Iran: Street Child Labours, Physical And Sexual Abuse By Municipal Agents
Published by Ali on February 14, 2019
The state-run news agency, Asr Iran, has published a video about child labours who work in the streets to earn insignificant amounts of money, while are abused physically and sexually by municipality agents.
In this video, one of the labour child girls says, “Me and my two brothers were doing our homework and at the same time selling walnuts when municipal agents came and caught my two brothers. I told them, ‘what do you want to do with them?’ Then they caught me, too… They took off my older brother’s clothes and started beating him by sticks. My younger brother started crying. Simultaneously, they told me to polish their shoes, I said I won’t. Then they rubbed black polish on my face.”
A social worker said the child labours are also sexually abused in addition to being brutalized. “Two of the child labours who work on the intersection, were forced into a car by municipal agents. One of the agents told one of the girls to unbutton her clothes. This girl even told us that when she was taken to the police station, she was separated from other kids and forced to take off her clothes.”
Another one of the child labours talked about sexual abuse of her friend by municipal agents. She said, “One day, when I saw Sara, I asked her, ‘Why are you upset?’ She said municipal agents caught me and mistreated me… They pulled my scarf, and touched me. When I screamed, he stepped away. But when I went to the office of the municipality and told my story, they did not believe me. They said I was making up the story so that they would let me go.”
So far, several state-run Medias have acknowledged to rape of child labourers.
Salamat News had published a report in 2017, which included some painful examples of sexual assault on poor girl children and child labourers. The same story was also reported by Roknar website.
The report also cites Elham Fakhari, member of Tehran’s City Council, as saying that: “sexual abuse is the greatest ailment among young scavenger children.”
In a shocking comment made in October 2018, in an interview with state-run Iran ISNA news agency, the managing director of the Tehran Social Services Organization, Reza Ghadimi, claimed that based on a survey of 400 child labourers, 90 percent of them are “molested.”