A five-year-old child in the Afghan city of Herat died this week after being the victim of a gang rape, from which he sustained fatal injuries. The incident has triggered another wave of outrage in the nation, which has struggled for centuries against Islamic cultural norms promoting rape.
This is a young Afghan boy but not the one in this story
Breitbart (h/t Rob E) According to the Afghanistan Times, the boy, who was not named by police, was raped by two other boys in succession. The two boys, neighbors of the victim, raped the five-year-old repeatedly until they became aware that the boy’s life was in danger. According to Herat Police spokesman Abdul Rauf Ahmadi, “When the accusers came to know that [the] life of the child was in danger after [the] sexual assault then the two assaulters tried to shift the victim to [the] hospital. However, he lost his life on the way as result of serious injuries.”
The boys have been arrested following the incident, though given the nature of rape law in Afghanistan, convicting rapists is a difficult matter. The Afghanistan Times notes, for example, that doctors are already claiming the rape was not the cause of death. One doctor, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the boy appeared to have been choked in addition to being raped: “Therefore, we are sure that the boy did not die because of injuries but of choking.”
In addition to the legal situation surrounding child rape, much of Afghan culture is plagued by the persistence of the rape of children. One institution that persists in this realm is the practice of bacha bazi (see links below), in which older men take on pre-pubescent male lovers. The U.S. State Department called this practice a “widespread, culturally sanctioned form of male rape.”
BACHA BAZI – This is the ancient Islamic cultural practice of older men being with prepubescent boys.