There
are 1.5 million street kids in Pakistan -- an estimated 90% of them have been
sexually abused at some point in their lives.
Rape
in Pakistan is so common, it’s barely taboo. Last week the Daily Mail
interviewed a bus driver from Peshawar who says, after his shift is over, he
likes to go into the slums and rape street kids. Sometimes he pays them a
dollar. But often he doesn’t – he just joins in a big gang rape.
“Once,
there was a boy on the bus and everyone had sex with him,” he told the Daily
Mail. “I did it too but what else could I do? They invited me. And he was that
kind of boy anyway.” He says he’s raped 12 different children.
This
wasn’t a solitary rapist, hiding in the shadows, afraid of being seen or being
caught. This was men joining together, unworried about social norms, unworried
about someone stopping them.
A poll
of 1,800 Pakistani men found that a third don’t think raping street kids is a
crime – and they don’t even think it’s a bad thing to do.
And then
there’s so-called honour killings – where families kill their own daughters for
social improprieties, real or perceived.
Every
year close to 1,000 Pakistani girls are murdered by their own fathers, brothers
or even mothers, for “moral indiscretions” ranging from going out on a date to
dressing in western clothing to marrying the wrong man.
What a
horrific duality -- a country that has normalized the rape of children, but
would rather murder its own daughters than have embarrassing gossip about them.
No
wonder so many Pakistanis are happy to emigrate. Put aside the ongoing
terrorist civil war, put aside official discrimination against minority
religions, such as Christianity or even other Muslim denominations like the
Ahmadiyyas -- Pakistan drives out its best, those who want a better life, a
life of freedom and peace and safety.
Canada
is the lucky recipient of many such immigrants. The Sun’s columnist Tarek Fatah
is a perfect example of that – someone so Canadian he probably has maple syrup
in his veins. But not all Pakistani immigrants prefer our liberal values to
those of the Peshawar bus driver.
Aqsa
Parvez was a young woman who was murdered by her father and her brother for the
honour crime of dressing and acting like a Canadian teenager. They imported the
worst of Pakistan to Mississauga
Rotherham,
UK, has received another import: mass rape gangs. Between 1997 and 2013, that
city of just 250,000 had 1,400 girls – as young as 11 – systematically
“groomed," raped and prostituted by Pakistani gangs. Fourteen-hundred out
of a city of 250,000. The girls were white Christians; in the eyes of the
Pakistani Muslim gangs, they were sub-human, like Pakistan’s own street
orphans.
Rotherham
police knew all about it. But they were paralyzed with fear – fear of being
called racist if they dared to act. They found the mass rape of a generation of
the city’s girls less intolerable than the risk of being called politically
incorrect or “Islamophobic."
Back
to Canada. Pakistan is the fourth largest source of immigrants to our country –
nearly 100,000 in the past decade. Most of them are wonderful, peaceful
Canadians, like Tarek. But how many are like the Peshawar bus driver, or the
Rotherham rape gangs, or Muhammad Parvez?
Pakistan,
like some other Muslim countries, has a rape problem. Perhaps before opening up
the floodgates, we might want to do something as simple as asking a prospective
immigrant for their views on women, rape and honour.
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