Mass protesters marched to the center of Brussels on 20 October 1996. The weather that autumn was warmer than usual because of the busy streets.
By
LINDA CHRISTANTY
·5 minutes read
ARSIP PRIBADI
Linda Christanty
Mass protesters marched to the center of Brussels on 20 October 1996. The weather that autumn was warmer than usual because of the busy streets. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets. It cannot be denied, it was the biggest peaceful demonstration in Belgian’s history.
The grieving and disappointed people held white balloons and white flowers. The faces of Melissa Russo and Julie Lejeune were printed on small posters. Both were eight years old. They were victims of kidnappings and sexual violence. The culprit was Marc Dutroux. However, he did not commit the crime alone. There were eyewitnesses who saw Melissa at a nightclub. Dutroux was suspected of trafficking children for sexual exploitation.
It cannot be denied, it was the biggest peaceful demonstration in Belgian’s history.
The peak of the protests in Brussels came after Jean Marc Connerotte, the judge who led the trial of Dutroux and 13 other suspects, was suddenly dismissed. A number of important people in the government were suspected of being involved in this crime network, which was confirmed by the statement of one of the suspects. He said the government would collapse if he mentioned their names.
Belgians united to question the judicial system and court practices that were seen as having failed to crack down on the criminal network.
Perpetrators of sexual crimes against children are often called pedophiles. However, pedophilia was associated with mental disorders or illness, not crime. This definition obscured a criminal act.
In the middle of last year, a traveler from France, Francois Abello Camille, committed suicide in a detention at the Jakarta Police Office, a few days after he was arrested. Based on the video that the police found, the number of his rape victims was 305 children. In order to get closer to his target, he pretended to be a photographer who was looking for a model. Most of the victims were street children.
The police suspected the 65-year-old man was involved in a transnational crime network. If that’s true, videos and pictures that were also evidence of the crime had been widely circulated among people who love child abuse.
KOMPAS/YOLA SASTRA
Illustration. The police escort AM (55), a pedophile suspect, to the Padang City Police office, West Sumatra, Sunday (5/1/2020).
Interpol, the organization that facilitates crime control and police cooperation worldwide, has access to more than 2.7 million images and videos of sexual exploitation of children from 63 countries. In 2019, this organization and ECPAT International, which campaign to end child sexual violence and trafficking, published a report on the trends of unidentified victims.
More than 60 percent of the victims are preteen, including infants and young children. Severe harassment tends to show boys as the victim while 65 percent of victims are girls. As many as 92 percent of the perpetrators are male.
It is not uncommon for criminals to work in institutions that fight for child protection. Peter John Dalglish, for example. He is known as a humanitarian figure from Canada. After founding Street Kids
International, he joined Save the Children and went to Afghanistan to lead an agency under the auspices of the United Nations (UN). In 2016, he received an award from his country for his sincerity in helping underprivileged children. Dalglish was sentenced to 16 years in prison for raping two boys in Nepal.
The exploitation of children in various places is made possible by poverty, gender discrimination, patriarchal culture, war, armed conflict and natural disasters. Under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, a child is anyone under the age of 18. It is estimated that over a million children worldwide are victims of trafficking each year.
Forced marriage is included as sexual violence and sexual trafficking. Girls are married to older men for economic or religious reasons. Ethnic Chinese girls in West Kalimantan are trafficked as contract-brides to Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Kompas/Wawan H Prabowo
Workers and students commemorate International Women\'s Day by demonstrating in front of the DPR RI Building in Senayan, Jakarta, Monday (9/3/2020).
Indonesia has ratified the Palermo Protocol through Law No. 14/2009. This is the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking of Persons, especially women and children. However, protecting children from these crimes requires hard work from various parties. The situation becomes even more dangerous when law enforcement officers are involved in the network and officials accept bribes.
The Covid-19 pandemic has helped change the way criminals work. They use the internet more often to find victims when the children also use the internet for studying at home. Data from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), a non-governmental organization in the United States, shows that the global rate of violence and sexual exploitation of children increased to 98.66 percent in January to September 2020 compared to the same time frame in the previous year.
The Dutroux case was an important part, but the judge failed to break the network. The experience of another survivor from other crimes has proven that one of the suspects has a long track record.
Anneke Lucas was six years old when her mother transferred her to a network of high-ranking “pedophiles” in Belgium. She met European heads of state and members of the royal family. Anneke recognized their faces from television.
Her neck was chained and she was forced to eat human feces. She experienced sexual violence on stage and became an object. One day she was taken to a small room to be tied to a meat cutting board. Anneke still remembers the face of her torturer, who is one of the suspects in the Dutroux case.
In her testimony on Global Citizen, an online media, Anneke said that power addicts, world leaders and corrupt politicians who abuse children are people who recycle the treatment they have experienced in the past. If her words are true, some of the leaders or high-ranking officials in various countries who torment the people were victims of abuse or violence in childhood who are seeking revenge.
/https%3A%2F%2Fkompas.id%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2020%2F01%2FWhatsApp-Image-2020-01-05-at-19.08.28_1578226568.jpeg){kind=logo}
