Children

700,000 street children risk stepping into crime world
 

Some seven lakh children live on urban streets and many of them are addicts, who run the risk of ending up as criminals, according to a study.
Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) has recently revealed the information based on a study on homeless children conducted in July-August. Most of these children hail from rural areas, the study says. Acute poverty, separation of parents, torture by stepparents and often elopement, especially in cases of the girls, prompt them to leave their village homes, it adds.
Unaware of reality, they take to street career -- by picking garbage and rags, selling flowers, peanuts and cigarettes -- and also become laborers.
 

The young girls, in most cases, fall victim to human trafficking and many of them are forced into begging and even prostitution.
Besides these hardships of the destitute children, there are the police and hooligans to make the situation even worse.
"Every day I give Tk 10 to the police for selling peanuts on the footpaths," said 10-year-old Latif of the city's Agargaon area. Babul, 14, another street vendor who sells tea, biscuits and cigarettes, said he gives Tk 5 to Tk 10 every day to a 'elder brothers' group in Mohammadpur.
 

Most child laborers are addicted to drugs, 'chakki' in their language, so as to work hard and carry heavy luggage, said an official of Ashakti Punorbashan Nibash (Apon), a drug rehabilitation centre that also treats addicted street children free of cost. They buy sleeping pills, phensidyl, heroin and hashish from local pharmacies and smugglers, who force them to carry those for them. Many of the children's employers also provide them with 'chakki'. Addiction takes its toll soon. The addict children get involved in pick-pocketing, mugging and other crimes for money to buy drugs.
 

Girls are the most vulnerable among the street children. "Almost each of them is sexually abused by miscreants, street boys and even by the police. Many of them eventually drift into prostitution," said a former official of Aparajeya Bangladesh, an NGO that works on street children, asking not to be named. Finding them new to the profession, customers dare not to have condoms, thus greatly increasing the threat of spreading HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, the official added.
 

On the eve of hartals, police pick up both girls and boys to shun hartal-hour picketing and keep them at different vagabond refugee centres.
"A girl was thus picked up by the police, kept at a centre and repeatedly raped by the cops and staff," the official said quoting a girl, who stays in a drop-in centre in the capital, as saying. The police fit them up in criminal cases and send them to prisons, says the BIDS study. However, it finds many of them involved in theft, pick-pocketing and other crimes. There are over 1,000 children in different prisons, according to a study by Save the Children UK, an NGO.
 

Deprived of parental love and affection, street children strongly feel the urge to make friends. They have made their own 'cult' -- they go for minor cuts in their bodies and share blood with each other, which they believe deepens the relations. Md Mizanur Rahman of Appropriate Resource for Improving Street Children's Environment (Arise), a government project, said few of these children return home. Those who return cannot reconcile themselves to their homes. In most of the cases, the girls' families cannot welcome them fearing social reaction.
Dr Shamim Matin Chowdhury, technical support consultant of United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime, described the situation as 'critical' to the country. "Many of these children later enter criminal world. There should be a concerted effort to rehabilitate them and create facilities in the villages so that they do not head towards urban areas. Awareness among parents and society is also a must," she noted.
 

Porimol Palma: The daily Star