In Crime and Punishment, Everyone Should Carry His Own Cross
- Category: Children
- Date 24-07-2005
- 388 views
You do not punish the innocent for the sins of the guilty! Yet very many people are suffering inexplicable injustice as they face undue arrests and/or imprisonment merely because they are related to lawbreaker. In the interest of fairness and commonsense, the crying of these unfortunate individuals whose predicament is a serious violation of human rights, and has got devastating effects on human growth and development should be seriously reconsidered.
One wonders how long the civil society organisations will slumber when the very individuals in whose interests they claim to have been established, and whose cause they claim to champion, are spending the best part of their most crucial lives under undesirable detention in prison cells without hope for any future recompense. I am addressing myself to the plight of numerous children who spend their formative life in prison simply because their parents, guardians or relatives have committed crimes.
From the biblical times, God condemned the practice of punishing children on behalf or the sheer account of their parents’ misconduct. He objected to the proverbial eating of sour grapes by parents, only to endanger their children’s dentition. Read the holy book, Ezekiel 18:2-13; it says in part, “Parents have eaten sour grapes, thus their children’s teeth are on edge … there shall no longer be anyone among you who will repeat this proverb … a son who is a thief, murderer, … his death shall be his own fault.”
That is to say that each individual is accountable for his own actions, therefore emphasis is laid on personal responsibility. We cannot be personally responsible for the deeds of our parents or relatives. I have had the privilege to visit a children’s remand home in Dar es Salaam, but I never came across a parent or guardian who accompanied or was apprehended by the police in addition to his child offender to jointly serve a prison sentence.
Yet very many innocent children are serving prison sentences with their errant mothers in cells all over the country. While presenting her ministry’s budget estimates for 2005/6 in Parliament, the line minister Hon. Dr. Asha-Rose Migiro said the problem of children born in prisons and those living with their mothers in prisons has not been addressed adequately. (See: Govt to study prison children, The Citizen Tuesday 5th July 2005).
In its admission of this fact, the Ministry of Community Development, Gender and Children has shamelessly revealed that government will conduct a study in the next financial year to determine the problems facing children born in prison or children who live with their imprisoned mothers. Honestly, with or without a study, any person of sound mind must know that these unfortunate children, in all their vulnerability, are being punished for the crimes they did not commit and which they know nothing about. Moreover whereas the two, mother and child, are simultaneously imprisoned for a crime committed by one, the sentence can never be reduced on the understanding that it has been shared.
Someone might say that this argument does not have any legal basis, and is therefore inconsequential. Granted, the writer is a layman as far as the law is concerned. Interestingly however, scientific and legalistic technicalities have in essence done little, if any, to make us less human by nature. The law must not perpetrate injustice against defenceless, voiceless citizens; therefore it is incumbent upon members of the legal profession to creatively revisit the country’s laws so that justice, other than injustice, is administered through them.
As a matter of fact, government should be held accountable. Parliament, which listened to the Minister glossing over the children’s plight, should legislate against this unfair practice. The executive should take immediate steps to correct and suspend this lawful injustice. Common sense should inform us that an innocent person must not be punished for the crimes of another.
Let us come up now and speak for these voiceless kids. Could lawyers of goodwill possibly volunteer and sue government for the damage occasioned to these innocent individuals whose rights to family life are being violated with impunity. Could the innumerable nongovernmental organisations purporting to champion children’s rights and welfare, with their millions of dollars from foreign donors pool resources and stand up to the government, demanding an end to this senseless act of torturing vulnerable citizens. My other string to the bow is that the children kept in prison should be enumerated and registered so that when they grow up, they are told the damage and injustice occasioned to them earlier, so they could seek redress.
By Venansio Ahabwe
Source: Peering Eye, Sunday Citizen