'Boko Haramisation' of Ja's children
Published:Monday | June 9, 2014 | 12:00 AM
THE EDITOR, Sir:
It was in 2012 that I was confronted with the dreadful reality of missing children in Jamaica. Between July 22 and August 30 of that year, 28 children were reported missing via the Ananda Alert system. My internet search back then revealed that no less than 15 Ananda Alerts were raised per month going all the way back to the 2010. These statistics point to the fact that there are a lot of Jamaican children, mainly girls, that have gone missing from their homes.
My initial outrage subsided, but then I had a recent reacquaintance with the family of a missing child and coupled with the horrible news about the abduction of over 200 Nigerian school girls, the emotions came flooding back.
Are we seeing the 'Boko Haramisation' of Jamaica when it comes to the abduction of our children? If so, where is the outrage that translates to the creation of Twitter hash tags, declarations by prominent leaders, the mobilisation of church communities and civil society, and importantly, the establishment of resourced law-enforcement units dedicated to making an impact against this scourge? Consider the families, the mothers, the siblings who must carry on for days, months and years without knowing what has become of the children. No funeral service to aid psychological and emotional closure, no police updates, no news, just unspeakable pain and untold suffering.
As citizens of this country, we have a right to wonder aloud about the action plan of the authorities to address this situation in its various dimensions. Law enforcement must do the work to determine if this phenomenon is being driven by organised crime, human-trafficking syndicates or spontaneous brutish and sadistic impulses of adults scattered across the several towns in our beloved island home.
If we suppose, God forbid, that 50 per cent of the thousands reported missing are now dead or have been trafficked from the island or otherwise are no longer in the island, and if 50 per cent of them are still alive in 'likkle' Jamaica, where are they and what is their daily existence like?
Social media campaigns
Perhaps, we can unleash the power of the many to accomplish what we cannot accomplish on our own. In other words, perhaps we can leverage social media and effective crowdsourcing techniques to launch a grass-roots effort to find and recover these children. Every owner of a bar or cookshop can check to make sure they have no child workers in their establishment. Every farmer and market worker can do the same. Every taxi man and bus driver can take an interest in their underage passengers who may seem frightened or scared. Every principal and teacher must assure themselves of the bona fides presented by the guardians of their pupils. Every nurse in a clinic, every doctor and health-care professional must be acutely observant of their patients who are children. And every minor that gives birth must be appropriately interviewed to learn the circumstances that resulted in a crime being committed against her. Every pastor and church member must look around and take note.
The suggestion is not for citizens to become spies or for the unleashing of Gestapo tactics on each other. Rather, if we believe that we are confronting a situation that deserves to be more than a nine-day wonder, surely, we can find a way to bring an immediate focus that can at least assure us that the little girl next door, the girl dancing in the club, the girl prostituting on the corner, the child sellers in the markets and streets, the children out begging or labouring like adults, are not someone's child who has been forcefully removed and deprived of their childhood.
We need action. We need to find our children. We need to bring them home.
Christopher Pryce