Thoughts about Boko Haram's intervention

[Oscar]

A human rights group called Domestic prisoners of conscience wrote this piece on their blog:

Boko Haram adducted several hundred girls because they were afraid that the girls instead of following the local social norm being an uneducated house wife would seek education and career. They have seen themselves as interventionists saving the girls from western influence.

However we must condemn the entire process of removing children from the society so they can be forced to adapt religious and social standards. While the focus of the international media is on these poor girls abductions like these are everyday life in many countries. In a country like the United States goons hired by parents remove teenagers from their bed every night. The teenagers are taken to wilderness programs or enclosed boarding schools which resembles prisons to serve out their sentence until they adapt social or religious standard as defined by their parents.

Why do we find it acceptable to hire goons to drag teenagers out of their homes just because their lifestyle doesn’t suit the one we had in the 1970’s where there were no Internet, no emo-movement, and no steampunk clothes?

We fail to realize that our children grow up to a new world with new standards where recreational drugs are sold legally in some states and strong work ethics doesn’t count when you are competing for a job in a globalized world where it is seem normal to accept loses among the workers as a cost just like the clothing industry in South East Asia experience. We live in year 2014, not 1970. We cannot parent our children like the last 40 years hasn’t happen.

It is not a risk free operation. First a lot of teenagers have lost their lives in Utah programs. Crushed to death during manual restraints, killed by the elements during wilderness expeditions, died of thirst during the same, you name it. The causes of death are many and in some residential programs the survival rate is the rate if the teenager had been hard core drug addicts for decades.

Second what about the life after the program? Will the now young adults throw themselves into a dangerous lifestyle the minute they become legally adults or will they have to battle the Posttraumatic stress disorder the program gave them?

The girls Boko Haram took from their parents should be allowed to return home as soon as possible. But for every children to do the same, we need to realize that it is not our job as parents to keep them tied to norms from 1970. We need to prepare our children for the future which will be based on their terms eventually.

[Pile of Dead Kids]

A couple of points-

1. Boko Haram at least admitted what they were doing. It was in revenge for their comrades being captured, and they have offered to perform an exchange of prisoners. (Note to Nigeria: Stop taking Boko Haram members prisoner. Just shoot them. It's more humane, less expensive, and prison breaks of Islamic militants have happened.)

2. In the US, it's not morals from 1970; that would be after the counterculture of the 60's. No, they're actually aiming for a heavily fictionalized version of the 50's.

[Froderik]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/14/nigeria-girls-kidnapped-5-months_n_5791622.html