by TODD PITMAN (Associated Press)
DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — A leading international rights group called on Senegal’s government Thursday to clamp down on Islamic schools whose leaders are subjecting tens of thousands of children to forced begging and daily beatings in conditions it says are “akin to slavery.”
Powerful religious leaders known as “marabouts” hold enormous political influence in this mostly Muslim West African nation. Parents often send their children to traditional Quranic schools run by marabouts, both because they hope their children will receive a religious education and because they are free.
But some marabouts have turned the schools into an exploitative, unregulated private industry, banking tens of thousands of dollars in annual profits by forcing droves of children as young as four into the streets to beg for change, according to a new report released by New York-based Human Rights Watch. Children who return without enough money are often brutally beaten, the group said.
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