Gulf News (21st November 2005)
By Aftab Kazmi, Bureau Chief

Young girls and children from the earthquake hit Pakistan-administered Kashmir are being kidnapped by unscrupulous people, said a leading international human rights activist here yesterday.

The situation is faced by unattended and orphan children and most of the survivors are reportedly guarding their tents and demolished residences at night to protect their shocked and devastated families.

Ansar Burney, a leading Pakistani international human rights activist, said most kidnapping cases are taking place in Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and in the surrounding areas. Burney is also chairman of Ansar Burney International Welfare Trust.

The survivors still living on the mountains are the prime targets of the kidnappers, who are also attracting unattended children mostly girls with promises of shelter, food, and a normal life, he said.

Burney, who recently arrived in the UAE from Muzaffarabad, said he was forced to leave Pakistan as he was highlighting the issue through the media.

"I received a number of threatening calls that compelled me to abandon relief activities and leave the country," he said.

Recently declared an international hero by the US in the field of human rights, Burney said several jihadi groups are also taking Kashmiri children to their camps.

"Organisations like the Jamaat-ud-Dawa have been openly calling for orphans to be handed over to it for an Islamic education," he said.

He said he had evidence that sympathetic government officials had themselves been passing children on to the jihadi organisations to be looked after there.

This is happening in contrast to Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz's announcement that children from the earthquake-hit areas would not be given to anybody.

He also promised to raise children in state houses that would specially be set up in different cities of Pakistan.

Burney said that he was, however, determined to raise the issue on the international level with the help of Unicef and UN Commission for Human Rights.

"I will shortly talk to both the organisations since children in Kashmir have been facing a grave situation," he added.

Some of the incidents have, somehow, been reported in Pakistani newspapers. He said some 50 kidnapped children were recently found in the city of Gujranwala near Lahore.

Burney said a prostitute from a notorious den in Lahore had recently disclosed that many young girls were being brought from Kashmir.

This was also reported in an Urdu language newspaper saying that many pimps have been bringing in girls in trucks.

Pakistani law enforcement agencies, he said, had been turning a blind eye to the kidnapping cases and the jihadi organisations' campaigns to take children into their custody.

Instead, Islamabad has been employing its energies in attempts to hide it from the international community through an unannounced media censorship.

He feared that the jihadi organisations, which were banned in Pakistan, would train these children in extremism that would later contribute to violence in the name of religion.

Some religious and political organisations in Pakistan have been deceiving people through their so-called relief operations.

"Such organisations are writing their names on the tents provided by the UNHCR to show they are doing relief work," he said, adding that actually they are trying to take political advantage in the name of relief activities.

"I took up the issue of child kidnapping and abuse in a live television talk show but was forced to drop it," he said, adding that a senior spokesman of the Pakistani military rang up the private television channel asking them to either to stop the discussion or bring the show to a close.

The show was televised on October 28 in which other participants were Senator Syed Mushahid Hussain, Secretary-General of the ruling Muslim League, and Senator Farhatullah Khan Babar, a leader of Pakistan Peoples Party. "Both of them also protested the ban," he added

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