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'Public Hangings Won't Prevent Child Abuse in Pakistan': NGO

  • Protesters in Pakistan demonstrate against the murder of seven-year-old Zainab Ansari, raped and killed in January, 2018.

    Protesters in Pakistan demonstrate against the murder of seven-year-old Zainab Ansari, raped and killed in January, 2018. | Photo: Reuters

Published 29 June 2018
Opinion

"Pakistan's government has yet to acknowledge that Zainab's death can also be partly attributed to a systemic failure of the authorities," Human Rights Watch said.

Publicly hanging a known child molester will not help combat child violence in Pakistan, the NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a statement Friday.

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Despite the widespread outrage shown by Pakistanis after the rape and murder of seven-year-old Zainab Ansari, the organization insists that public displays of violence do nothing to secure justice.

In response to a request made by the victim's grieving father, the Labor High Court decided the fate of her killer, Imran Ali, should be reviewed by a division bench as a conviction had already been delivered according to the 1997 Anti-Terrorism Act.

According to HRW, this was the not the first time the court had debated a public hanging, as the former chief minister of Punjab had said he was willing to amend the law in favor of cases of child rape.

However, in an online statement, the NGO denounced the decision: "Shock and anger at child sexual abuse and violence is understandable and the cruelty and callousness of the attack upon Zainab can shake the conscience of a nation.

"But Pakistan's government has yet to acknowledge that Zainab's death can also be partly attributed to a systemic failure of the authorities to protect children.

"A public hanging – or any execution, for that matter – will not absolve the state of that failure. Nor will it make Pakistani children safer."

Child sexual abuse is notoriously underreported in Pakistan, something HRW attributes to social stigma and substandard law enforcement.

According to Sahil, an organization dedicated to child protection, 1,764 children were abused nationwide within the first half of 2017. The previous year, 4,139 abuse cases were registered – that's 11 children every day.

Sixty-two percent of the 2017 cases were in Punjab, where Zainab was abducted in January. Since 2015, at least 700 children have been abused, including by a sex trafficking network responsible for abusing more than 270 minors.

HRW said that rather than exposing children to such violence, "Pakistan owes it to them to do the hard work by addressing these barriers and offering real protection."

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