11 February 2008
Maputo — The 40 children rescued in the central province of Manica in late January from a truck that was apparently taking them to madrassas (koranic schools) are on their way home.
32 of the children were taken to Beira on Saturday, where they were put on a plane to Nampula. Most of the children are from Nampula and the neighbouring province of Cabo Delgado. The other eight could not accompany them, because the plane was full. The authorities promise that they too will be flown to Nampula on Sunday.
39 children were traveling in appalling conditions in the back of an open truck without any proper seating, and with very little to eat or drink. So disorganized were the adults in charge of the trip that they left a fortieth child, 10 year old Emane Nordine, behind in Caia, on the south bank of the Zambezi.
She told the private television station STV that she had gone to relieve herself, and the truck left without her. Caia residents took the girl to the traffic police and she told them about the truck.
Not surprisingly, the first assumption of the police when they stopped the truck was that the children had been kidnapped and that this was a case of human trafficking. However, three of the seven adults accompanying them turned out to be officials from a Nampula madrassa, who said they were taking the children to continue their education in madrassas in Maputo and in the western province of Tete.
These men declared "we took the children with the consent of their parents, in order that they could be trained to memorise the Koran".
Some of the children confirmed that their parents had consented to the journey, and had even paid substantial sums, supposedly for transport and food on the journey. The amounts mentioned were three million meticais (about 120 US dollars) per child - which is enough to provide decent transport, and proper food.
Instead the children were treated like cattle, thrown into an open truck and given nothing to eat but bread and fruit juice. All those interviewed by STV at Beira airport on Saturday said they were pleased to be going back home. Some of the children also said that they had been beaten during the journey.
The children were assisted in their return home by the police, staff of the local directorate of social welfare, and the NGO Save the Children, which paid for their air tickets. Mozambique Airlines (LAM) offered a special price for the group.
One of the places where the children were supposed to study, the Massjid Hamza madrassa, in the southern city of Matola, is headed by the chairperson of the Islamic Council of Mozambique (CISLAMO), Sheik Aminuddin Mahomad.
Aminuddin claimed he knew nothing about the children, and said he was out of the country when the truck was seized. But he added that he saw nothing wrong with sending children to madrassas, and admitted that his madrassa already has about 100 children studying "Islamic theology".
But what sort of studies are these ? STV interviewed children studying at two Matola madrassas - in one, the pupils were supposedly also learning the Mozambican school curriculum - but in the other they were doing nothing except memorizing the Koran in Arabic. Unlike serious private schools, madrassas are not recognized as educational institutions by the Mozambican Ministry of Education.
The incident does not fall within the usual definition of kidnapping or child trafficking, because of the clear indication of parental consent. But it is certainly a serious case of child abuse to cram children, some as young as six, into a truck for a journey of over 2,000 kilometres, with precious little to eat or drink, and then to deprive them of a chance of a decent education, and set them to learning by rote a seventh century text written in a language that none of them understand.
Assistant Attorney-General Andre Cumbe told reporters that there were no indications that this constituted trafficking. But he could not state with certainly where the children were to have been taken, and admitted that prosecutors had not yet interrogated the alleged traffickers who are still in police custody.
He suggested that the adults accompanying the children had extorted money from their parents, given the gross disparity between the 3,000 meticais paid for each child, and the 500 meticais they had paid the truck driver.
Cumbe said that documents accompanying the children had been falsified. Although mosques and madrassas are private institutions, the documents bore the official symbol of the Republic of Mozambique, giving the impression that the venture had the blessing of the Ministry of Education.
Cumbe thought that this forgery showed that those in charge of this journey were fully aware that it was illicit.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
