Violence And Sexual Abuse Against Young Pakistanis Continues Unabated

Violence And Sexual Abuse Against Young Pakistanis Continues Unabated
On the night of May 24, an 18-year-old boy named Jazlan Faisal was shot dead in a private housing society in Karachi. According to reports, Karachi police had registered a case of murder in the presence of Jazlan's uncle. So far, two of the three accused have been arrested, and the third or the main culprit, Irfan's father Faiz has been captured by police.

According to the investigating officer, the main accused Irfan has brought his father's weapon to kill Jazlan and his friends, and now there are reports that he has escaped the country.

The incident happened on the night of the 24th of May when Jazlan was going to his friend's house in Bahria Town to prepare for their exams. Jazlan's grandmother said that his friends were doing group study for a few days at Jazlan's place on the night of the incident, and they had a plan to study at his friend's place.

According to the victim's uncle, on the night of 24th May Jazlan left for Bahria Town with his friends and on their way, a motorbike came in front of his car and the biker was doing dangerous stunts. They asked him to stop reckless behaviour on the road, due to which he (the biker) along with his friends followed the victim’s car and opened fire near Bahria Town’s ‘Eifel Tower.’

Friends first took Jazlan and Shameer to a local hospital in Bahria Town, after which they were transferred to Jinnah Hospital, and then to Aga Khan Hospital. He lost his life because the bullet got stuck in his head.

Jazlan's father died a long time ago and then his mother got remarried – from the age of 8 years, he was living with his grandparents.

Jazlan's grandfather, during the interview, could not control his emotions and was overwhelmed by grief. “We had recently celebrated his 18th birthday. It's the same as what you do if you grow a small plant, irrigate it, protect it from heat and cold, then it will grow big and someone will cut it. It's the same way as an old man has a stick, the age at which I am right now, he was my stick someone broke my stick, what a great injustice.”

***

There are a lot of heart-wrenching cases that appear before us when we consider violence against young people. One notorious case is of the 100 young boys killed by serial killer Javed Iqbal.

There are not as such details about Iqbal’s early life. Although complaints of sodomy were filed against him in 1985 and 1990, he was never convicted of any of the charges. Iqbal surrendered to Pakistani authorities in 1999 after confessing to 100 murders in a span of six months. According to his confession, he had induced the boys, mostly beggars and street youngsters between the ages of 6 and 16, to his home in Lahore, where he sexually abused them, choked them to death, tore limb from limb of their bodies and disposed off the pieces in a drum of acid.

Iqbal claimed that he did these crimes as an act of revenge against the police, who, he said, had assaulted him following an arrest. Iqbal kept detailed records of his victims, including their names, ages and photographs. Although he later denied his guilt, Iqbal was given 100 death penalties; the court also ordered that he be executed with the same chain he used to strangle his victims and that his body be cut into 100 pieces and dissolved in acid. Before the execution could take place, however, Iqbal and a young accomplice, who also had been sentenced, were found dead in their prison cells. Their deaths were officially ruled suicides.

***

In January 2021, a 16-year-old boy was killed in Peshawar’s Shahpur area allegedly for not ‘befriending’ the offender. Gul Rehman, who had been identified as the victim, went missing for four days. His family had filed a report at the Shahpur Police Station against his disappearance. It was also discovered that the main culprit Sher Akbar had also disappeared since the victim’s disappearance. Police traced Akbar’s location & data from his mobile phone. Upon being investigated, he admitted to killing Rehman and then proceeding to dispose of his body in the fields.

According to SP Rural, the police have also detected whether Rehman was sexually assaulted. However, the initial postmortem did not confirm any form of abuse.

ASP Chamkani Ahmed Zunair Cheema said. “Rehman was a rickshaw driver who, according to the initial investigation, was killed for not befriending Akbar.”

The case of innocent Rehman defines how worthy the life of a common man is nowadays, that a silly matter will make other people take your life.

***

Another story that no one can forget is the case of 7-year-old Zainab Ansari from Kasur, who was first abducted and then her dead body was found in the trash can. The Zainab Murder case was reported in 2018, where a serial killer over two years had been sexually abusing and assassinating children under the nose of police and other law enforcement agencies. The people of Kasur were infuriated and came out on the streets to protest. However, the police, instead of standing with the people of Kasur and paying attention to the demands of poor people, opened fire – resulting in two deaths.

In the year 2021, the data on child abuse cases showed that a total number of 3,852 cases have been reported in newspapers. These cases were reported from all four provinces and also include figures from the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT), Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) and Gilgit-Baltistan (GB).

The data indicates that a total of 3,852 cases include reported cases of child sexual abuse (CSA), cases of abduction, cases of missing children and cases of child marriages.

The data shows that more than 10 children have been abused per day during the year 2021. The cases of child abuse have increased by more than 30% as compared to the year 2020.

The gender divide shows that out of the total reported cases of child abuse, 54% of victims were girls and 46% were boys.

Political activist Naeem ur Rehman says: “As long as the governments support the killers, and provide them fake hospitals instead of jails, Shah Rukh Jatoi will continue to be born, and the children of the rulers and powerful elites will continue to shoot the weak. The killers of Jazlan Faisal, a child killed in Bahria Town, should be arrested immediately.”