Children’s rights

Yesterday (October 9) it was quite late I was walking home with a friend after watching a Bhutanese film. We reached near the Hongkong market when we saw a crowd of people there. Vegetable vendors were also shouting. My friend said we should leave the place but I insisted we see what was going on.

I pushed myself through the crowd and was a small girl crying and hiding herself behind a woman. The woman did not know what to do. The girl’s mother and grandmother were drunk and were beating the child. The father was sitting nearby and not saying a thing. The family were asking the child to come home with them but the girl refused because she was beaten up.

A few concerned people asked the mother and the grandmother not to beat the child but the mother was very difficult to handle. She was drunk and aggressive. She was pulling her daughters hands so hard that the child was crying. “Don’t interfere she is my child and I have the right to do anything,” she shouted at the people. The woman behind whom the child was hiding was also helpless. She did nto know what to do.

There were some traffic police trying to sort things out. I asked one of them if they could do anything because the police have a different unit called the, “women and children protection unit.” The police first said it was better if the parents solved the problem mutually. I told him that would not be possible because the parents were drunk he then told me to call 113 and complain.

I called 113 and complained. The receiver there asked me a lot of questions which irritated me. He asked for my name, number, and the spot again and again. I explained to him that it was just near the city police station. To which he asked if there were other people there and how he could know when he get to the place. Had he come out he would have directly noticed the crowd. For once I thought the time taken by the police to answer the call and ask questions again and again was enough for people to run away.

There was an incident when I saw two guys fighting outside a party hall. One had carried some kind of a knife (couldn’t see in the dark). I quickly called 113 and informed the police. The fight took long and by the time police came one was seriously injured and was bleeding. The incident was just near the police station too.

But the issue here is not about the police but the child being beaten up. It was 10 pm and I could not stay there longer. I just hoped the police came to the rescue of the child. In Bhutanese society there are cases where children are beaten up. I also got a lot of beating as a kid especially from mom but can a small child be beaten up by three people in the mid of the town.

Sometimes I feel we should follow the west in having the children’s rights.