“Bacha Bazi”

“boy play“

Radhika Coomaraswamy said the practice, called “bacha bazi” – literally “boy play” – was a taboo subject, but she had heard reports of warlords and military commanders keeping young boys and “exploiting them in terrible ways”.

“What I found was nobody talks about it; everyone says ‘Well, you know, it’s been there for 1000 years so why do we want to raise this now?’” she said at UN headquarters, reporting on a visit to Afghanistan last week.

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Known as “bacha bereesh”, boys without beards, the victims of such abuse are teenage boys who dress up as girls and dance for male patrons at parties in northern Afghanistan.

[...] 

In a society where the sexes are strictly segregated, it is common for men to dance for other men at weddings in Afghanistan. But in northern Afghanistan, former warlords and mujahideen commanders have taken that a step further, sometimes taking the boys as “mistresses”.

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“It is sad to state that this practice that includes making boys dance, sexual abuse and sometimes even selling boys, has been going on for years,” General Asadollah Amarkhil, the security chief of Kunduz province, said last year.

[...]

Ms Coomaraswamy said raising awareness and prosecuting those responsible was the first step to ending the practice as it would act as a deterrent to others.

As Michele blogged before, this practice is indeed common knowledge and our military have been asked to turn a blind eye.  At least the UN is acknowledging that there is a problem.