By Adeel Ahmed
AMONG some of the major issues plaguing Pakistani society is that human life here comes very cheap. People get killed at the slightest perceived provocation or for committing a petty crime. Domestic abuse is rampant, and those living on the margins of society are treated as second- or even third-class citizens.
Many young girls have been raped and then killed by ravenous vultures in the garb of humans. In fact, such incidents have become so routine that they are often laughed off as a norm prevalent in Pakistani society. Perpetrators who commit such heinous crimes are barely brought to book, and even if they do get caught, the decadent justice system lets them go scot free for lack of evidence.
The poor, helpless, and desperately needy domestic workers are often subjected to ill-treatment and overwork without appropriate wages, and even abuse and violence. They are considered as robots or slaves who are supposed to work non-stop without a whine or a whimper. And even if someone musters the courage to raise their voice against the injustice and barbarity meted out to them by their employers, they are given heart-wrenching punishments. Some callous people with no regard for human life even kill them on as minor a pretext as losing a broom or making a bad tea.
One such hair-raising incident happened the other day in Rawalpindi, where a an eight-year-old maid succumbed to wounds inflicted by her employers, who allegedly gave her a hiding for inadvertently setting their parrots free. The police say that the suspect conceded that he and his wife had tortured the maid, Zahra, after she allowed his costly pet parrots to escape from their cage. The FIR also stated that she had injury marks in areas suggesting she was possibly raped. Media reports said that the couple had promised the girl’s uncle they would provide her education and pay Rs 3,000 every month, but they gave them nothing.
This shameful incident highlights many of the worst aspects of Pakistani society: the crushing poverty that inflicts large sections of it, the repulsive sense of entitlement among the ‘elite’, and an unfair system that perpetuates the status quo either through apathy or collusion.
Not the first incident
This is the first incident that has brought ignominy and disrepute to the country. Of late, a number of the torture and killing of domestic workers have occurred in Pakistan. In 2018, a judge and his wife in Islamabad were sentenced to one-year jail term for keeping their 10-year-old maid in illegal confinement, burning her hand over a missing brush, beating her with a ladle and detaining her in a pantry.
In another case a doctor and her husband purportedly killed their 14-year-old maid and claimed she fell from stairs and died. Nevertheless, a post-mortem revealed she was subjected to torture.
Modern-day slavery
Zahra’s murder is only the latest in a reprehensible list of cases which demonstrate that modern-day slavery is alive and kicking here. In such a situation, every man, woman and child does not have inherent self-respect, but instead it is gauged by a sliding scale according to socioeconomic class. Children are the most vulnerable, sometimes at the hands of their own parents who out of compulsion send them to work to places where their well-being cannot be guaranteed.
While outpouring of anger, grief, and sorrow have become a fad when such acts of highhandedness come to light, these are soon forgotten until another such incident shocks the civilized world. It is high time that the loopholes in the child labor laws that exist in certain sectors were fixed and legislation relating specifically to child domestic workers enacted. Besides, the government must reinforce child protection laws so that young children can be salvaged from the brutality of exploitative and abusive employers.
We must no longer fail the young Pakistanis like Zahra.
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