The hard reality of Bangladesh's child laborers

There are 3.45 million child workers in the impoverished nation, says survey.

Muhammad Sohel, 13, is a transport worker in Dhaka. He works 17-18 hour days. (Photo by Stephan Uttom)

Dhaka:  It's Friday morning in Dhaka and 13-year-old Muhammad Sohel waits inside a public transport van to begin another day's work as the driver's assistant.

Sohel's job is to attract passengers and to their collect fares as the vehicle moves through the streets of Bangladesh's capital.

Friday is a day of prayer for Muslims and considered a day off in this Muslim-majority country. For Sohel it means he will have to deal with fewer passengers but the day will be long like most others.

"I start work at 6 a.m. and continue until around midnight," says Sohel, who has worked as a driver's assistant for three years.

Every month, Sohel earns about 7,000 taka ($90). After paying for his own costs, he sends money to his father and two younger siblings who live in a village in central Bangladesh.

Prior to working in the city, Sohel lived with his family and attended a free primary school run by a non-government organization. His life changed drastically in 2012 when his mother died.

"With my mother's death my schooling came to end and I came to Dhaka with my elder brother to support my family," he says.

Sohel says it hurts to see children his age go to school.

"I had a dream of becoming a sportsman … Now, I've ended up becoming a van helper, possibly forever," he says.

The young mechanic

Muhammad Aslam, 14, has been working in a mechanic's workshop in old Dhaka for the past four years.

Aslam's primary job is welding metal and helping to operate a heavy machine that makes auto-parts. His work day begins at 6 a.m. and finishes at around 10 p.m.

Coming from a very poor family, Aslam has never seen inside a classroom.

"Children my age go to school and I also wanted to go to school but my parents couldn't afford it and sent me to work," says Aslam.

Many Bangladeshi children are in a similar situation.

The National Child Labor Survey Report by Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics says that there are 3.45 million active child laborers.

The survey was published last December and it reveals a rise in number of child workers since the last survey conducted in 2003, when there were 3.2 million recorded.

About 1.2 million children are currently engaged in various hazardous forms of child labor including tanneries, mechanical workshops, construction, and warehousing, the survey says. The figure was 1.3 million in 2003.

Over the past decade, the government has managed to make two sectors — the garment and shrimp industries — free of child labor, the report says.

The government in 2012 had aimed to eradicate child labor by 2016. That time frame has been pushed back.

"We must admit that we have failed to fulfill pledges we made. During a regional meeting of South Asian countries in Colombo last December, we reset the goal for eliminating child labor from Bangladesh to 2019," said A.K. Masud, a joint secretary at Bangladesh's Labor and Employment Ministry.

Poverty

Over 30 percent of Bangladesh's 160 million people live on less than $2 per day, making poverty the biggest driver of child labor.

Although primary education is free in state-run schools, poor families who can't manage to reach government facilities, often send their children out to work.

"Families struggle to survive every day and need to find resources for one or two meals a day. Any kind of work, no matter how low the pay, is needed to cover their basic needs," child rights activist Marist Brother Cesar Henriquez told ucanews.com.

"And all members of the family capable enough will work for the family's sake," he says.

Often child workers are badly treated by their employers. Apart from being poorly paid they are at a high risk of physical and psychological abuse. Sometimes the abuse can be fatal.

"Children in the workplace are at the lowest rank of power. They are treated as people with no dignity. Apart from health and safety risks, they face insults, humiliations and physical abuse," says Brother Henriquez.

Due to poverty and lax law enforcement, child labor is widely accepted in Bangladesh society, activists say.

"Instead of keeping children at home, families look for income-generating prospects in sending children to work. People see child laborers everywhere, but they don't consider it a problem," said Emranul Haque Chowdhury, president of Bangladesh Child Rights Forum, a national coalition of child rights groups.

The government and non-government organizations need to take effective action like providing interest-free loans so poor families can start a small business making it possible for them to send their children to school, Chowdhury says.

"More efforts are needed to enforce the law and more campaigning is needed to educate people against child labor," he added.

Church's work for children

To tackle child labor, the Catholic Church and other Christian groups have focused on providing children from poor communities with an education that will provide them with vocational skills.

"Most of our projects focus on economic and livelihood development of poor communities," says Shiba Rozario, senior communication manager at Caritas.

"We incorporate our child protection policies into our projects, encouraging parents to send their children to school, not work," she says.

Caritas Bangladesh has been providing a basic education to over 150,000 unschooled children from disadvantaged and marginalized communities in Bangladesh.

Thanks to funds from the European Union, Caritas is doing this through 1,000 schools set up across the country.

Caritas also runs childcare and skill development centers in eight operational regions where they offer disadvantaged children with an informal education and vocational training.

Source: UCAN

On being fully human

Hate speech makes us forget who we are.

By Father Shay Cullen
Philippines:  The deplorable remarks of Philippine congressman and former world boxing title-holder Manny Pacquiao where he described gay people as "worse than animals" are vile comments that are to be condemned, rejected and repudiated in the strongest terms possible.

He has since apologized.

We as humans have to recognize and respect the dignity of every human person and end discrimination of all kinds whether it be based on race, religion, gender, culture or social and economic status.

As Pope Francis says, "Who are we to judge?"

U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump wants to build a wall to stop Mexican migrants and has insulted and condemned them as criminals and rapists and has called for the banning of Muslims coming into the United States. In response, the pope said "A person who only thinks about building walls and not of bridges is not Christian, this is not Gospel."

Strong words of truth for those super rich who exploit and condemn the poor to lives of hardship and need.

Christianity is based on the example and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth and the most important, outstanding value that he gave his life for was love and service to the poor and the needy and equality among all humans — a value rejected by the secular and materialistic world that has ignored what it means to be human.

They allegedly only know of what it means to be rich. Even children and people in old age with disabilities are disposable based on the economic costs to care for them.

The immoral politicians and their rich supporters who get them into office prefer to abort children, deny medical support to disabled children and allow them to die or pressure the elderly to commit assisted or planned suicide. The tyrants of war are bombing, gassing and starving their fellow human beings into submission and extermination in Syria.

The right of all is to be accepted, respected, supported and free to love and be loved. It's a basic human right to have the opportunity to a life of dignity and economic sustainability. But too many corrupt and immoral and discriminating politicians and billionaires rule the world.

When 62 people have more wealth than half the world's poorest, then we know that democracy has failed and might is declared to be right.

This we have to oppose and we must promote the right of all, especially the poor, to a life free of discrimination and to live in a society based on human dignity and social justice.

As a BBC report puts it, Oxfam found that since 2010 the wealth of the richest 62 people — according to the Forbes' billionaires list — has risen by 44 percent while the wealth of the poorest 3.5 billion people fell by 41 percent. The average annual income of the poorest 10 percent has risen by less than US$3 a year in the past 25 years.

The billionaire Philippine boxer became a congressman — like many other members of the Philippine congress — not on the strength of his wisdom and knowledge and ability to lead and legislate for 100 million Filipinos, but on the mindless hoopla and media blitz surrounding his status as a celebrity. Movie stars have made it to the Philippine congress with ease and have failed to deliver a performance worthy of a good actor.

While there are many good, decent and intelligent representatives in congress where 292 members make up the Lower House and 24 in the Senate, many have little or no ability or insufficient experience and knowledge for the important task. Some are there as representatives — not of the voters whose votes they buy with their money — of the super-rich tycoons and barons with billions to whom they are beholden to.

The votes of legislators in congress are bought and sold to approve laws favoring certain industries, business conglomerates or other foreign-vested interests.

In other words, congress being dominated by millionaires tends to serve the rich rather than the poor. To the filthy rich, the poor are teeming masses of inferior creatures living in the dirt and disease-infested slums where their hovels squat in the towering shadows of the glittering condominiums of the rich.

In the aftermath of Pacquiao's comment, the media should ask the candidates running for office in May to name at least three of the unique attributes of being human, what makes one truly homo sapien?

That question when asked is usually met with a stunned silence. The wise philosopher directing his students to a perfect life advised them to "know thyself." It is attributed to Socrates but to many other Greek philosophers also.

Knowing and being constantly aware of what makes us human and above the other animal species gives us a greater self-knowledge and richer, fuller life and we will come to respect and value every other human life.

The great dictum "Do to others as you would want them to do to you" is a guiding light and to live a life of dignity we must know and be aware that no person is lower or "worse than animals." We are spiritual beings endowed with unique attributes and abilities. You have just to ask yourself what they are.

Irish Father Shay Cullen, SSC, established the Preda Foundation in Olongapo City in 1974 to promote human rights and the rights of children, especially victims of sex abuse.

Source: UCAN

Cyber-crime destroys children’s lives

Failure to implement laws against online child abuse is same as aiding, abetting it.

Gerard Peter Scully of Australia, right, accused of raping and trafficking two girls in the Philippines, leaves a court handcuffed to another inmate after his arraignment in Cagayan de Oro City, on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao last June 16. (Photo by AFP)

By Father Shay Cullen
Manila: 

It is the most disturbing crime that you will ever read about when young children, only 6 years old and above, are taken to a room in a rich suburb or a squatter's shack in a slum and made to perform sex acts before a camera linked to the Internet.

This is massive criminal business growing by the day. Despite the very slow Internet connections throughout the Philippines in general, the cybersex operators and the sex dens that show child pornography seem to have the fastest broadband speed of all.

Inside deals with Internet service providers might account for this, but one thing is certain — it is wrecking havoc with the lives of thousands of small children.

During these sessions young boys and girls are coerced or lured into doing sex acts for foreigners who view them from abroad for payment. Many children are traumatized and disturbed for life.

The case of Australian Gerard Peter Scully, on trial in Cagayan de Oro City for allegedly sexually assaulting children on camera and killing one while videotaping it before selling it over the Internet, is perhaps the most heinous case.

A charity protecting children worldwide, Terres de Hommes, helped police identify and arrest pedophiles who are using the Internet to abuse children and share the shocking images.

The international demand is great. A few years ago the charity posted online a video of a computer generated 10-year old child named "Sweetie," who looked so real that as many as 20,000 pedophiles worldwide tried to contact her and made sexual overtones.

Philippine laws are plenty to combat these crimes against children. However, government officials struggle to catch criminals and child traffickers who are smart in hiding their activities.

In the Philippines, the courts are quick to convict journalists, writers, and commentators when accused of libel, however notorious cases of cybercrime, child pornography, child abuse and human trafficking go unpunished.

Victims saved by social workers of the children's rights group, the Preda Foundation, tell of how they were recruited, given money, tricked into debt and then coerced to perform acts. They tell how widespread it is among youth and that many view the sex acts on smart phones.

Other youth perform and film sex acts among themselves and schoolmates and illegally share it with others.

People are also lured online to believe that they have a girlfriend or boyfriend in a chat room and are persuaded to show themselves in sexual poses. Then they are blackmailed to pay money to the extortionist not to post the images online. Some young people have committed suicide as a result.

While the Philippine 2009 Anti-Child Pornography Act forbids all of these criminal acts, it is not implemented by Internet server providers in the Philippines.

The law specifically states that filters and blocking software must be used to prevent child pornography websites from being accessed and for any indecent images of children being transmitted. But this is not being done.

The National Bureau of Investigation has special powers under the Anti-Cybercrime Act allowing it to obtain data from Internet service providers so they can act if there is illegal content passing through the provider’s computers, yet this illegal content goes on unimpeded.

Nongovernmental child protection organizations have challenged Internet server providers to confirm they are complying with the law but are ignored.

Telephone and Internet companies are violating the law and other laws covering inappropriate and offensive content if they do not have these filters in place.

Impunity for crimes is common in the Philippines especially for the wealthy and those well connected. Money passes hands and anything is possible. When criminals, despite there being strong evidence against them, can walk free then we can see a serious problem with the legal system.

The corruption within law enforcement and a weak political will encourages international pedophiles and child pornographers to come to the Philippines and abuse children and make money from it. It's a billion dollar business worldwide. An estimated 100,000 children are lured or forced into sex acts on web cams and child pornography prostitution.

Silence about child crime is to allow and even approve it.

Irish Father Shay Cullen, SSC, established the Preda Foundation in Olongapo City in 1974 to promote human rights and the rights of children, especially victims of sex abuse.

Source; UCAN

Saint Francis Regis Clet Lazarist Missionary (1748-1820)

Saint Francis Regis Clet

Lazarist Missionary
(1748-1820)

Saint Francis Regis Clet

Born in 1748, Francis was the son of a merchant of Grenoble in France; he was the tenth of fifteen children. The family was deeply religious, and several of its members were already consecrated to God. Francis attended the Jesuit college at Grenoble, and in 1769 entered the novitiate of the Lazarists, a missionary Community founded by Saint Vincent de Paul. He was ordained a priest in 1773, then taught moral theology in a diocesan seminary. In 1789 he was named director of the Lazarist Seminary in Paris, but was obliged by the fury of the revolution in that year, with the entire Congregation, to abandon the mother house.

Saint Francis exposed his desire to be a foreign missionary to his superior, and was sent by him to China in 1791; there he labored for 28 years, entirely alone for several years in a vast district. Death had deprived him of his two brother-priests. Persecutions in 1812 and 1818 destroyed his church and schoolhouse, and he himself escaped several times, as it were by miracle, from searching parties. But he was finally betrayed by a Chinese Christian for a large sum of money, and seized in June of 1819.

For five weeks he endured cruel tortures in total silence, then was transferred to another prison, where he found a fellow Chinese Lazarist from whom he could receive the Sacraments. His death sentence was pronounced in January of 1820, and he died in February of that year, strangled while tied to a stake erected like a cross.

Indian Jesuit appointed to US university post

Father Xavier Savarimuthu's research will focus on public health impact of climate change.

Father Xavier Savarimuthu

India:  Indian Father Xavier Savarimuthu, S.J., has been appointed the Donald I. MacLean Chair for the spring semester at Jesuit-run St. Joseph University in Philadelphia, Pa.

An environmental scientist, Father Savarimuthu has been published in international journals and has presented lectures on water and public health worldwide from the Philippines to Stockholm.

Father Savarimuthu arrives at St. Joseph’s from St. Xavier's College in Kolkata, where, since 2009, he served as head of the department of environmental studies. He earned his doctorate in environmental science at the University of Kalyani in India in 2006 and specialized his doctoral research on the impact of arsenic-contaminated drinking water on public and environmental health.

"The future we want for our well-being is going through a sea-change due to human and natural activities," said Father Savarimuthu.

This semester, Father Savarimuthu will focus his research on climate change's effects on water disasters and public health in tropical countries. He is also teaching the environmental science course, "Environment and Public Health."

Source: UCAN

ROBERT JOHN KENNEDY: Saint John de Britto Martyr (1647-1693)

ROBERT JOHN KENNEDY: Saint John de Britto Martyr (1647-1693): Saint John de Britto Martyr (1647-1693) Saint John de Britto Don Pedro II of Portugal, when a child, had am...

Saint John de Britto Martyr (1647-1693)

Saint John de Britto

Martyr
(1647-1693)

Saint John de Britto

Don Pedro II of Portugal, when a child, had among his little pages a modest boy of rich and princely parents. The young John de Britto — for that was his name — had much to bear from his careless-living companions, to whom his holy life was a reproach. A severe illness made him turn for aid to Saint Francis Xavier, a Saint well loved by the Portuguese; and when he recovered, in answer to his prayers, his mother clothed him for a year in the tunic worn in those days by the Jesuit Fathers. From that time John's heart burned to follow the example of the Apostle of India.
When he was fifteen years old, he entered on December 17, 1662, the Lisbon novitiate of the Society of Jesus, and eleven years later, despite the determined opposition of his family and the court, he left with twenty-seven Jesuit co-disciples for Madura. Blessed John's mother, when she had learned that her son was going to India, used all her influence to prevent him from leaving his own country, and persuaded the Papal Nuncio to intervene. But the future martyr declared firmly: God, who called me from the world into religious life, now calls me from Portugal to India. Not to respond to my vocation as I ought, would be to provoke the justice of God. As long as I live, I shall never cease to desire passage to India. His ardent desire was fulfilled.
He labored in the Jesuit province of Madura, which included seven missions, preaching, converting, and baptizing multitudes, at the cost of privations, hardships, and persecutions. In 1682, struck by his success and his sanctity, his Jesuit Superiors entrusted to him the government of the entire province. To the wars of the local kings, which created ravages, disorder, pillage and death for the people, famine, pestilence, and floods came to add to the devastation of the unhappy land. Both the days and the nights of Saint John were dedicated to bringing aid to the poor Christians and pagans afflicted by so many disasters. At times he took charge of entire populations which the wars had caused to migrate. All the Christians were pursued by bands of robbers, paid by the ruling elements to prevent any increase in the influence of the disciples of Christ. Saint John's miracles helped him, and God preserved him from the snares of his many enemies.
After four years of this major responsibility, amid the anarchy which reigned, he was seized, tortured, and nearly massacred by the pagans, then banished from the local states. His Superiors sent him back to Europe to concern himself with the affairs of the missions of India. They wrote of him: He has affronted every peril to save souls and extend the kingdom of Jesus Christ, for whose love he has been captured several times and condemned to frightful torments. He preached in Portugal at the court and in the various dioceses and universities, without ever forgetting that he was a missionary of Madura, for which he recruited many generous workers for the Gospel vineyard.
He finally went back to the land of his choice in 1690 with twenty-five Jesuits, of whom several died during the voyage. The king of Portugal took every means to obtain his return to Portugal, if not as tutor to his son, which post he had declined, then as bishop of one of the Portuguese sees, but the Saint was occupied in baptizing thousands of catechumens and instructing the pagans whom grace had touched. The brahmans were alarmed once more and conjured his death; he was tracked everywhere, but the envoys could not take him for some time. Eventually they succeeded, and his great enemy, a local ruler, exiled him with orders to imprison him and kill him secretly. But his execution by decapitation was carried out in the sight of a multitude of Christians who knew of his coming martyrdom, and who saw him pray in an apparent ecstasy, which checked the executioner's courage for a time. They buried him and did not cease to pray at the tomb of this second Apostle to India. He was canonized in 1947 by Pope Pius XII.