Children of Yemen: Victims of the present and future [Archives:2006/924/Opinion]

We often think of any regime or social order in terms of what it means to the hard working taxpayers who must dish out a sizable portion of their incomes to insure that Government can meet the costs of protecting the nation, maintaining law and order and providing basic social services, With the government also controlling all the important natural resources of the society, the job would be considered easy to accomplish thanks to the high income that the government is generating with the price of oil and gas now at a premium. Having said that it goes without saying that as a taxpaying public, we can state categorically that we are not really getting our money's worth, whether from the money that is dished out of our incomes or the money that the government collects from the royalties of our natural resources. Now the tragedy does not end there, but only begins. What is lately becoming certain is that the children of Yemen are truly becoming the worst victims of an incompetent regime that is incapable of providing the most basic of services for the children of the country. We are not just talking about vaccinations or free milk in school to help overcome the problem of stunted growth and other maladies faced by our children. We are talking about the most essential of services, namely the ability to go to school or to play in the streets (since there are so little, if any parks they can go to in their neighborhoods) without having to be threatened by mysterious criminals ready to snatch them away and bring their normal lives to an end (if not their lives altogether). Yes the problem of child kidnapping has reached seriouc proportions in both the rural and urban areas of the country. The causes vary for this tragic unholy trend that has become a common disturbing matter to all parents, rich and poor and there does not seem to be any genuine effort to get to the root causes of such a serious social and criminal development. Children are being kidnapped for “sale” overseas, for embezzlement of money or extortion for meeting unholy demands by the culprits on the parents of the stolen children, for prostitution purposes. You name it and you can be sure it will fit in the possible reasons for this sad trend on the increase. Even in Sana'a, the City of Peace, childfen have not been spared the agony of being separated from their parents (temporarily) by Godless criminals, who have lost all heart and sympathy for the cries of a wailing child as he is lifted away from his parent at the point of a gun, or stolen from a standing automobile, while the parent is in a store, or simply picked off the street as he or she is out to buy some candy. Yes these are the sad stories that are begnning to make the major talk of qat sessions and newspaper headlines and yet the issue is not even given any significance by the Government media, which continues to reassure us that we have reached the Seventh Heaven, so we do not have to worry about our children anymore, or anything else for that matter!
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