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Recently by RiazHaq
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Feudal Slavery Survives in Pakistan
The return of democ racy in Pakistan last year has once again put feudal political elite firmly in charge of the nation's affairs. Both major parties, the PPP and the PML, are heavily dominated by the country's biggest landowners, who are reliability voted into power by their poor landless peasants making up the majority of the electorate in Pakistan.
British writer William Dalrymple has accurately described the politics in Pakistan as follows: "There is a fundamental flaw in Pakistan's political system. Democracy has never thrived here, at least in part because landowning remains almost the only social base from which politicians can emerge. In general, the educated middle class - which in India seized control in 1947, emasculating the power of its landowners - is in Pakistan still largely excluded from the political process. As a result, in many of the more backward parts of Pakistan the local feudal zamindar can expect his people to vote for his chosen candidate. Such loyalty can be enforced. Many of the biggest zamindars have private prisons and most have private armies."
The Pakistani landlord's "private prisons" came in sharp focus recently with the news of 170 peasants being held against their will by Sindhi landowners, in violation of the court orders.
Responding to questions about the situation during US Secretary of State Hilar y Clinton's recent visit, Luis CdeBaca, President Obama's ambassador-at-large to monitor and combat trafficking in persons, told Time magazine, "we are exploring ways we can help Pakistan to confront the scourge of captive workers, to deliver freedom for these workers and realize the promise of Pakistan's 1992 emancipation law."
In his recent column in the New York Times, Nicholas Kristoff argued that the feudal systems remains the biggest obstacle to reform in Pakistan. Addressing those who have not been to Pakistan, Kristoff explains that they "should know that in remote areas you periodically run into vast estates — comparable to medieval Europe — in which the landowner runs the town, perhaps operates a private prison in which enemies are placed, and sometimes pretty much enslaves local people through debt bondage, generation after generation. This feudal elite has migrated into politics, where it exerts huge influence. And just as the heartlessness of feudal and capitalist barons in the 19th century created space for Communists, so in Pakistan this same lack of compassion for ordinary people seems to create space for Islamic extremists. There are other answers, of course, such as education, civil society, and the lawyers’ movement. But I wonder if land reform wouldn’t be a big help."
There have been rare instances when media attention and public pressure have compelled the government to free haaris from private prisons. In April this year, a private TV channel GeoTV reported that police freed 14 people including 8 children and 4 women from the private prison of a landlord in Faiz Muhammad Brohi Goth in Gadap Town near Karachi.
Though Pakistan has been in the news lately for its continuing practice of slavery, it is not alone. Bonded labor in South Asia is considered the problem in modern slavery affecting millions of people. The UN believes 20 million people are enslaved worldwide, the majority of whom are in South Asia, according to a BBC report.
A recent report by US State Department for 2009 said that “India is a source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation.”
India is listed with 52 countries on the watch list of nations that have failed to meet the minimum standards against human trafficking but are making efforts to do so. The blacklisted countries are subject to US sanctions if they don’t make greater efforts to fight trafficking.
The Philippines, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Pakistan have recently been added to the U.S. “watch list” because of what the report calls a worsening trafficking record in those countries.
“This is modern slavery. A crime that spans the globe, providing ruthless employers with endless supply of people to abuse for financial gain,” Secretary Clinton said as she released the report.
For the first time, India, China, Russia, Sri Lanka and Egypt and other countries that have been on the on Tier 2 watch list for two years, face the prospect of being automatically moved to the Tier 3 blacklist next year without a presidential waiver if they fail improve their trafficking record, the State Department said.
A 2004 study by the International Labor Office (ILO) estimated that there are up to a million haari families in Sindh alone, the majority living in conditions of debt bondage, which the U.N. defines as modern-day slavery. Last fall, Pakistan's Daily Times newspaper quoted the labor minister of neighboring Punjab province as saying that landlords hold millions of forced laborers in "private prisons" across the country.
Amidst all the cries for democracy, independent judiciary, human rights and social justice in Pakistan, nothing has fundamentally changed during the last year under "democracy", except the worsening economy, much longer power outages and a growing sense of insecurity. Regardless of the party labels and promises, the feud al power continues to endure in the name of democracy. The choices remain narrow for Pakistanis: Choose between the military and the feudal class. There is no third choice as long as the middle class remains small and unable and unwilling to exert strong influence to bring about much-needed reforms. The only hope for real democracy and necessary social, political and economic reforms lies in continued robust growth of the middle class over an extended period of time of another decade or two. There are no guarantees that the current feudal rulers will permit that.
Related Links:
India Not Combating Slavery
Bonded Labor in India, Nepal and Pakistan
Feudalism in Pakistan
Is Democracy Right For Pakistan?
Slavery in Pakistan
US State Department Report on Human Trafficking 2009
Feud al Power Dominates Pakistani Democracy
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsjcobgpcoE&feature=player_embedded
As elections in Afghanistan loom in August, President Hamid Karzai appears to be looking for Islamist votes by supporting a law, article 132 of which states that women must obey their husband's sexual demands and that a man can expect to have sex with his wife at least "once every four nights" when traveling, unless she is ill.
The final document is not yet published but it also appears to forbid wives from leaving home without their husbands' permission, to grant custody of children to fathers and grandfathers only, and to approve child marriages. According to the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), "Article 132 legalises the rape of a wife by her husband."
(March 22, 2009) Aug. 16, 2009 update: The BBC reports that the bill, only slightly modified from its initial terms, has passed and become law. It also indicates that husbands may withhold food from wives who refuse their sexual favors.
An unnamed member of Iran's paramilitary Basij, currently married with children, explained to a reporter that he joined the Basij at 16 years when his mother took him "to a Basiji station and begged them to take me under their wing because I had no one and nothing foreseeable in my future. My father was martyred during the war in Iraq and she did not want me to get hooked on drugs and become a street thug. I had no choice." Then came a description of his role raping young girls:
He said he had been a highly regarded member of the force, and had so "impressed my superiors" that, at 18, "I was given the 'honor' to temporarily marry young girls before they were sentenced to death." In the Islamic Republic it is illegal to execute a young woman, regardless of her crime, if she is a virgin, he explained. Therefore a "wedding" ceremony is conducted the night before the execution: The young girl is forced to have sexual intercourse with a prison guard - essentially raped by her "husband."
"I regret that, even though the marriages were legal," he said. Why the regret, if the marriages were "legal?"
"Because," he went on, "I could tell that the girls were more afraid of their 'wedding' night than of the execution that awaited them in the morning. And they would always fight back, so we would have to put sleeping pills in their food. By morning the girls would have an empty expression; it seemed like they were ready or wanted to die. I remember hearing them cry and scream after [the rape] was over," he said. "I will never forget how this one girl clawed at her own face and neck with her finger nails afterwards. She had deep scratches all over her."
This is I-slam
Pakistan is way behind India!
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_inf_mor_rat-health-infant-mort ality-rate
Pakistan´s infant mortalty rate is higher than India!
http://brambledoula.wordpress.com/2007/09/09/world-wide-infant-mortali ty-ranking/
Desperately poor families routinely kill girl babies after birth for fear they can't afford to raise them or provide the extortionate dowry required by a groom's family. Pavati's husband killed her second daughter the day she was born. She went home to her father's house and didn't eat for a month following the death but with two other children she had to return to her tiny hut and carry on. Another baby, Hymera was luckier, brought to a safe house by her uncle despite fierce opposition from his neighbours. Now she is cared for by people who value her life. Teenage girls sit in a circle in a coconut grove discussing the strengths they will need as India's next generation of mothers. A report on the attempts of agencies, such as the Indian Council for Child Welfare, to stop infanticide through re-education, training of women and providing homes for unwanted girl babies. So far prosecuting local mothers for murder has done little more than punish the saddest victims of a social tragedy.
Produced by ABC Australia
Distributed by Journeyman Pictures
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnmtKLQRh6g&feature=related
NIKE AS A HELPER OR EXPLOITER TO IIIRD WORLD - A columnist 'Stephen Chapman' from Libertarian newspaper argues that "But why is it unconscionable for a poor country to allow child labor? Pakistan has a per-capita income of $1,900 per year - meaning that the typical person subsists on barely $5 per day. Is it a a revelation - or a crime - that some parents willingly send their children off to work in a factory to survive? Is it cruel for Nike to give them the chance?"
(source: http://www.raincity.com/~williamf/words96.html)
PAKISTAN - • Young children whose parents take money in advance for their work on carpet looms are victims of the “peshgi” or debt-bondage system in Pakistan. They are paid half the wages of older workers and are not allowed to leave the premises until the debt is fully paid. Older workers sexually abuse these children. (A Rapid Assessment of Bonded Labour in the Carpet Industry of Pakistan, International Labour Office).
Bonded labour otherwise known as debt slavery is rampant in Pakistan. The system works as follows. Desperately poor families go to a feudal employer usually a brick kiln owner or a carpet manufacturer and ask them for a loan, perhaps to pay for medical treatment for a sick child.
In return for the loan, the entire family is turned into the private property of the employer. They are forced to work long hours for pitiful wage and half of these wages are kept by the factory owner as payment towards the loan. The loan may take a generation or more to pay off. But until it is paid, the family are held in slavery.
Iqbal had been sold by his mother to a carpet manufacturer at the age of four. For years he spent twelve hours a day, seven days a week working in carpet factories for a pittance. He eventually rebelled against his conditions and became a major figure in the BLLF. At the age of 12 he was traveling Pakistan addressing mass meetings and leading demos of thousands of children against industrial slavery. To this day, his murder has never been satisfactorily explained.
Women are being sold like animals in Pakistani markets. The trade is being encouraged by corrupt officials and politicians in the Sindh province of the country. Anti human practices are taking place in markets of Thar and other parts of Sindh under protection of influential politicians. The buyers of these unfortunate women fix their prices after examining and scanning their bodies. They humiliate and sexually harass these women in public.
Servitude exists in many forms in Pakistan. Over the past two decades, hundreds of thousands of Afghan families — eager to flee 20 years of war and three years of drought — have sought safe haven in Pakistan, only to spend the rest of their lives working to pay off the debts they accumulated to get there. They do so by becoming indentured laborers, often at brick factories, and by sending their children to carpet factories that crave small fingers. Indentured servitude is not only legal but ubiquitous in Pakistan, and servant culture thrives: the wealthy can have a driver, three maids, a cook, and a night watchman for less than $75 a month.
At least 54 Iranian girls and young women, between the ages of 16 and 25, are sold on the streets of Karachi in Pakistan on a daily basis, according to report outlining the latest statistics. The report also revealed that there are at present at least 300,000 runaway girls in Iran, adding that the estimated number of women under the absolute poverty line was more than eight million.
Aisha loves the clothes her new guardian has bought for her, what she doesn't realize is this woman just bought her for $1500 and intends to make her into a prostitute. Other children in the area are being bought up by pimps who will pay twice that.
Slavery Survives, Despite Universal Abolition
Nadeem has spent most of his life hunched over a carpet loom in Lahore, Pakistan, trying to pay off a loan given to his parents years ago. "I'm 12 years old and I've been working since I was 4," Nadeem says. Nadeem is one of thousands of children who work as bonded laborers in Pakistan's carpet industry. As in most countries, bonded child labor is illegal in Pakistan. But enforcement of that law is sporadic.
www.indianmuslims.info/news/2008/jan/21/pakistan_poverty_forces_traffi cking_children_rise.html
While boys in impoverished parts of rural Pakistan, particularly towns in the southern Punjab, are more likely to be trafficked overseas, girls are trafficked more often within the country, and sometimes sold into what amounts to little more than sexual slavery, says the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP).
HRCP has reported that in most cases, they are given away for amounts of money ranging from US$1,300 to $5,000 by impoverished parents, sometimes in "marriage"; and sometimes to agents who promise lucrative jobs as domestic servants in large cities.
Many of these girls, according to child rights groups, end up as sex workers. Some are no older than 10 at the time of the "sale".
"Hundreds of girls are trafficked within the country each year. There are markets in the North West Frontier Province where these victims are sold like cattle," I.A. Rehman, director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said.
www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=155996
www.nation.com.pk/pakista n-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Regional/Karachi/07-Jan-2009/
Human-traff icking-case-unearthed
Shabana was lured with a nice job and kidnapped along with her three daughters and one son on July 20, 2008 and taken to the ‘katcha area’ of Kashmore on the Sindh-Balochistan border area. “A man called Rasheed Shar said I was like his sister. He offered me a nice job in interior Sindh,” Shabana told The News on Tuesday. “He took me to a ‘katchi area’ near Kashmore along with my four kids — seven-year-old Sana, four-year-old Roshi, six-year-old Aisha, and eight-year-old Suleman.” “He kept us there for three days and then disappeared. My elder daughter Sana became ill and I tried to escape but Rasheed’s younger brother, Shabeeb, threatened to kill us,” she said with tears in her eyes. “Then they shifted me to a place near the river and threatened to throw me in the water after killing me. However, Rasheed’s son-in-law Lalu became a blessing in disguise and helped us.”
After two or three weeks, one of Rasheed’s brothers came to Shabana and said that they were dacoits. “Rasheed called us up on his brother’s cell phone, and said he was waiting for us on the other bank of the river. He told us to get on a boat which was waiting there. He promised he would take us back to Karachi,” Shabana said. “After about two hours we were shifted to the ‘katcha area’ across the river. However, the moment we arrived there, we were surrounded by many people and I came to know that I was being sold. I told them I was already married but I was sold to an elderly man, Ali Mohammad Kurd. I remained with him for about two months and was often beaten severely. In the meantime, several other people offered to purchase me. I was sold thrice. However, on a lucky day, I along with my kids managed to escape to Kashmore.”
Campaigners say the children, who are sold by their families for about £12.50, often suffer abuse at the hands of the bosses who control the roadside pitches.
The Indian Save the Children foundation raided one of the junctions in the Indian capital of New Dehli and rescued 13 children selling magazines earlier this year.
Bhuwan Ribhu, an activist for the foundation, said: "The BBC has a responsibility to police their subcontractors."
Top Gear magazine was launched in India in 2005, after the BBC formed a joint venture with the Times of India group to create Worldwide Media, India's biggest magazine publisher, which also produces Good Homes magazine.
Although the magazines are sold on bookstalls for £1 each, the level of competition in the market has led sellers to battle for readers on the roads of major cities.
Retailers appointed by the joint venture hire distributors, who in turn employ gangs who use trafficked children to sell to motorists. The children are forced to work punishing 12-hour days. They recieve as little as five rupees (6p) per copy sold.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2614023/BBC-magazines-being-sold -in-India-by-child-labourers-earning-12p-a-day.html
The thriving trade in young humans illustrates the problems that the government of President Pervez Musharraf faces as he tries to turn Pakistan into a modern and tolerant nation.
Here in the mountainous areas along the Afghan border, foreigners travel with armed guards, Pakistani laws are unenforceable and the infamous black markets of Landi Kotal and Jamrud thrive.
With 30-foot-high walls studded with broken glass, machine guns mounted in the corners and armed guards standing behind the gate, Ejaz Arbab's warehouse in Jamrud looks much like others in the region.
One of the wealthier men in Jamrud, Mr. Arbab has been making a fortune over the past 20 years selling children — most of them the sons and daughters of penniless refugees who for years have streamed across the border to escape the warfare in Afghanistan.
Girls are auctioned off in a large rectangular room about 40 feet by 30 feet where intricate Afghan carpets cover the floor and pillows serve as seats for low tables.
Buyers puff on hookahs as the girls, escorted by an elderly woman, walk to a dais in the center of the room dressed only in thin cotton smocks. Before purchase, a buyer has the right to remove the tunic and inspect the girl in front of the crowd.
Dozens of locals say Afghan girls between the ages of 5 and 17 sell for $80 to $100. The price depends on the colors of their eyes and skin; if they are virgins, the price is higher.
Mr. Arbab, an older man with a white shovel beard and a green turban, absently fingers his prayer beads as he calls out prices for the children.
"The selling of children is common among the poor in Pakistan and Afghanistan," said Syed Mehmood Asghar, a program manager specializing in child abuse for Save the Children Sweden, based in Peshawar. "It has always been in the culture; the poor do not regard it as slavery."
The most well-publicized occurrences involve sheikhs from the United Arab Emirates buying young boys for use as jockeys in the camel races in Dubai.
The girls generally are sold into prostitution or, if they are lucky, they may join harems in the Middle East.
But the very celebrity of those cases betrays their rarity and the almost lackadaisical attitude Pakistanis have to the problem.
A prominent banker in Peshawar said that in the capital of one tribal area known as the Mohmand Agency, slavers dig deep holes in the ground to serve as holding pens for the girls.
Children are fed once each day and given water with which to wash before buyers inspect them. The banker said he wanted to buy a girl for himself this year, but his wife would not let him. He said he hopes to buy one next year.
In many cases, semantics conceal the buying and selling of children.
Rather than being directly "sold," boys are sent to work in carpet factories or as camel jockeys while their families are given advances on their wages.
But this indentured servitude becomes permanent when the boys are forced to assume new debts while abroad. Most families stop receiving money and do not see their boys again.
The families, who generally sell their daughters because they cannot afford to provide dowries, do not hear about the sexual abuse either.
The children have no legal recourse, said Mr. Asghar, who noted that local politicians also profit from the trade. "Even if a girl would testify, who would listen?" he asked.
Usma, an Afghan prostitute, said she was 12 when her family sold her to a man. "We were crossing the border [into Pakistan] and had no money to eat. The man gave them $80, so my mother told me to go with Akbar.
"After Akbar found other girls at the border, he put all 17 of us in a truck and took us to Jamrud. I stood on the dais and men offered Arbab dowries for me.
"Initially I was proud to earn such a high dowry price at Jamrud, but then the man refused to marry me and instead sent me out with his friends."
Although men at the auction ostensibly are paying for the right to marry the girl, few — if any — do. Most of the girls become prostitutes; some become domestic help.
The girls never see the dowry money given to Mr. Arbab. According to dozens of buyers interviewed, the girls are disposable — and most never live to the age of 30.
When asked about how she felt, Usma started to cry.
"While I was with my first man, Khoram, the whole time I was thinking how much I wished that I was a married woman with my own husband, my own children, and my own house.
"I did not like it at all. After the first time, I came home and cried and tore my hair — I hated myself and wished that I would die."
What an audacity takla budha!
While your revered Prophet Mohammad owned sold slaves, as endorsed by Quran (right hand possesion) you have guts to come here with your twist.
Slave ownership within Islam has always been an acceptable fact. The Islamic prophet, Muhammad, stated throughout his teachings that during wars with their enemies all males were to be killed and their women and children were to be taken captive and turned into slaves.
Not only did Muhammad own slaves, but the following account from Islamic theology indicates that he sold slaves as well:
"A man amongst us declared that his slave would be freed after his death. The Prophet called for that slave and sold him. The slave died the same year."
(Sahih Bukhari,Volume 3, Book 46, Number 711: Narrated Jabir bin 'Abdullah)
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