Educated youths find ‘jobs’ in criminal gangs

By Hasan Mansoor   
Nasir is one of many graduates who are involved in street crimes. He faces a case of car hijacking and does not hesitate to say that the number of educated youth involved in organised crimes is bound to increase.    “I am a graduate and left no stone unturned to get a job to support my parents, but I could not get one,” he said.    Nasir was recently arrested along with two of his accomplices during an abortive attempt to snatch mobile phones from a shop in the city. Police investigators say he was part of a gang that was also involved in car hijacking.    “I could not bear an idle life seeing my aging parents working to support me,” an investigator quoted Nasir as saying.     The police are witnessing a phenomenal increase in the number of educated youth in street crime and their number in car hijacking and snatching of mobile phones is the highest. A report of the Anti Car-Lifting Cell (ACLC) of the Sindh police reveals that some of the accused arrested in a year are holders of master’s and bachelor’s degrees.    Of around 300 suspects involved in such crimes, six hold master’s degree and 27 of them are graduates. The report said 20 of the youngsters arrested on a charge of being members of car-lifting gangs are intermediate and 35 of them are matriculates.    Experts at the Citizen-Police Liaison Committee (CPLC), which has been dealing with car hijacking in the city since 1990, has expressed concerns about the increasing trend of educated youth joining criminal gangs and has held joblessness as the main culprit.    “It is nothing but the increasing unemployment and poverty, which is forcing our educated youth to take to crime,” Sharfuddin Memon, ex-chief of the Citizen-Police Liaison Committee (CPLC), which has been dealing with car hijacking in the city since 1990, says.    ACLC officials have similar findings to share. “During investigations, we ask these young men what made them to take to crime and they reply that despite getting such degrees they failed to find any jobs to support their families,” says an investigator.    Hundreds of graduates had applied for the post of police constables. Most of the applications sent by job aspirants were not accepted because some senior police officials did not find it fit to “dump” such educated lot into a mess, a job that requires hardly matriculates.    “Our requirement is matriculation and we decided not to spoil such educated lot by making them constables,” says a police official.    Police hierarchy’s ‘sincerity’, however, failed to bring respite to our educated youth. In fact, asking them to apply for a job in keeping with their degrees is also an injustice being done by our authorities to these youngsters. The fact is that they do not get jobs in keeping with their qualification at government and private establishments.    Young people with fresh degrees from universities and other educational institutions are in the market waiting endlessly for jobs, but they find no job. The prevailing economic stagnation is one important cause of rising unemployment.

Pakistan children rescued from ‘madrassa’ chains

by Hasan Mansoor
KARACHI, Dec 13, 2011 (AFP) - Pakistani police said Tuesday they had rescued 53 students, including children as young as seven, who had been chained in the basement of a madrassa raided by security forces in the port city of Karachi.

Former students including an eight-year-old told AFP they were regularly beaten at the school, which was equipped with chains, hooks and a warren of basement rooms. The head of an education federation called it a "torture cell".

Police said 21 teenagers were among those found during the raid on the self-styled seminary in Pakistan's biggest city, used by the United States to ship supplies to troops fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Two children aged seven and another aged about eight were among those rescued, Naeem Akram, deputy inspector general of Karachi police, told AFP.

Madrassas, which provide the poorest families with the only education they can afford, are not tightly regulated in Pakistan and have served as recruitment grounds for the Taliban and other Al-Qaeda-linked terror groups.

Police said the students were chained up because they were drug addicts whom the madrassa "wanted to rehabilitate", but many details remain unclear.

The three-storey building is in northern Karachi, isolated from the city's congested and densely populated areas, meaning there were no neighbours who could corrobate details of the police raid or the conditions inside.

The basement was a maze of rooms, according to an AFP photographer, while an AFP reporter saw chains and hooks.Accounts given to AFP by students and relatives indicated that impoverished families believed the madrassa could offer treatment to drug addicts and a religious education to the youngest boys.

Azmat Ulla, a 17-year-old student, said his father sent him there because he suffered fits and could be violent.

"My father took me to several spiritual healers who said I was a victim of black magic," Ullah said."Three months ago I was admitted here," he told AFP.

"My father pays 3,000 rupees (34 dollars) per month to the madrassa as a fee to make me a normal person, but I still suffer from fits and despite that they kept me chained and beat me with sticks ruthlessly," Ullah added.

Mohammad Ashraf said he had sent his eight-year-old son Mushtaq Ahmed to the madrassa believing he would receive a religious education.

"I didn't know the madrassa management would beat him so mercilessly. I will no longer keep my son in this madrassa," he said.

His son, Mushraq, said the teachers beat the students daily. "I don't know why they kept young children with adults here," he added.

Police official Akram Khan told AFP it was a "complex situation" and there would be "no clear picture until police collect all the evidence".

"Relatives of the elder boys and men say they had sent them for drug addiction rehabilitation, while younger children's relatives say they were sent for religious studies," he told AFP.

Hanif Jullandhri, head of a federation of Pakistani madrassas, told Express television that the premises was not registered.

"We strongly condemn this and urge the government to take the harshest possible action against its owners. The government should investigate how such torture cells are established and operated," he said.

At least 15,148 seminaries in Pakistan educate more than two million students -- around five percent of the 34 million children in formal education -- according to official statistics.

But officials suspect thousands more go unregistered, providing sons of Pakistan's poverty-stricken majority with the only education they can afford.