26/10/2001
The Rat People of Pakistan:

To Some, They Are Victims Of Cruel Abuse, To Others, They Are Messengers From God.

Thousands of beggars can be seen on the streets, writes Akhtar Soomro from Karachi, but some of them are different. People call them 'Chuwas' from their rodent-like appearance. The name means 'rat'

Some believe that the chuwas have special powers. Give them money and they will touch you on the shoulder conferring a blessing. But no one discusses the origins of the chuwas

If you ask them some will say they were born with those funny shaped heads. Others will talk nervously of abandoned or kidnapped children taken by gangs and elevated to adulthood in cruel savagery.

They talk of heads bound in steel cuffs and feet squeezed into iron shoes. Normal mental and physical growth is impossible and the results are tiny shrunken heads with ill-looking compressed features, large fleshy ears, retarded mannerism, gobs of spittle bubbling from mouth and a life spent dispensing blessings by day and being beaten at night at the hands of their 'keepers.'

The chuwas are then hired like monkeys to professional beggars on a contract basis, where their deformities attract the sympathy and the small change of the passers-by

In this way one chuwa can make as much as 7,000 rupees a month for his minder - the salary of a middle-graded Pakistani civil servants.

International humanitarians and the government of Pakistan should take serious notice of this inhuman practice which is not only a gross violation of human rights but also a crime against humanity.

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