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He had a beautiful smile.
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He was four years old.
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He was kidnapped.
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He was killed.
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His story cannot be these four sentences.
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It must not be. It should not be. But it is. Before the rose petals on his tiny grave dried up, the condemnation without longevity trailed off to some other tragedy, the world trudging along in its jaded, pain-beaten apathy. The death of a child is more painful than any other thing in the world. The murder of a child is one act that has the darkness to overwhelm all of humanity, forcing it to gasp and pause. Humanity stands still in a moment of collective pain. Humanity waits for introspection to arrive. Humanity gives up, its hands folded in a forlorn prayer.
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How does the world become a witness to one cruelty after another against children, becoming an unwitting abettor to another heinous crime that does not directly affect their cocooned existence? Loud condemnatory words are not enough. A child’s murder is not merely the lifelong tragedy of one family. A child’s murder is humanity’s collective grief. There is no one individual that has the power to stop cruelty to children. But there is nothing that is an impossible feat for collective humanity. United, human beings have the power to make the world a safe place for children. Impossible it may seem I won’t give up on that world.
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The face of each murdered child haunts me. The smile of the boy in the brown jacket broke my heart me after its brief presence in media as the latest atrocious event. The attention was terse. I had to write to ensure his story was more than four sentences.
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His name was Omar Rathore. He was the youngest of the six children. His father, Mukhtar Ahmed Rathore, works at the Oil & Gas Development Company (OGDCL) in Islamabad. They live in a four-marla house in Dhok Jillani colony in Bhara Kahu, Islamabad. In the same-sized house next to theirs lives Hamza, Rathore’s cousin. His financial status is almost identical to that of Rathore.
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Six siblings, the oldest daughter is studying to be a doctor in Quetta, the second one is a student of the IMCG College in Islamabad, and the other four are studying at the OPF School in Islamabad. Three now. One of them, the youngest, is dead. Every day their father, a mid-level employee at a state organisation, takes them to school thirty minutes from their house. Devoted to the idea of providing good education for his children, he would continue to drive his children to school every day, every minute of their absence from home a frightening reminder of the world’s ability to inflict cruelty at the most unsuspecting.
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The motive
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One of the kidnappers was Hamza, the other three were his friends. The father of one kidnapper is also an employee at the OGDCL, and that of another one works for the police. The four kidnappers are twenty/twenty-one years old.
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Hamza and his friends had planned for a month. As most people their age fret about their college examinations, the best-paying internship, the pretty girl they have a crush on, the smoking they hide from their strict parents, Hamza and his friends spent a month making a plot to kidnap a four-year-old boy.
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The first step was to rent a house two streets away from where the little boy lived. The wait for the perfect opportunity began. December 21 became the day the four young men decided to carry out a crime that—other than in movies—end in a most awful way. They kidnapped Omar as he played outside his house. Omar’s father and uncle weren’t home. Omar’s mother couldn’t imagine that her beloved youngest child could be unsafe right outside his house in a locality where everyone loved the happy, adorable child. At about 4:30 pm, Hamza and his accomplices kidnapped Omar.
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It was for ransom. The kidnappers took little Omar to the house they had rented. They taped his mouth. Multilayered packaging tape. His hands were tied with so much tape it was as if he was wearing brown mittens. With his socks removed they tied his feet together, his tiny toes left un-taped. Omar was locked in a cupboard lined with white pillows on both sides, so small even the four-year-old child couldn’t have straightened his legs in it if his feet weren’t tied. It had two thin doors that didn’t even have a hole for light.
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That is how Omar was found on December 24. Taped, cold, his brown jacket removed, very still. Omar was dead.
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In almost all the stories of kidnapping of children that are shown in films and TV shows, there is one common factor. Kidnappers take turns to stay with the child who is kept in a room that has a bed and toys. That room is always the part of the planning. How to keep a child comfortable even after picking him up like a commodity that has a price. Children who are kidnapped with the intent to return are not tied with packaging tape and locked in a cupboard with no hole for light.
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Four hours after Omar went missing on December 21, the news of his disappearance appeared on social media. Pakistan began to pray for Omar’s safe return to his family. The agencies became involved, the deputy commissioner of Islamabad deployed his full force, and the police began searching with a thoroughness that was more than customary. The three-day search, a day too late, led them to the house with the light-less cupboard. Omar, tied with tape, was dead.
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Haunting image
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When I saw the photo of the missing child, his smile resplendent, I prayed he would be found soon. A part of me feared the worst. Before sleeping when I pray for my family, I prayed for little Omar. I couldn’t get his smile out of my mind. To think of a child, even the one I didn’t know, in pain is something that my mind has a hard time accepting in a world constantly darkened with unmentionable crimes against children. It is a world in which a six-year-old girl is raped, killed and thrown on a garbage heap. It is a world in which a ten-year-old boy is raped more than hundred times by multiple men until his body breaks down, his eyes bleeding.
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The news of Omar’s death has devastated me. I cried for Omar many times. Five days later it still makes me cry. The pain of his parents is unimaginable to me. It is pain that is inexpressible.
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The images of the four-year-old Omar’s body, his mouth, hands and feet tied, lying in a cupboard made for clothes will haunt me for a long, long time.
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As a human being, as a mother, the pain of a child, any child, is unbearable for me. To know that a child, almost a baby, was tied up and locked up in a cupboard for so long that he died makes me go silent, cold. To live in a world where a twenty-one-year-old man and his friends kidnap a child, put him in a cupboard, and tie him up so tightly with packaging tape that his blood circulation halts, his breathing stops. How do you make sense of that world?
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I’m waiting for the time when Pakistan will say: no child will be harmed. The onus of the murder of one child is on all of Pakistan. No child will be safe until each child becomes the collective responsibility of all of Pakistan. There must be a united force of family, relatives, school, friends, neighbourhood, community, city, investigating agencies, and courts for Pakistan to be safe for its children. Each child, before everything else, must have assurance of safety of life. That basic right will become a reality once the whole of Pakistan unites to keep its children secure.
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The 220-million country whose hundreds and thousands protest every second week, on one pretext or the other, remains apathetic to the enormity of the crimes committed against children. When will human rights activists, religious organisations and political parties, beyond emotional and angry condemnation on social media, unite to stage a public protest to demand a safe Pakistan for our children? Not one or two or ten, but a hundred million march for every missing, raped, tortured, murdered child of Pakistan.
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I know it will never happen.
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And Omar and all other dead children will remain no more than four sentences.
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