E’ stata scritta nel 1962 ma è ancora attualissima. Si ispira a un canto tradizionale dei negri americani contro le aste degli schiavi. Ci spinge a riflettere su noi stessi e su quanto siamo disposti a fare per lenire la sofferenza o almeno quella dei nostri shadow children.

Underage Thai girls in Thailand’s southern border provinces are often forced into marrying older Malaysian men. But Thai authorities have largely turned a blind eye to the problem.Earlier this summer the marriage of Ayu, an 11-year-old Thai girl, to 41-year-old Malaysian  Che Abdul amid  sparked outrage in Parliament.  In Malaysia, men can legally marry girls under 18 only if they get Islamic sharia court approval. But Hamid got around this paying an imam 4,500 baht (£105) for officiating before getting his new marriage certificate at the Islamic Council offices. With that, Ayu became his third wife, and the pair crossed back into Malaysia. Hashim Yusoff, the imam who married the two, defended the wedding saiyg that he made Hamid pledge to not have sexual relations with his 11-year-old wife. However, recent medical tests have revealed that Hamid did not keep his promise.The Guardian reports that marriages like these occur because of a legal loophole.  “Facilitators” often came to villages on behalf of men looking for a child wife.“The facilitators come to the houses, they  ask them  saying things like, ‘Do you have any lambs or baby goats you are selling?Everyone knows that it means they are looking for a young virgin to marry. And then an arrangement will be made between the girl’s father and the facilitator. The girl has no say.”

A recent Guardian investigation has found that more than 3,500 reports of forced marriage were made to police over a three year period in the UK.  In 2017, the NGO, Karma Nirvana received a further 8,870 calls, including more than 200 from or about children under 15.  Over the same three year period, one national helpline run by another NGO received 22,030 calls from individuals or agencies  ( see Rotarian Action Group against Slavery http://www.ragas.online 4 September 2018 Issue No 86). See also the Editorial by Mark Little -President and Founder of RAGAS  RC Norwich St Edmund, England- in which he writes: “Forced marriages are now rightly regarded as a form of modern slavery. According to the charity Karma Nirvana the number of UK cases of forced marriage soared by 40% at the start of the school holidays this year. The charity revealed that it was receiving reports of cases at a rate of two a day in July, more than double the average of 25 seen in the first four months of the year, with 44 cases reported. Jasvinder Sanghera, who is the founder of the forced marriage victim support charity Karman Nirvana, says: Even if teachers notice their female students are missing from the classroom, the “alarm bell will not necessarily ring because the first person to be alerted are the parents, who will often say they are being educated abroad. The parents are the perpetrators of the crime of forced marriage”. So if you decide to add your support to others’ on this issue, click on  Freedom United link,  and join the fight against forced child marriage. https://www.freedomunited.org/

Women fleeing North Korea primarily head to China, but upon making it across the border there lies the danger of human traffickers who attempt to sell them to  Chinese men searching for wives.But the stories of North Korean women sold into marriage become even more complicated if they eventually make it to South Korea — they must endure the torment of leaving behind their children born to their Chinese husbands.  North Korean defector ,Choi, South Korea was supposed to be the start of a new life. She escaped starvation in North Korea only to be sold to a Chinese cab driver However, as her husband explained, “She had no legal status in China and she may be caught by the police. But she could have residency in South Korea.” China currently treats North Koreans as illegal immigrants and repatriates them if discovered.Choi thus fled to South Korea, struggling to adapt in a new environment where she faced several educational barriers to getting a job. Still, she began the lengthy paperwork and DNA tests needed to prove her relationship with her son in China and applied for him to have residency. In the end, Choi  — just three weeks after she was able to bring her husband and son over from China she was murdered. There have been no reports of her death in South Korean media and police did not tell her husband and son what happened to the killer.

Laura Dryjanska- former Vice Coordinator of our Shadow Children Project and  now Professor at the Biola University, Cal.- has visited a new association against human trafficking, mainly dedicated to minors  called Forgotten Children, Inc. Possible interesting collaborations both on the territory and in the field of research and teaching. Among minors special care is dedicated to baby prostitutes(from 12 to 14 years old)- mainly coming from illegal mexican families- who offer heir bodies to the truck drivers along the main highways of California. Often they have choosed this life or have been pushed  by their poor and miserable mothers. Between Interstate 5 and  Long Beach there are about 32 motels not requiring documents. Thanks to Laura for carrying on programs dedicated to poor minors in spite of her great work at the Biola University and also expecting a baby. Congratulations and all the most wishful thoughts from our site…also to Roberto Giua!

Papa Francesco ha parlato oggi, al ritorno dall’Incontro mondiale con le famiglie in Irlanda, del trattamento ricevuto dai migranti prima del loro imbarco. “È doloroso: le donne e i bambini sono venduti, ma gli uomini ricevono torture, le più sofisticate”. Ha poi citato le parole del ministro irlandese per l’infanzia Katherine Zappone sulle Case per Madri e Bambini che gli ha detto : “Santo Padre, abbiamo trovato fosse comuni di bambini, stiamo facendo delle indagini, e la Chiesa ha qualcosa a che fare con tutto ciò”. Il Papa ha aggiunto:”Mi ha detto questa cosa con molta educazione e rispetto, equilibrio. L’ho ringraziata. Mi ha inviato un memorandum, lo devo ancora studiare. Questo per me è stato un esempio di collaborazione costruttiva”. A proposito dell’incontro   con  otto vittime degli abusi commentato: “Ci voleva questa riunione di ascolto. È stato per me doloroso. Ma è uscita da lì la proposta di chiedere perdono che ho fatto all’inizio della messa, su cose concrete. Per esempio alcune cose  non le sapevo. Come quella delle mamme nubili alle quali venivano tolti i bambini e dati in adozione e alle quali le religiose di questi istituti dicevano loro che era peccato mortale ricercare poi figli, o i figli la propria madre e per questo motivo ho messo nella preghiera di perdono anche questo peccato contro il quarto comandamento. È per me doloroso, ma ho la consolazione di poter aiutare a chiarire queste cose”. Sulle responsabilità delle Case gestite dalla religiose in Irlanda, questo sito aveva già riferito mesi orsono.

Come già segnalato tempo addietro dal nostro sito,  è in atto una persecuzione della popolazione mussulmana Rohingya, in fuga dalla Birmania. Le Nazioni Unite hanno condannato le Autorità militari birmane ma anche i politici civili che non hanno mosso un dito, tra questi anche Aung San Suuky,  Premio Nobel per la Pace (!) e Consigliere di stato. Si rammenta tra l’altro che la Birmania è un paese a religione buddhista i cui principi evidentemente non sono stati un deterrente. Avranno preso posizione i monaci e i Maestri di tanti Monasteri splendidi sparsi nel  Paese? Ci troviamo di fronte ad un ennesimo caso di “predicare bene e razzolare male”?

La Fellowship RSR sta portando avanti un bel  Progetto “Le conferenze del  Rotary “e ha appena creato una pagina Facebook a questo proposito. Si tratta di una serie molto specifica di conferenze che potranno essere tenute, presso i Clubs eventualmente interessati, da rotariani conoscitori dei vari temi proposti. Scopo del Progetto è suscitare interesse intorno ad argomenti  di cui altri amici rotariani possono essere esperti .Tra queste ve ne  anche una dedicata ai nostri “Shadow children o Bambini nell’ombra”.Per saperne di più collegarsi al link  https://www.facebook.com/Rotarian-Conferences-A-cura-della-FRSR-276181196326571/

Salwa, a 14 year old girl, remembers chugging bleach for as long as she could. She ignored the burn as it went down her throat, and she tuned out the sound of gunshots outside her window.But Salwa, a Syrian refugee, wasn’t trying to escape the Syrian war — she was trying to escape her forced marriage.In Lebanon, nearly 40% of young Syrian refugee girls are being married off by impoverished families who erroneously believe that they are protecting their daughters against sexual assault. Often they are wedded off to much older men who rape and beat them if they refuse to sleep with them. Such was Salwa’s case. Her drunk husband wanted to have sex, but Salwa said she would be right back. She left the room and tried to poison herself. I returned to the bedroom and thought, this will be the last time, said Salwa. “When I woke up the next morning, I said, ‘F*ck you, God.’” The Times of Israel reports that this isn’t an isolated case:Halima’s death certificate says she fell down the stairs. But according to SB Overseas — an NGO working with Syrian refugees across Lebanon, including Halima’s camp — the 13-year-old actually killed herself. It started one night in October, when she ran away from her abusive husband at a refugee camp outside Beirut. She fled back to her family and asked if they’d help her divorce him. No way, was their answer, she had to stay with him. So, that night, Halima overdosed on pills.SB Overseas has noticed how common suicide has become among child brides — and how often families lie about it.