On Thursday, May 25, people remember the Day of Remembrance and with it the fate of missing children. Currently, police officers in the Czech Republic are searching for more than 500 missing children. Although they usually find most of them quickly, in the last 20 years they have accumulated almost 20 cases of children, after which it seems that the ground has collapsed.
Although the International Day of Missing Children was originally born in the USA, its meaning soon spread around the world. In 1979, on May 25, six-year-old Etan went missing on his way to school. Although thousands of people joined the search for him and his face even appeared on milk cartons, the boy was never found. When he disappeared, forget-me-nots blossomed and have since become a symbol of missing children. Since 2004, the Czechs have also been commemorating this day.
“Every year, Czech police officers search for several thousand children and almost two dozen missing children in danger. Last year there were even 30 cases of searches for children in danger. Except for one girl from the Ústí Region, all missing children were found safe, ” published the Ministry of the Interior. The great involvement of the public, which pays considerable attention to each case, also contributes to the success of the search.
“As of May 25, the number of missing children under the age of 15 equals 183, and 320 missing children from 15 to 18,” the police provided the editors of TN.cz with their statistics. According to them, 15 of the missing children are even in danger.
“Despite all the efforts of all the police officers and other members of the IZS and, of course, the public, during the last twenty years it has not been possible to bring almost twenty cases of missing children to a successful conclusion, i.e. the children have not been found.” the Ministry of the Interior informed. According to the police, Anička Košková is also among the missing, who disappeared in 1997 at a beer festival in Újezda and has not been found even after more than 20 years.
However, the police are not giving up. “It doesn’t mean that the police are no longer working on these cases. On the contrary, they are constantly trying to find new clues and clues, even years later, that can lead them to clarify the fate of the missing child,” the ministry added.
In the Czech Republic, the crime department of the Ministry of the Interior and the Police of the Czech Republic deal with the issue of missing children, which also managed to create the projects “Help me find you” and “National coordination mechanism for the search for missing children”. The systems are used to move information quickly, which is essential when searching for children.
Missing children from 2019 | Source: Police of the Czech Republic
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Tags: Czechs commemorate Remembrance Day Hundreds children returned home
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