Site Update - "Live Chat" Now Available !!

Hey Everyone,This is just a brief note to inform everyone that we have now created a new chat room (a special thanks to Gav !!) which we hope you will all use ... For those of you who are unfamilar with chat rooms, it is a great way to meet people from around the world by having a "real time" conversation with them... You can talk about all sorts of various subjects or simpy view the online discussion... I would like to invite all of you to use this feature which I believe is a great way to connect with people from around the world...Thanks again to Gav as this would not have been possible without his hard work and dedication...Sincerely,JonoThe Mittelholzer Foundationhttp://www.mittelholzer.org

Link

The child that moved some to tears

Editorial

The child that moved some to tears

The photograph on the front page of the Monday issue of the Kaieteur News was as harrowing as anything could get. There was this child so emaciated that he could very well have been some child in the throes of starvation in one of the drought-affected African countries.

The reports state that the police had been searching for two missing children and having failed to find them, moved on. Then they got another lead about the children and returned to the area. Instead of finding the children, some neighbour directed them to the house in which this emaciated boy was found tied to some object to prevent him from leaving the premises. Further, whoever tied him up also bound his feet.

The report stated that those who found him were moved to tears. Anyone would have been. In fact, all over the city yesterday, the talk was about the cruel parents who could have done such a thing to the child.

One fellow simply could not eat because as he said, every time he looked at his meal he saw this child who was so close to death's door for the want of food and water.

The child might have been too young to pray for death but his agony cannot be experienced by the rest of us who have never had to go for more than a few hours without a meal. We certainly had access to water as we desired. But this child knew both hunger and unbearable thirst.

The police, up to when last we checked, had made no arrest but they were able to ascertain the identity of the child's parents. They have learnt that the mother is running from the father because she fears for her life. There are two other children and it is believed the two children for whom the police mounted a search may have come from that very house. They too are missing.

Further, we have learnt that because of the mother's flight the father may have vented his spleen on this hapless child whose photograph appeared on the front page of the newspaper.

From time immemorial people have been saying that children are our future. There is a song to that effect and indeed, it is the children who will be tomorrow's leaders. To torture a child is nothing more than reducing one potential leader from the future society.

That being said, we need to look at the cruelty that exists in the society. We have spoken about the father who dunked his son's hand into boiling water causing the child to lose all his fingers; the mother who poisoned her two children; the father who gave poison to four of his children before he killed himself and his wife; and those parents who literally beat their small children to death.

The woman who poisoned her children was duly informed by the late President Cheddi Jagan that her crime, while serious, was not serious enough to have her face the ultimate sanction. This, to many, was some sort of tacit support for a vicious killer. It mattered not the situation that drove the woman to such extremes.

We also had the woman who watched her child killed because her paramour did not like the child since he was fathered by another man. What animal could have resorted to such an action? As is the case of the incident reported earlier, we are not aware of the sanction being prepared by the state.

Most people rush to help the unfortunate child, some to the point of seeking police help. We are aware of some adults in society who seek the help of the administration to improve the lot of the children on the streets; we get angry when we see children abused, sometimes to the point of physically attacking the abuser; we cherish our children and we sometimes go without so that they could get.

Many of us try to live our lives through our children and so we take pride when they do well at the various examinations. But each day we are coming to the realisation that some of us are worse than the basest animal and treat our children as though they are something to be discarded.

None of us knows what the mental state of this child would be but we hope that the society deals condignly with the person who tortured him. The decent among us would wish the law to take its course; the others would seek to exact Moses Law.

Kaieteur News

Link