Thousands of infants killed in Pakistan

Karachi, Pakistan:  Corpses of newborns lie at a walk-in-freezer at a morgue in Pakistan’s largest city – the bodies wrapped inside linen pouches.

The innocent infants are victims of what one relief agency calls Pakistan’s worst unfolding tragedy: the killing and dumping of newborns, reports CNN.

“Sometimes they hang them, and sometimes they kill by the knife, and sometimes we find bodies which have been burned,” said Anwar Kazmi, a manager at Edhi Foundation, Pakistan’s largest privately run social service and relief agency.

Edhi Foundation has records showing more than 1,200 newborns killed and dumped in Pakistan since last year.  There has been an increase of about 200 from the previous year.

Many of these children are labeled as illegitimate in a culture that condemns those born outside of wedlock.

Statistics show that roughly nine out of 10 are baby girls, which families may consider too costly to keep in a country where women frequently are not allowed to work, writes a CNN reporter.

The babies are mostly just a few days old and their corpses are usually dumped in Karachi’s sprawling garbage dumps, where they’re sometimes mutilated by street animals, Kazmi said.  He estimates that hundreds of baby corpses are never found.

The head of Edhi Foundation, 83-year-old Abdul Sattar Edhi, blames Pakistan’s crippling poverty and a government that, for decades, has failed to educate the masses, generate jobs and provide citizens with the most basic needs.

“The distribution of resources by the government is wrong,” Edhi said. “Many people don’t pay taxes; there’s no charity, and what you get from the government is all based on your wealth.”

Read it at CNN.

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