Stop killing our children.
This is a call from civil rights organisations who say the brutal murders and violence against children in the country must end and that harsher sentences must be handed down to perpetrators.
Yet another child, Bokgabo Poo’s mutilated body was found in Tamboville, Benoni, on the East Rand, last week.
Some of her body parts are missing.
According to police statistics, 549 children aged between 0 and 17 were murdered between January and June this year.
This is an increase compared to the same period last year with 389 children killed.
#NotInMyName secretary-general Themba Masango said the levels of hate against children showed that SA was a violent country.
“To the perpetrators, stop killing our children. You stop it now otherwise we are going to do our best to find you and lock you up for good,” said Masango.
“We hear of these cases every day. It needs to come to an end now. The acts carried out against children are unforgivable and unacceptable. Violence is unacceptable, but it is even worse when adults are preying on children who cannot defend themselves.
“That is cowardice and straight evil. This country is known to be the rape capital of the world. How can we allow that?”
He called for the courts to give harsher sentences to those who are found guilty of harming children to send a strong message to others, but to do it swiftly to minimise the trauma for the families.
“Nothing less than a life sentence should be given to people who are found guilty of these crimes. We need to make spaces smaller for these perpetrators so they have no room to move.”
Missing Children SA has also urged citizens to take a stand in the fight against the increasing numbers of kidnappings, human trafficking and child murders in the country.
According to the organisation’s national coordinator Bianca van Aswagen, they have seen a yearly increase in cases of missing children reported to them.
While Van Aswagen could not share statistics on the number of children that have been reported missing this year, she said the figures were significant and people needed to be more vigilant.
“We deal with different types of kidnappings such as parental abduction, opportunistic kidnappings, ransom demand kidnappings and then human trafficking. Kidnapping has escalated tremendously and also that of human trafficking,” she said.
Van Aswagen said while there were many success stories where children had been found alive, other cases went cold after long periods due to leads going cold.
“…the quicker a case gets reported and action is taken the more chance we have in finding the child safely and alive. But there is always hope no matter how long, as we as an organisation never give up on any of our cases and make sure everything is done to find the child or person who is missing.
“We need to make sure that the cold case flyers get featured and that they get the attention that is needed, and that they are never forgotten.
“Justice needs to be served against those that are taking the lives of our children. Those that are part of these kidnapping syndicates and of human trafficking [must face the law]. It must end now.”
sibiyan@sowetan.co.za
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