?

The Pakistani media has made sure that this issue not go unnoticed. The tragedy has been constantly reported by every channel and every paper to ensure that a precedent is set for every case of abuse towards children.

But somehow, the entire incident is being seen in a narrow minded context. Some media outlets, mostly the foreign press, is looking at the case as one of Christians being targeted by Muslims, highlighting the insecurity people of other faiths face in Pakistan. I assure you that employers make no distinction of faith when dealing with their maidservants. Incidents of children being brutally treated are common across the religious board. The only discretion would appear to be in targeted killings, which are a different story altogether.

Another angle being taken by the media is to see the incident as an isolated case of an employer taking advantage of a young girl by treating her brutally, and therefore he must take the entire blame. Footage is shown constantly of Advocate Naeem in police custody, along with the parents who are crying over the loss of their daughter and blaming Naeem for everything. I'm sorry, but that's just to oversimplified. This is not an isolated incident, and the blame does not just go to Advocate Naeem, but rather to a societal mindset.

For a start, if the parents really cared about the life of their child, why did they send her off to work in the first place? She was just 12. Didn't she deserve an education? Didn't she deserve to be a child without taking on the burdens of adults? Somehow everyone forgets that aspect of the story. Shazia's parents may grieve at her loss, but they are just as much to blame for the incident as anyone else. They neglected the girl's education and childhood, and she paid for it with her life.

This is all the biproduct of a societal construct, one that sees children as a commodity more than anything else. Children have to be "productive", because they are a "social indicator" of a family's value in their community. Due to that reason, they are pushed by their parents to go into the most "productive" fields, regardless of what they want. For the poor, education is not as high a priority as employment, so they need as many bread earners in the house as possible. Regardless of what dreams and aspirations Shazia had, they were simply sidelined so that her parents could have another source of income. And they are one in a million families that perpetuate these evils over and over again. And they consider it as the right thing to do. The only thing worse than committing a social evil is perpetuating it, and that is why this societal mindset is just as much to blame.

This is the prime reason why child labor has always existed in Pakistan. Everyone from the elites to the beggers knows that child labor is perfectly acceptable, even though laws exist to prevent it. What makes child labour particularly tricky is that it is not a social taboo (like prostitution), and is even considered economically justifiable at some level. Of course, the children might look at it another way, but who cares what they think? Its not like they know whats good for them, right?

That's another aspect of treatment against children, one that is far more detrimental: violence. Brutality against infants is another social construct, one that has been manufactured as a key ingredient in ensuring the "grooming" of children. Beating kids up is considered perfectly justified on the grounds of discipline. I am sure that Advocate Naeem thought it was perfectly alright to "discipline" little Shazia by torturing her. How else would she improve, right?

This is a consequence of a social mindset that nothing good in life is achieved without struggling, and that includes all kinds of physical and mental torture. Hence pain plays an important role in the progression of an individual. Parents fail to realize the kind of trauma they are inflicting, and rather than admit their flaw, go on to justify it on the grounds of personality building. I even know of people saying that unless a child is beaten up, he/she will not be successful! By that standard, all the people tortured in Syria and Egypt has transformed them into better men. In fact, prisons and interrogation centers aren't a bad thing...they're academies that produce the next generation of great leaders!

It is an absolutely deplorable state of affairs. We as a nation need to question our entire moral system, because every day millions of our children suffer because of it. And if you think that this is simply going to end eventually with exposure think again. It is a fact that physical abuse only leads to more physical abuse. You are raising a new generation of mentally tortured individuals who are going to perpetuate the same social evils, and hold them perfectly acceptable. We need to eliminate this, before our mistakes come full circle. The cycle must stop, because the last thing we want is another fate like little Shazia's.