Comment from the Director

There is a reason why pornography is on the rise in Tonga.  There are also reasons why our young are getting involved in such practices.  Yet everyone is quick to judge the youth of our country and point fingers and shake heads in disapproval of why our youth are so different compared to the youth of yester-years. 

Aside from pornography, the WCCC continues to see an increase in the reporting of incest, sexual harassment and sexual abuse among our children.  Why?  Are our laws insufficient, are they not being implemented well?  Are our monitoring systems weak?  Is our education system empowering our young to know what the consequences are?  Are we educating our young to understand respect, gender equality and the rights and dignity of every single human?  Are we as parents spending enough time with our young?  Are we engaged in meaningful dialogue with them, are we preventing and protecting them from abuse and long-term exposure to violence?  Are we tackling the issue of youth and unemployment and poverty in Tonga?  Do our most disadvantaged youth have non-barrier access to key services and support? 

The Tonga Family Health Association continues to report an increase in sexually transmitted diseases (STIs) among our youth and we have seen reports published by the Tonga National Youth Congress and Tonga Trust where it clearly highlights the issues and struggles our youth are facing –have we bothered to listen?  In these reports we have found that there are too many of our young girls getting married for no reason other than ‘because there is nothing else to do,’ too many of our young women and men are experiencing several periods of depression whilst in school with no-one to talk to about it and yet we still don’t have proper counseling programs in our school systems.  Suicide rates of our youth are too high for our small population, access to pornography over the counter is as easy as buying bread and students are let out of school during lunch breaks to wonder aimlessly around town.  Hundreds if not thousands of students own mobile phones and take these into school, into church and into all the spaces that we once used to see as taboo for such spaces.  Entering nightclubs for a 13 year old is not a problem, checking for age eligibility is unheard of.   We have alcohol and tobacco purchasing laws in place but no one is really implementing it, neither monitoring it.

Our schools are continually fighting and school-violence has escalated over the years. We allow our young to surf the net without any restrictions in the ever-growing domain of the public internet cafes and fail to recognize the explicit sites that are being visited and the engagement in sexual-chat spaces. We allow sexual harassment among young people in the workplace to be brushed off as a ‘joke’ pea ke tau poto he fe hua’aki and not being able to see the correlation of such behavior to sexual assault, incest and rape.

And yet we still point the finger and shake our heads and say “we were never like that…” But here is the challenge.  Let’s not dwell on how we were once like as youth but let’s ask ourselves, what have we done in terms of prevention?  What are we doing to ensure a better tomorrow is there for our youth, how are we protecting our children and youth from the endemic of physical and sexual violence and the abuse of their dignity and rights?

Did you know that….

• In the Philippines, there are 6 year old children who have sex with motorcycle drivers for $6, two hours’ worth of fares.
• In Bombay, hundreds of children in brothels are held in cages; on the street, 50 cents buys half an hour of sex with a 12 year old.
• In Sri Lanka, tourists rent elegant houses along the beaches, where they keep little boys whom they abuse.
• In Amsterdam, Holland, the show-window prostitutes are now mostly under 14 years of age.
• On Ninth Avenue in New York City, 15 year old girls approach slowly cruising cars behind the General Post Office and offer themselves, $40 with a condom, $60 without.
• In many African countries, in railroad and bus stations, brothels and bars, in private homes and maxi taxis, in parks, piers, and on beaches, the bodies of children are being bought and sold for a minimum of money, for food or candy, for school books, or the entrance fee to a local discotheque. West Africa has become an export center for underage girls.

How much longer will it take before we start seeing reports of this nature in the Pacific, moreover in our own country?  We hear things about our youth and we are quick to judge but just how many of us are willing to take the time to find out ‘why’ and ‘what’ is happening to our youth and how best we can work together to help empower them and aim for a better tomorrow?  Let’s show our children and youth that we care and that we are serious about tackling these issues together with them, before it’s too late!