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Al-Masry Al-Youm columnist calls for exterminating street children 'in the Brazilian way'

June 21, 2014 at 10:48 am

The Egyptian Children’s Rights Coalition has lodged a complaint with the prosecutor general against Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper and one of its columnists, accusing them of incitement to “exterminate” Egyptian street children using the Brazilian way.

In a statement Friday, the coalition slammed the newspaper and its columnist Nassar Abdullah for publishing an article titled “Street Children: The Brazilian Solution,” dated Friday June 20, 2014, in which he argues that Egypt’s ailing economy cannot afford the rehabilitation of street children. The article cited the Brazilian brutal extermination of street children in the 1990s as an example of how the Brazilian leadership at the time had a political will to improve the livelihood of its people. It suggests that Brazil’s mass killing of street children has led to its economic success on the long run, and that “this is the lesson anyone seeking to learn from the Brazilian experience should be keenly aware of.”

The coalition said the article amounts to “incitement to genocide” and violates the constitution and the law.

Moreover, the coalition warned against “media calls to reduce the rights of children by capitalising on political and social events to adopt harsher punishments for children.”

The statement stressed that street children have been wronged by failed economic, social and cultural policies by successive Egyptian governments over the past 50 years. Society has also dealt with them as outcasts, it added.

The coalition criticised media calls for amending the Children’s Law and toughening up penalties against minors to reach rigorous imprisonment or the death sentence in certain crimes.

“They all forgot that religions have enjoined mercy for children due to their physical and psychological immaturity. This has also been enshrined in relevant international covenants and laws,” the statement added.

The coalition called for rehabilitating street children, and dealing with the root causes of their situation, and then reintegrating them into society.