Development needs to be the development of righteousness

THURSDAY, 09 AUGUST 2012 
By Dianne silva




 
Q:There have been a number of reports of child abuse in recent months, do you think that the responsibility of curtailing these incidents lies in the hands of the police and that they are doing enough to control the situation?
Not at all— because I feel that if there is very strong law enforcement in this country, we would not face a situation like this. Day in day out the situation is worsening. In the first half of this year alone there have been over 700 cases of child rape, reported to the police. Our culture is such that there is a stigma attached to incidents of this nature and therefore victims don’t want to seek justice. The unreported cases, I believe, must be about ten fold.

I feel the law is not being enforced properly and therefore the perpetrators feel that they can get away scot-free. In the past we have seen situations like this where the cases went on for years and years. Therefore I think we need to have very strong law enforcement, when it comes to crimes against children and women.

I also feel there need to be separate institutions to execute law enforcement when it comes to cases of rape and child abuse. We need immunity and protection for children and women who face situations such as this. Therefore my suggestion to the authorities is to have a separate court system and a separate group of institutions to deal with issues of this nature and bring about justice.

If you look at the long term statistics it is also very disturbing; from 2007 to 2011 there have been 6643 cases of abuse against women and 15, 158  cases of child abuse and child rape have been reported within that period.

It is pretty obvious that the type of people who commit these types of crimes; people who have some type of standing in society—they are in politics, they are in power or they have links to higher authorities.

Further it is a reflection of the mental state of the people of this country, where a father and a son can rape a girl together and rapists can talk about it and take pride in it.




Q: When it comes to dealing with this issue on a policy level where do you think the responsibility stops, who is ultimately to blame for this oversight in dealing with this issue?
I believe it is the judiciary, I believe it is the highest authority. I think the executive and legislature have a role to play as well. For instance look at some of the perpetrators; they are mostly political goons and they have immunity—look at the way they take the authority to speak to the OIC or the head of a particular police station and say “you have no authority I do as I want”.

I am glad to see that the government took a firm stand by sacking some of them from their party membership but eventually you know at the next elections they will be in the nominations list.




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