In his message on Universal Children’s Day, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon emphasized the importance of ensuring that the commitments made by the international community to the world’s children are to be extended to a group of children who are often forgotten or overlooked –those deprived of their liberty.
“Far too many children languish in jail, mental health facilities or through other forms of detention,” he stated. “Some children are vulnerable because they are migrants, asylum seekers, homeless or preyed on by organized criminals. Whatever the circumstances, the Convention dictates that the deprivation of liberty must be a measure of last resort, and for the shortest time.”
He added that the global community’s aim “must be to pursue the best interests of the child, prevent the deprivation of liberty and promote alternatives to detention.” (Source: un.org)
Comment:
Is talking a single true word equal with intending to do the true deed? Or maybe to reformulate: Is speaking of the fact that there are children who “languish through various forms of detention” or their “vulnerability” due to war, migration or organized criminality, equal with confessing the reasons for the injustice and oppression that children face? Or moreover, is it a promise to eradicate these reasons and lift the oppression upon children?
In fact, the answer is NO! It is impertinence and moreover it should be evaluated as perfidy!
وَإِذَا قِيلَ لَهُمْ لاَ تُفْسِدُواْ فِي الأَرْضِ قَالُواْ إِنَّمَا نَحْنُ مُصْلِحُونَ
“And when it is said to them, “Do not cause corruption on the earth,” they say, ‘We are but reformers.’”
(al-Baqarah: 11)
Palestinian children in the Occupied Palestinian Territory are living under the Zionist entity’s military law and are prosecuted in military courts since this Zionist monster has invaded this blessed soil of Islam. Since 2000, at least 8,000 Palestinian children have been arrested and prosecuted in the Jewish occupying entity’s military detention system that is notorious for the systematic ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian children. Around 500-700 Palestinian children are arrested, detained and prosecuted in this military court system each year – including children as young as five years old. At the end of August 2015, 156 Palestinian minors were held in the Jewish state’s prisons as security detainees and prisoners. Another 13 Palestinian minors were held in “Israel” Prison Service facilities for being in “Israel” illegally. The IPS considers these minors – both detainees and prisoners – criminal offenders.
The majority of Palestinian child detainees are charged with throwing stones, and three out of four experience physical violence, including sexual abuse and rape, during arrest, transfer or interrogation.
After sentencing, nearly 60% of Palestinian child detainees are transferred from occupied territory to prisons inside ‘Israel’ in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The practical consequence of this is that many of them receive either limited or no family visits due to freedom of movement restrictions and the long time it takes to issue a permit to visit the prisons. And we do not mention here the numbers of children murdered by the Zionist forces without any reason.
We as Muslims do not expect the global community to undertake any step for the interests of our Muslim children, as we know that it is this capitalist global community that has facilitated the implanting of this Zionist monster on our blessed soils. We do not expect from the UN, nor any other Kufr system, state or power to change anything in the well-being of our current or future generations.
Immediately after eradicating the existence of capitalist nations and their colonial oppression from our soils; pursuing the “best interests of the child, preventing the deprivation of liberty” and ensuring peaceful and dignified lives for our children, not only in Palestine, but in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, our Rohingya children in Myanmar, in countries across Africa, and the whole world will be the highest priority of the Khilafah Rashidah.
But we expect, no we urge! the global Muslim community to rise up and to unite under the Khilafah Rashidah upon the method of the Prophethood, the one and sole institution that is able to uproot this Zionist entity and to cut off all ropes of support by any capitalist entity to it and against the Islamic Ummah.
وَاعْتَصِمُواْ بِحَبْلِ اللّهِ جَمِيعًا وَلاَ تَفَرَّقُواْ
“And hold firmly to the rope of Allah all together and do not become divided.”
(Al-i Imran: 103)
Zehra Malik