Professor Daizal Samad
THE Honourable Guyana Minister of Public Security has come down hard on human trafficking. The move is excellent and timely, and if the policy is implemented efficiently, we should see a dramatic decrease in this serious crime.
We ought always to bear in mind that any well-designed policy should contain strategies of coherent and coordinated implementation — action!
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It is not infrequent to read or see or hear about underage girls being lured or taken to far-flung places on the pretext of getting jobs as waitresses, cooks, and so on. They end up being victims of crimes of rape, being bought and sold. The inverse is also true: young girls from the interior (especially Amerindian girls) being lured out to the coast on the pretext of “jobs.” This governmental initiative should put an end to those kinds of human trafficking. Victims should be provided relief (safe housing, food, educational opportunities, jobs), and the perpetrators should face severe penalties.
There is another and more insidious form of human trafficking as well: the “matrimonial” selling of underage girls, especially to boys or men of legal age. This is done in the full face of often unquestioning society. There are ceremonies held upon this trafficking, and the sale of young girls is final and forever. All of this yields a lifetime of misery and enslavement, and all is done in the name of some tradition or religion, or some other oppression.
How many times do we have to witness, and how much genius must we have to see, the damage — girls ripped out of schools by the same men to whom they are sold like cheap beef? And we, like the spawn of Sodom and Gomorrah, wonder why suicides happen in these circumstances. There have been several suicides recently that are linked to “romantic” relationships. Many involved underage girls. There are so many girls who are pregnant at twelve! Some fellow kills himself. It is all horrible, but the relationship has had the “approval” and “permission” of “parents” to be “together.” But this “permission” and “approval” is given by parents for a child to be a victim of statutory rape!! Who, then, is culpable and thusly comes under the firm hand of the law?
Why is it that no one seems to see the warning signals to murder and domestic violence and marital rape? And the end is either suicide or irreversible psychological damage. We could build a million psychiatric hospitals, but, as a nation, we need to root out this disease, which begins with the low premium to which we hold our girls and women. Pills and feeble chats will not do it, especially when the victims are taken to these hospitals by the very people who are the culprits in the first place.
No parent should be allowed to sell children! No man should be allowed to buy a child. The law must take its firm grip and handcuff these criminals.
Incidentally (or not so incidentally), I have been floating the idea of a Special Victims Unit since 2010. Various ministers and senior officials have taken this up with words at various forums, but we need concrete action in more rapid fashion.
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