Morality gone missing

Teachings of morality can stop child abuse

When we visualise a picture of a village, we see it full of tress and people of simple mentality living in harmony. It is sad but true that the villages are not picturesque anymore. Urbanisation has highly affected the villages. As a result, the lifestyle and mind-set of the villagers have changed as well.

We were a joint family and all of us used to live together under the same house in a village. The villagers often used to arrange Jari songs (one kind of folk music) and plays. I remember all of us going to those events and enjoying ourselves. But things have changed a lot and these traditional recreational events are way lost now.

Due to urbanisation, the idea of joint family is almost gone. What we see now is the existence of nuclear families. The bonding and ties among the family members have broken down a lot. No one really cares about others anymore. We can see continuous quarrels, and it is a common scenario that the people are fighting over land issues.

People are losing their moral values. And this is not only because of urbanisation, but also for capitalist mentality being on the rise. In our current socio structure, we prioritise the rich and powerful over the honest and hardworking. This has affected us so much that people have become self-centred. They do not think about good or bad, neither think about the consequences of their actions. This is happening throughout the country.

Children are vulnerable. As they do not have a voice of their own, they become easy preys. It is easier to abuse them, torture them, rape them, and even kill them. This happened in the case of Tuhin Miah as well. He was just a five-year old boy, brutally killed nonetheless. The primary assumption so far is that he was killed so that some other people can be framed through this.

Children are our future. And of course, a sense of morality is essential to stopping child abuse. There is no way we can stop these incidents if we cannot increase our moral values.

There is a lack of moral education in our curriculum. I think the government should introduce this in all the levels of education so that we don't lose our morality when we become adults.

Dr Ruhul Furkan Siddique is a Professor, Department of Public Health and Informatics in Jahangirnagar University

A mentally fit person can never kill a child

The number of child abuse is rising in Bangladesh and it can be happening for different reasons. The incident that happened at Sunamganj is undoubtedly a hateful thing. And there is no doubt that the killer is mentally disturbed.

Almost every one suffers from anxiety, depression, frustration and dissatisfaction. Maybe the killer suffered from these too. But these mental states cannot justify the killing of a child, it is a work of a psychopath.

What we need to do is to identify these people and give them proper medical treatment. It is necessary to study them so that we can know more about their psychology and bring a solution to it.

Shockingly, we are also losing our moral values. And we don't see much of work, or actions that could increase our values. It is necessary to keep morality intact and for that we need to introduce this as a separate subject in our curriculum. We also need to make more programmes that will increase this value. The media houses also need to come forward.

I believe it is possible to stop child abuse if we want. Once upon a time, in our country, people would fall victim to acid attacks every now and then. But the government has stopped that by taking necessary measure. I am sure if the government is willing they can stop the abuse too.

Tanzir Ahmed Tushar is an Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology in Rajshahi University