It's 16th Century In Sindh

THOUSANDS of Hindu men are being forced into slavery and kept in chains in Pakistan; the plight of the women is worse. This has continued for years, sometimes to generations of Hindu families who stayed behind in Pakistan, information gathered over five years by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan shows. The group has rescued more than 3,000 Hindus from slavery in recent years, but it has produced evidence that thousands more remain in chains in private jails of Pakistani zamindars. The Commission, led in Sindh by Shakeel Ahmed Pathan, has handed the Sindh administration a list of 4,074 Hindu slaves or Haaris as they are called in Sindh.

The list—바카라 was given a copy—names the zamindars and identifies where their slaves are chained. But few people in the Pakistani government are willing to listen. Pathan launched a special taskforce of the human rights group to do something for this wretched people. "The problem was so great, and is so great that we had to org-anise ourselves to do just this," he told Out -look in an interview on a visit to London.

Extensive documentation with Pathan provided a glimpse into their world. But for the chance of a rescue by Pathan's group, the slaves live in hopeless conditions. Some attempts by the Haaris themselves to fight off their slavery have been dealt with swiftly and brutally. On May 12 last year, a young Haari named Jagsi escaped from his zamindar and "owner" Ramazan Rajer in Umerkot. He fled to Pathan's office in Hyderabad. He had been enslaved and beaten up for years, he told the human rights group, and the women of his family were being raped. For two months Jagsi and Pathan tried to move the district authorities to rescue his family. They didn't. One day he disappeared. On July 24, Jagsi was found dead on the zamindar's estate.

"He had been beaten up severely and mutilated, his body was found hanging upside down," says Pathan. The human rights group wrote to its head office in Lahore with an account that Jagsi had given of his situation. It was typical of the rest. "In his application he had stated that they were purchased by the above named zamindar (Ramazan Rajer) from another zamindar, Ghulam Nabi Qaimkhani of Jamesabad." Buying and selling of Haaris among zamindars is a "common practice," says Pathan. Jagsi and his family had been enslaved for years, the only freedom they knew was the freedom to be sold. "I told the district authorities Jagsi died because they did nothing, that they should at least save his family." Nothing happened.

According to Pathan, of the 3,000 Haaris rescued, almost all the women had been raped and many were pregnant. "We found cases where the mothers were raped, and then their daughters were raped in front of them," he says. In some families, grandmothers, mothers and daughters had all borne illegitimate children. "Many of these women have 10 to 12 children and these children are put to work from a very young age. Young girls grow up to be concubines all their lives."

Pathan has been trying to stir up consciences in Pakistan without much luck. At a meeting called by the Pakistan Press Foundation in Karachi on November 17 last year, Pathan detailed the position of these women as sex slaves to zamindars. He spoke of Meera who was raped over the years by Ibrahim Mangrio, son of the influential zamindar Lal Muhammed Mangrio, in Umerkot. But the Pakistani media glossed over it.

The administration and the political parties do not seem to care either. "I have approached every single party in Pakistan for support against this practice but I am ashamed to say that hardly anybody has offered us any support." Instead, Pathan complains that "many of them call us RAW agents but it is these people who are anti-Pakistan by letting such practices continue in our country." There have been occasions when "PPP (Pakistan People's Party) leaders have accused us in the Sindh Assembly of trying to destroy their crops and their reputation."

바카라 웹사이트Only the Muttahida Qaumi Movement has shown some sympathy, he says. Meera was among a hundred slaves rescued in a raid on Mangrio's estate by members of the human rights group along with local officials. They had lived in slavery for 22 years. "The zamindars simply think that when they rape these women they are exercising their rights," says Pathan.

From time to time the women are sold to other zamindars for "handsome amounts". Nenu, a young Hindu boy in Khipri Sanghar, once hurled a stone at a zamindar who was trying to rape a woman from his family. Nenu was caught and badly beaten up. He managed to run away and hide in a field. The field was set on fire, no one knows whether Nenu escaped or was burnt to death. In no such case has the zam-indar been prosecuted. Now, Pathan says, the zamindars have launched a "powerful counter-movement" against his group, and rescue missions have become dangerous.

HE narrowly escaped a murder attempt when two men fired at him from a car on August 19 last year. Pathan, who is partially disabled following a stroke, fell down, and the bullets missed him. Again last year when he came to attend the human rights meeting in Geneva someone called him to say that his three children had died. More than once he has had to hide his children in the face of threats. Pathan says he has received several death threats, even in the presence of policemen. "I told them that I can only die once. But I will not give up my struggle to free these people."

On September 8, '97, a group of rescued slaves joined a protest march in Karachi to the house of the chief minister of Sindh. "We are sold and purchased like animals/market commodity from one zamindar to the other, our women are made prey of sexual assaults and abuse," they said in a memo. Asma Jehangir, who heads the human rights group in Pakistan, led the protest march. The protesters demanded police raids to liberate slaves, held mostly in the south of Sindh in Matli, Umerkot, Tando Allahyar, Jhuddo, Badin, Mehmoodabad, Mithi, Sangarh and Kotri—the areas where zamindaris have been granted by the Pakistan government to a favoured few.

At one place, the slaves were found chained to one another and then to a heavy stone on a farm in Sangarh owned by Murid Khan Moreed. The human rights team found the men after one of them, Hamiso Bhil, fled and complained to the human rights group that his wife was being raped by the zamindars. She too had been tied up in chains. "The DC did not believe us at first," alleges Pathan. Only when he was shown photographs was he convinced of the practice of slavery in his area. He then led a team that rescued the Hindu slaves.

Hamiso Bhil's father hadn't been so lucky. When he protested, years ago, he was beaten to death and buried instantly. For years, Bhil and his family had worked on fields all day in chains, to be carted away in trucks at night to dwellings from where their women were taken away by the zamindar. For years, food had been roti and water. The human rights group persuaded the police to register cases of rape and murder. But no one has been arrested.

바카라 웹사이트"Hindus are easier to pick on because they are the minority, while the Muslims hold together," says Pathan. Most of the Hindu slaves are from the Kolhi, Bhil, Meghwar, Odh and Bagri caste/ethnic groupings. The going price for a slave varies, but is usually between Rs 20,000 to Rs 1 lakh, records of the human rights groups show.

Rupo escaped from the household of a zamindar Qamar-u-Zaman Qaimkhani and said he had been sold for Rs 20,000 by his former master Ramzan Punjabi. The price for women slaves are higher. A fairly large Hindu population lives in the Thar area of Sindh from where families have been picked up as slaves. "Their masters demand a high price for their freedom, and they of course have no means to find that money," Pathan said. So they remain bonded for generations. "I have met slave children whose parents and grandparents were also slaves," says Pathan. "The children are given no education, no medical treatment."

바카라 웹사이트Once they get freedom, things are no better. "There is just no rehabilitation programme for them," says Pathan. "The most that anyone ever did was a group of Catholics who sheltered some of the rescued slaves for a few weeks."

Pakistan's bonded labour Act makes slavery illegal. Officials have acted on complaints earlier, but are wary of targeting zamindars. "Every leader is a zamindar, that is the problem. In one case the DC refused to conduct a raid because he told us that the army chief had been a guest at that estate the previous night." Many of the zamindars are former army officers. Pathan is hellbent on wiping out slavery but his frustration comes through when he admits: "New zamindars or old, the old system continues. There is just no will to do anything about this in Pakistan."