Earthquake orphans sold into sex trade

The Sunday Times October 23, 2005

Six-year-old Aisha loves the orange blouse and jeans given to her by the kind woman who rescued her from the chaos of the Kashmir earthquake. She snuggles up to her, trying to forget the devastation of her village home and the deaths of her parents 15 days ago.

What Aisha does not know is that the woman, Kausar, is a prostitute who has bought her from relatives for 50,000 rupees (£500) and plans to put her to work in the sex trade as soon as she reaches puberty.

Aisha is not alone. According to welfare agencies, many of the hundreds of girls and boys orphaned by the earthquake are being targeted by gangs intent on turning them into prostitutes or street beggars. Other children are being sold for adoption by their parents in acts of desperation prompted by the destruction of homes and livelihoods.

The Pakistani government is so alarmed by the threat to vulnerable children that it has placed armed guards at all hospitals and ordered that no child is released to anyone until proof of kinship has been verified. A complete ban on adoption was announced after hospitals and emergency shelters were besieged by people offering to take Kashmiri orphans. Staff at the PIMS hospital in Islamabad say a number of people posing as relatives were caught trying to abduct children. But according to Manan Rana, a child protection officer working for Unicef, the United Nations children’s fund, in Muzaffarabad, near the epicentre of the earthquake, local government in Kashmir has collapsed and officials are unable to provide protection.

No official appears to have noticed when Aisha disappeared. After her home in a village called Arja was wrecked, she was taken to her grandmother’s house in the nearby city of Bagh. Kausar, her new “carer”, who claims the little girl is a distant relative, heard about her plight from family members. “Her grandmother was too old to look after the girl. I went to Bagh on October 12 and I got her very cheap. A pimp from Lahore might have paid 100,000 rupees,” she said. “I will provide a good education for her. I would not like her to be a cheap, third-class prostitute. I do care about the girl. I will take good care of her, and then reap the benefit. I’m providing for her protection and I don’t care what Allah thinks.”

Kausar said she was earning £200 a month from prostitution, but could earn thousands more from Aisha. She will sell the girl’s virginity to the highest bidder when she reaches puberty and expects to get up to £2,000 for that alone. “She could start work as soon as she has her first period,” Kausar said. If Aisha refuses to work as a prostitute, she will be sold to a pimp, Kausar said. She may sell Aisha sooner if she is offered £1,000, but she would not pass her on to whites or non-Muslims, she said, and she would not consider any intervention by this newspaper.

By contrast the family of Summaya, 7, managed to escape the destruction of their house in Muzaffarabad, but her parents now plan to sell her for adoption so that they can buy a new one. Her mother, Rafia, 38, said they were hoping a good family would pay £2,500 for her and would allow them to visit her. “My husband is a daily wage labourer and he’s been selling blood for 400 rupees (£4) a pint,” said Rafia. “If our problems are resolved, we will not sell the girl. I love her. I know another family will never be able to give the love a real mother can, but we have to compromise.”

Mohammad Hassan Mangi, director of Pakistan’s National Commission for Child Welfare and Development, said the government had set aside funds to make sure every family affected could rebuild their home. He asked to be put in contact with Summaya’s family. “The government is giving $10,000 (about £5,650) compensation for each person killed in the quake. If this woman is affected, she will definitely get a home,” he said.

For Aisha, however, there is little anyone can do. After being interviewed, Kausar vanished into Islamabad’s vice world, taking Aisha’s future with her. The first of three Chinook helicopters sent by Britain to help ferry supplies to remote areas of the earthquake zone left RAF Odiham in Hampshire yesterday. The two other aircraft are due to to be airlifted out today aboard C-17 transport planes.

The rising death toll

Confirmed deaths: 51,139
Injured: 70,000  

By Dean Nelson, Islamabad
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1838452,00.html

Unrest, Arrests, Amid murder Trial of Turkish Police

AFP - ANKARA / 24 October 2005

Demonstrators clashed with police Monday in a western Turkish town where four policemen are on trial for the murder of a 12-year-old Kurdish boy and his father, the Anatolia news agency reported.

About 40 people who wanted to observe the trial were denied access to the court of assizes in Eskisehir, the agency reported. The group then threw stones at riot police, who made a dozen arrests. The chairman of Turkey's human rights association, Yusuf Alatas, was among those prevented from entering the courtroom, Anatolia reported. Security in Eskisehir was beefed up ahead of the trial. Armoured vehicles were brought in from nearby towns.

The trial concerns the death of Ahmet Kaymaz and his son Ugur, who was 12 when they were killed in front of their house in Kiziltepe, a town in the Kurd-majority province of Mardin.

Police have said that the two were killed during an operation targeting armed Kurdish rebels. Neighbours and local human rights groups insist the two were unarmed civilians. A parliamentary enquiry concluded there had been "serious negligence" by the police and that Kaymaz and his son could have been apprehended peacefully.

The trial of the four policemen opened in Mardin but was moved to Eskisehir at the request of defence lawyers who said they feared for their clients' safety. The case is viewed as a test of Turkey's undertaking to respect the rule of law at a time when it is negotiating its accession to the European Union.

Breaking the silence

04 December 2004 - KurdishMedia.com - By Welat Lezgin

Currently, the Turkish media is busy trying to come to terms with the execution of a 12-year old Kurdish boy and his father by Turkish security forces. Shocked columnists are asking how a little boy can be executed in front of his house and seem unable to come to terms with how such things can happen in their country on the eve of launching negotiations with the European Union for possible membership. In fact, some columnists seem more upset with the timing of the killing, coinciding with a vital period in Turkey’s EU bid, rather than the fact that such a horrendous event has taken place.

Generally speaking though, the execution of the 12-year old Kurdish boy Ugur Kaymaz and his father Ahmet Kaymaz (31) in Kiziltepe near Mardin in Turkish Kurdistan on the 21st of November by Turkish security forces has received certain attention by the Turkish media. One should not complain, because as far as extra-judicial killings and ’disappearances’ of Kurds go in Turkey, the fact that such acts are even mentioned and criticised for that matter, must be a seen as a great leap indeed. And who says Turkey is not changing?

While the Turkish columnists are coming to terms with the “shock” of this event, which might suggest to them that “such things might have happened in the past as well”, let us look into what it meant for Ugur Kaymaz and Ahmet Kaymaz to be “first class Turkish citizens of Kurdish origin” in Turkey.

The news of the cold-blooded execution of Ugur and his father reached Turkish newspapers only a few weeks after the news that the remains of 11 executed Kurdish villagers had been found in a mass grave in Kulp, near Diyarbakir. The mass grave contained the remains of 11 executed Kurdish villagers who had been detained by Turkish security forces in 1993 and never seen again. Unlike Ugur’s case, excluding a few exceptions, the news of the mass grave in the Turkish media disappeared before it even emerged. Similarly, the news that the 19-year old Kurdish shepherd, Fevzi Can in Semdinli, near Hakkari, had been killed by security forces emerged at the same time as the news of Ugur’s execution, but received no attention either. But one should not complain I suppose. At least Ugur’s case is being heard to a certain extent and shatters the Turkish media’s consciously selective amnesia, unlike the cases of thousands of other Kurdish children who were executed, villagers who were buried in mass graves or shepherds who were slaughtered like the sheep they were herding, in Turkey’s attempt to carry out ethnic cleansing against Kurds under the banner of fighting “terrorists”.

At first, there was the announcement that “two terrorists had been killed in clashes and one wounded.” Later on, the Governor of Mardin, through the Anatolia news agency, stated that “terrorists” had attacked the Kiziltepe gendarmerie headquarters and the soldiers had responded by killing the two “terrorists” when they “did not heed the calls to stop.” The final official version was that the incident had taken place in a house, which “belonged to a man who had been convicted in the past for membership of a terrorist organisation.” The news wires quoted the governor saying that “the residents had alerted security forces that armed men were seen in the area” and when the security forces had arrived at the scene a “shoot-out” had erupted when “the two men who were spotted outside the house, opened fire”. According to the governor, the two men were “armed with two AK-47 assault rifles, two hand grenades and six cartridge clips.”

It soon emerged, however, that those the governor called "terrorists" were none other than Ugur Kaymaz, and his father Ahmet Kaymaz, who had been killed outside their house. Their bodies had been riddled with bullets from a close range; 13 bullets were found in Ugur’s tiny body while 8 were found in his father’s. Reports emerged that the police had prevented the emergency services from examining the bodies; as if to make sure they were dead. The ambulance crew was quoted as saying, “We were only able to check the pulse of the one in the front, and police did not let us go any further.”

The Mardin branch of the Human Rights Association in a report after a fact-finding mission concluded that there had been no signs of a clash taking place as the authorities had argued and that the bodies had been fired upon from a close range. The report argued that no bullets could be found anywhere in the surroundings except in the bodies and that weapons that were found near the bodies were planted there.

Ugur’s mother, Makbule Kaymaz, in her statement also contradicted the official version of the event: “My husband Ahmet is a [lorry] driver. He wanted to start his preparations before setting out on his trip the following day. He left the house to put a pillow and a duvet in the lorry. Ugur was helping his father, running around him. My dear son had his slippers on. Suddenly when I heard gunshots I ran out. When I looked, I saw that a police officer had bent my son’s head forward and was firing. My son had blood everywhere. My husband was lying next to him. What did they want from us? They want to present a small kid as terrorist.”

The fact that Ugur and his father still had their slippers on is revealing in itself. The security officials have so far not explained how a boy of 12 could handle and apparently fire with a Kalashnikov weighing 3 kilos 600 grams that was “found” near his body. The officials have also not answered why a father and a son launched a “terrorist attack” with their slippers on? Furthermore, the officials have not explained how a 12 year-old boy both prepared a “terrorist attack” with his father and managed to attend school everyday? More importantly, as the people of Kiziltepe have asked, which father would risk the life of his 12-year old son to clash with 100 police officers?

What is interesting is the silence of the government on this matter. Unlike the silence of the Turkish government on Ugur’s case, in the case of a little Palestinian girl whose body was also riddled with bullets beyond recognition, the AKP government went to all lengths and heavily criticised Israel’s “state terror”. The Fallujah and Tal Afar operations were described as ”genocide” and “the massacre of our brethren.” In Ugur’s and the case of the mass grave of Kurdish villagers, the silence is deafening.

Turkey’s true commitment to implement its much-lauded democratisation reforms can in the coming months be judged by its stance towards this event. If the authorities fully pursue this case and bring justice to Makbule Kaymaz and the people of Kiziltepe, then Turkey’s efforts can slowly be taken seriously. However, if the authorities continue to do what they have been doing for years, protecting the perpetrators and persecuting the victims, then Turkey’s so called democracy will always lack credibility.

Read more: Urgent appeal for support of Makbule Kaymaz (by IFWF)