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Latest Updates: child exploitation RSS

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  johnpi 4:14 am on February 9, 2010 | 2 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: child abuse (31), child cruelty (3), child exploitation, child protective services (3), child sexual abuse (11), children (40), sexual abuse (7), sexual violence (2)

  Hijaabified Beauty takes on child abuse in the Muslim community:

  A while ago, I wrote a very personal post which was deleted very soon after I published it. You see, I have a dark secret that I have kept to myself for much of my life. A secret that I wish I had the courage to share with someone close to me. One that has, in my mind robbed me of the innocence of childhood. I was a victim of sexual abuse.

  I am not writing this post to gain some sort of pity, or to be encouraged by my readers to tell someone I know, or even to confront my abusers. I am writing this post to alert parents. Most instances of child molestation are committed by individuals that are close to the child or family. The offender is often a family member…someone who has easy access to the child, and someone who the child is relatively comfortable around. Unfortunately, this was true in my case.

  It pains me to say this, but parents need to stop being so trusting of their relatives. It is important that if you leave your child home with a relative that you ask your child what they did with their uncle (for example). Children are innocent, they will tell you. I wish till this day that my mother would have forsaken all political correctness and politeness and that she had explained to me what a good touch and bad touch was so that I might have been able to salvage my childhood.
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  And don’t for a second think that we are free from such a fitna because we are Muslim. Child molestation is big problem in our communities…it just doesn’t get talked about. I want to change that. Start talking…to your child, your neighbor, a family member, your shaykh or community member. Make the community aware of this horrible problem.

   

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  johnpi 8:07 am on October 30, 2009 | 4 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Capitalism (22), child abuse (31), child cruelty (3), child exploitation, child prisoners (3), children in prison (2), justice (15), privatization (5)

  A Pennsylvania judge has erased more than 6,000 juvenile court convictions in that state arising from a pair of corrupt judges who took kickbacks to convict more children of crimes so the private corporation jailer could increase profits by warehousing the convicted children in its jail.

  The story was featured prominently in Michael Moore’s new documentary “Capitalism: A Love Story,” as a paradigm example of what happens when government functions are privatized.

  Moore concluded that ‘capitalism is evil.’

   
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  johnpi 11:06 pm on October 28, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: blogger activism (6), child abuse (31), child exploitation, child labor (2), crime and punishment (9), morocco (14)

  

  Last Fall, a 10-year-old Moroccan girl named Zaineb Chtit (Zaineb is spelled Zineb in many of these stories) who had been contracted as a domestic servant to an affluent Moroccan family by her impoverished parents was hospitalized. Her injuries, inflicted by her employer, were described:

  Zainab looked emaciated. Her body was bruised and bleeding from beatings. She was branded on her lips with a red-hot iron. She was burned with boiling oil on her chest and private areas.

  She was also illiterate, having never attended school, and had been locked in a cellar while not working. Moroccan bloggers highlighted her story and the fact that Morocco has 177,000 child workers, 66,000 of whom work as domestic servants, many of them girls.

  Last week, Zaineb’s attacker Nawal Houmin, the wife of the couple who had hired her, was sentenced to three years in prison without possibility of parole and a $13,000 fine.

  Human rights groups have complained that the sentence is too lenient, but a local blogger reports that most people in the community were shocked, expecting that there would not be a penalty of more than a few months, given it was a prominent local family, and the husband is a judge.

  Moroccan bloggers are now advocating for a campaign to address the problem of child labor at its roots with more resource put toward social aid and subsidized tuition and school supplies for poor children, as well as more substantial enforcement of child labor laws in that country.

   
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  thabet 6:55 am on October 11, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: child exploitation, human rights (381), international law (144), racism (201), rights (19), uae (99), unhcr

  Githu Muigai, a UN human rights expert, visited the UAE this past week:

  Githu Muigai, the UN special rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, yesterday concluded his week-long mission to the UAE, during which he travelled to Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Ras al Khaimah.

  “I came here with the desire to obtain a better understanding of the UAE, to engage in a constructive dialogue with the Government and to prepare a report with positive recommendations,” he said..

  Another UN representative, Najat M’jid Maalla, is expected to visit this week. She specialises on working to prevent the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography.