Tag: children

Al-Marg pigs refuse to investigate hanged child case, his parents say

Posted on By 3arabawy

From the Daily News Egypt:

Mustafa Mahmoud Ibrahim, aged 11, was found hanged at the door of his own home in the Al-Marg area by his mother 10 days ago.
A stranger had come knocking one night to tell the boy’s family that he was on the front porch, and the mother found him hanged from the roof of the house. The neighbors helped her rush him to the hospital but the boy had passed away by the time they got there.
As they returned home with the body, they were arrested by the Al-Marg police. Mustafa’s mother tried to file a report on the incident and search for the killer but was told instead, “Do you want your son to be buried or to be sliced up in an autopsy?”
The police said that the boy had died from falling off of the swings in front of their home. But the mother pointed out that this was impossible as the child’s death had taken place around midnight, way past the time when he’d be out playing on the swings, and that her son had been hanged
At this point, the officer dragged her to the District Attorney’s office, asking him to close the case before it even started. Again he threatened an autopsy if she didn’t do as she was told. She gave in and the District Attorney gave her a burial permit.
Mahmoud Ibrahim, the father of the child and a traveling salesman, was contacted by his wife straight after the incident. He rushed off to the hospital and saw the rope marks around the boy’s throat. He tried to get this point through to the officer in charge, only to be rebuffed and told: “Please, we don’t want a headache. Your son is dead. It’s over and done with.”
He realized then and there that the police wanted to close the case and consider it an act of God.

Egypt child labor a somber reality

Posted on By 3arabawy

From AFP:

Thirteen-year-old Essam Hussein spends his days lugging exhaust pipes in a little repair workshop in central Cairo, one of hundreds of thousands of children forced into labor to secure a future.
“I hate school, I like it here,” says Essam who dreams of owning his own repair shop with his brothers one day.
“I’ve been working here since last year,” he says, showing the mechanics’ garage where he has been working for about a year.
In a nearby workshop, Mohammed Hassan, 15, says he works only during the summer holidays.
“At least if school doesn’t work out, I’ll have a job,” says the teenager who makes around LE 40 per week.
Whether sweating under the engine of a broken down car, roaming the streets for a few pennies in exchange for flowers or picking cotton in the Nile Delta, one in 10 Egyptian children are forced into work.
On every street corner, out in the open fields or in gritty workshops, children, some as young as 10, are required to put in a day’s work.
The UN children’s agency UNICEF estimates that 2.7 million children between the ages of six and 14 in Egypt work.
According to official statistics, a third of Egypt’s 80 million population is below the age of 15. NGOs say that among those, 10 percent are forced to work, often in difficult conditions.