KAMPA-UGANDA/NEWSDAY: The police cyber unit and the anti-human trafficking team at the ministry of Internal Affairs are hunting for teachers who allegedly took pictures of breastfeeding girls in classrooms and shared them on social media.
Ever since schools reopened last month on January 10 after nearly two years of closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic, pictures of returned pregnant or breastfeeding students have been making rounds on social media.
Although some of these pictures have been digitally manipulated (‘Photoshopped’), Agnes Igoye, the deputy coordinator anti-human trafficking department, says some of the pictures are genuine and they suspect that they were taken by teachers who then circulated them on various social media.
Igoye says they have come out to collaborate with police after noticing that there is an increase in attacks on girls who have been courageous enough to return to school even after giving birth.
“If you are a teacher, it is even worse. If you receive the picture and also forward, there is a trail. We request all investigating officers to trace the sources of these pictures. Parents please report to police when you see your child’s picture being shared. It is an attack on the girl child. We are not seeing males’ pictures who are responsible for making the girls pregnant being shared,” says Igoye.
She says even editors and producers of mass media who republish these pictures will not be spared. It is estimated that 354,736 girls were impregnated in 2020 – the first year of Uganda’s COVID-19 lockdown on education institutions. By end of June last year, 196,499 more girls had been defiled and impregnated, according to ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development.
The government through the ministry of Education and Sports directed schools to allow all pregnant and breastfeeding girls back in school. It is believed that the pictures shared on social media of pregnant or breastfeed girls were taken from upcountry schools.
Igoye explains that sharing pictures of girls breastfeeding in classrooms or in school compounds with their pregnancies, torments the girls and they could end up abandoning school forever. With hope that they could put a stop to an act which Igoye says is discouraging and ridiculing girls, the police has been tasked to work hand in hand with anti-human trafficking department to ensure people circulating such photos are arrested.
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