We posted before about the primitive
and disgusting tradition of disguising girls as boys or “Bacha Posh” in
Afghanistan (here). This is done for reasons ranging from social (parents want
to have a son) and economic (to work on the streets to feed their families).
Today, I’m posting about “Bacha Bazi” (see video above). It is as primitive, disgusting and
in almost all countries is considered “pedophilia” although tolerated by the Afghanistan government. “Bacha Bazi” is the practice of
wealthy or prominent Afghans exploiting underage boys as sexual partners who
are often dressed up as women to dance at gatherings.
The Washington Post had the
disturbing details in a story published two weeks ago (here) and Bad
Rachel the uber-conservative blogger followed on the story with her take (here).
Excerpt below:
“Women are for children, boys are for pleasure.” So goes the Afghan saying. But there are no women in the Hindu Kush or Kabul or Kandahar. There are no mothers, no sisters, no grandmothers, no aunts. There are only the shades of womanhood; pale shadows flitting in the background of the horrific crimes routinely committed against their little boys—their sons, their brothers, their grandsons, their nephews—by Afghani men awash in the sick pleasure of pedophilia. And there is no childhood for those little boys. There is only their agony, and the creatures imitating men—the fathers, the grandfathers, the brothers, the uncles—who buy them, steal them, enslave them, groom them, rape them, prostitute them, turn them into dancing playthings, “bacha bazi,” for the pleasure of others of their ilk, and then discard them: “When he starts growing a beard, his time will expire, and I will try to find another one who doesn’t have a beard,” declares one such “man” about his “companion” of two years. And there is no Afghani government, apparently, either: “A kid who is being sexually exploited, if he reports it, he will end up in prison,” a UN worker tells the Washington Post. “They become pariahs.”Image: The Washington Post
