Senegal Court Forbids Forcing Children to Beg – NYTimes.com

If ordinary people use children as beggars, it’s called child abuse. It’s a crime.

If priests or holy men use children to beg for them, what happens? Over many centuries, it’s an accepted practice in Senegal.

If you read the article below, you will know that even politicians and judges there, are afraid to change things. It’s even though the children beggars got killed begging in the dangerous traffic. They don’t have a conscience. When passing this judgment in order to obtain millions of dollars in donations, they still pass the “buck.” They say the Americans made them do it.

No backbone!

The supposedly “holy” men or priests, and nation leaders, they all are heartless, despite seeing children being hit by cars. They don’t know how to differentiate right from wrong nor do they have the guts. The “holy” men are not holy, they are fake priests and are merciless, even though they may be “learned.”

We have bad priests in every religion. Supposedly “holy” men, they misuse other people to get more and more donations for themselves in the name of religion or monastery building. Like the Senegalese in this article below, most people would turn a blind eye to the bad priests’ wrongdoings. Also, they don’t have the guts to challenge them.

The bad priests always have the “Nga Yeah Gyi” (you will go to hell) psychological weapon on them. The lay people are “brainwashed and blindsided.”

Lord Buddha actually encouraged critiques to his and all others’ teachings. He disliked blind obedience.

As contrast, Vinaya monk rules forbid such begging as seen in Senegal. All donations to Buddhist monks have to be voluntary, not coerced nor influenced nor persuaded. (Google Vinaya monk rules and find out for yourselves).

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Senegal Court Forbids Forcing Children to Beg – NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/13/world/africa/13dakar.html?ref=world

DAKAR, Senegal — The judge spoke quietly, and decades of custom were quickly rolled back: the Muslim holy men were to be punished for forcing children to beg.

The sentence handed down in a courtroom here last week was gentle, only six months’ probation and a fine for the seven marabouts, or holy men. Yet the result could be a social revolution, in the eyes of some commentators. By government decree, and under international pressure, Senegal has forbidden the marabouts to enlist children to beg on their behalf.

Outside the crowded courtroom, a dozen or more white-robed marabouts sat in an anxious conclave on the ground to discuss their colleagues’ predicament. More than 40 had shown up in support, and they knew the stakes. If the government here follows through, thousands of children could be released from a practice that human rights groups condemn as exploitation under the guise of education but that religious leaders defend as essential for keeping their enterprises afloat.

“Very sad, really heavy; this is a custom from our ancestors,” Chérif Aïdara, an Islamic lecturer in the group, said later. “This is how we teach the Koran.”

Outside the courtroom, Aboubacry Barro, a lawyer for the convicted marabouts, said: “This has been practiced since the beginning of time in Senegal. This is a case without precedent.”

A singular and ubiquitous feature of the landscape here seems about to change: the flocks of ragged boys known as talibés, who tender begging bowls to motorists and pedestrians on behalf of the marabouts.

The bowls are sometimes no more than old tin tomato cans; the children, some as young as 4, are often barefoot, and they spend perilous hours on the streets and sidewalks, weaving in and out of traffic in their torn, filthy T-shirts. When they return to their rudimentary living quarters in the evening, they must turn their coins over to the marabouts, or face severe punishment. Not infrequently, newspaper headlines on a back page announce the crushing of a little talibé in traffic.

Three weeks ago, after the government announced its ban, the police began rounding them up, along with other beggars. The children, in turn, led the authorities to their marabouts, officials here said.

Until then, they could be seen in every neighborhood of this Muslim West African metropolis. Ostensibly students in schools where the Koran is taught, the boys often leave these makeshift establishments knowing little of the Muslim sacred texts, according to Human Rights Watch, which estimates that there are as many as 50,000 on the streets of Senegal.

The marabouts depend on the pitiful gleanings of the children for their own livelihood, as they testified in court here.

“It’s an abusive use of children,” said Ibrahima Thioub, a specialist in Senegalese history at the Université Cheikh Anta Diop here. “These kids in the street don’t learn the Koran.”

Tidiane Baldé, a spokesmen for the marabouts at the courthouse last week — each of them has around 40 to 100 talibés — countered: “They don’t have the means to feed the talibés. So they have to send them out.”

The custom is so ingrained that many Senegalese, even if they do not quite approve, continue to roll down their car windows and flip coins into the children’s bowls, sustaining the practice. The government, dependent on support from powerful Muslim brotherhoods with large popular followings here, has only just begun to tackle the problem. There has been no popular pressure to do so. The outrage has come mostly from abroad.

So prosecuting the marabouts is a major break with precedent, Mr. Thioub said.

“It’s something totally new, and very important, to take the marabouts to justice,” the historian said. “This risks becoming quite complicated for the government,” he added.

On Thursday, the Koranic Teachers’ Association in Louga, an important provincial town, called for President Abdoulaye Wade to step down if the government persisted with the ban.

Still, like others here, Mr. Thioub is not certain that last week’s prosecution amounts to more than a symbolic gesture to appease international donors. Indeed, the talibés have hardly disappeared: On Thursday morning, the day after the prosecution, in Fenêtre Mermoz, a neighborhood north of downtown, two little talibés, Omar and Mamadou, both 10, held out their begging bowls — old cans — to a passerby. Asked if the police had bothered them, they shyly shook their heads no.

“We have to wait and see if this is a one-time thing, or whether it’s a real engagement,” said Matthew Wells of Human Rights Watch, who recently wrote a stinging report on the practice.

It was outside pressure that led to the ban, Prime Minister Souleymane Ndéné Ndiaye made clear in announcing the measure. Senegal was “under threat from its partners,” he said late in August. The Millennium Challenge Corporation, an American foreign aid agency created by Congress, promised this impoverished country $540 million over five years in September last year, in a good-government grant.

“This was a question that interested specifically the Americans,” said Abdoulaye Ndiaye, a high official in the Ministry of Justice here. “We got a note on the trafficking act from the Americans,” Mr. Ndiaye said, referring to American legislation against human trafficking.

But pressure aside, he insisted that “what we are doing, we needed to do.”

Outside the courtroom, though, supporters of the marabouts were convinced that the government here had cravenly knuckled under. “It’s aid donors who are behind this,” said Mohammed Diagne, an accountant. “They’re attacking a whole system.” He added, “This is not something that just developed overnight.”