JORDBUR has been busy, terribly busy with his day job that paid for his meals and room, nightly readings that feeds his gigantic brain and so he could not fulfil duties of active citizenship for a long time.

Now it is time to write in Burma Digest after he feel really annoyed, provoked and moved by exploiters and abusers of children. Time to bash the abusers, and lash them, with a word processor in the name of the almighty internet journalism.

Recently in International Herald Tribune, he read about advances and accomplishment of anti Child labour campaigning NGOs in India, emergence of the new law that ban labour of minors and failure to enforce that law. The Indian director Satyajit Ray’s Apu trilogy made him learnt about child labour problem in India too.

While enjoying public Wireless internet access in library, JORDBUR’s mind travel back to his motherland Burma. He recollect his own experience with child labour and reflect how did he behave then…. JORDBUR himself used to be a man whom he want to judge and criticize now…….

Our JORDBUR was in a canteen of an engineering college in Burma sipping free tea. Being young students from lower middle class families, all JORBUR and his buddies could afford were just a couple of sweet tea and cheap meals and they were doing what they do best: arguing, bluffing, showing off, coaching (rarely academically) and gossiping. To water down their drying mouth, green tea was always at their refuge as it came quite free but it adds workload to already very busy kid waiters. So JORDBUR kept on raising the empty to signal the poor boy waiters…

It took a quite while to get the request being noticed by and it took quite long to get the jar filled. JORDBUR started complaining, why did it take too long to get his green tea Blah blah blah …. And so his friends joined in bullying the hapless kid with blames…..

Not so long, JORBUR and friends were back in action, talking and talking and talking. Suddenly cries filled the shop and the café owner was smacking the JORBUR’s inattentive little waiter. Suddenly JORDBUR realized that to make his customers happy, the cafe owner was penalizing his underage waiters brought or bought from rural villages of Burma. The boy was barely 10; he was beaten severely unmatched for his age, away from his parents, not for stealing, not for doing anything wrong but just for the ignorant remarks recklessly made by young men like JORDBUR. Guilt filled JORDBUR intervened the unfair punishment he himself indirectly had caused, but he did too little too late and the boy had already suffered.

JORDBUR will always feel shame for that. That accident gave birth to a more considerate JORDBUR emerged from his ignorant cocoon. He promised that he will never be like that again and he will try his best not to exploit or abuse children and educate others too.

While writing this article, as much as a million of Burmese minors (under 16) are probably exploited and abused as child soldiers and porters in the government armed forces, insurgent rebel armies, raped as unwilling prostitutes in brothels, risking their lives in dirty and dangerous works, serving customers in restaurants, cafes, hotels, as domestic maids in homes. JORDBUR simply wished Burmese of all races, faith and class will join hand to hand to fight this problem and to give the poor kids a chance to study, free from abuses and exploits from modern day slave owners in the disguise of employers.

JORDBUR thinks it is as serious as getting Burma democracy, and child rights is an issue of human rights and he wished a law to ban child labour throughout Burma, imposing severe penalty for child labour employers and agents, assistance scheme for parents to make sure that kids will be learning instead of suffering and time to establish NGOs and schools for those kids, time to raise mandatory schooling up to 8th Standard.

powered by performancing firefox