"Mother's Day Messages" - Dave Granlund, US
Showing posts with label kids. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kids. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 3, 2016
Thursday, February 11, 2016
"Testing Stress" by Nate Beeler
Tuesday, December 29, 2015
Nearly 40% of African-American children living in poverty – study
This article is linked to my previous blog post. As the article mentions that the poverty rate of African-American & Latino children is so high partly because of employment status & income levels of their parents, I will expand on it in this blog.
One of the major problems causing this stark differences in poverty & why African-American & Latino kids are poor is because of high levels of discrimination. This discrimination, or racism, not only exists in employment but also perpetuates in society through criminal legal system.
As my previous blog explained that prisoners, who are mostly African-Americans & Latinos, not only are incarcerated at a much higher rate than their Caucasian counterparts, but those incarcerations adversely affect their lives. One mistake, however small it is, stays with them all their lives.
Now, we can say that why those people have to commit crimes in the first place. Right on!! But, the question also arises then that what a parent is supposed to do when he/she is unable to find enough income to feed his/her children properly, save enough to send them to school, & provide them enough to help them live a proper life (housing, clothing etc.) Many commit crimes to help them earn enough income to help them properly raise their kids. So, it's sort of becomes a case of catch-22.
As I explained in my previous blog, governments & other institutions (profit & non-profit alike) are supposed to work together to decrease the exorbitantly high costs of housing & education for the people to thrive. If these two essential things are cheaper, then even poor people will be able to live & educate themselves & their kids. These two things should also be without any gentrification or division based on discrimination that poor people are pushed into dirty, polluted, unhealthy, unsafe living areas & the schools in their areas also suffer in the same way; incompetent teachers with the education system not in favour of poor people. Costs of post-secondary education also needs to be reduced a lot, just so children of poor people are not afraid of going to school because then they will have to take on high levels of debts, which in itself, is a major problem, since non-payment of student debt can land one in prison, which goes back to the incarceration problem I explained above.
Every parent wants the best for their children & will do anything he/she can to see their kids thrive in life. But the laws of the country can heavily affect what that parent can or cannot do, which in turn, could (& usually does) adversely affect their whole generation. That's why, governments have to take proper action to resolve this problem, but the rising poverty rates of children only shows how governments of the Western developed world have forgotten their essential responsibilities.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A new study found the percentage of American children living in poverty has declined slightly since 2010 as the economy has improved, but the rate for African-American children remains extremely high, at nearly 40%.
More than 45.3 million people are considered to be living in poverty in the US, given a poverty line of $24,000 for a family of four. Some 14.7 million of these, or 20%, are children.
While that figure has declined from 16.3 million in 2010, it still comprises one-fifth of the total number of American children under 18, & one-third of Americans living in poverty, according to Pew Research Center analysis of Census data.
Pew said that for the first time since the US Census starting collecting data in 1974, the number of African-American children living in poverty outnumbers the number of white children. Poverty rates declined for white children from 4.9 million in 2010 to 4.1 million in 2013, but for African-American children it only decreased from 4.4 million in 2010 to 4.2 million in 2013.
While Pew said the difference is not statistically significant, it is still notable since white children outnumber African-American children by three to one, with two out of five African-American children living in families with total income below the poverty line.
There are also stark differences for Latinos. In 2013, one out of three Latino children, or 30.4% of the 18 million Hispanic children in the country, was living in poverty, compared to 1 out of 10 white & Asian children, according to Pew.
The poverty rate for African-American children can be explained, in part, by the employment status & level of income of their parents, according to Mark Hugo Lopez, the director of Hispanic research at the Pew Research Center. Blacks are more likely to be unemployed & earn less than people of other races.
...
Last month, the Department of Labor said the unemployment rate for African-Americans was 9.5%, compared to 6.6% for Hispanics, 4.6% for whites & 3.8% for Asians.
...
One of the major problems causing this stark differences in poverty & why African-American & Latino kids are poor is because of high levels of discrimination. This discrimination, or racism, not only exists in employment but also perpetuates in society through criminal legal system.
As my previous blog explained that prisoners, who are mostly African-Americans & Latinos, not only are incarcerated at a much higher rate than their Caucasian counterparts, but those incarcerations adversely affect their lives. One mistake, however small it is, stays with them all their lives.
Now, we can say that why those people have to commit crimes in the first place. Right on!! But, the question also arises then that what a parent is supposed to do when he/she is unable to find enough income to feed his/her children properly, save enough to send them to school, & provide them enough to help them live a proper life (housing, clothing etc.) Many commit crimes to help them earn enough income to help them properly raise their kids. So, it's sort of becomes a case of catch-22.
As I explained in my previous blog, governments & other institutions (profit & non-profit alike) are supposed to work together to decrease the exorbitantly high costs of housing & education for the people to thrive. If these two essential things are cheaper, then even poor people will be able to live & educate themselves & their kids. These two things should also be without any gentrification or division based on discrimination that poor people are pushed into dirty, polluted, unhealthy, unsafe living areas & the schools in their areas also suffer in the same way; incompetent teachers with the education system not in favour of poor people. Costs of post-secondary education also needs to be reduced a lot, just so children of poor people are not afraid of going to school because then they will have to take on high levels of debts, which in itself, is a major problem, since non-payment of student debt can land one in prison, which goes back to the incarceration problem I explained above.
Every parent wants the best for their children & will do anything he/she can to see their kids thrive in life. But the laws of the country can heavily affect what that parent can or cannot do, which in turn, could (& usually does) adversely affect their whole generation. That's why, governments have to take proper action to resolve this problem, but the rising poverty rates of children only shows how governments of the Western developed world have forgotten their essential responsibilities.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A new study found the percentage of American children living in poverty has declined slightly since 2010 as the economy has improved, but the rate for African-American children remains extremely high, at nearly 40%.
More than 45.3 million people are considered to be living in poverty in the US, given a poverty line of $24,000 for a family of four. Some 14.7 million of these, or 20%, are children.
While that figure has declined from 16.3 million in 2010, it still comprises one-fifth of the total number of American children under 18, & one-third of Americans living in poverty, according to Pew Research Center analysis of Census data.
Pew said that for the first time since the US Census starting collecting data in 1974, the number of African-American children living in poverty outnumbers the number of white children. Poverty rates declined for white children from 4.9 million in 2010 to 4.1 million in 2013, but for African-American children it only decreased from 4.4 million in 2010 to 4.2 million in 2013.
While Pew said the difference is not statistically significant, it is still notable since white children outnumber African-American children by three to one, with two out of five African-American children living in families with total income below the poverty line.
There are also stark differences for Latinos. In 2013, one out of three Latino children, or 30.4% of the 18 million Hispanic children in the country, was living in poverty, compared to 1 out of 10 white & Asian children, according to Pew.
The poverty rate for African-American children can be explained, in part, by the employment status & level of income of their parents, according to Mark Hugo Lopez, the director of Hispanic research at the Pew Research Center. Blacks are more likely to be unemployed & earn less than people of other races.
...
Last month, the Department of Labor said the unemployment rate for African-Americans was 9.5%, compared to 6.6% for Hispanics, 4.6% for whites & 3.8% for Asians.
...
Friday, November 6, 2015
Changing a sincerely held belief about Halloween
This article is great in making one of my main points: how a majority of Muslims are forgetting not only their roots but integrating to the point that a couple generations down the road, nobody from their progeny would know who followed Islam in their forefathers or even what Islam is/was.
Take this example of a parent who, after a lot of questioning (& prodding) by kids finally gave in & let the kids enjoy Halloween. Mosques & Islamic centers in North America are coming out with "Halal-oween" to let the kids enjoy Halloween in an Islamic setting. Frankly, I don't even know how one would explain the concept of Halloween in an "halal" setting.
Now, the festivities of Halloween are borne out of a pagan ritual. It's nothing to do with Christianity. There is one another major ritual in Christian world, which is catching on around the world, which also has its roots in pagan rituals: Christmas. Because, as science has already proven it, that Prophet Jesus was born in spring/summer months & not in winter, & certainly, not on Dec 25th.
Anyway, so my concern is with making Halloween as "halal" is that next thing on the agenda would be making Christmas "halal". I mean why can't there be "halal" Christmas? After all, Muslims consider Jesus as a Prophet of God & respect him very much. Muslims consider Jesus as the son of Mary. So, what would stop an Islamic center to label Christmas as "halal"?
Next thing would be "halal" Valentine's Day (Muslim kids can send love messages to their parents or spouses to each other & siblings to each other etc.).
Problem with allowing one's own Muslim children to go out trick-or-treating or Islamic centers hosting "Halal-oween" is that it's a very slippery slope. It won't stop at only Halloween & will start snowballing into other Christian festivities becoming "Halal".
One or two generations down the road kids of today will be parents or even grandparents themselves, & they would be like, "well, I celebrated Halloween, Christmas & other Christian festivals. So no harm in doing it." Their kids will be celebrating it, too. However, those kids won't know the difference between Islamic "Halal-oween" & Christian "Halloween."
Now, it won't merely stop there, but young Muslim parents are also naming their kids with biblical names, e.g. Adam & Sophia. Now, Adam is considered a Prophet in Islam. There are several Prophets or religious men in the New Testament who are also considered Prophets in the Quran & as such respected by Muslims. So, in a few years, we will see Muslim parents naming their kids Jacob, Joseph, John, Mary, Zachary etc.
Now, if we couple the biblical names with celebrating Christian festivals, you may get an idea what will happen. But, if not, let me paint the picture for you:
So, by the mid-to-late 21st century, it might be common that a Muslim Jacob will propose to her Christian girlfriend, saying that "we celebrate the same holidays & I don't even know what Islam is, & hence, I don't even follow it, & you don't even need to convert to Islam. So why don't we get married?" Or a Muslim Mary will propose to her Christian boyfriend, saying the same as above. Their kids will of course wouldn't know the difference between any religion, since their parents are celebrating all holidays as same, & their names are all the same as biblical / Christian names.
Lo and behold, Islam is gone from that generation & Christianity has taken a firm hold on that generation.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The first (and last) time I went trick-or-treating, I was 5 years old. The week leading up to Halloween, I watched my best friend Alana’s mother turn yards of pink tulle & glitter into a Glinda the Good Witch dress. There was a sparkly silver wand & she was even allowed to wear frosted pink lipstick.
My mother had no intention of letting me trick or treat. She thought begging candy from strangers was odd. Worse — it seemed ill-mannered, & for my Hyderabadi mother, there is nothing worse than being rude. So she told me Muslims don’t celebrate Halloween, & left it at that.
But mom had a soft spot for my best friend’s mother, who had gifted her with a killer walnut brownie recipe. So on Halloween, when Alana showed up resplendent in her Glinda the Good Witch outfit (& frosty pink lipstick), I begged my mom to let me go.
There was just one problem. I didn’t have an outfit. The two moms cast about & settled on a classic solution.
For my first & only Halloween, I dressed up as a floral-bed-sheet ghost, with hastily cut-out eye holes. Underneath my ugly costume, I was grinning.
Flash forward several decades. My eldest son is 4. On Halloween he goes to school dressed in jeans & a sweatshirt. He tells me about the costume parade afterwards — a popular tradition where the younger grades show off their outfits to the older kids.
“How come I didn’t dress up?” he asked.
“Muslims don’t celebrate Halloween,” I tell him.
Then I pause. That answer is reflexive. But is it even really true?
“It’s not part of our family tradition,” I try again. My son looks a bit confused. “We can buy some chocolate tomorrow if you want,” I say, a little desperately. “It all goes on sale Nov. 1 anyway.”
The following Halloween, the same thing happens. My sons have questions & I don’t have any great answers.
Because here’s the thing: my kids love to dress up.
By the time he was 6 years old, my older son had not one, but 3 Batman costumes. He also had a doctor’s coat, a Viking helmet & various foam swords & shields. My mother sewed them both Harry Potter cloaks with iron-on Gryffindor badges when they went through their Hogwarts phase. My younger son has a Luke Skywalker costume, to match his older brother’s Darth Maul get-up.
So is Halloween really such a big deal for us?
The Supreme Court of Canada says that a religious belief is one that is sincerely held. Many religious & secular traditions avoid Halloween for lots of reasons.
But I didn’t know how I felt about it anymore.
I asked my husband what he thought about trick or treating.
“Why start now?” he argued. “They’ve stayed away all these years. Playing dress up & knocking on people’s doors are two different things.”
“Didn’t you go trick or treating until you were 12?”
“Fourteen. That’s not the point.”
I polled my friends. Some let their kids dress up for school, but skipped the evening candy collection. Some kept their kids home from school. Still others took their kids to events at the mosque dubbed “Halal-oween.” The mosque version includes dinner, loot bags & games. Some mosques hold a movie night.
Last year, my kids came right out & asked if they could go trick or treating. I decided to go with my gut.
“OK. Let’s see what all the fuss is about.”
We walked around the neighbourhood after dinner. It was drizzling slightly, & cold. The kids were dressed up, but you could barely tell under their jackets. They rang the doorbells of brightly lit houses while I hung back, ready to tell them to run if a weirdo opened the door.
No weirdos, mostly just smiling grandparents. It was quiet, & a little bit dull.
They want to go again this year. My younger son has a new Storm Trooper costume & my older son wants to be Darth Vader. We might even check out the mosque Halal-oween party afterwards, to further develop our community participation (& candy collection).
Take this example of a parent who, after a lot of questioning (& prodding) by kids finally gave in & let the kids enjoy Halloween. Mosques & Islamic centers in North America are coming out with "Halal-oween" to let the kids enjoy Halloween in an Islamic setting. Frankly, I don't even know how one would explain the concept of Halloween in an "halal" setting.
Now, the festivities of Halloween are borne out of a pagan ritual. It's nothing to do with Christianity. There is one another major ritual in Christian world, which is catching on around the world, which also has its roots in pagan rituals: Christmas. Because, as science has already proven it, that Prophet Jesus was born in spring/summer months & not in winter, & certainly, not on Dec 25th.
Anyway, so my concern is with making Halloween as "halal" is that next thing on the agenda would be making Christmas "halal". I mean why can't there be "halal" Christmas? After all, Muslims consider Jesus as a Prophet of God & respect him very much. Muslims consider Jesus as the son of Mary. So, what would stop an Islamic center to label Christmas as "halal"?
Next thing would be "halal" Valentine's Day (Muslim kids can send love messages to their parents or spouses to each other & siblings to each other etc.).
Problem with allowing one's own Muslim children to go out trick-or-treating or Islamic centers hosting "Halal-oween" is that it's a very slippery slope. It won't stop at only Halloween & will start snowballing into other Christian festivities becoming "Halal".
One or two generations down the road kids of today will be parents or even grandparents themselves, & they would be like, "well, I celebrated Halloween, Christmas & other Christian festivals. So no harm in doing it." Their kids will be celebrating it, too. However, those kids won't know the difference between Islamic "Halal-oween" & Christian "Halloween."
Now, it won't merely stop there, but young Muslim parents are also naming their kids with biblical names, e.g. Adam & Sophia. Now, Adam is considered a Prophet in Islam. There are several Prophets or religious men in the New Testament who are also considered Prophets in the Quran & as such respected by Muslims. So, in a few years, we will see Muslim parents naming their kids Jacob, Joseph, John, Mary, Zachary etc.
Now, if we couple the biblical names with celebrating Christian festivals, you may get an idea what will happen. But, if not, let me paint the picture for you:
So, by the mid-to-late 21st century, it might be common that a Muslim Jacob will propose to her Christian girlfriend, saying that "we celebrate the same holidays & I don't even know what Islam is, & hence, I don't even follow it, & you don't even need to convert to Islam. So why don't we get married?" Or a Muslim Mary will propose to her Christian boyfriend, saying the same as above. Their kids will of course wouldn't know the difference between any religion, since their parents are celebrating all holidays as same, & their names are all the same as biblical / Christian names.
Lo and behold, Islam is gone from that generation & Christianity has taken a firm hold on that generation.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The first (and last) time I went trick-or-treating, I was 5 years old. The week leading up to Halloween, I watched my best friend Alana’s mother turn yards of pink tulle & glitter into a Glinda the Good Witch dress. There was a sparkly silver wand & she was even allowed to wear frosted pink lipstick.
My mother had no intention of letting me trick or treat. She thought begging candy from strangers was odd. Worse — it seemed ill-mannered, & for my Hyderabadi mother, there is nothing worse than being rude. So she told me Muslims don’t celebrate Halloween, & left it at that.
But mom had a soft spot for my best friend’s mother, who had gifted her with a killer walnut brownie recipe. So on Halloween, when Alana showed up resplendent in her Glinda the Good Witch outfit (& frosty pink lipstick), I begged my mom to let me go.
There was just one problem. I didn’t have an outfit. The two moms cast about & settled on a classic solution.
For my first & only Halloween, I dressed up as a floral-bed-sheet ghost, with hastily cut-out eye holes. Underneath my ugly costume, I was grinning.
Flash forward several decades. My eldest son is 4. On Halloween he goes to school dressed in jeans & a sweatshirt. He tells me about the costume parade afterwards — a popular tradition where the younger grades show off their outfits to the older kids.
“How come I didn’t dress up?” he asked.
“Muslims don’t celebrate Halloween,” I tell him.
Then I pause. That answer is reflexive. But is it even really true?
“It’s not part of our family tradition,” I try again. My son looks a bit confused. “We can buy some chocolate tomorrow if you want,” I say, a little desperately. “It all goes on sale Nov. 1 anyway.”
The following Halloween, the same thing happens. My sons have questions & I don’t have any great answers.
Because here’s the thing: my kids love to dress up.
By the time he was 6 years old, my older son had not one, but 3 Batman costumes. He also had a doctor’s coat, a Viking helmet & various foam swords & shields. My mother sewed them both Harry Potter cloaks with iron-on Gryffindor badges when they went through their Hogwarts phase. My younger son has a Luke Skywalker costume, to match his older brother’s Darth Maul get-up.
So is Halloween really such a big deal for us?
The Supreme Court of Canada says that a religious belief is one that is sincerely held. Many religious & secular traditions avoid Halloween for lots of reasons.
But I didn’t know how I felt about it anymore.
I asked my husband what he thought about trick or treating.
“Why start now?” he argued. “They’ve stayed away all these years. Playing dress up & knocking on people’s doors are two different things.”
“Didn’t you go trick or treating until you were 12?”
“Fourteen. That’s not the point.”
I polled my friends. Some let their kids dress up for school, but skipped the evening candy collection. Some kept their kids home from school. Still others took their kids to events at the mosque dubbed “Halal-oween.” The mosque version includes dinner, loot bags & games. Some mosques hold a movie night.
Last year, my kids came right out & asked if they could go trick or treating. I decided to go with my gut.
“OK. Let’s see what all the fuss is about.”
We walked around the neighbourhood after dinner. It was drizzling slightly, & cold. The kids were dressed up, but you could barely tell under their jackets. They rang the doorbells of brightly lit houses while I hung back, ready to tell them to run if a weirdo opened the door.
No weirdos, mostly just smiling grandparents. It was quiet, & a little bit dull.
They want to go again this year. My younger son has a new Storm Trooper costume & my older son wants to be Darth Vader. We might even check out the mosque Halal-oween party afterwards, to further develop our community participation (& candy collection).
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
Laurie Scott calls for Ontario task force to protect sex slavery victims
These kinds of news stories don't usually make the front news. The general public in the Western world is oblivious to these kinds of stories & thinks that these kinds of things, i.e. sexual violence against vulnerable women & sex slavery only happens in law less countries like Iraq, Syria, Libya, Cambodia, & other African & Latin American countries. And these girls & women who unfortunately fall victims to these are not adults or illegal migrants but born-&-bred Canadians & even as young as 11 years old.
Furthermore, this is happening right here in the largest Canadian city; Toronto. But this is not happening only in Toronto or Canada, but happening all over the Western world; US, UK, & other Western European countries.
People who are involved in the rehabilitation of these victims are saying that this problem is not dying down, but actually exploding in major urban areas of North America & Europe. What the heck is going on?
Well, the problem is borne out of multiple factors:
1. Decreasing role of parents: Western philosophy on family, rightly or wrongly, changed in the last few decades that everyone is responsible for their own lives. Parents can, but actively discouraged, to meddle into their daughters' affairs. Heck, the society even gave that kind of parenting a derogatory name, "helicopter parenting."
Girls were taught from schools to general society that you are your own person & should make your own decision. That's all ok when that young lady is old enough (at least in university) to understand her world around her & see what's going on, but telling that to a teen girl is simply wrong. Mix that "independence" teaching with the love-hate relationship a teen has for his/her parents, & you are only going to get a problem.
2. Broken homes: In the latter half of 20th century, more & more homes start to break up. Every one on their own. Parents, when living separately, got more expenses, & hence, working more & more to bring that extra cash. When single parents are working more & more, & looking less & less after their kids, the kids got the free leash on whatever they can do. Well, from dabbling into drugs to coming into contact with the wrong crowd through those drugs to selling their bodies to get those drugs (when out of money) leads these girls to a life of prostitution & sex slavery.
3. Media's objectification of women: Media is an expert in manipulating social values & thinking. People in 21st century have being programmed for the past few decades that women are sexual objects. Of course, internet & easy accessibility to porn only escalated that problem, but media didn't stop there, too. Men & boys are bombarded day & night that women should be used for sexual purposes & then discarded like used tissues.
Movies & TV shows all show women whimpering after men to take them & use them as they please. Young men are being heavily influenced by latest rap & hip hop music videos & these videos don't exactly show men respecting women. Then, on top of that, we got the Kardashian clan, which, ironically, is the young female generation's idol. That idol is effectively teaching young females to rise to the top of social hierarchy through sex.
4. Female dresses: Yes, inevitably, this topic will be breached. Female dresses is pretty much becoming non-existent in the Western world. Men are wearing more & more clothes, while girls & women are encouraged to take it all off ... in the name of latest fashion. Latest fashion trends from the Kardashians is pretty much showing as much as flesh in the public as a female can. Miley Cyrus is showing young females in the West, & effectively, the whole world, that wearing a few strips of clothes, literally, is enough. Heck, we got stories coming out of Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, & New York, US, that women are publicly strolling around in the nude (after all, what's the point of those strips, too?)
So, what we can then expect from young impressionable girls, when they are being taught from a young age that do whatever you what to do & it's your body, & nobody in the home is teaching them any proper morals & values, & their celebrity idols are prancing around on the worldwide stages in the nude, & they are seeing that their celebrity idols got their fame & fortunes by baring it all?
They definitely are not going to learn to study hard, don't do drugs, wear proper clothes to school, make good friends, & of course, have good role models in their lives. They are learning, & hence, then actively practicing, with not very good end results, to get what they want by using their bodies as a collateral.
Of course, these factors is not the comprehensive list of all that is causing this problem of prostitution. There are lot more factors. These are just the tip of iceberg. But what I'm trying to say is that this "exploding" problem of prostitution is not so easily resolved by a special vice squad or the close collaboration of a few law enforcement agencies. It may just take the problem underground, which is even more dangerous for the victims. This problem is just a symptom of several other social problems & unless, & until, those problems are handled effectively, this problem of prostitution will not go away.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ontario is in the grips of homegrown human trafficking, says a veteran Tory MPP, who is calling for the creation of a provincial task force on sex slavery.
Laurie Scott, the member for Haliburton–Kawartha Lakes–Brock, says women & girls as young as 11 years old are being forced into prostitution here & they are not newcomers from the former Eastern Bloc looking for a better life — they are Canadian-born.
“I’ve heard stories of girls being targeted at the mall food court, the parking lot at their high school or a house party they attended with friends,” she told the legislature last week.
“This province is home to the largest number of domestic human trafficking cases, where victims are born & raised right here in Ontario,” said Scott, who presented a non-binding motion calling on the government to form a special team dedicated to rooting out human trafficking.
It would be similar to the existing guns & gangs unit, in which police officers, Crown prosecutors & social workers work together as a team from beginning to end of an investigation.
“Through this combination of expertise, the task force achieves the dual purpose of apprehending criminals & assisting victims,” Scott said in the introduction to her motion, which passed with all-party support.
Asked whether the passage of the non-binding motion meant a task force would be established, a spokeswoman for Community Safety Minister Yasir Naqvi said the government would continue to work with its partners “to combat this very serious issue.”
Scott said it’s also important to co-ordinate support for women & girls escaping exploitation.
“One aspect where a provincial task force would be immeasurable would be its ability to help facilitate the creation of safe houses solely for the purpose of sheltering human trafficking victims,” she said.
MPPs were told how pimps frequently move prostitutes up & down the Highway 401 corridor both to meet demand & to make police detection much more difficult.
“Young women are lured through personal relationships, systemically isolated from the family & friends, psychologically & physically abused by those who they trusted & in some cases loved,” said Scott.
Human trafficking was recently front & centre at a legislative select committee on sexual violence & harassment against women. Scott is a member of that committee.
Among those that appeared before the committee was Katarina MacLeod, a former prostitute whose agency, Rising Angels, deals with women trying to escape that life. She said modern-day slavery is out of control.
“From what I see working on the front lines it is getting worse … it is really exploding,” MacLeod told the Star, adding many of the women she sees are under 18.
She said she is hearing of more & more women moving from hotel to hotel, in many cases not even knowing what city they are in.
MacLeod agreed a specialized team in the justice system “fighting for these girls” is needed.
Several police services across the province have vice squads that deal with human trafficking & informally share information.
York Regional Police is recognized for its progressive work on human smuggling, especially in dealing with sex trade workers. Det. Sgt. Peter Casey said the force has not arrested a woman on solicitation charges in the past 7 years — but it does throw pimps in jail.
The people behind the smuggling range from organized crime to teenage boys pimping out girls in their schools because there is “huge” money to be made, said Casey.
“Let’s put it this way, if you are a drug dealer … you can only sell that kilo of cocaine once, but if you are a pimp & have a number of young vulnerable women you are exploiting, you can exploit them over & over & over again, day after day.”
Experts said a woman working in the sex trade can generate revenues of $280,000 a year. And that often goes straight into a pimp’s pocket.
...
The Ministry of Community Safety & Correctional Services says it has provided about $1.4 million in funding since 2003 to 11 projects under the Proceeds of Crime–Front Line Policing Grant, to help police combat human trafficking in Ontario.
Furthermore, this is happening right here in the largest Canadian city; Toronto. But this is not happening only in Toronto or Canada, but happening all over the Western world; US, UK, & other Western European countries.
People who are involved in the rehabilitation of these victims are saying that this problem is not dying down, but actually exploding in major urban areas of North America & Europe. What the heck is going on?
Well, the problem is borne out of multiple factors:
1. Decreasing role of parents: Western philosophy on family, rightly or wrongly, changed in the last few decades that everyone is responsible for their own lives. Parents can, but actively discouraged, to meddle into their daughters' affairs. Heck, the society even gave that kind of parenting a derogatory name, "helicopter parenting."
Girls were taught from schools to general society that you are your own person & should make your own decision. That's all ok when that young lady is old enough (at least in university) to understand her world around her & see what's going on, but telling that to a teen girl is simply wrong. Mix that "independence" teaching with the love-hate relationship a teen has for his/her parents, & you are only going to get a problem.
2. Broken homes: In the latter half of 20th century, more & more homes start to break up. Every one on their own. Parents, when living separately, got more expenses, & hence, working more & more to bring that extra cash. When single parents are working more & more, & looking less & less after their kids, the kids got the free leash on whatever they can do. Well, from dabbling into drugs to coming into contact with the wrong crowd through those drugs to selling their bodies to get those drugs (when out of money) leads these girls to a life of prostitution & sex slavery.
3. Media's objectification of women: Media is an expert in manipulating social values & thinking. People in 21st century have being programmed for the past few decades that women are sexual objects. Of course, internet & easy accessibility to porn only escalated that problem, but media didn't stop there, too. Men & boys are bombarded day & night that women should be used for sexual purposes & then discarded like used tissues.
Movies & TV shows all show women whimpering after men to take them & use them as they please. Young men are being heavily influenced by latest rap & hip hop music videos & these videos don't exactly show men respecting women. Then, on top of that, we got the Kardashian clan, which, ironically, is the young female generation's idol. That idol is effectively teaching young females to rise to the top of social hierarchy through sex.
4. Female dresses: Yes, inevitably, this topic will be breached. Female dresses is pretty much becoming non-existent in the Western world. Men are wearing more & more clothes, while girls & women are encouraged to take it all off ... in the name of latest fashion. Latest fashion trends from the Kardashians is pretty much showing as much as flesh in the public as a female can. Miley Cyrus is showing young females in the West, & effectively, the whole world, that wearing a few strips of clothes, literally, is enough. Heck, we got stories coming out of Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, & New York, US, that women are publicly strolling around in the nude (after all, what's the point of those strips, too?)
So, what we can then expect from young impressionable girls, when they are being taught from a young age that do whatever you what to do & it's your body, & nobody in the home is teaching them any proper morals & values, & their celebrity idols are prancing around on the worldwide stages in the nude, & they are seeing that their celebrity idols got their fame & fortunes by baring it all?
They definitely are not going to learn to study hard, don't do drugs, wear proper clothes to school, make good friends, & of course, have good role models in their lives. They are learning, & hence, then actively practicing, with not very good end results, to get what they want by using their bodies as a collateral.
Of course, these factors is not the comprehensive list of all that is causing this problem of prostitution. There are lot more factors. These are just the tip of iceberg. But what I'm trying to say is that this "exploding" problem of prostitution is not so easily resolved by a special vice squad or the close collaboration of a few law enforcement agencies. It may just take the problem underground, which is even more dangerous for the victims. This problem is just a symptom of several other social problems & unless, & until, those problems are handled effectively, this problem of prostitution will not go away.
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Ontario is in the grips of homegrown human trafficking, says a veteran Tory MPP, who is calling for the creation of a provincial task force on sex slavery.
Laurie Scott, the member for Haliburton–Kawartha Lakes–Brock, says women & girls as young as 11 years old are being forced into prostitution here & they are not newcomers from the former Eastern Bloc looking for a better life — they are Canadian-born.
“I’ve heard stories of girls being targeted at the mall food court, the parking lot at their high school or a house party they attended with friends,” she told the legislature last week.
“This province is home to the largest number of domestic human trafficking cases, where victims are born & raised right here in Ontario,” said Scott, who presented a non-binding motion calling on the government to form a special team dedicated to rooting out human trafficking.
It would be similar to the existing guns & gangs unit, in which police officers, Crown prosecutors & social workers work together as a team from beginning to end of an investigation.
“Through this combination of expertise, the task force achieves the dual purpose of apprehending criminals & assisting victims,” Scott said in the introduction to her motion, which passed with all-party support.
Asked whether the passage of the non-binding motion meant a task force would be established, a spokeswoman for Community Safety Minister Yasir Naqvi said the government would continue to work with its partners “to combat this very serious issue.”
Scott said it’s also important to co-ordinate support for women & girls escaping exploitation.
“One aspect where a provincial task force would be immeasurable would be its ability to help facilitate the creation of safe houses solely for the purpose of sheltering human trafficking victims,” she said.
MPPs were told how pimps frequently move prostitutes up & down the Highway 401 corridor both to meet demand & to make police detection much more difficult.
“Young women are lured through personal relationships, systemically isolated from the family & friends, psychologically & physically abused by those who they trusted & in some cases loved,” said Scott.
Human trafficking was recently front & centre at a legislative select committee on sexual violence & harassment against women. Scott is a member of that committee.
Among those that appeared before the committee was Katarina MacLeod, a former prostitute whose agency, Rising Angels, deals with women trying to escape that life. She said modern-day slavery is out of control.
“From what I see working on the front lines it is getting worse … it is really exploding,” MacLeod told the Star, adding many of the women she sees are under 18.
She said she is hearing of more & more women moving from hotel to hotel, in many cases not even knowing what city they are in.
MacLeod agreed a specialized team in the justice system “fighting for these girls” is needed.
Several police services across the province have vice squads that deal with human trafficking & informally share information.
York Regional Police is recognized for its progressive work on human smuggling, especially in dealing with sex trade workers. Det. Sgt. Peter Casey said the force has not arrested a woman on solicitation charges in the past 7 years — but it does throw pimps in jail.
The people behind the smuggling range from organized crime to teenage boys pimping out girls in their schools because there is “huge” money to be made, said Casey.
“Let’s put it this way, if you are a drug dealer … you can only sell that kilo of cocaine once, but if you are a pimp & have a number of young vulnerable women you are exploiting, you can exploit them over & over & over again, day after day.”
Experts said a woman working in the sex trade can generate revenues of $280,000 a year. And that often goes straight into a pimp’s pocket.
...
The Ministry of Community Safety & Correctional Services says it has provided about $1.4 million in funding since 2003 to 11 projects under the Proceeds of Crime–Front Line Policing Grant, to help police combat human trafficking in Ontario.
Thursday, October 22, 2015
Number of sexual assaults reported on children rises to 85 a day
Although, it is despicable wherever children are sexually abused in the world, but these kinds of stories don't make the headlines in the West. When something like these surfaces in the developing world, people are up in arms that children are not being protected by the law enforcement authorities & government.
Usually, the numbers of sexual assaults on children in those countries is quite small, compared to thousands upon thousands being abused in England or North America.
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Police are recording 85 sexual assaults on children each day after an increase of more than a third in reports of abuse & exploitation, new figures have revealed.
A total of 31,238 allegations of sexual offences against children, including rape, assault & grooming offences, were made to forces in England & Wales in 2013/14, research by the NSPCC has found. The figures show an increase of 38% – more than a third – on the previous year.
The majority of the victims were aged between 12 & 16 but more than one in four – 8,282 – were younger than 11, the charity said. Of those, 2,895 are estimated to be aged 5 or under, including 94 babies.
More than three-quarters of the reported abuse cases were against girls (24,457). Britain’s largest force, the Metropolitan police, recorded the highest number of sex crimes against children, with 3,523.
The data, obtained through freedom of information requests, reveals a significant year-on-year increase in the number of sex offences against children. In 2012-13, the same research showed that a total of 22,654 sexual crimes against children were recorded by 41 police forces. All 43 forces in England & Wales responded in the latest study.
The NSPCC said that until now the total had largely remained steady & the 38% rise was the biggest increase in 6 years of requesting the figures. Since 2008/09, the number has increased by almost 50%.
Last year the charity helped 2,400 young victims through its therapeutic recovery programme, but it says there are not enough services to support every child who has experienced abuse.
Jon Brown, senior policy officer for the NSPCC, said: “Our estimate is that there are 50,000 children in the country who need help & support for abuse who are not getting it.
“We need the government to step up & breach this gap. It cannot be right that so many children are going without support. We should be treating this as a public health problem given the damage done into adulthood to individuals who have been abused as children.”
...
Police experts say the effect of the case has been to encourage more victims, both those reporting abuse in the past & ongoing abuse, to come forward because they are now more confident they will be believed.
But improved recording methods by police have also been cited as a possible reason for the increase.
Brown said it was not clear whether the increase in reports of abuse was due to an actual rise or increased confidence of victims coming forward.
He agreed with comments made last month by Simon Bailey, chief constable of Norfolk & the national police lead on child abuse, that there was a real increase in abuse taking place, much of it facilitated by the internet.
Responding to the new figures, Bailey said they still represented the tip of the iceberg.
“Many, many, more victims have found the confidence to report abuse, knowing they will be treated with sensitivity & respect, that we will listen to them & that we will take their allegations seriously,” he said.
“Increased reporting means we are dealing with unprecedented number of investigations but it is my belief that more abuse is being perpetrated. The internet has given people the ability to sit in their room & indulge fantasies in a way that simply was not available to them two decades ago.”
Last month Bailey revealed that the police are investigating more than 1,400 prominent men, including politicians, celebrities & those linked to institutions, over allegations that they have sexually abused children in the past. The investigations are being carried out by forces across the country & coordinated by a team running Operation Hydrant.
...
Peter Wanless, the charity’s chief executive, said: “These figures are disturbing & clearly illustrate child sexual abuse is a continuing & widespread problem that needs urgent action. But we know this is still only a fraction of the true number of victims because some endure an agonising wait of many years before telling anyone – & others never reveal what has happened to them.”
Usually, the numbers of sexual assaults on children in those countries is quite small, compared to thousands upon thousands being abused in England or North America.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Police are recording 85 sexual assaults on children each day after an increase of more than a third in reports of abuse & exploitation, new figures have revealed.
A total of 31,238 allegations of sexual offences against children, including rape, assault & grooming offences, were made to forces in England & Wales in 2013/14, research by the NSPCC has found. The figures show an increase of 38% – more than a third – on the previous year.
The majority of the victims were aged between 12 & 16 but more than one in four – 8,282 – were younger than 11, the charity said. Of those, 2,895 are estimated to be aged 5 or under, including 94 babies.
More than three-quarters of the reported abuse cases were against girls (24,457). Britain’s largest force, the Metropolitan police, recorded the highest number of sex crimes against children, with 3,523.
The data, obtained through freedom of information requests, reveals a significant year-on-year increase in the number of sex offences against children. In 2012-13, the same research showed that a total of 22,654 sexual crimes against children were recorded by 41 police forces. All 43 forces in England & Wales responded in the latest study.
The NSPCC said that until now the total had largely remained steady & the 38% rise was the biggest increase in 6 years of requesting the figures. Since 2008/09, the number has increased by almost 50%.
Last year the charity helped 2,400 young victims through its therapeutic recovery programme, but it says there are not enough services to support every child who has experienced abuse.
Jon Brown, senior policy officer for the NSPCC, said: “Our estimate is that there are 50,000 children in the country who need help & support for abuse who are not getting it.
“We need the government to step up & breach this gap. It cannot be right that so many children are going without support. We should be treating this as a public health problem given the damage done into adulthood to individuals who have been abused as children.”
...
Police experts say the effect of the case has been to encourage more victims, both those reporting abuse in the past & ongoing abuse, to come forward because they are now more confident they will be believed.
But improved recording methods by police have also been cited as a possible reason for the increase.
Brown said it was not clear whether the increase in reports of abuse was due to an actual rise or increased confidence of victims coming forward.
He agreed with comments made last month by Simon Bailey, chief constable of Norfolk & the national police lead on child abuse, that there was a real increase in abuse taking place, much of it facilitated by the internet.
Responding to the new figures, Bailey said they still represented the tip of the iceberg.
“Many, many, more victims have found the confidence to report abuse, knowing they will be treated with sensitivity & respect, that we will listen to them & that we will take their allegations seriously,” he said.
“Increased reporting means we are dealing with unprecedented number of investigations but it is my belief that more abuse is being perpetrated. The internet has given people the ability to sit in their room & indulge fantasies in a way that simply was not available to them two decades ago.”
Last month Bailey revealed that the police are investigating more than 1,400 prominent men, including politicians, celebrities & those linked to institutions, over allegations that they have sexually abused children in the past. The investigations are being carried out by forces across the country & coordinated by a team running Operation Hydrant.
...
Peter Wanless, the charity’s chief executive, said: “These figures are disturbing & clearly illustrate child sexual abuse is a continuing & widespread problem that needs urgent action. But we know this is still only a fraction of the true number of victims because some endure an agonising wait of many years before telling anyone – & others never reveal what has happened to them.”
Tuesday, September 22, 2015
Thousands of children in Britain being forced to live on £1 a day
Since, this is happening to 1000s of children, "many of whom are British children," what do you expect will happen to the children of refugees. In many cases, refugees are treated much better than the country's own citizens. Why?
Reason being that, depending on how visible the issue is of refugee crisis (for example, the current refugee crisis stemming from the wars in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya etc.), governments tend to throw inordinate amount of money at the crisis to appease the voting public. But, since, the government has a set amount of money in its coffers, it takes that money from somewhere else in the social security system. So, for instance, in this case, other vulnerable families & children.
This news story also dispels the myth that Western countries are awash in money. This myth is especially true in Asia, Africa, & Middle Eastern countries ... all the developing nations. At least, 80% of the public of Western countries is struggling financially. These people are the residents & citizens of the country; be it UK, US, Canada, Germany, France, Italy etc.
Problem is that these people & stories are not visible. What is visible in the media is the high-falutin' people with luxurious lifestyles of the rich. In many cases, those people themselves are also struggling financially, & only able to afford luxurious items by borrowing heavily on their credit cards.
So, anyway, if & when, refugees & their families are treated much better in a Western country than their own citizens & their families, resentments & hate start fomenting among the public. Citizens turn against refugees, whom they see as robbing them off jobs & money, of which those citizens think they were entitled of, in the first place. Were those citizens entitled of that extra financial help is a separate discussion. But what should be of common sense to any government is that the welfare of its own public comes first.
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Thousands of children – many of whom are British citizens – are subsisting on as little as £1 a day because their parents are migrants with no recourse to public funds.
There are 5,900 children in England & Wales living on the brink of total destitution because their parents cannot work or receive government benefits, according to research from The University of Oxford’s migration unit. Charities say the situation is pushing vulnerable children into “severe poverty & hunger.”
In almost a quarter of the families affected at least one child is a British citizen, researchers from Oxford’s Centre on Migration, Policy & Society (COMPAS) found. Some go for months without receiving any help at all, forced to sleep in cars, disused buildings or even on the street.
Most of the families affected are here legally but awaiting a Home Office decision on their immigration case. ... 71% of the families helped by local authorities in 2012/13 had a decision on their immigration status pending.
Forbidden from working or receiving welfare, the only money many migrant parents can find to feed their children is a child poverty payout from social services, which can be as low as £5 a week for a family. If the local authority decides the child is destitute its family will also be given accommodation.
The Home Office does not help families while they wait for a decision on their immigration case unless they are seeking asylum - & it forbids them from working.
Local Authorities have an obligation to help all destitute children under the Children’s Act. The financial support, known as Section 17, is set by individual councils, often on a case by case basis.
Since councils’ budgets have been significantly cut back by central Government, these payments are frequently far below the necessary amount to live on. Payments typically range from £23 to £35 per child per week but this money has to feed parents too. If a family receives help from a food bank the value of this is often deducted from the meagre council help, leaving them with just a few pounds a week for nappies & other essentials.
Matthew Reed, chief executive of The Children’s Society said: “The desire to be seen to be tough on immigration can often mean the government overlooks its legal obligation to recognise children as children. As a result, too often they & their families are being pushed into severe poverty & hunger. They are being made homeless, forced into over-crowded, inappropriate accommodation & even on to the streets.
“Some families aren’t even being assessed to determine what help they need or are entitled to. And if they do get support, it is too low & often at the discretion of local authorities. Recent cuts to legal aid & the Home Office’s slow decision making means children are being forced to live on this support for long periods of time. This must change.”
Experts believe the Government needs to step in & provide funding to protect children’s welfare in this situation. Mr. Reed said: “It is critical that these families get the help they need & that the Government provides the funds necessary so local authorities can protect these children’s welfare. Children must be treated first & foremost as children — not as immigration statistics.”
Councils have to assess whether a family is eligible by working out if they are truly destitute. Researchers found social services often rejected cases with very little evidence.
Rita Chadha, chief executive of the Refugee & Migrant Forum of Essex & London (RAMFEL), said: “We see at least one client a day in this situation. They come in extremely distressed. We’ve seen children sleeping in church graveyards & disused shops. In many cases councils won’t give families money until prompted to by other agencies.”
More than a third of families surveyed survived on rudimentary council support for more than a year, largely due to lengthy waits for a decision from the Home Office. In 7% of cases, families needed help for more than 3 years.
Jonathan Price, co-author of the report, said: “Even after they have started receiving Section 17 support, some children face long periods living on subsistence rates that are well below those deemed minimal for any other category of people in the UK. This raises real concerns about the long-term impact of poverty on these children.”
Price added: “These are vulnerable people. We found that, prior to receiving local authority support, children & families were living highly precarious lives & were sometimes subject to exploitation. Domestic violence was an element in many referrals.”
A Home Office spokeswoman said: “We welcome those who wish to make a life in the UK with their family, work hard & make a contribution. But family life must not be established here at the taxpayer's expense.
“We work closely with local authorities to ensure that immigration decisions in cases receiving local authority support are made as quickly as possible.
“In exceptional circumstances, or where people granted leave on family grounds show that they would otherwise be destitute, they are granted recourse to public funds.”
The study was based on a survey of 137 Children’s Services departments in England & Wales, as well as 105 voluntary sector organisations & 92 interviews.
Reason being that, depending on how visible the issue is of refugee crisis (for example, the current refugee crisis stemming from the wars in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya etc.), governments tend to throw inordinate amount of money at the crisis to appease the voting public. But, since, the government has a set amount of money in its coffers, it takes that money from somewhere else in the social security system. So, for instance, in this case, other vulnerable families & children.
This news story also dispels the myth that Western countries are awash in money. This myth is especially true in Asia, Africa, & Middle Eastern countries ... all the developing nations. At least, 80% of the public of Western countries is struggling financially. These people are the residents & citizens of the country; be it UK, US, Canada, Germany, France, Italy etc.
Problem is that these people & stories are not visible. What is visible in the media is the high-falutin' people with luxurious lifestyles of the rich. In many cases, those people themselves are also struggling financially, & only able to afford luxurious items by borrowing heavily on their credit cards.
So, anyway, if & when, refugees & their families are treated much better in a Western country than their own citizens & their families, resentments & hate start fomenting among the public. Citizens turn against refugees, whom they see as robbing them off jobs & money, of which those citizens think they were entitled of, in the first place. Were those citizens entitled of that extra financial help is a separate discussion. But what should be of common sense to any government is that the welfare of its own public comes first.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thousands of children – many of whom are British citizens – are subsisting on as little as £1 a day because their parents are migrants with no recourse to public funds.
There are 5,900 children in England & Wales living on the brink of total destitution because their parents cannot work or receive government benefits, according to research from The University of Oxford’s migration unit. Charities say the situation is pushing vulnerable children into “severe poverty & hunger.”
In almost a quarter of the families affected at least one child is a British citizen, researchers from Oxford’s Centre on Migration, Policy & Society (COMPAS) found. Some go for months without receiving any help at all, forced to sleep in cars, disused buildings or even on the street.
Most of the families affected are here legally but awaiting a Home Office decision on their immigration case. ... 71% of the families helped by local authorities in 2012/13 had a decision on their immigration status pending.
Forbidden from working or receiving welfare, the only money many migrant parents can find to feed their children is a child poverty payout from social services, which can be as low as £5 a week for a family. If the local authority decides the child is destitute its family will also be given accommodation.
The Home Office does not help families while they wait for a decision on their immigration case unless they are seeking asylum - & it forbids them from working.
Local Authorities have an obligation to help all destitute children under the Children’s Act. The financial support, known as Section 17, is set by individual councils, often on a case by case basis.
Since councils’ budgets have been significantly cut back by central Government, these payments are frequently far below the necessary amount to live on. Payments typically range from £23 to £35 per child per week but this money has to feed parents too. If a family receives help from a food bank the value of this is often deducted from the meagre council help, leaving them with just a few pounds a week for nappies & other essentials.
Matthew Reed, chief executive of The Children’s Society said: “The desire to be seen to be tough on immigration can often mean the government overlooks its legal obligation to recognise children as children. As a result, too often they & their families are being pushed into severe poverty & hunger. They are being made homeless, forced into over-crowded, inappropriate accommodation & even on to the streets.
“Some families aren’t even being assessed to determine what help they need or are entitled to. And if they do get support, it is too low & often at the discretion of local authorities. Recent cuts to legal aid & the Home Office’s slow decision making means children are being forced to live on this support for long periods of time. This must change.”
Experts believe the Government needs to step in & provide funding to protect children’s welfare in this situation. Mr. Reed said: “It is critical that these families get the help they need & that the Government provides the funds necessary so local authorities can protect these children’s welfare. Children must be treated first & foremost as children — not as immigration statistics.”
Councils have to assess whether a family is eligible by working out if they are truly destitute. Researchers found social services often rejected cases with very little evidence.
Rita Chadha, chief executive of the Refugee & Migrant Forum of Essex & London (RAMFEL), said: “We see at least one client a day in this situation. They come in extremely distressed. We’ve seen children sleeping in church graveyards & disused shops. In many cases councils won’t give families money until prompted to by other agencies.”
More than a third of families surveyed survived on rudimentary council support for more than a year, largely due to lengthy waits for a decision from the Home Office. In 7% of cases, families needed help for more than 3 years.
Jonathan Price, co-author of the report, said: “Even after they have started receiving Section 17 support, some children face long periods living on subsistence rates that are well below those deemed minimal for any other category of people in the UK. This raises real concerns about the long-term impact of poverty on these children.”
Price added: “These are vulnerable people. We found that, prior to receiving local authority support, children & families were living highly precarious lives & were sometimes subject to exploitation. Domestic violence was an element in many referrals.”
A Home Office spokeswoman said: “We welcome those who wish to make a life in the UK with their family, work hard & make a contribution. But family life must not be established here at the taxpayer's expense.
“We work closely with local authorities to ensure that immigration decisions in cases receiving local authority support are made as quickly as possible.
“In exceptional circumstances, or where people granted leave on family grounds show that they would otherwise be destitute, they are granted recourse to public funds.”
The study was based on a survey of 137 Children’s Services departments in England & Wales, as well as 105 voluntary sector organisations & 92 interviews.
Thursday, September 17, 2015
Young American Muslims would rather live under Sharia law
I've talked about how young Muslims, growing up in the West, feel alienated, in one of my previous blog posts.
The parents of these young Muslims immigrated to US, from their own troubling countries, & have first-hand knowledge of what goes on there or how bad those countries are; Somalia, Sudan, Middle Eastern countries, Pakistan, Afghanistan etc.
Then, after immigrating to the West, those parents had 3 options of how to raise their kids; strict Islamic & within the boundaries of their own cultural background, take a balanced approach between Western & Eastern values & cultures, or take the proverbial "do as the Romans do while in Rome" approach. All these approaches have their own pros & cons, but all in all, they all will work until their kids are younger than teen years & haven't started building their own identities.
Once, their children get into their teen years & start developing their own identities, with the help of their peer groups, their own understanding of Islam, & depending on the level & kind of support they got from home, then those children start to either see the hypocrisies, discriminations, & biases in the Western societies against Islam & Muslims, or they become just one of many ignorant Westerners.
Now, this article, in itself, is flawed, in the sense, that we all know that you cannot take a very small sample (a little slice of the Somali community in only one American city, Minneapolis) & extrapolate it to all American Muslim children. You are going to get shocking, & certainly wrong, results, if you do do that.
Having said that, & depending on what kind of Muslim children we are talking about here (as I explained above), the results may completely surprise you or they may not. For example, there are many children of Ismailis in the West, who are second or third generation Westerners, & they don't want to go back to Uganda or Kenya. Looking at these people, a person who knows & understands Islam, would never recognize that these Ismailis are Muslims, since, they don't have a problem with drinking, pre-marital sexual relations, dating, wearing clothes that even respectful non-Muslim Westerners would hesitate wearing etc.
These "children" consider themselves South Asians but they don't want to go back to an Islamic country, since their parents took the proverbial "do as the Romans do while in Rome" approach in raising them. There are also new generations of Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Nigerians, Arabs etc. who have the same attitude towards Islam & they will never give away their freedoms to go back & live in the countries from where their parents originated.
On the other hand, there are Somalis, Pakistanis, & children of people from Middle Eastern countries, who are completely opposite on the spectrum. They are very strict in abiding by the rule of Quran, or Shariah, & would not consider otherwise, regardless of how much it benefits or harms them.
The attitudes of these latter kinds of Muslim youths become a problem for the West when these youths are alienated by the society. Their friends become other Muslim friends who think like them, & not the "white" ones, who drink & party. When these Muslim youths grow up further & become of age where they start looking for jobs, they are again made to feel alienated by the labour market, which discriminates based on name & appearances. Western labour markets are heavily based on "networking." While "laissez-faire" Muslims change their names & appearances to network & mingle in the labour market, Muslims, who are strictly following Islam, are left behind. This happens regardless of merit or education or skills background. That further alienates & angers those Muslims who follow Islam & Quran by the book. They start to feel that those noble values their parents & teachers led them to believe while they were young that the West is fair, just, honest, & people in the West respect honesty & truth, & the jobs are based on objective merit, etc. are all a façade.
These feelings of alienation & anger lead to believe these Muslim youths that they won't feel such alienation in their countries where there is Islam & Shariah-based laws. Since, they have not lived in those countries, themselves, for a long time, they have not experienced some harsh realities of living in those countries. These feelings of alienation & anger are also currently making many Muslim youths to join such groups as ISIS.
So, not all young Muslim Americans want to live under Shariah law. There is a wide spectrum. Some do & some don't. The ones who do want to live under Shariah law are made to think like that by the false promises the West made itself to these people. The West portrayed a very noble picture of a honest, fair, just, & an objective society, but fell far short of it. And whenever, reality falls far short of the expectations, anger & disappointment follows.
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A US film maker, Amy Horowitz, went out onto the streets of Minneapolis to speak to young Muslims & found that most of those questioned would rather live in the Muslim countries they came from & under Sharia law than in the US.
Horowitz asked the simple question: “Do you feel more comfortable living under American Law or do you feel more comfortable living under Sharia law?”
The majority of the people answered that they’d rather live under strict Sharia law. Sharia law gives women virtually no rights at all, they can be married at the age of 9, & is a literal interpretation of the Quran, which governs all aspect of life.
Horowitz then asked Muslims in a predominately Somali area of Minneapolis if they would rather live in the US or Somalia.
Somalia, which has been engulfed in civil war for 3 decades, is one of the poorest countries in the world. Yet most of the Somalians Horowitz spoke to said they would prefer to live there than in the US, except for one young boy who said he wanted to live in Saudi Arabia.
Horowitz believes that many young Muslims he spoke to answered the way they did because they feel alienated from US society, despite being born or growing up in the US.
“What we find among the Muslim immigrants in Europe & the United States is that the first & second generation are more radical than their parents, they’re not integrating as time goes by & there’s a larger alienation,” he told RT.
One young Somalian wearing a baseball cap & speaking fluently in a strong American accent said he did not feel American.
“I speak fluent [English] & I can articulate what I’m trying to say, but other than that, as far as my culture & my preferences & everything I’m still Somali,” he said.
Horowitz explained that it is this generation of immigrants that has become problematic to Western countries.
“The fact that the vast majority of young people I asked would rather live in Somalia or Saudi Arabia as opposed to the United States, it blew me away,” he said.
The parents of these young Muslims immigrated to US, from their own troubling countries, & have first-hand knowledge of what goes on there or how bad those countries are; Somalia, Sudan, Middle Eastern countries, Pakistan, Afghanistan etc.
Then, after immigrating to the West, those parents had 3 options of how to raise their kids; strict Islamic & within the boundaries of their own cultural background, take a balanced approach between Western & Eastern values & cultures, or take the proverbial "do as the Romans do while in Rome" approach. All these approaches have their own pros & cons, but all in all, they all will work until their kids are younger than teen years & haven't started building their own identities.
Once, their children get into their teen years & start developing their own identities, with the help of their peer groups, their own understanding of Islam, & depending on the level & kind of support they got from home, then those children start to either see the hypocrisies, discriminations, & biases in the Western societies against Islam & Muslims, or they become just one of many ignorant Westerners.
Now, this article, in itself, is flawed, in the sense, that we all know that you cannot take a very small sample (a little slice of the Somali community in only one American city, Minneapolis) & extrapolate it to all American Muslim children. You are going to get shocking, & certainly wrong, results, if you do do that.
Having said that, & depending on what kind of Muslim children we are talking about here (as I explained above), the results may completely surprise you or they may not. For example, there are many children of Ismailis in the West, who are second or third generation Westerners, & they don't want to go back to Uganda or Kenya. Looking at these people, a person who knows & understands Islam, would never recognize that these Ismailis are Muslims, since, they don't have a problem with drinking, pre-marital sexual relations, dating, wearing clothes that even respectful non-Muslim Westerners would hesitate wearing etc.
These "children" consider themselves South Asians but they don't want to go back to an Islamic country, since their parents took the proverbial "do as the Romans do while in Rome" approach in raising them. There are also new generations of Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Nigerians, Arabs etc. who have the same attitude towards Islam & they will never give away their freedoms to go back & live in the countries from where their parents originated.
On the other hand, there are Somalis, Pakistanis, & children of people from Middle Eastern countries, who are completely opposite on the spectrum. They are very strict in abiding by the rule of Quran, or Shariah, & would not consider otherwise, regardless of how much it benefits or harms them.
The attitudes of these latter kinds of Muslim youths become a problem for the West when these youths are alienated by the society. Their friends become other Muslim friends who think like them, & not the "white" ones, who drink & party. When these Muslim youths grow up further & become of age where they start looking for jobs, they are again made to feel alienated by the labour market, which discriminates based on name & appearances. Western labour markets are heavily based on "networking." While "laissez-faire" Muslims change their names & appearances to network & mingle in the labour market, Muslims, who are strictly following Islam, are left behind. This happens regardless of merit or education or skills background. That further alienates & angers those Muslims who follow Islam & Quran by the book. They start to feel that those noble values their parents & teachers led them to believe while they were young that the West is fair, just, honest, & people in the West respect honesty & truth, & the jobs are based on objective merit, etc. are all a façade.
These feelings of alienation & anger lead to believe these Muslim youths that they won't feel such alienation in their countries where there is Islam & Shariah-based laws. Since, they have not lived in those countries, themselves, for a long time, they have not experienced some harsh realities of living in those countries. These feelings of alienation & anger are also currently making many Muslim youths to join such groups as ISIS.
So, not all young Muslim Americans want to live under Shariah law. There is a wide spectrum. Some do & some don't. The ones who do want to live under Shariah law are made to think like that by the false promises the West made itself to these people. The West portrayed a very noble picture of a honest, fair, just, & an objective society, but fell far short of it. And whenever, reality falls far short of the expectations, anger & disappointment follows.
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A US film maker, Amy Horowitz, went out onto the streets of Minneapolis to speak to young Muslims & found that most of those questioned would rather live in the Muslim countries they came from & under Sharia law than in the US.
Horowitz asked the simple question: “Do you feel more comfortable living under American Law or do you feel more comfortable living under Sharia law?”
The majority of the people answered that they’d rather live under strict Sharia law. Sharia law gives women virtually no rights at all, they can be married at the age of 9, & is a literal interpretation of the Quran, which governs all aspect of life.
Horowitz then asked Muslims in a predominately Somali area of Minneapolis if they would rather live in the US or Somalia.
Somalia, which has been engulfed in civil war for 3 decades, is one of the poorest countries in the world. Yet most of the Somalians Horowitz spoke to said they would prefer to live there than in the US, except for one young boy who said he wanted to live in Saudi Arabia.
Horowitz believes that many young Muslims he spoke to answered the way they did because they feel alienated from US society, despite being born or growing up in the US.
“What we find among the Muslim immigrants in Europe & the United States is that the first & second generation are more radical than their parents, they’re not integrating as time goes by & there’s a larger alienation,” he told RT.
One young Somalian wearing a baseball cap & speaking fluently in a strong American accent said he did not feel American.
“I speak fluent [English] & I can articulate what I’m trying to say, but other than that, as far as my culture & my preferences & everything I’m still Somali,” he said.
Horowitz explained that it is this generation of immigrants that has become problematic to Western countries.
“The fact that the vast majority of young people I asked would rather live in Somalia or Saudi Arabia as opposed to the United States, it blew me away,” he said.
Monday, September 7, 2015
Corporal punishment in India's schools
A good article on corporal punishment being used by school teachers as a form of discipline. I'm personally in favour of corporal punishment but within, some bounds.
The article does try to put it into a proper perspective that "blaming specific groups (teachers, &/or parents) will not enable progress to be made, & risks alienating teachers already under pressure because of overcrowded classrooms, poor infrastructure, & poverty situations."
Beating children because they are poor or being absent from class because they have to provide help in the family farms or not having proper school supplies due to poverty is definitely wrong.
But beating children because they are cheating on the test/exam (that is not "teamwork") or they have not done their homework or they are late to class/school are very plausible reasons to punish students. However, if those children didn't do homework because of lack of school supplies or came late because of a family emergency, then they must not be punished.
Corporal punishment make the children know that teacher is to be respected. Being of a Pakistani background, I know the experience of corporal punishment, first hand. After moving to Canada in my teens, I was aghast at watching how students in secondary school talked back to teachers. Teachers have little to no respect in the eyes of students in the West, except a few good students.
On top of that, I was reading an article a few months back (I may have even wrote a blog post on it) that how teachers, in North American elementary to secondary schools, are always afraid of their students, that when & who may allege something against them to the school authorities.
There was an example that how a elementary school substitute teacher saw a student throw away a perfectly good banana in the garbage during lunch hour. The teacher told the student to take the banana out of the garbage & eat it. The student took it out & took 1 bite of the banana, & then threw it back in the garbage. This all happened while he kept staring back at the teacher, like challenging her back. The incident didn't stop there. The student went home & told his parents that the teacher forced him to eat the fruit from the garbage. Parents, of course, stormed the principal's office. Consequently, the teacher got suspended while the matter was investigated. Although, no charge was ever laid against her for child abuse, she was never called back again to teach at that school. After all, which school administration would want to go through the whole hassle of investigation against such a teacher who was merely teaching a student the value of food & discouraging him from wasting food?
Corporal punishment is being removed from schools around the world. One of my maternal aunts in Pakistan, who is a secondary school teacher for around 20 years now & is highly respected, was decrying back in December 2013 that teachers are being banned from using corporal punishment as a form of disciplining the children. Her school is a network of private schools in Karachi & kids from middle to upper middle class attend that school (so not exactly poor kids who need to help out their families in the farms are attending that school). She was saying that school children are becoming more & more brave & talk back to teachers & don't listen to what teachers are saying because they know that teachers can't touch them now.
I fully agreed with her. Because, I have seen the effects of how much respect teachers really have in North American schools. And, it's only getting worse. Teachers aren't allowed to discipline students. So, students have a free rein to do whatever they like, however they like, in whichever way they like. If they want to smoke & deal drugs right outside the school, who is going to stop them? If they want to start a fight in / around the school, who is going to stop them? If they want to bring a gun / other weapons to school, who is going to stop them? If they want to harass / bully another student(s), who is going to stop them? Definitely, not the teachers, because their hands are tied.
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Despite widespread concern about the effects of corporal punishment on children, it persists in schools across the world. Its eradication in many countries is proving difficult, & India is no exception.
... more everyday forms of violence may go unnoticed or unquestioned, & limited academic attention has focused on gender differences in the way punishment is meted out to boys & girls at home, school, & society at large. For children in many parts of India, norms relating to femininity mean that girls are required to be docile & submissive, & not to be “naughty”. Ideas about masculinity may mean that boys are supposed to be able to accept physical punishment & to withstand pain.
India ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1992, & has many policies that ban corporal punishment in schools. But these seem out of kilter with everyday realities. The Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education Act of 2009 guarantees school for all children between the ages of 6 & 14. Although elementary schooling has expanded, this rapid expansion has not been matched by comparable increases in the teaching workforce. There is a shortage of teachers across schools, & class sizes are very large, putting pressure on teachers to control high numbers of children.
The government of India commissioned research that included more than 3,000 children aged from 5 to 18, asking about physical abuse by teachers. In all age groups, 65% reported being beaten at school. Our own findings back up these figures. Younger children (aged 7–8) were significantly more likely to have witnessed & experienced corporal punishment than the 14- to 15-year-old cohort, with over two-thirds of the younger children having been physically punished at school in the past week, compared with one-third of the older young people. Poorer children were more likely than less poor children to be punished.
However, among children aged 14–15, we found that girls & boys alike experience routine corporal punishment, with boys experiencing particularly high levels. There was a less sharp distinction in use of corporal punishment between boys & girls in the younger cohort. This may be because corporal punishment is part of the socialisation of younger children, but when they are older it is no longer seen as an appropriate way to discipline young women, while “toughening up” young men may be normative.
It may be seen as part of boys’ socialisation & transition into adulthood. One 15-year-old boy complained about the unfairness of the beatings being meted out on boys, whom he perceived as being punished much more than girls. The violence children & young people experience in schools may not be visibly gendered but it may reinforce gender differentiation because of the ways in which it is employed by male & female teachers. Some children, for example, spoke of being particularly afraid of the male PE teachers. However, the reality is that young boys & girls alike are physically abused in schools, & it is being children that make them vulnerable, rather than their gender.
Reasons to be punished
Girls and boys spoke of a range of other reasons for punishment, including being absent from school due to work, illness or attending family celebrations, missing classes, not doing their homework, not reading well, making mistakes, receiving poor marks in exams, not wearing uniform, not having the right equipment, or not paying the teacher for extra lessons. One girl, aged 10, said:
“If we don’t study, they beat us. If we ask other children for help, they beat [us]. I went to drink water without asking sir, so he beat me that time. They said all children should come back to class by the time they count 10 after the interval. But I went home [to use the toilet]. After coming back to school, he beat me.”
Punished for poverty
Poverty at home also clearly influenced school discipline practices. Living in poverty meant that children were sometimes not in a position to follow the rules & expectations of school. Children described being punished for not having uniform or the right equipment, or money to pay fees.
...
As Young Lives data have shown, economic constraints & family circumstances mean that boys & girls in rural areas engage in seasonal agricultural work on family land, & miss school for days, weeks, or months at a time. Although the boys & girls did different gender-specific work, the impact was the same: when they did return to school, they faced punishment. Although older boys rarely spoke directly about their fears of punishment, their mothers spoke of their sons’ emotions. Ranadeep’s mother explained:
“Without him, we cannot run the family, we don’t get labourers & there is no other way for us. When he returns to school they shout at him & he is terrified ... His father goes there & informs them ... they scold us, they say ‘how will he get on if he is absent for such a long time?’... We try to pacify them by telling them about our problems at home.”
What can be done?
In global policy debates, much emphasis has been placed on the role of education as the solution not only to reducing cycles of poverty in developing countries, but also to addressing gender violence.
However, the evidence presented here suggests that we must question this, at least in the Indian context. All children, regardless of gender, experience high levels of physical violence in schools. But it is teenage boys who experience the most.
But blaming specific groups (teachers, &/or parents) will not enable progress to be made, & risks alienating teachers already under pressure because of overcrowded classrooms, poor infrastructure, & poverty situations.
Approaches need to develop not only from the top down, but from communities, families & teachers to find ways of working together to change practices.
Violence as an integral part of schooling may have consequences for boys’ & girls’ development that go beyond the here & now of childhood to social & economic factors in adulthood. In India, this needs to be understood in the context of the high expectations that parents & children have of schools. Some children dislike school for many reasons, but if they discontinue school because of their experience of corporal punishment, & if they learn that corporal punishment is the solution to behaviour that is out of line, then formal schooling may inadvertently be reinforcing both cycles of poverty & the use of violence.
Virginia Morrow is a senior research officer at Young Lives & a University of Oxford associate professor. Follow Young Lives on Twitter.
The article does try to put it into a proper perspective that "blaming specific groups (teachers, &/or parents) will not enable progress to be made, & risks alienating teachers already under pressure because of overcrowded classrooms, poor infrastructure, & poverty situations."
Beating children because they are poor or being absent from class because they have to provide help in the family farms or not having proper school supplies due to poverty is definitely wrong.
But beating children because they are cheating on the test/exam (that is not "teamwork") or they have not done their homework or they are late to class/school are very plausible reasons to punish students. However, if those children didn't do homework because of lack of school supplies or came late because of a family emergency, then they must not be punished.
Corporal punishment make the children know that teacher is to be respected. Being of a Pakistani background, I know the experience of corporal punishment, first hand. After moving to Canada in my teens, I was aghast at watching how students in secondary school talked back to teachers. Teachers have little to no respect in the eyes of students in the West, except a few good students.
On top of that, I was reading an article a few months back (I may have even wrote a blog post on it) that how teachers, in North American elementary to secondary schools, are always afraid of their students, that when & who may allege something against them to the school authorities.
There was an example that how a elementary school substitute teacher saw a student throw away a perfectly good banana in the garbage during lunch hour. The teacher told the student to take the banana out of the garbage & eat it. The student took it out & took 1 bite of the banana, & then threw it back in the garbage. This all happened while he kept staring back at the teacher, like challenging her back. The incident didn't stop there. The student went home & told his parents that the teacher forced him to eat the fruit from the garbage. Parents, of course, stormed the principal's office. Consequently, the teacher got suspended while the matter was investigated. Although, no charge was ever laid against her for child abuse, she was never called back again to teach at that school. After all, which school administration would want to go through the whole hassle of investigation against such a teacher who was merely teaching a student the value of food & discouraging him from wasting food?
Corporal punishment is being removed from schools around the world. One of my maternal aunts in Pakistan, who is a secondary school teacher for around 20 years now & is highly respected, was decrying back in December 2013 that teachers are being banned from using corporal punishment as a form of disciplining the children. Her school is a network of private schools in Karachi & kids from middle to upper middle class attend that school (so not exactly poor kids who need to help out their families in the farms are attending that school). She was saying that school children are becoming more & more brave & talk back to teachers & don't listen to what teachers are saying because they know that teachers can't touch them now.
I fully agreed with her. Because, I have seen the effects of how much respect teachers really have in North American schools. And, it's only getting worse. Teachers aren't allowed to discipline students. So, students have a free rein to do whatever they like, however they like, in whichever way they like. If they want to smoke & deal drugs right outside the school, who is going to stop them? If they want to start a fight in / around the school, who is going to stop them? If they want to bring a gun / other weapons to school, who is going to stop them? If they want to harass / bully another student(s), who is going to stop them? Definitely, not the teachers, because their hands are tied.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Despite widespread concern about the effects of corporal punishment on children, it persists in schools across the world. Its eradication in many countries is proving difficult, & India is no exception.
... more everyday forms of violence may go unnoticed or unquestioned, & limited academic attention has focused on gender differences in the way punishment is meted out to boys & girls at home, school, & society at large. For children in many parts of India, norms relating to femininity mean that girls are required to be docile & submissive, & not to be “naughty”. Ideas about masculinity may mean that boys are supposed to be able to accept physical punishment & to withstand pain.
India ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1992, & has many policies that ban corporal punishment in schools. But these seem out of kilter with everyday realities. The Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education Act of 2009 guarantees school for all children between the ages of 6 & 14. Although elementary schooling has expanded, this rapid expansion has not been matched by comparable increases in the teaching workforce. There is a shortage of teachers across schools, & class sizes are very large, putting pressure on teachers to control high numbers of children.
The government of India commissioned research that included more than 3,000 children aged from 5 to 18, asking about physical abuse by teachers. In all age groups, 65% reported being beaten at school. Our own findings back up these figures. Younger children (aged 7–8) were significantly more likely to have witnessed & experienced corporal punishment than the 14- to 15-year-old cohort, with over two-thirds of the younger children having been physically punished at school in the past week, compared with one-third of the older young people. Poorer children were more likely than less poor children to be punished.
However, among children aged 14–15, we found that girls & boys alike experience routine corporal punishment, with boys experiencing particularly high levels. There was a less sharp distinction in use of corporal punishment between boys & girls in the younger cohort. This may be because corporal punishment is part of the socialisation of younger children, but when they are older it is no longer seen as an appropriate way to discipline young women, while “toughening up” young men may be normative.
It may be seen as part of boys’ socialisation & transition into adulthood. One 15-year-old boy complained about the unfairness of the beatings being meted out on boys, whom he perceived as being punished much more than girls. The violence children & young people experience in schools may not be visibly gendered but it may reinforce gender differentiation because of the ways in which it is employed by male & female teachers. Some children, for example, spoke of being particularly afraid of the male PE teachers. However, the reality is that young boys & girls alike are physically abused in schools, & it is being children that make them vulnerable, rather than their gender.
Reasons to be punished
Girls and boys spoke of a range of other reasons for punishment, including being absent from school due to work, illness or attending family celebrations, missing classes, not doing their homework, not reading well, making mistakes, receiving poor marks in exams, not wearing uniform, not having the right equipment, or not paying the teacher for extra lessons. One girl, aged 10, said:
“If we don’t study, they beat us. If we ask other children for help, they beat [us]. I went to drink water without asking sir, so he beat me that time. They said all children should come back to class by the time they count 10 after the interval. But I went home [to use the toilet]. After coming back to school, he beat me.”
Punished for poverty
Poverty at home also clearly influenced school discipline practices. Living in poverty meant that children were sometimes not in a position to follow the rules & expectations of school. Children described being punished for not having uniform or the right equipment, or money to pay fees.
...
As Young Lives data have shown, economic constraints & family circumstances mean that boys & girls in rural areas engage in seasonal agricultural work on family land, & miss school for days, weeks, or months at a time. Although the boys & girls did different gender-specific work, the impact was the same: when they did return to school, they faced punishment. Although older boys rarely spoke directly about their fears of punishment, their mothers spoke of their sons’ emotions. Ranadeep’s mother explained:
“Without him, we cannot run the family, we don’t get labourers & there is no other way for us. When he returns to school they shout at him & he is terrified ... His father goes there & informs them ... they scold us, they say ‘how will he get on if he is absent for such a long time?’... We try to pacify them by telling them about our problems at home.”
What can be done?
In global policy debates, much emphasis has been placed on the role of education as the solution not only to reducing cycles of poverty in developing countries, but also to addressing gender violence.
However, the evidence presented here suggests that we must question this, at least in the Indian context. All children, regardless of gender, experience high levels of physical violence in schools. But it is teenage boys who experience the most.
But blaming specific groups (teachers, &/or parents) will not enable progress to be made, & risks alienating teachers already under pressure because of overcrowded classrooms, poor infrastructure, & poverty situations.
Approaches need to develop not only from the top down, but from communities, families & teachers to find ways of working together to change practices.
Violence as an integral part of schooling may have consequences for boys’ & girls’ development that go beyond the here & now of childhood to social & economic factors in adulthood. In India, this needs to be understood in the context of the high expectations that parents & children have of schools. Some children dislike school for many reasons, but if they discontinue school because of their experience of corporal punishment, & if they learn that corporal punishment is the solution to behaviour that is out of line, then formal schooling may inadvertently be reinforcing both cycles of poverty & the use of violence.
Virginia Morrow is a senior research officer at Young Lives & a University of Oxford associate professor. Follow Young Lives on Twitter.
Monday, August 31, 2015
3,000 children enslaved in Britain after being trafficked from Vietnam
After I keep hearing news of how adults & youths, of both genders, were keep getting enslaved in war torn countries, where there is no law & order, I came upon this article & thought to put some perspective to this news of slavery ... in a developed Western country. Now, this article is highlighting the problem of slavery in UK, but US & Australia have a similar problem.
These 3,000 children are enslaved in UK. They are being sexually & physically abused & put in domestic labour as a slave. The authorities, as usual, keep saying that they are trying to end it but losing the war against slavery. The reality of 21st century is that the slavery has actually increased in this century.
Slavery is wrong, regardless of whoever or wherever it happens. But, considering, there are almost 10,000 to 13,000 slaves in Britain, then how can the Western developed countries expect people in war torn countries to prosecute people in slave trade (criminal gangs & organizations) & protect people from being enslaved. It's very easy to blame others for their practices & ideologies before judging oneself where he/she is standing.
Furthermore, we need to keep in mind that these criminal gangs are only suppliers of slaves. Supply cannot exist without demand. That means then that people in the West, regardless of their race, education, national origins, ethnicity, religion, are open to knowingly taking in a slave, as long as it benefits them, somehow. Slavery exists because the general public demands it. Now, it might be a small section of the general public who is demanding it, but they definitely are the customers. The public supports slavery by either directly buying the slaves (usually rich elites) or indirectly asking for quality products at the lowest prices possible, which is possible only by businesses paying no or extremely low wages (recall my blog on Thailand's fishing, & Australian & Spanish agricultural industries employing slaves).
Since, we also know that criminal gangs would not be involved into this business without making a good return on their investments, they charge high prices for these slaves. So, their customers must be well-heeled to be paying such high prices for these slaves, which, in turn, means that they themselves are earning handsomely. So, the "respected" rich elites of our society don't hesitate from slavery. Hey, I thought, that happened in 1800s in the Western countries. So, after all, it seems like that the society hasn't developed, at all.
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Hien was 10 when he arrived in Britain. He did not know where he was or where he had been. He knew only that he was here to work. Since he emerged from the back of a lorry after crossing from Calais 7 years ago, his experience has been one of exploitation & misery. He has been a domestic slave, been trafficked into cannabis factories, been abused & beaten & was eventually prosecuted & sent to prison. It has been a life of terror, isolation & pain.
... . He is one of an estimated 3,000 Vietnamese children in forced labour in the UK, used for financial gain by criminal gangs running cannabis factories, nail bars, garment factories, brothels & private homes. Charged up to £25,000 for their passage to the UK, these children collectively owe their traffickers almost £75m.
While there is growing awareness of the use of trafficked Vietnamese people in the booming domestic cannabis trade, child trafficking experts are now warning that the British authorities are unable to keep up with the speed at which UK-based Vietnamese gangs are recruiting & exploiting children for use in other criminal enterprises such as gun-smuggling, crystal meth production & prostitution rings.
“By our calculations there are around 3,000 Vietnamese children in the UK who are being used for profit by criminal gangs,” says Philip Ishola, former head of the UK’s Counter Human Trafficking Bureau.
“The police & the authorities are now aware that trafficked children are being forced to work in cannabis farms but this is really only the tip of the iceberg. Often the same child will be exploited not just in a cannabis farm but also in myriad different ways. This is happening right under our noses & not enough is being done to stop it.”
Police admit that they are struggling with the speed at which Vietnamese criminal gangs are diversifying & expanding their activities across the England & into Scotland & Northern Ireland. “Right now we are just fighting in the trenches, fighting in the nail bars,” said detective inspector Steven Cartwright, who heads Police Scotland’s human trafficking unit. “It is vital that we that we understand new methods being deployed by the gangs because we need to stop demand at one end or limit their ability to make money at the other.”
Hien’s journey to the UK started when he was taken from his village at the age of 5 by someone who claimed to be his uncle. As an orphan, he had no option but to do as he was told. He spent 5 years travelling overland, completely unaware which countries he was going through, from Vietnam before being smuggled across the Channel & taken to a house in London. Here he spent the next 3 years trapped in domestic servitude, cooking & cleaning for groups of Vietnamese people who would come in & out of the property where he was held.
The men in the house beat him & forced him to drink alcohol until he was sick. Other things happened to him that he still cannot talk about. He was never allowed out of the house & was told that if he tried to escape, the police would arrest him & take him to prison.
During his time in that house, Hien says, many other Vietnamese children were brought in. They told him that they were here to work & to pay off debts for their families back home. They would stay for a few days & then be taken away, & Hien never saw them again. He became homeless after his “uncle” abandoned him. He slept in parks & ate out of bins. He was eventually picked up by a Vietnamese couple, who offered him a place to stay but then forced him to work in cannabis farms in flats in first Manchester & then Scotland.
In his testimony to police, he says he still does not understand exactly what the plants were, although he understands now that they are worth a lot of money. He looked after the plants, using pesticides that made him ill, & only left the flat when he helped transport the leaves to be dried elsewhere. He was locked in, threatened, beaten & completely isolated from the outside world.
“I was never paid any money for working there,” he says. “I did not stay there for money but because I was afraid & I hoped the whole thing would end soon.”
When the police came, they found Hien alone with the plants. He told his story to the police, but was still sent to young offenders’ institution in Scotland, where he spent 10 months on remand, charged with cannabis cultivation. He was released only after the intervention of a crown prosecutor led to him being identified as a victim of trafficking.
Vietnamese children such as Hien are easy pickings for the increasingly sophisticated trafficking gangs operating between the UK & Vietnam. Children make up nearly a quarter of the estimated 13,000 people trafficked into the UK every year, & Vietnamese children are the largest group of children trafficked to the UK. The United Nations Office on Drugs & Crime estimates that 30 Vietnamese children arrive illegally in the UK every month, on well-established smuggling routes.
“Children are an increasingly valuable assets to criminal gangs because they are easy to get hold of, easily intimidated & exploited, & easy to keep isolated & unaware of what is really happening around them, which makes it far less likely for them to be able to disclose anything of use to the police,” says Ishola.
When it comes to Vietnamese children, he says, the culture of seeing a child as the “golden egg”, who will be sent to work abroad & provide for their families still prevails. This attitude is exploited by gangs, who deceive families into believing that there is legitimate work in Britain for their children.
“During their journey to the UK, the traffickers keep charging the children more & more money, & by the time they arrive, the pressure to pay back this enormous debt is a key factor in their vulnerability to ending up trapped in forced labour,” he says. “Upon arrival the children are faced with a highly organised system of criminal activity, with methods of control ranging from extreme physical brutality to debt bondage. Before they even arrive, that trap is set for them.”
Members of the Vietnamese diaspora in London told the Observer that they had seen an explosion in child trafficking by criminal gangs operating on the peripheries of their communities in recent years. “Some of these children & victims have told me that it cost them £25,000 to get to the UK,” said one Vietnamese community leader in London, who did not want to be named. “They come with a debt & they are not allowed to leave until the debt is paid. That is slavery & exploitation.”
Like Hien, many of the children end up working on cannabis farms. The link between child trafficking & the UK’s domestic cannabis industry has been increasing, with Vietnamese children the main group at risk. According to a 2014 report by the NGO AntiSlavery International, almost all potential victims of trafficking linked to cannabis are Vietnamese, & more than 80% are children.
Many of these children are subsequently prosecuted by the UK justice system, despite many being identified as potential victims of trafficking. This has led to Vietnamese children becoming the second-largest ethnic group held in youth detention centres across the UK.
Vietnamese gangs have historically dominated the UK’s £1bn cannabis trade & have been instrumental in the proportion of domestically grown cannabis in Britain rising from 15% in 2005 to about 90% now. While the trade remains enormously profitable – the number of Vietnamese cannabis factories in the UK has grown by 150% in the past 2 years – their grip has been weakened thanks to increased law enforcement & under competition from British growers. Now they are finding new & more efficient ways of doing business.
“In terms of law enforcement, I think we’re about 2 years behind the curve,” says Daniel Silverstone, a criminologist at London Metropolitan University who has written extensively on Vietnamese gangs in the UK.
“Traffickers have changed their modus operandi in recent years in direct response to the attention & interventions of law enforcement. A few years ago it was almost exclusively cannabis farms, but their business interests have now become much more diverse. So we’re seeing an expansion into Scotland & Northern Ireland, the use of nail bars for forced labour & money laundering, & moves into drugs like crystal meth.” This means that children, who are an integral part of the gangs’ business operations, are also now being moved into other areas of exploitation. “As their grip on the domestic cannabis trade slips a little, they are looking to maximise their profits from these children in whatever way they can,” he adds.
The Metropolitan police say that there is now much more awareness of the complexity of tackling the UK’s child trafficking problem but that the closed nature of the Vietnamese community has made things difficult. “What has persistently been a challenge for us is making inroads into this community,” says Phil Brewer, who heads its new human trafficking & kidnap unit. “We usually only find out about a child when we make a raid & find someone in a cannabis factory or nail bar, but often this person has been through multiple forms of exploitation before we reach them.”
Parosha Chandran, a leading human rights barrister & UN expert on trafficking, has represented Vietnamese children charged with cannabis cultivation who have gone through many different trafficking situations before being moved into cannabis farms.
“Trafficked Vietnamese children have rarely faced just one type of forced labour,” she says. “I’ve come across cases where young people have been subjected to a spectrum of exploitative practices. In one of my cases, for example, the child was forced to look after people’s homes & care for their children, when he was just a child himself, then he was taken to work cleaning a nail bar, then moved to another place where he was forced to sew labels on to clothing – & all of this happened before he even arrived in the cannabis factory.”
In March the UK passed its first Modern Slavery Bill, designed to increase the prosecution of traffickers & give better protection to victims of modern slavery in the UK. However, Chandran says that Vietnamese children continue to be prosecuted for cannabis cultivation while their traffickers remain free.
“The Modern Slavery Act’s central focus on prosecution is misguided & its provisions fail to fully protect the rights of trafficked children,” she says. “We as a democratic country need to find durable solutions to ensure these children remain protected from harm for the rest of their lives.”
...
Methods used to lure children from Vietnam to the UK are also becoming increasingly sophisticated, including use of social media. “Vietnamese children are brought to the UK, taken in by Vietnamese adults & put to domestic work,” says Swat Pandi, from the NSPCC’s child trafficking advice centre. “The child feels indebted to the adults for food & shelter & is told they need to return the favour by looking after cannabis plants. These children suffer high levels of neglect, emotional abuse &, in the absence of any protective factors, are highly vulnerable to physical & sexual abuse.”
Despite the government’s pledge to end modern slavery & the UK’s first modern slavery bill, passed in March, Chitty says she has seen no change in the numbers of Vietnamese children coming through her charity’s services. “It’s very much business as usual,” she says. “We still have a problem with immediate safeguarding & appropriate placements for trafficked children. And young people are still being criminalised by the courts.”
Even when a child has been taken out of trafficking & come under the care of a local authority, he or she is likely to return to the control of the traffickers. In 2013, a report by independent thinktank the Centre for Social Justice concluded that 60% of trafficked children in local authority care go missing, nearly a third of them within a week of arrival. Most are never found again. There are increasing reports of children being retrafficked from foster homes or when they have been given asylum status.
“I don’t think we understand the entire enterprise,” says detective inspector Cartwright. “Despite our best intentions I think we’re not offering them anything that would persuade them to stay. Many will get retrafficked because we didn’t offer them a better alternative to what the traffickers are providing.”
Hien is trying to rebuild his life after being given asylum in Scotland, but is struggling to find peace after years of trauma. “I still worry that the traffickers may find me & come to my house. But I know this time that I will ask for help,” he says. “I think they have justice here but I wish they hadn’t kept me in prison for so long. By telling my story, I want people to understand what I have experienced here.”
These 3,000 children are enslaved in UK. They are being sexually & physically abused & put in domestic labour as a slave. The authorities, as usual, keep saying that they are trying to end it but losing the war against slavery. The reality of 21st century is that the slavery has actually increased in this century.
Slavery is wrong, regardless of whoever or wherever it happens. But, considering, there are almost 10,000 to 13,000 slaves in Britain, then how can the Western developed countries expect people in war torn countries to prosecute people in slave trade (criminal gangs & organizations) & protect people from being enslaved. It's very easy to blame others for their practices & ideologies before judging oneself where he/she is standing.
Furthermore, we need to keep in mind that these criminal gangs are only suppliers of slaves. Supply cannot exist without demand. That means then that people in the West, regardless of their race, education, national origins, ethnicity, religion, are open to knowingly taking in a slave, as long as it benefits them, somehow. Slavery exists because the general public demands it. Now, it might be a small section of the general public who is demanding it, but they definitely are the customers. The public supports slavery by either directly buying the slaves (usually rich elites) or indirectly asking for quality products at the lowest prices possible, which is possible only by businesses paying no or extremely low wages (recall my blog on Thailand's fishing, & Australian & Spanish agricultural industries employing slaves).
Since, we also know that criminal gangs would not be involved into this business without making a good return on their investments, they charge high prices for these slaves. So, their customers must be well-heeled to be paying such high prices for these slaves, which, in turn, means that they themselves are earning handsomely. So, the "respected" rich elites of our society don't hesitate from slavery. Hey, I thought, that happened in 1800s in the Western countries. So, after all, it seems like that the society hasn't developed, at all.
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Hien was 10 when he arrived in Britain. He did not know where he was or where he had been. He knew only that he was here to work. Since he emerged from the back of a lorry after crossing from Calais 7 years ago, his experience has been one of exploitation & misery. He has been a domestic slave, been trafficked into cannabis factories, been abused & beaten & was eventually prosecuted & sent to prison. It has been a life of terror, isolation & pain.
... . He is one of an estimated 3,000 Vietnamese children in forced labour in the UK, used for financial gain by criminal gangs running cannabis factories, nail bars, garment factories, brothels & private homes. Charged up to £25,000 for their passage to the UK, these children collectively owe their traffickers almost £75m.
While there is growing awareness of the use of trafficked Vietnamese people in the booming domestic cannabis trade, child trafficking experts are now warning that the British authorities are unable to keep up with the speed at which UK-based Vietnamese gangs are recruiting & exploiting children for use in other criminal enterprises such as gun-smuggling, crystal meth production & prostitution rings.
“By our calculations there are around 3,000 Vietnamese children in the UK who are being used for profit by criminal gangs,” says Philip Ishola, former head of the UK’s Counter Human Trafficking Bureau.
“The police & the authorities are now aware that trafficked children are being forced to work in cannabis farms but this is really only the tip of the iceberg. Often the same child will be exploited not just in a cannabis farm but also in myriad different ways. This is happening right under our noses & not enough is being done to stop it.”
Police admit that they are struggling with the speed at which Vietnamese criminal gangs are diversifying & expanding their activities across the England & into Scotland & Northern Ireland. “Right now we are just fighting in the trenches, fighting in the nail bars,” said detective inspector Steven Cartwright, who heads Police Scotland’s human trafficking unit. “It is vital that we that we understand new methods being deployed by the gangs because we need to stop demand at one end or limit their ability to make money at the other.”
Hien’s journey to the UK started when he was taken from his village at the age of 5 by someone who claimed to be his uncle. As an orphan, he had no option but to do as he was told. He spent 5 years travelling overland, completely unaware which countries he was going through, from Vietnam before being smuggled across the Channel & taken to a house in London. Here he spent the next 3 years trapped in domestic servitude, cooking & cleaning for groups of Vietnamese people who would come in & out of the property where he was held.
The men in the house beat him & forced him to drink alcohol until he was sick. Other things happened to him that he still cannot talk about. He was never allowed out of the house & was told that if he tried to escape, the police would arrest him & take him to prison.
During his time in that house, Hien says, many other Vietnamese children were brought in. They told him that they were here to work & to pay off debts for their families back home. They would stay for a few days & then be taken away, & Hien never saw them again. He became homeless after his “uncle” abandoned him. He slept in parks & ate out of bins. He was eventually picked up by a Vietnamese couple, who offered him a place to stay but then forced him to work in cannabis farms in flats in first Manchester & then Scotland.
In his testimony to police, he says he still does not understand exactly what the plants were, although he understands now that they are worth a lot of money. He looked after the plants, using pesticides that made him ill, & only left the flat when he helped transport the leaves to be dried elsewhere. He was locked in, threatened, beaten & completely isolated from the outside world.
“I was never paid any money for working there,” he says. “I did not stay there for money but because I was afraid & I hoped the whole thing would end soon.”
When the police came, they found Hien alone with the plants. He told his story to the police, but was still sent to young offenders’ institution in Scotland, where he spent 10 months on remand, charged with cannabis cultivation. He was released only after the intervention of a crown prosecutor led to him being identified as a victim of trafficking.
Vietnamese children such as Hien are easy pickings for the increasingly sophisticated trafficking gangs operating between the UK & Vietnam. Children make up nearly a quarter of the estimated 13,000 people trafficked into the UK every year, & Vietnamese children are the largest group of children trafficked to the UK. The United Nations Office on Drugs & Crime estimates that 30 Vietnamese children arrive illegally in the UK every month, on well-established smuggling routes.
“Children are an increasingly valuable assets to criminal gangs because they are easy to get hold of, easily intimidated & exploited, & easy to keep isolated & unaware of what is really happening around them, which makes it far less likely for them to be able to disclose anything of use to the police,” says Ishola.
When it comes to Vietnamese children, he says, the culture of seeing a child as the “golden egg”, who will be sent to work abroad & provide for their families still prevails. This attitude is exploited by gangs, who deceive families into believing that there is legitimate work in Britain for their children.
“During their journey to the UK, the traffickers keep charging the children more & more money, & by the time they arrive, the pressure to pay back this enormous debt is a key factor in their vulnerability to ending up trapped in forced labour,” he says. “Upon arrival the children are faced with a highly organised system of criminal activity, with methods of control ranging from extreme physical brutality to debt bondage. Before they even arrive, that trap is set for them.”
Members of the Vietnamese diaspora in London told the Observer that they had seen an explosion in child trafficking by criminal gangs operating on the peripheries of their communities in recent years. “Some of these children & victims have told me that it cost them £25,000 to get to the UK,” said one Vietnamese community leader in London, who did not want to be named. “They come with a debt & they are not allowed to leave until the debt is paid. That is slavery & exploitation.”
Like Hien, many of the children end up working on cannabis farms. The link between child trafficking & the UK’s domestic cannabis industry has been increasing, with Vietnamese children the main group at risk. According to a 2014 report by the NGO AntiSlavery International, almost all potential victims of trafficking linked to cannabis are Vietnamese, & more than 80% are children.
Many of these children are subsequently prosecuted by the UK justice system, despite many being identified as potential victims of trafficking. This has led to Vietnamese children becoming the second-largest ethnic group held in youth detention centres across the UK.
Vietnamese gangs have historically dominated the UK’s £1bn cannabis trade & have been instrumental in the proportion of domestically grown cannabis in Britain rising from 15% in 2005 to about 90% now. While the trade remains enormously profitable – the number of Vietnamese cannabis factories in the UK has grown by 150% in the past 2 years – their grip has been weakened thanks to increased law enforcement & under competition from British growers. Now they are finding new & more efficient ways of doing business.
“In terms of law enforcement, I think we’re about 2 years behind the curve,” says Daniel Silverstone, a criminologist at London Metropolitan University who has written extensively on Vietnamese gangs in the UK.
“Traffickers have changed their modus operandi in recent years in direct response to the attention & interventions of law enforcement. A few years ago it was almost exclusively cannabis farms, but their business interests have now become much more diverse. So we’re seeing an expansion into Scotland & Northern Ireland, the use of nail bars for forced labour & money laundering, & moves into drugs like crystal meth.” This means that children, who are an integral part of the gangs’ business operations, are also now being moved into other areas of exploitation. “As their grip on the domestic cannabis trade slips a little, they are looking to maximise their profits from these children in whatever way they can,” he adds.
The Metropolitan police say that there is now much more awareness of the complexity of tackling the UK’s child trafficking problem but that the closed nature of the Vietnamese community has made things difficult. “What has persistently been a challenge for us is making inroads into this community,” says Phil Brewer, who heads its new human trafficking & kidnap unit. “We usually only find out about a child when we make a raid & find someone in a cannabis factory or nail bar, but often this person has been through multiple forms of exploitation before we reach them.”
Parosha Chandran, a leading human rights barrister & UN expert on trafficking, has represented Vietnamese children charged with cannabis cultivation who have gone through many different trafficking situations before being moved into cannabis farms.
“Trafficked Vietnamese children have rarely faced just one type of forced labour,” she says. “I’ve come across cases where young people have been subjected to a spectrum of exploitative practices. In one of my cases, for example, the child was forced to look after people’s homes & care for their children, when he was just a child himself, then he was taken to work cleaning a nail bar, then moved to another place where he was forced to sew labels on to clothing – & all of this happened before he even arrived in the cannabis factory.”
In March the UK passed its first Modern Slavery Bill, designed to increase the prosecution of traffickers & give better protection to victims of modern slavery in the UK. However, Chandran says that Vietnamese children continue to be prosecuted for cannabis cultivation while their traffickers remain free.
“The Modern Slavery Act’s central focus on prosecution is misguided & its provisions fail to fully protect the rights of trafficked children,” she says. “We as a democratic country need to find durable solutions to ensure these children remain protected from harm for the rest of their lives.”
...
Methods used to lure children from Vietnam to the UK are also becoming increasingly sophisticated, including use of social media. “Vietnamese children are brought to the UK, taken in by Vietnamese adults & put to domestic work,” says Swat Pandi, from the NSPCC’s child trafficking advice centre. “The child feels indebted to the adults for food & shelter & is told they need to return the favour by looking after cannabis plants. These children suffer high levels of neglect, emotional abuse &, in the absence of any protective factors, are highly vulnerable to physical & sexual abuse.”
Despite the government’s pledge to end modern slavery & the UK’s first modern slavery bill, passed in March, Chitty says she has seen no change in the numbers of Vietnamese children coming through her charity’s services. “It’s very much business as usual,” she says. “We still have a problem with immediate safeguarding & appropriate placements for trafficked children. And young people are still being criminalised by the courts.”
Even when a child has been taken out of trafficking & come under the care of a local authority, he or she is likely to return to the control of the traffickers. In 2013, a report by independent thinktank the Centre for Social Justice concluded that 60% of trafficked children in local authority care go missing, nearly a third of them within a week of arrival. Most are never found again. There are increasing reports of children being retrafficked from foster homes or when they have been given asylum status.
“I don’t think we understand the entire enterprise,” says detective inspector Cartwright. “Despite our best intentions I think we’re not offering them anything that would persuade them to stay. Many will get retrafficked because we didn’t offer them a better alternative to what the traffickers are providing.”
Hien is trying to rebuild his life after being given asylum in Scotland, but is struggling to find peace after years of trauma. “I still worry that the traffickers may find me & come to my house. But I know this time that I will ask for help,” he says. “I think they have justice here but I wish they hadn’t kept me in prison for so long. By telling my story, I want people to understand what I have experienced here.”
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