Ammoun News reported yesterday, that a GAM worker discovered a new born baby in a plastic garbage bag, just beneath the Abdoun suspension bridge. The worker heard the baby’s cries and found him shivering and blue from the cold. This is the second newborn that’s been found in the garbage in the past 2 and a half months, which prompted Dr. Ahmad Al-Awaishah, director of the Islamic Cultural Center at the University of Jordan, to claim that this type of act is due to the fear of social stigmas rather than attributable to poverty. Blaming recent strange behavior on the “wrong usage of imported technologies such as satellite TV and the Internet”, Awaishah also claimed that this incident was done out of imitation of media reports about the first incident.
I don’t know to what extent satellite TV and the Internet played in the decision to discard one’s newborn in a garbage bag, but I have hope in the unlikeliness that the perpetrators got the idea through Facebook. I also don’t know if this will now mean the start of a phenomenon, but I hope not.
Hopefully, if and when the police manage to find those responsible for the act, mistakes of the past won’t be repeated and they’ll be charged with attempted murder instead of adultery.
UPDATE: The parents were found the next day after an Indonesian maid was admitted to a hospital for excessive bleeding due to childbirth. A fellow maid helped her out by delivering the baby and getting rid of it. The father is the Egyptian caretaker for the building where she works.
It’s scary out there… and it’s only getting worse…
Poor child.. this is really sad and scary!
That’s depressing. I’ll agree with Al-Awaishah about this being most likely influenced by “the fear of social stigmas”…but I think attempting to drag in the media as a scapegoat is lame.
That is just sad and depressing … When will people start becoming accountable?
Was it a decision that it is their life or the baby’s life? If the intention was to get rid of the baby because of the social stigmas, wouldn’t it be much better if they abandon the baby at the door of a mosque or a church like we saw in movies?
I say: the intention was to murder the baby and silence it forever and that’s just a shame and a disgrace!!!
Dave ,,,Please spare us your sympathy ,while I agree it not only depressing story,but also criminal behaviour to abandon babies,in your previous post you endorsed torture and invasion which most likely will result in murdering hundreds of thousand of innocent civilian including babies as the case of Iraq,and i must say to you you are \hypocrite son of a gun.
OMG! Frankly, I heard some stories before which I thought just rumors! It’s really sad the phase we are going through. Our society is getting broken brick by brick. Actually, Dr. Awaishah is true about “wrong usage of imported technologies such as satellite TV and the Internetâ€. People are learning the bad side of the West culture leaving the good side…
I can’t find a word ugly enough to describe this! I was at the hospitl yesterday as my sister gave birth and I was worried about the baby even though she was taken care of very well in a warm, safe room. How can anyone throw their own flesh and blood on the streets! I can’t find a viable excuse except that the baby was kidnapped! This is one case when I can’t help but be judgmental… If I lay my hands on the mother/father or whoever relative who did this I may just keep beating them till they bleed!
I know this comment is very long but I just can;t contain myself! Babies are the most peaceful and innocent of creatures, how could someone bring themselves to leave a baby shivering in the cold like this! I don’t understand I just don’t understand…
AlurduniAlhurr: you are talking to the wrong dave. there is more than one in this vast world of ours. plus, the person you’re referring to is David the Canadian soldier, not Dave the american living in jordan. 😉
Ola: alf alf alf mabrook! 🙂
AlurduniAlhurr, you seem to have a bit of a chip on your shoulder. And until you can point out exactly where I’ve “endorsed torture and invasion”, I suggest you keep your bitter comments to yourself.
Nas, thanks for clearing that up. Perhaps I should get a new name? 😉
Sounds like the garbage collecters maybe becoming the new neonatal nurses of the field. Time to give them a raise for saving precious things s carelessly thrown away.
This isn’t just sad and depressing…this is infuriating. This is an outright attempt at murder, and when it first happened a couple of months ago, the idiots who abandoned the first baby should have been charged with something that would make more sense than a charge of ADULTERY. If not attempted murder, then how about harmful abandonment?? This is sickening. People are never forced to face the consequences of their actions in this country. No one takes responsibility for their mistakes and I HATE IT.
This is one of the most inhumane and senseless things a person can do, but at the same time, doesn’t it reflect on the shortcomings in our own society? Eradicate those social stigmas. Give people options to deal with sensitive/delicate situations if we’re going to continue living in a society where a fear of social stigma can lead to abandoning a new born in a trash can.
Eft, this is all quite disgusting, frankly. TWICE IN TWO MONTHS?!?!? What the hell??????? Sure, let them walk off, unscathed, so that this becomes the latest in a series of ridiculous trends in this country. Honour killings, anyone?
(sorry for long comment, I was ranting, this put me in a bad mood)
“the fear of social stigmas rather than attributable to poverty” so it gets dumped in abdoun and now poverty is no longer a viable option ?? hey if you want to stereotype you don’t get to be picking i thought those people are rich and immoral.
““wrong usage of imported technologies such as satellite TV and the Internet†oh how expected that excuse is ! after all we all know how our society is impeccably perfect and anything bad must be a foreign pathogen that infiltrated our system, and then saying its just an imitation of media reports as if to discourage reporting so it wouldn’t be imitated any more.
In fact i give the mother the benefit of the doubt since there is no support system, there is no excuse for her to dump it in the bin rather than the many more suitable places as if the act it can be described as such. When faced with the repercussions such as death, ostracism, and shame it is not entirely unthinkable to think irrationally about a way out. The only way around that is to provide a haven for such cases and if they may want to provide them the option to abort rather than subjugate that soul to a miserable life of stigmatization in our society.
Dave: i like Ikuseghan Kuan-Yin…it highlights your afro-asian background quite nicely.
Hal: given the gravity of the news, your comment was pretty short 😉
but you are right, there need to be options here. fear of social stigma should not be strong enough to drive people to murder their wives, daughters, sisters, aunts…and in this case…a newborn baby. as you said, honor killings is very much entwined to this type of action; both deeds stem from the same source of fear.
there’s really only two ways about this that i can see: the first is implementing a variety of initiatives that range from sexual education in schools to condom distribution. the second is to overhaul the judicial system to reflect laws with more appropriate punishments and judges with more appropriate rulings (27 is currently the minimum age for becoming a judge so that should tell us something).
the former will be seen by most as too liberal, and be rejected forthright. the latter will also be seen as too liberal a measure, given that a great deal of our society is in favor of crimes done in the name of protecting honor.
which is why you’ll never hear any real outcry about honor killings, and why the news of a baby tossed in the garbage illicits no more than an “awww that’s terrible” general reaction.
(my reply to you was longer than your original comment, so you’re good) 😉
Awartany:” “wrong usage of imported technologies such as satellite TV and the Internetâ€. People are learning the bad side of the West culture leaving the good side… ”
Don’t act like the arab society had been clean and “virgin”! What goes behind the scenes is worse than what you claim to be imported from the west..And historically, the arabs had been known to love “fun”..
Poems about nipples and wine are well documented…
😉
Note: Welcome back naseem.
i dont get it .. why go through the pregnancy and the labor if ur just going to throw it away .. abortion?
This is horrible, some people never think about others.
Parents will be found soon.
Such things have been happening a lot in Jordan. The police usually don’t pay any effort to find the parents, were it’s actually very easy to locate them, like in the case of the Jabal Amman kid 3 months ago, they looked for them because it got public!
The kid looks Indonesian, so most probably someone’s maid (I’m not stereotyping) must have been pregnant.Someone should start pressuring the police on doing their job, or starting an NGO that will locate the parents and take care of these kids, it’s very easy considering how small Jordan is.
It’s been happening for years, people leave kids at mosques, hospitals doorsteps, even some go straight to shelters.
Now all they have to do is to determine the kid’s age, go to medical records of births at that time frame in Amman, and then go check on every parents (yes a house to house search), in case the kids was not delivered in a hospital, then loud mouth Jordanians come to the rescue, if a women is pregnant, the whole neighborhood know, a dedicated phone line will do the trick.
Having the newspapers talking about it did it’s magic in the Jabal Amman case. Some of the relatives will soon enough get all emotional. Anyways, we have become a large country, so such things will happen more often, but it doesn’t mean we are going Sodom and Gomorrah!
Nassem,,,Our democracy or I must say our constitutional democracy ended in1957 when,”our government arrested most of the elected members,we all remember Dr Yacoub zaideen ( originally from Karak) was elected by over whelming Majority of Jerusalem district.
Since ,1957, the government has perfected the tools of manipulation in order to rule with virtually free hand without any serious oversight and scrutiny.
The problem is not in the lack of SERIOUSE CONTENDER to challenge the one man show but the constant government brutal policy toward any body and I mean anybody ,be it An “east banker” or “west banker” that tries to put forward a serious proposal to change the status qua.
In toujan Al faisal lecture at the university of Chicago explains everything ,from corruption ,human right abuses and mismanagement of public funds
And here is the second part to whom it may concern Tuajan Al faisal ,again.
Nas, your long reply hit the nail on the head – perfect. Thank you. I could not agree more. Although I knew there needed to be a solution, you actually HAVE the solution. When you run for parliament, I’m going to vote for you 😉
Mohannad: Did I say that “our society was virgin”? No! We are making it worse and worse by adding the bad side of Western culture!
So the parents have been caught already! You see, I am no psychic, butI knew this would be soon, because there is a public interest in this case!
Otherwise, the police would not bother, like in many other cases, where their response was : Bel Zayid Wahad, hu e7na fathyeen ashghal!
“the police would not bother, like in many other cases”
i agree with that
I think it’s far more profound than influence of ‘bad’ culture thru TV or other. It’s about being caught in a fear grid that knocks the sense out of one.
When our society is not our safety net. When our community fails to help us clean up. When the environment we live in is so morally hostile. If one makes mistakes, gets into trouble, is confused, scared, desperate… where/how else would one dispose of the unwanted?
When an incident like this happens, surely it’s a cry for attention. It is the silenced call of despair! It is the deafening plea for help!
“surely it’s a cry for attention”
well put…that’s both metaphorical and (unfortunately) literal in this case.
I cannot believe this! How cruel can people become these day?
Poor baby! 🙁
I almost cried reading this article. =(