Uncle Tom's country
Nine-year-old Rashida died the 10th day she was sold by
her 'owner' Haji Qasim Jamali to
recover the $ 1,500 her father owed him. Her parents came to know about it four days later, from some villagers.
"She probably died of fear," says the shocked father, Allahdino, who, for the past eight years, has been working as a bonded labourer on Jamali's land, "We told him we would work till we clear all our debts. But he did not heed it; instead, he sold off our daughter and settled accounts.''
Jan Mohammed Hingoro, who bought Rashida, has no compunction in admitting the girl is dead. ''I purchased her for
Rs 60,000. There is no reason why I should report the matter. It is I who have lost a huge sum."
''Take a few thousand (rupees) and keep the matter to
yourself," the district magistrate adviced the journalists and NGOs who raised a ruckus about the incident, "What can you do to such powerful people?''
They are the Uncle Toms of modern world,
the cattle of rural Pakistan -- to be bought, sold, exchanged or killed at the slightest whiff
of their master's fancy.
Though the law bans bonded labour in the country, feudal landowners who wield enormous political power over a largely illiterate rural society get away with it as cool as you please. In fact, this is the norm in the countryside where the landowners can get away with anything -- even murder of their 'slaves'.
"Nearly 100 girls in the Kachho area (some 400 kilometres
north of Karachi) have been sold in one month to
landlords," says Azeema Lashari of the Sindh Green Human Rights Supreme Council, "Each fetched a price between $ 1,000 and $ 4,000.''
Such sales are always to pay back debts to landowners, Lashari says. In the feudal society, landowners do not allow workers to
repay even the smallest loan with labour. Instead, they are made to
buy their freedom by trading daughters and sisters.
"The sale of girls is one of the most pernicious practices
of rustic Pakistan. The system is widely prevalent in the south-eastern Sindh
province and even Punjab," confirms Independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan officials, "Sindh landowners have enormous political clout, as many of the country's biggest politicians, including President
Farooq Leghari and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, belong to the region."
In Punjab, according to the HRCP report for 1996, girls are sold by landowners 'on the
pretext of getting them married.'
''Women are a commodity, bought and sold under an age-old
practice,'' says Nafeesa Shah of Shirkat Gah, an NGO that works
to protect women from outdated Islamic laws. One of the cases it took up recently was that of 16-year-old Farzana Ranjho, a bonded labourer's daughter.
''I was handed over to a man by our
landowner without my or my parents' consent. When I resisted, I was kept at the police station for nine
days. The officer in-charge raped me several times,'' Ranjho says.
She said her parents paid the equivalent of $ 500 to secure her release. But she was forced to go to her new 'owner'. "I was raped again," the girl says.
Such rampant disgraces, HRCP officials say, almost always go unrecorded. ''Parents do not come forward
to report it, either to the local press or NGOs. And those who come to know of it would rather keep mum out of fear of the landowners."
The SGHRSC is collecting information about these cases. It plans to approach the court shortly. Their case, officials say, will not be against the landowners alone. "The role of police needs to be defined," they say, "Now, if a girl goes to the police station to report a forced sale, she is arrested and raped by the law enforcers!"
UNI
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