| ashu |
Posted
on 24-Nov-00 05:47 AM
Breaking News from the Far Western Nepal:
A rally of 7000 ex-Kamaiyas, under the leadership
of Dilli Chaudhary, today (Friday) 'gheraoed' the
offices of the CDO, DDC and local Land Reform Office, blocking
traffic for hours in Dhangadi bazaar.
The police laathi-charged the crowd, injuring 18 ex-Kamaiyas
in front of the Land reform Office.
The ex-Kamaiyas' demand is for jagga so that they
can settle permanently as opposed to be living
in makeshift temporary camps.
Dilli and his activist colleagues have given a
14-day ultimatum to the government.
What follows was published yesterday in Spotlight
magazine.
****************************
On to the next phase of the Kamaiya Mukti Andolan
By Dilli Bahadur Chaudhary
On July 17, 2000, the government declared the age-old practice of
debt-bondage illegal in Nepal, thus freeing up to 200,000 bonded
laborers in Far Western Nepal, in the districts of Dang, Banke, Kailali, Kanchanpur and Bardiya.
Though this decision had then been hailed as a historic one, and we
welcomed it as such, strictly speaking, the decision was not really
necessary. That was because Nepal's Constitution and laws expressly
forbade debt bondage anyway. Missing since 1990, the year when the new
Constitution came into force, were the political will and the
administrative machinery to enforce the existing laws against debt
bondage.
Running parallel to this age-old governmental indifference was the focus
of the NGOs, including mine. Looking back, we focussed perhaps too much
on running "project-oriented" activities such as those pertaining to
literacy, sewing, carpentry and so on. To be sure, those projects,
carried out in a span of several years with support from many
hardworking and dedicated partner NGOs and INGOs were important in
raising the overall awareness among the bonded laborers.
But such "project-oriented" activities were not, on the whole, as
effective as we would have liked them to be. The reason was simple: As
long as Kamaiyas (or bonded laborers) remained in bondage, there was
little sense in running skill-development programs for them. The
Kamaiyas needed to be free -- politically, legally and socially -- first
in order both to benefit from the programs designed for them and to
demand their own programs in future.
In retrospect, the "project-oriented" approach also diminished the
importance of litigation for us. As long as we remained busy with
projects to help the Kamaiyas, there was little incentive for us to seek
legal redress. We did not file test-cases on behalf of the bonded
laborers. This was just as well, for taking into considerations as to
how slowly the courts in Nepal move, we really did not hold out much
hope for legal solutions. And so, we continued on with our projects,
knowing that, yes, they were not enough in and of themselves, and that a
search for better, more effective solutions to the Kamaiyas' problems.
Thus, it was no surprise that the problems of the bonded laborers
persisted despite there being many good activities run by a number of
NGOs and INGOs for a number of years. Meantime, the government's
response predictably ranged from being indifferent to uncaring. Finally,
to stir the political will and the administrative machinery of the
government, bonded laborers took matters into their own hands by
starting a Mukti Andolan (Movement for Emancipation) on May 1st.
By sitting outside and staging peaceful yet deliberate protest programs
at government offices in Dhangadi, Mahendra Nagar and other towns and
villages in the Far Western Nepal, they started to exert pressure on the
government to declare them free from bondage.
When the government did not heed their call for freedom, they sent about
150 representatives to Kathmandu to launch a high-profile dharna in
front of the Singha Durbar, the Prime Minister's office. This went on
for a few days, before the government finally declared, on July 17, the
age-old practice of debt bondage illegal in the Kingdom of Nepal. That
declaration sent shock-waves among the feudal landlords, who wasted no
time in Kailali and Kanchanpur districts in evicting their bonded
laborers -- confiscating
their properties, physically abusing them and rendering the already
vulnerable ex-Kamaiyas all the more vulnerable.
Since then, we activists have been thust into the role of relief workers
-- a role we are not capable of fulfilling. Not only have we been taking
care of food, medical and shelter needs of the displaced ex-Kamaiyas
through the help of a few willing INGOs, but also that the work has made
us wonder whether the government indeed does anything for the displaced
ex-Kamaiyas. To its credit, the government has formed committees in all
the five districts, but most of them are politically charged and are not
sympathetic to the plights of the displaced ex-Kamaiyas. Most of these
committees have spent precious time and resources arguing over who was a
real Kamaiya and who was not, and other such non-urgent matters. The
result is that the freed Kamaiyas, scattered in various camps with
makeshift huts and cottages, have ended up becoming "internal refugees"
in and around their own communities. The situation is dire indeed.
In light of the fact that the government has done little to assist the
ex-Kamaiyas, what, then, is there to be done?
Rights we have focussed on is those pertaining to land. This is to say,
each freed Kamaiya family should be given 10 katthas of land. Our
analysis is that this much land is enough for a family of six or seven
to live on for more than half a year in the Far Western Nepal. For the
rest of the year, the family can work in either agriculture or in some
form of industry. Only when each ex-Kamaiya family is settled in its own
patch of land in its own village, then the issue of rehabilitation (i.e.
literacy, health and sanitation, savings and credit, and the rest) can start to take shape. Else, with no land of their own,
freed ex-Kamaiyas will simply become 'internal refugees living in
camps', and this is not what they or we want.
And so, in coming weeks, in the Far Western Nepal, especially in
Dhangadi and in other cities and villages, we will be launching the second phase of the 'Kamaiya Andolan' -- this time, demanding
specifically for land for each Kamaiya family. Our studies show that
there are pieces of undesignated land available. Again, missing are the
political will of the government and the efficacy of its administrative
machinery. Maybe this Andolan (movement) for land will stir the
government into action.
|
