there are rarely consequences for those who cause them harm.
His programme contains some scenes which viewers may find upsetting.
For losing a broom, this ten-year-old girl says she was
beaten and her hands were burnt. This 16-year-old boy died allegedly
after being assaulted again and again. Their horrific stories
highlight the plight of some children working as servants in the
homes of the rich and powerful in Pakistan.
But they are desperately poor families often choose not to pursue
the cases.
Meaning those accused of abuse regularly go unpunished.
Wherever you go in Pakistan, you can see young children working to
support their families. But others are less visible. Working behind
closed doors in a dark unable with. -- in upmarket neighbourhoods. Tens
of thousands of children are sent by their impoverished families to work
as domestic servants in homes across Pakistan. Some of them are aged as
young as eight or nine years old. And in most of the country, there is
simply no law whatsoever preventing anyone from hiring them. This
ten-year-old girl is learning to be a child again.He is very fat...
(LAUGHS)
a child again.He is very fat... (LAUGHS).She used to work hundreds
of miles away from her family in the home of a judge and his wife in the
capital Islamabad. These pictures of her taken in late 2016 caused
outrage on social media. Tayyaba is currently being looked after at a
children's home run by a charity. Sitting with her best friend and her
carers, she agreed to talk to us.
The couple employing her have denied mistreating Tayyaba. As she told me
she was beaten by the wife just for losing a broom.
The children here are divided into houses, each with a specific carer,
or mother, to look after them. Azmat has been helping Tayyaba recover
from her ordeal.
Tayyaba's best friend in the home is another former child made, Fatimah.
Slightly older and more confident, she has taken Tayyaba under her
wing.
Tayyaba grew up in a small village about 200 miles south of Islamabad.
I went to meet her father to find out why the ten-year-old had to
leave home to go and work for a judge and his wife.
Children are not legally allowed to work in most businesses in Pakistan,
but despite calls from campaigners, the vast majority of the country has
no ban on them working inside homes. There are thought to be over 250,000
children working as domestic servants. Some child maids and up
working in homes alongside their mothers, or find jobs in their own
neighbourhood. But for others it is much more organised. There are
employment agents act as middlemen, and we are on our way now to meet
one of them. Irshad Bibi runs an employment agency on the outskirts
of Islamabad. She has no shortage of clients looking for domestic
workers. And no shortage of families volunteering their children.
Some people would say these children should not be working, they should
be in school.
Amidst the tangled streets of the historic centre of Lahore, we
discovered one of the most shocking examples of what can happen to
children who are domestic servants. This 16-year-old died while working
in the home of a local politician and her daughter stop his uncle was
the first from the family to recover the body.
The home belongs to local politician from the ruling party. She was never
accused of any wrongdoing, also living there was her daughter. Both
women deny abusing the boy and say he died from an infection. But his
12-year-old sister also worked there. She said she and her brother
were regularly beaten by the politician's daughter.
The police registered a case against the daughter for killing the boy and
assaulting his sister last July. The postmortem on his body revealed he
had been beaten repeatedly with a blunt instrument. 25 injuries. The
lawyer who represented his father claims the evidence was clear-cut.
He agreed to take on the case for free, as long as Akhter's father
decided to pursue a trial and not taken out of court settlement.
Before the trial had even really started, Akhter's father announced
he did not want to pursue the case. Most criminal cases in Pakistan are
not filed by the state but by the victims or their families. That
means they have the right to drop the charges and to reach a
settlement. Or they have to do is tell the court that they forgive a
suspect in the name of God. Usually the real reason, though, is that
they are being paid off. I visited Akhter's family home last October.
They were building an extension. According to some relatives with
money from a settlement. Although they denied receiving everything. At
the time, they refuse to talk to me. But now I am my weight back to meet
the head of the village, who says he was a witness to at some
negotiations. Muhammad Ali says representatives of the family keen
to see him and Akhter's father.
It is hard to pin down exactly what have and next. Different people
allege different things about who received money to drop the case. But
none of it can be proved and the family denied paying anybody
anything. I wanted to speak to Akhter's father directly.
This is where Akhter's body now lies. Largely forgotten amidst the
negotiations, squabbling, and accusations of money. It would be
easy to blame these families for seeming to give up on the chance of
justice for their dead children in exchange for a few thousand dollars.
But when you see the kind of poverty that they live in, then perhaps it
becomes completely understandable. The problem is that if no one is
ever punished for these crimes, they will never stop. I wanted to ask
about the allegations but could not get an answer. Forzia lives just up
the road here. We have had no response to our allegations. We have
been told that at the time of Akhter's death, Forzia was working
as a some sort of teacher. And because there was no conviction,
there is nothing preventing her from working with children again.
Forzia's mother, who we have been told that with her at the time, even
though she was not accused of any abuse, is still a member of the
Regional Assembly. I managed to track down. So she was just saying
that she was out of breath and she is a heart patient and she can
barely breathe. Obviously didn't want to enter our questions. But it
is really hard to understand how she can live in the same house as her
daughter and his young boy Akhter and not know what is going on. That
is what we wanted to ask about. In the case of this 10-year-old, there
was a conviction. Before the trial, the police were told that she had
been beaten. When she came to give evidence, she initially confidently
repeated the claims, but under cross-examination, she contradicted
herself and withdrew them. The court apparently noticed a change in her
behaviour. In note here, it says that whatever the defence lawyers
were asking she responded with a simple yes sir. Her father, would
help his lawyer, had tried to get the charges dropped. But in this
instance, the court refused to allow them to do so.
As long as there are poor families in poor villages, there are likely
to be child maids. Ushad and one of the agents are going south of
Islamabad to meet potential recruits.
This family say they want to send their ten-year-old daughter to work
in Islamabad. A few weeks later, I get a call from his father, and says
he wants to tell me the truth.
He claims his lawyer was paid for by the suspects and convinced him to
try and drop the case.
It is hard to tell what really happened, but his account was
corroborated by a second source involved in the negotiations. The
father's for the lawyer says the claims are completely untrue. --
former. And that the father testified in court that he was not
under any pressure. The lawyer representing the defendant and his
wife said the claims were malicious and false. There were convicted of
neglecting an injured child, and each was sentenced to one year in
jail. They were acquitted of all other charges, including assaulting
them. There remain free was the appeal the verdict. But there is a
Jasper happy ending. When she grows up, she wants to be a teacher.
Because she says children should be in school. -- a chance