Submitted by Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
Deutsche Welle reports a frightening and disturbing practice within Pakistan where newborn children are murdered due to the stigma of illegitimacy.
Warning: This article contains explicit information.
Adultery is often punished by vigilantism where family exact revenge against couples, often murderously. The children and mothers more often are targeted.
Nurse Razia Zulfikar of a maternity hospital in Gujranwala, Pakistan states that hundreds of children are killed simply by reason of the status of having unwed parents; a social taboo of society. The law provides a potential capital criminal offense stemming from pre-marital intercourse.
An eight-month pregnant girl came to us just a few days ago. We didn’t want to admit her to our hospital. After repeated requests from her family, we finally agreed to treat her. But we told the family explicitly that we would not kill the child,” Zulfikar told DW. “We gave the baby to the girl’s family. Only she and her family know what they did to the newborn, and how they killed him,” she added
A Pakistani welfare organization known as the Edhi Foundation estimated that 1,100 children were murdered and dumped into garbage bins last year. The figure is likely much higher as cases were tabulated only within large cities and not rural areas. Anwar Kazmi, a manager within the organization, describes the atrocities he and members of his charity have witnessed:
“A six-day-old child was burnt to death. We also found the corpses of babies who had been hanged, or who had been partly eaten by animals,” Anwar Kazmi, a manager at the Edhi Foundation, told DW.
“I can never forget one incident. A woman left a child in front of a mosque hoping that somebody would adopt him. But the cleric of the mosque ordered the people to stone the child to death. I saw the mutilated and torn body of the child myself,” he recalled
To address this painful issue, the Edhi Foundation began the Jhoola Project (meaning Cradle in Urdu) which encourages individuals to bring unwanted children and place them within cradles at foundation offices. This happens more often during the late hours and promises anonymous placement without fear of retribution against the mother or the child.
Edhi Foundation maintains over three hundred branches throughout the country.
Abortions are illegal in Pakistan with the exception of medical necessity to prevent harm to the mother. However this exception does not apply to unmarried women, leaving the mother to face persecution and perhaps the ultimately the murder of her child.
The murder of an infant in Pakistan is still a crime, but this unfortunately is not a deterrent to some who place their morals above the law.
By Darren Smith
Source:
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Free NYC – the problem is the family feels that only blood can reclaim their honor. It’s not a question of simply finding the baby a home, because you’re right, there’s always adoption. But adoption does not wipe the slate clean.
How to change cultural mores is the question.
I hope international adoption agencies get involved, as well. But the culture won’t change without the imam’s support.
This story made me cry. What kind of homicidal maniac could burn a baby alive? Stone a baby? The sounds that child must have made should have brought people running to save him, not harm him.
I hope the Edhi Foundation gets real traction in Pakistan. It’s already made a difference to the children saved from infanticide.
And I hope one day the law in Pakistan will give women and children equal protection, a barrier against “honor” killings that I find quite dishonorable.
And, Nick, you’re right. Statistics show that the highest risk of murder to a newborn is from his own mother. Pregnant women are most often murdered by their own partners, and newborns are most often murdered by their own mothers. The people who are supposed to be protectors become twisted. When such a terrible crime becomes embedded in a culture, it’s tragic.
Where are these murders taking place? Have there been any charges ever brought? Are there other sources reporting these murders? Quite an inflammatory report regarding “a cleric” (unnamed and somewhere and some mosque) and the torn baby left on the street.
I need some convincing that this isn’t a xenophobic propaganda piece on the part of Darren’s source. I also imagine it is quite a good fund raising piece for Edhi Foundation.
This may be true. But because of its extreme inflammatory nature, it deserves further collaboration..
Nick
Why are you bashing America? Haters gotta Hate?
What’s even more of an affront about this is that with the demand for babies for adoption, the adoption rights to the infants could obviously probably be sold.
Interesting morals. The Muslim cleric no doubt preached against abortion, but faced with the result, stoned the child. Hypocrisy perhaps?
Help, please. Someone took the time to delete my expressed displeasure w/ the unacceptable Word press. Could they please retrieve my comment that caused by understandable outburst. Thank you.
Babies are thrown in trash bins all the time in US inner cities, where abortions are free and frequent. The zealotry of people of organized religion in Pakistan, and a depraved inner city culture w/ no moral center, have the same effect. Babies being murdered in a horrible ying/yang juxtaposition. The liberals here will be outraged by the Pakistani murders. They will be mum on the US problems.
Nick, I retrieved your comment at 12:36.
One of the reasons that abortion should never become illegal, not even mentioning the extreme fundamentalist mindset that puts such a severe stigma on illegitimacy.
good grief! Another typo noticed…
I guess that the law enforcement person’s actions toward me were really subjectively very traumatizing.
The words, “I learned that “legitimate” can accurately be defined as “without deceptive.” ” would have been accurately written, “I learned that “legitimate” can accurately be defined as “deceptive.” ”
After learning to use nested parentheses in writing computer programs, I learned to use nested quotation marks.
Ain’t poetic license simply grand?
And, I guess, without human stupidity, my life would never have begun. However, is my being stupid anything else than a hint of learning that I have yet to achieve?
I sometimes wonder whether my making mistakes may be the only sign that I can recognize that I am alive.
Sure am glad I was born in South Carolina — though some of the customers here may wish otherwise.
“How does a society come to such “morals”?”
Juris,
That is the question every society needs to answer for itself. If they have a moral compass, it’s certainly not pointing anywhere near what one expects of a civil society. This is what I would expect from a culture that places the natural rights of its citizens in the hands of their collective human nature.
We need to start killing the killers……….. Babies are innocent of their parent’s ‘sins’………….
typo, sorry:”there is, and never can be” was intended to be, “there never is, and never can be.”
Mistakes happen. Believing that illegitimacy happens is another instance of a mistake, so I observe.
I do make mistakes, as I unwittingly and/or unconsciously, did in my prior post.
When I find I have made am mistake, I avow that I made it, and set out to repair, as best I can, whatever damage resulted from the mistake.
J. Brian – as you are painfully aware, autistic people do not pick up on social clues. However, I have heard there is a new app for the phone that help teach them. You might try tracking it down. Never to late for us old dogs to learn useful tricks.
WordMess ate my reply to Juris’ question.
It does not like the words “group-mind trance” perhaps?
Juris
How does a society come to such “morals”? Disturbing to say the least.
=========================
Psychologists explain it:
(Comparing a Group-Mind Trance to a Cultural Amygdala). It is always easier to see the trance in other cultures than our own.
Dredd, I retrieved your comment at 12:45.
In my work in bioengineering, as a licensed Professional Engineer, there is, and never can be, an illegitimate person or action or event; the belief that illegitimacy happens is, for me, the most atrociously addictive delusion I have ever encountered or been able to yet imagine.
I was once falsely accused by a law enforcement person, and sought legal counsel. After I explained, as truthfully as my autistic ability with words allowed me to explain my concern about having been falsely accused, the attorney whose help I sought sent me a letter in which he instructed me to never contact him at work or at home ever again, and stated that what I had done was of harassment without legitimate purpose.
With that letter, I learned new meanings for some of those words.
I learned that “harassment” can accurately be defined as speaking truthfully to an untruthful, coercive, dishonest, self-proclaimed, seriously mistaken, authority figure (aka, “bully”?).
I learned that “legitimate” can accurately be defined as “without deceptive.”
I think it was the group, Led Zeppelin that did the rock song, “Stairway to Heaven,’ and I seem to recall a line in that song, that went something like, “Because you know words can have two meanings.”
How does a society come to such “morals”? Disturbing to say the least.
Really, Paul?
Planned Parenthood would have no problem with this. These are just late term abortions.
Abhorrent – simply abhorrent. While there are certainly Muslims practicing a peaceful religion, there are large swathes of the world where thus is far from the truth.
Any further comment would simply be seen as Muslim bashing.
I should note that the Hindus in India had similarly barbaric traditions as well.