Pakistan horrified by alleged child sex abuse blackmail ring

[webfact]

Pakistan horrified by alleged child sex abuse blackmail ring
By ASIF SHAHZAD

HUSSAIN KHAN WALA, Pakistan (AP) — In this dusty town near Pakistan's border with India, families kept quiet for years about the blackmail gang that locals believe filmed some 270 children being sexually abused, fearful the videos could appear online or sold in markets for as little as 50 cents.

Those living in Hussain Khan Wala say the gang forced children at gunpoint to be abused or drugged them into submission. It was only after one family spoke up that others rose against the gang, with police later arresting 11 suspects.

But as Pakistan recoils in horror at the scope of the abuse, the case shows the dangers here facing poor children, many of whom work as domestic servants and face abuse at the hands of their employers. It also raises questions about how such a gang could operate for years, with some questioning Pakistan's police and political elite.

"They destroyed me," one victim said. "They destroyed my family. They just killed me"

The Associated Press does not identify victims of sexual abuse.

The gang likely began targeting its victims years earlier, Kasur district police chief Rai Babar Saeed told the AP. Saeed said police already confiscated some 30 videos, nearly all of which included sexual abuse of children as young as 12. The gang then used the videos to extort money from families, threatening to release them publicly and shame their children and their relatives, Saeed said.

If a family couldn't pay, there were some cases in which a victim would be forced to find another child to be filmed being abused, said Latif Sarra, a lawyer representing some victims. He, as well as other town residents interviewed by the AP, said the gang filmed at least 270 children being abused. Saeed said he didn't know of that many children being involved.

"It was a gang that has 15 to 21 members. These people have been ... raping boys and girls under the age of 15 and then filming them since 2009," Sarra said. "It is a case of extortion. It is their business."

Saeed said authorities began investigating the case in June after receiving a complaint, but many families declined to press charges, even after officers drove through the town of Hussain Khan Wala, asking over loudspeakers for victims to come forward. But on Aug. 4, Pakistani media reported that hundreds of protesters descended on a Kusar police station and briefly fought with officers, demanding investigators take action.

On Monday, a court in Kasur ordered five suspects in the case held without bail. Six others also have been arrested in connection to the case.

Haseem Amir, accused by police of being one of the ringleaders in the gang, shouted to journalists from lockup: "We have got nothing to do with it!"

"We have been trapped!" Amir yelled. A lawyer for him and the others arrested could not be immediately reached.

The allegations have dominated Pakistani newspapers and television stations. Many compared it to the case of Javed Iqbal, a man in Punjab's provincial capital, Lahore, who one day in 1999 confessed to kidnapping, sexually abusing and dissolving the bodies of some 100 children in acid. Families identified their children from scraps of clothing left behind or by the snapshots he took of each of them before their death. Later sentenced to death, Iqbal killed himself in prison in October 2001.

Such horrors, while sickening to this Muslim-majority country of 180 million, happen as children remain vulnerable. Child labor is common in Pakistan, and children as young as 5 are "bought, sold, rented or kidnapped and placed in organized begging rings, domestic servitude, small shops, brick kilns and prostitution," the U.S. State Department said last year. Pakistan also has a huge population of at-risk Afghan refugees, though those involved in this blackmail ring appear all to be from Pakistan, officials said.

The abuse allegations also carry political implications in Pakistan, whose young democracy remains challenged by Islamic extremists and a history of military coups. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's younger brother, Shahbaz, is Punjab province's chief minister and rumors already have circulated linking police and politicians to the blackmail ring.

On Monday, opposition politician and former cricket star Imran Khan accused Punjab officials of "politicizing the police."

"That is why the force is unable to check criminal activities and a tragedy like Kasur," Khan told supporters at a rally in Pakistan's northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. "We will force the government through the independent media to chase the real culprits and punish them in an exemplary manner."

Saeed, the police chief, said he hadn't seen any signs of political interference in the case and denied any impropriety by police. However, Sarra, the victims' lawyer, said he believed police were downplaying the case and that at least one local politician could be involved.

"The police are conniving with the accused," Sarra said.

Pakistan's parliament also discussed the abuse allegations, unanimously passing a resolution calling on authorities to bring all those accountable to justice. Protesters angered by the abuse also demonstrated in Islamabad, while the Lahore High Court ruled against starting a separate judicial inquiry into the case, saying police already were investigating.

For now, those living in Hussain Khan Wala, a poor farming community, are trying to come to terms with what has happened. Another victim who spoke to the AP said the gang extorted some $7,000 from him over five years while threatening to release a video, forcing him to steal jewelry from his own family.

"It shattered me so badly that I would often walk out of my school. I would miss my classes," the victim said. "I had no idea how to handle all this."

The gang ultimately released the video and his mother saw it. It caused her to finally confide a secret to her son she'd never told anyone: The same gang had raped her years earlier.

"They are beasts," she said.
___

Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Cairo and Zarar Khan in Islamabad contributed to this report.


-- (c) Associated Press 2015-08-11

[Rockhound]

_{No surprise to me considering how their compatriots behave in the UK.}

[Seastallion]

The Muslim haters are going to be happy.

[micmichd]

Is it really necessary to come up with anti Islamic hate speech here?

What would you say if this was done to your own children, dear "Christians"?

[Pattaya28]

Pakistan Horrified ???

I think not !!

All in the culture.

[sammygood]

hope they catch them, at least then they will meet their creator soon

or they might have some crazy laws to go blame it all on the victims

[Scott]

Please stay on topic. An unnecessarily derogatory post and reply have been removed.

[empireboy]

There is no limit to the depths of depravity when ignorance prevails in the human species!

Unbiased education irrespective of religious doctrines is the key to real progress.

[Lissos]

The Muslim haters are going to be happy.

Maybe some are 'Muslim' haters.

Others are repelled by most of Islamic Doctrine.

Myself, not the former. Certainly the later.

Anyway, moving on, my first thought uoon reading the article was not an immediate link with Islam, but culture mixed with the obvious malicious criminal element that characterises this whenever it happens in the world.

It is difficult to pin point exactly where this starts and ends in the region but Pakistan must be the only part of the workd I've been to where an adult man quite openly said to me that an hour ago he rented a preteen Afghan Boy off the street for sex, reeling off a summary of his day.

It was seen as quite normal, and the 'matter of fact' manner of it could be said to be related to cultural habit in the Afghan and tribal culture. For example, this was in Peshawar, very much a location where things overlap between the areas. Others told me this was not an unusual activity, too.

Yes, at its core is the same exploitative, abuse of poverty, misuse of strength and obedience to elders of anywhere else in the world where this has happened (education institutions / boarding schools etc), but the way child sex was viewed in certain parts of Pakistan seems to be an even more troublesome dynamic into the mix because elsewhere there seems to be great efforts to cover tracks and they know full well that it is not only illegal but wrong in itself. When the aforementioned man was so open about it, you saw this was not a confession of a tortured mind, but boastful.

[Jimlove]

The Muslim haters are going to be happy.

Whats wrong in your head ... ?

I bet you condone this right ... ?

[Nemesis7]

Just Shoot these bastards, all of them, no judgement is required for such animal and beasts in the society who rapes children and extorts later.

and I sereiously hope KARMA pays them back exactly the same way.

[Rancid]

Well this sort of thing would never be tolerated in the West, the police would take them down immediately without fear of favour, outraged politicians would pursue to the ends of the earth, the church would expose them as devils and condemn them to hell. Or, then again...

Consider your outrage, then consider what happens in your own countries. Evil is often well protected and little publicised.

[Seastallion]

The Muslim haters are going to be happy.

Whats wrong in your head ... ?

I bet you condone this right ... ?

Probably nothing, and no, I don't.

Where you (and your "liker") can draw a connection between the observation that our resident Muslim haters will like this story as it gives them fuel for their hate, and me condoning child abuse is a mystery, best explained, perhaps, by what's going on in your own heads.

[jesimps]

The Muslim haters are going to be happy.

Muslim apologist-in-chief, in like greased lightning on this one.

Edited August 11, 2015 by jesimps

[Zyxel]

The Muslim haters are going to be happy.

This and all what is happening in the world today (IS, Boco Aram etc...) induce islamophobia like rough sea makes some people puke, they don't react rationally with their brain anymore but with their guts.

Edited August 12, 2015 by Zyxel

[Seastallion]

The Muslim haters are going to be happy.

This and all what is happening in the world today (IS, Boco Aram etc...) induce islamophobia like rough sea makes some people puke, they don't react rationally with their brain anymore but with their guts.

Suprising that you're one of the "likers" of the post that impugns my mental health and my morals.....Yet you got that bit spot on!

[Steely Dan]

There is no limit to the depths of depravity when ignorance prevails in the human species!

Unbiased education irrespective of religious doctrines is the key to real progress.

The trouble is that religious doctrines and the behavior of the savage go hand in hand. You can't address one without addressing the other. To eradicate mosquitoes its best to drain the swamp.

[simple1]

Some people seem to have overlooked (deliberately?) the OP headline "Pakistan horrified by alleged child sex abuse blackmail ring". The appalling crimes committed by these criminals were motivated by greed, not religion.

[Steely Dan]

The Muslim haters are going to be happy.

Such crassness says more about you than anyone else. The repugnant crimes and the suffering they caused are surely the first thoughts of any normal human being. To point out there may just be a link between the religion and culture which formed the sea in which these animals swam is not condemning every Muslim on planet earth. To dishonestly make this all or nothing link provides cover for such practices and in effect perpetuates such suffering, were some or most of the victims not Muslim?