WUNRN
Pakistan - Deaths
of Abandoned Babies On The Rise
By Zofeen Ebrahim
|
KARACHI,
Mar 14, 2011 (IPS) - The graves at a cemetery in Moach Goth have no epitaphs,
no verses from the Koran, not even the names of the deceased. The only
inscription on the small wooden signs that serve as headstones is a number and
the date of burial. The latest one is Number 72,315.
This is a
burial ground of unclaimed dead, overseen by the Karachi-based Edhi Foundation.
It is also the gravesite of newborns abandoned by unwed mothers who face death
for bearing the fruit of ‘illicit’ relationships.
Established
by Maulana Abdul Sattar Edhi, the foundation is
"Last
year the number of abandoned newborns we buried across
The number is
up from 999 in 2009, and 890 in 2008 - most of them baby girls. In
These
figures come only from a few urban centres. "The number could be much
higher, but we will never find out," said Kazmi, who has been with the
foundation for 40 years.
In this
conservative Muslim nation, having a baby out of wedlock is considered a sin,
and adultery is punishable by death under strict interpretations of Islamic
law.
"Young
people are having babies out of wedlock and even when they want to get married
of their own free will, they are denied this right bestowed by Islam by
parents," Kazmi says.
He narrates
a tragic episode illustrating the mindset prevailing in society. The story
occurred 25 years ago in Khamosh Colony, one of Karachi’s squatter settlements.
"A
woman left a newborn on the steps of a mosque just before sunrise. When the men
came out after offering their morning prayers and found the baby, they informed
the cleric, who proclaimed it to be an illicit baby which should be stoned to
death. And it was," Kazmi said.
The mindset
prevails, and extends even to government hospitals where some doctors turn away
desperate women, who then seek the help of "unskilled persons".
Shershah
Syed, an eminent obstetrician and gynaecologist, told IPS that while abortion
is legal, it is still not carried out in government hospitals. If it were,
there would be a "marked decrease" in infanticide.
"There
needs to be a sea change in the attitude of the doctors who refuse to address
the needs of a pregnant woman, or a woman who comes for termination and desires
privacy and confidentiality," Syed told IPS.
At the Moach
Goth cemetery near Naval Colony some 14 kilometres from the city centre, the
smaller graves are just mounds of earth and don’t even get a number. The only
sign is an inconspicuous yellow stone marking the head of each grave.
Khair
Mohammad, the graveyard’s 65-year old caretaker, has been the gravedigger for
almost 29 years, an occupation his four sons took up as well. Pointing to the
10-acre piece of land, Mohammad says it is the third one the foundation
acquired just three years back, and is fast filling up. The other two just
across the road are in decrepit condition.
But for some
time now, Mohammad said, he has been getting requests for more and more graves
for babies.
"Last
year, we must have dug between 200 to 250 graves for the young ones," he
recounted. Mohammad’s middle son also performs the last prayer before the dead
are finally laid to rest.
Twenty-five
year old Haq Nawaz has been giving these babies the rite of the last bath,
putting them in a plastic bag, and then shrouding them in white cloth, in
keeping with the Muslim ritual.
"I was
very scared in the beginning and a decomposed body smells awful," he told
IPS.
Nawaz, who
has been at his job for four years, said he has seen babies infested with
insects, "creatures coming out of their nose and eyes" or having skin
so "frayed" that it comes off at the slightest touch.
It takes a
lot of courage, he said, to bathe the dead. "I feel privileged to be doing
this deed as in Islam, we believe, performing this last ritual earns you points
for the hereafter," Nawaz said.
To him, only
the act of conceiving, and not the baby, is illegitimate, and he said he fails
to understand how anyone could snuff the life out of such tiny beings.
Since the
early 1970s, Kazmi said, the foundation has installed cradles outside some of
its centres where parents could leave unwanted children. Today all of the
foundation’s 335 centres have one and scores of babies are left in the
foundation’s care.
Every day,
at their centre in Mithadar, 70-year old Bilquis Edhi, the wife of founder
Maulana, interviews at least four or five childless couples desperate to adopt
- making certain the babies go to the right people. "The ones left over
with us are always the girls and the sick," she says.
But the
possibility of giving up babies for adoption has not stopped infanticide.
"We advertise our cradles every third day, but have not succeeded in
stopping the murder of these innocent lives," Kazmi said.
Babies are
born out of wedlock in all societies, Syed pointed out. But he said the trend
of unwanted pregnancies is likely to increase "in urban centres, where
poor families are living in one-room homes and where there is no privacy even
for married couples, where there is little or no education, where the sole
entertainment and exposure to the outside world is through films and the idiot
box."
One
solution, he proposed, is age-appropriate all- encompassing reproductive health
education to be incorporated in school curricula for the young.