The Mind Creative NOV-Dec 2016

In one episode of the incessant Israeli-Arab conflict, about a
decade ago newspapers published pictures of Israeli children
cheerfully writing messages on bombs and artillery shells ready
to be fired on villages in south Lebanon. Political parties and
movements often put children at the forefront of rallies and
demonstrations to push their own demands, to which the
children can barely relate, if at all.
States brainwash children to be “loyal” citizens, whatever
that means. We definitely know what it means in North Korea,
where malnourished children sing in praise of the “dear leader”.
Mao Zedong organized teenagers into his dreaded “Red Guards”
who ripped the fabric of Chinese society.
But these are the mental forms of the exploitation of
children. There is also the crude physical and sexual abuse of
poor children, rampant in the Third World.
In the mid-1990s the sexual abuse of domestic servants in
the Gulf countries made headlines when Sarah Balabagan, a
15-year Philippine girl, was jailed in the UAE for stabbing to
death her Arab master who had raped her. The international,
cultural and judicial aspects of the affair generated huge
publicity, but the ill treatment of domestic servants from poorer
countries in relatively rich countries and within their own
countries is widespread and quite well-known.
In the late 1990s, there was the case of Shokina, a runaway
Bangladeshi maid in Kuwait, one of the few that get reported.
When interviewed by a journalist in the Bangladeshi embassy in
Kuwait, her face was covered in bruises, her arms had long
claw-like scars down to her wrists and burns from cigarette butts
dotted the back of her hands. She had been kicked in the back,
punched in the head, scratched on the face, pinched, pulled and
spat on by her mistress.
In a welcome move, the Indian government has just
announced a ban on children under 14 working as domestic
servants. The new law also bans children from teashops,
restaurants, hotels, motels, resorts, spas or other recreational
centres.
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