PEMRA asks media to report sensibly over child sex abuse scandal

ISLAMABAD (Staff Report) - Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) on Saturday issued a circular to all media houses asking them to report Kasur's child sex abuse scandal very sensibly and cautiously.

According to a statement, the authority advised all TV channels to ensure that identities of sex abuse victims remain hidden.

The Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra) on Saturday directed TV channels to exercise caution while reporting about the Kasur sex abuse scandal.

"The faces of the victims and the parents should not be shown and neither should their identities be revealed," it stressed.

The regulatory body further said the "victims have been through enough trauma already and their wounds should not be scratched further by media instead of healing them".

Meanwhile a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) probing the Kasur’s child sex abuse scandal has ordered the medical examination of the victims.

The team ordered the medical examination of 10 victims including a woman. However representatives of the victims have expressed their displeasure over the medical examination.

The representatives claimed the police has been pressurizing the victims to take back their cases; as well as implicating innocent people into the heinous crime which has been dubbed as the Pakistan’s greatest child sex scandal.

The number of complaints filed against the sexual exploitation and abuse of minors by a gang in Kasur has risen to 18 while 15 suspects have been arrested. Statements of over 20 victims as well as 6 police officers including the District Police Officer (DPO) have been recorded.

Police has arrested another suspect, Muhammad Ramzan alias Jhana, in Pakistan’s bisggest child sex abuse scandal.

Earlier Punjab’s Child Protection Bureau disclosed country’s largest child pornography ring, in which 400 videos have been confiscated featuring more than 280 children being sexually exploited.

The Nation published the report of organised child sex exploitation, which has shocked the nation.  According to the report, most of the victims were under 14 years of age. In one of the videos a six-year-old boy can be seen forced to perform sexual act, and a 10-year-old schoolgirl who was filmed being molested by a 14-year-old boy.

Thousands of copies of the sexual assault videos are believed to have been sold for Rs. 50 each in Hussain Khanwala village in Kasur district. According to the parents of the children, the gang members were in contact with pedophiles in western countries through Skype and would sell the videos overseas for large amounts of money.

According to our reporter, Shoaib Bhatti, the 3 villages namely Hussain Khanwala, Bagga, and Rohi Nala were under the control of a large child-porn gang that exported their content abroad. They barely sold their content in Pakistan. The whole scheme was being financed by two primary sources: extortion money from the victims and their families, and sales to foreigners over social media and Skype who would pay large amounts to sometimes watch these rapes live. Sales in local area was limited because it did not yield great profits. It is estimated that from extortion alone, they have earned Rupees 80 million.

Our reporter was also able procure a CD containing at least 280 clips of these barbaric acts from an ordinary villager.

Many on social media and TV channels have condemned the scandal and urged provincial government to try those behind this under terrorism law.