http://in2eastafrica.net/the-pakistani-servant-girl-tortured-to-death/
Human rights organisations argue that Pakistan’s labour laws
ignore child abuse in a country where almost half the population is
under the age of 18. It is an oversight which often has tragic
consequences.
Evidence of that can be found in a small village in the province
of Punjab, where a haunting wailing echoes off the crumbling mud
walls of a ramshackle home.
It sounds like many mothers crying for lost children.
It is called the “wayne” – the song for the dead and is an
integral part of the local funeral ritual.
Tortured
The village is called Moza Jindraakha which means “the place
where life is protected”.
But things are different now – a young girl’s death is being
mourned.
Iram Ramzan was sent to Lahore to cook for a middle class family
– so her own family could eat. Her two sisters are also employed as
domestic helps for different families.
But Iram came back in a white shroud – apparently tortured to
death by her employers.
Her mother Zubaida Bibi, who has lost her hand in a threshing
accident, faced the prospect of bringing up three young daughters
without a husband’s financial support.
Zubaida says that she had little option but to send her
daughters out to earn money as domestic servants.
She thought they would be safer in more affluent homes rather
than on the streets. But she was wrong and has had to go through
the torture of burying her youngest child – and now she does not
know where to bury her guilt.
“Maybe we should have begged for scraps instead,” the
inconsolable mother laments. “How was I to know I was sending my
daughter to her tormentors?”
Last year Iram’s family was telephoned by a distant uncle in
Lahore telling them to rush to the hospital.
‘An accident’
Doctors said she had died on arrival. There were torture marks
on her body and rope burns on her wrists and feet.
Her employers, the Mahmood family had brought her in. The police
immediately took the family into custody.
The girl had been beaten to death with an iron pipe, which was
later found in the Mahmood’s home, along with the ropes used to tie
her up.
Nasira Mahmood has confessed to repeatedly beating the child
with the pipe while her 16-year-old son stood by and watched.
In jail, Mrs Mahmood is having tea and biscuits. She is almost
casual when asked why she did it, saying it was all an accident and
that no one expected Iram to die.
“Three times she stole money from me. I got angry, that’s all,”
she says. “She said she was getting sleepy so I tied her up and
left to make dinner.”
‘Indications of beating’
Police investigators say that Iram died slowly, not accidentally
and breathed her last while still tied up.
“Right away, they admitted to having tortured her,” says Police
Superintendent Umar Cheema.
“There were marks of violence, indications of beating, swelling,
indicating that the girl was tortured with a heavy instrument which
later turned out to be a domestic gas pipe.”
Iram’s employers were paying her $23 (£14) a month – a small
price to pay for her life.
In the same week that Iram died, another 15-year-old domestic
maid, Azra, was found strangled to death in her employer’s home in
Lahore, allegedly the victim of sexual abuse before she was
killed.
The Society For the Protection of the Rights of the Child
(Sparc) say they receive about 20 cases like Iram and Azra’s every
year. These are just the cases where a child has died. There are
many others featuring assault and abuse, many of which go
unreported.
Sparc representative Sajjad Cheema says that whatever
legislation for children that does exist is not being implemented
because there are no administrative mechanisms in place to regulate
child workers.
“The United Nations has sent a recommendation to the Pakistan
government to adopt a child protection policy,” Mr Cheema says. “We
need to know whether we are going to let these children work like
this, to die, or are we going to protect them, and how will we do
it?”
Human rights groups say more than 12 million children are pushed
onto the streets and the homes of strangers to seek an income.
Without a legal safety net, these children are slipping through
the cracks with no one to catch them.
Meanwhile, in the village of Moza Jindraakha, a child-sized
mound of earth marks Iram’s resting place.
Right next to the graveyard, is a green and yellow field where
she used to play with the other children – before her childhood and
her life was cut short by a combination of cruelty, official
indifference and poverty.
BBC
