Author: Asim Tanveer
Publication: Homepage of Neo-Hindus
Date: March 20, 1996
URL: http://www.geocities.com/fmqu/captive.html
Pakistani authorities freed 42 children
Wednesday who had been kept in chains or ropes at a Muslim religious school
near the city of Multan in Punjab province, a local police officer said.
The raid followed one on another
Koranic school in Multan Tuesday in which 22 chained children aged eight
to 14 were released.
Mian Mukhtar Ahmed, in charge of
a police station in the Makhdoom Rashid area east of Multan, told Reuters
his men had swooped on the Jamia Ghosia school and freed 42 captive children
in a morning raid.
Police arrested one man on the spot
but the superintendant of the religious school had fled earlier with the
keys to the shackles. The chains had to be sawn off the children at the
police station, witnesses said.
Riaz Memon, Assistant Commissioner
of Multan, told Reuters earlier the children released in Tuesday's raid
had been taken to a private welfare center run by the Edhi Trust.
He said legal proceedings had been
started against Maulvi Hafez Amir Ahmad, the cleric in charge of the school
raided Tuesday, and some parents who allegedly agreed to their children
being chained.
The English-language Nation newspaper
reported that some parents had even paid for their children to be shackled
at the Madrasa Siddiqia Talim-al-Koran (Koranic instruction) school.
"Some of the recovered children
told us that a few had been in chains for more than a year," Memon said.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan
drew attention in its 1995 report to the strict discipline imposed at some
Koranic schools. "Many even kept the children in chains round the clock
so that they... were not exposed to any outside influences, which were
all regarded as evil," it said.
