Malaysia: The Police have Rescued 402 Children Suspected of Being Abused Across 20 Care Homes.

Written by Isaac Omollo

The Islamic Global Ikhwan Group (GISB) has  in September created attention after police rescued 402 children suspected of being abused across 20 care homes.

Authorities have caught 171 people, including teachers and caregivers, who are suspected of being involved in human trafficking and child abuse. Even after the police took strong action, members of a religious group in Malaysia kept doing these wrong things, according to the BBC. Since then, many more arrests have happened as more information has come to light.

Among those are claims that five GISB members trafficked people for the purpose of exploitation by forced labour through threats.

Despite child abuse and exploitation happening physically, the society must not assume that every child abuse happens physically, everyone must know that conveying messages and  producing sexually related content of and for children is another form of child exploitation and abuse.

Every year, over 400 million children around the world experience something called child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA). This means any harmful sexual activity involving a child. Many children who go through this face a lot of pain, both in their bodies and hearts, for the rest of their lives.

In Kenya, many cases of CSEA aren’t reported, and there isn’t a way to keep track of them all. So, we don’t know the exact number of children affected. But it’s clear that CSEA is happening more and more in the country. The COVID-19 pandemic has made this problem even worse.

In Kenya, many people are using the internet for bad things like child abuse, especially online. This includes serious crimes like sex trafficking and making and sharing harmful pictures of children. For a long time, these actions happened in secret, and many felt ashamed to talk about them, which allowed the problem to keep growing.