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Protest against child rape outside KPC – Government urged to take steps to curb child rape cases

KARACHI: The civil society activists held a protest against child rape outside the Karachi Press Club (KPC) and demanded from the government to take steps to curb such heinous cases in the country.

The steps include; Sindh government must urgently enact the long-pending children’s protection laws, including maximum punishments of life-long imprisonment until death, without possibility of parole, remission or pardon for paedophilia, rape and gang-rape convicts; Child Protection Units must be established throughout the province which must also provide free legal aid to the victim child; and special and free of cost treatment must be provided to the child victim.

During the demonstration at KPC, civil society activists pledged to drive a campaign and invited members of the public to join in solidarity and raise their voices against this inhumanity acts, as well as to protest the blatant corruption, callousness, indifference and utter failure of the law enforcing agencies in identifying and arresting the perpetrators.

The Karachi-based civil society activists, networks and NGOs are outraged at the increasing rape cases against children in Pakistan. The participants expressed their strongest condemnation of this inhumanity, as well as of the shocking numbers of other paedophilia cases surfacing in the past four days, including Faisalabad, Dera Ismail Khan, Gujranwala/Manga Mandi, Kasur, Peshawar, Shujaabad, Bhakkar, Sargodha, Hala, Karachi and Chachro – to list just the tip of the iceberg.

Keeping in view the gruesome situation, SPARC has initiated a week-long campaign from September 23, 2013 which will go on till September 27, 2013 against rapes with children in Pakistan under ‘Jinsi Tashadud Se Bacha Bachao Muhim’. Rallies, protests, walks, press conferences and hunger strikes will be held to raise the issue. The political parties’ representatives and intellectuals were requested to join the protest in Sindh. According to the schedule, the protest was held in Hyderabad on September 23, in Badin, Larkana, Kotri on September 24, in Karachi, Khairpur, Ghotki on September 25, in Mithi, Umerkot Nausheroferoze and Dadu it will be held on September 26, and in Shikarpur, Sukkur and Nawabshah on September 27.

Sexual abuses are committed in large numbers in Pakistan. According to Madadgar National Helpline, around 5,659 cases of violence against children were reported from across Pakistan from January to October 2012. These also included 302 cases of sodomy, 407 of sexual assault and others. According to Sahil’s Annual Cruel Report, a total of 3,861 cases of Child Sexual Abuse were reported from different parts of the country in the year 2012 and majority of child sexual abuse victims reported in newspapers included girls children (71 percent). Almost 67 percent of the cases were reported from rural areas whereas 33 percent were reported from urban areas.

Daily Times