SLAVERY IN SINDH PAKISTAN

["R. Mirpuri" <intramir@YAHOO.COM>]

It seems Sindh is reverting to a primitive state of affairs akin to
pre British times.  When Burton visited Sindh just at the beginning of
British rule, he remarks on the peasant workers under the Talpurs in
his Scinde Or The Unhappy Valley: "The wretched ryot after paying off
his liabilities, a dozen times or more, is still as deeply indebted as
ever....."  A similar situation exists in today's Sindh.

When the British conquered Sindh, Charles Napier instituted a write
off of all the pre 1843 dues of the peasantry and the 100 years that
followed was an easier time for them.  Exploitation was always there
but under British administration it never came down to physical
slavery. Come partition the situation along that of Sindh has
detiorated to an extent that around two million people in Sindh are
tied to their employers by "bonded labour" - even after [Pakistan's]
"Islamic government" outlawed the practice..

Read about it in the following BBC article of 11/25/2004

Regards,

R.Mirpuri
-----------------------------------------------

LIFE AS A MODERN SLAVE IN PAKISTAN

Around two million people in the southern Pakistan province of Sindh
are tied to their employers by "bonded labour" - 12 years after the
country's government outlawed the practice.  Under bonded labour,
landlords - or zamindars - tie their employees to them by debt. Often
the debt is many thousands of rupees - much more than the workers
actually borrow.

Some workers are taken against their will. "I was kidnapped with
several others," one woman, Shanti, told BBC World Service's Slavery
Today programme. "I was confined alone in a small room. Then the
landlord who kidnapped us raped me."

'No feeling'

Bonded labour in South Asia is said to affect the most number of
people engaged in the modern slave trade.  The UN believes 20 million
people are enslaved worldwide, the majority of whom are in South Asia...

Excerpted from BBC NEWS.  See story at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/4042207.stm

[See also:
http://www.ambedkar.org/research/Dalitsof.htm

Those interested in helping should contact Thardeep, an NGO headed by
social worker Dr. Sono Khangharani working to alleviate the abject
poverty in Thar, where most of the bonded labor problems in the case
of Sindh arise from.  See:

http://www.realp2p.com/thardeep/files/home.asp
]