Justice for Zohra

We have another tragedy involving a child domestic worker, another uproar over social media and yet another Twitter hashtag demanding justice for a little girl. Eight-year-old Zohra was employed at the home of a wealthy couple in Bahria Town Rawalpindi. While cleaning the cage of her employers’ pet exotic parrots, Zohra accidentally set them free. As ‘punishment’, she was beaten and kicked by the husband-wife duo. She was taken to hospital in an unconscious condition and died soon after being placed on a ventilator. Hospital staff suggest she had been brutally kicked and beaten, and also that marks show a possibility of previous sexual assault. Tragically, Zohra’s story is not unique. Last year, the body of Uzma, 16 years old, was found dumped in a canal in Lahore apparently after being murdered by her employers for taking a single bite of food from the plate of those who had hired her. Before that, in 2016, Tayyaba, aged about nine years old, was brutally beaten and tortured by her employer who was himself a judge. He and his wife were sentenced to jail, though later the sentences were cut short. Tayyaba was sent back to her family who, not surprisingly, ‘forgave’ her employers.

Such incidents display one of the ugliest sides of our society in which our decent-looking and so-called educated men and women cross all boundaries of barbarism and prove themselves to be highly uncivilized. This proves a complete failure of the state to first eliminate extreme poverty that forces destitute parents to send their children to work rather than to schools. Second, it shows a failure of our education system that churns out even doctors and judges – among many other professions – as individuals who are devoid of all considerations for other human beings, especially children who are at their mercy. Third, such incidents also testify to an inadequate legislative framework to prevent child labour and punish those who indulge in such practice, and then torture and kill innocent souls.

It is about time appropriate legislation is enacted and enforced against child labour and such criminals are given exemplary punishments rather than allowing the parents of the victims to forgive the killers in exchange of some money. Zohra committed no crime. She was after all only a child, a very young child. She should not have died. Like the others killed in rich homes before her, our duty now should be to ensure there are no other victims of such brutality and such inhumanity in a class-based society which often considers the lives of the poor as having no meaning and no value.