| ashu |
Posted
on 08-Feb-01 11:05 AM
What follows is another letter, asking the
Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
in Geneva to get involved with the Kamaiya issue.
This is here on this Web site to share with you
all that nothing in Nepal happens in isolation.
Every event in Nepal can be made to have local,
national and international repercussions. The government does
not respond to its own citizens' demands; but it
is more likely to listen to foreign authorities.
oohi
ashu
*********************
7 February 2001
Dr Miloon Kothari
Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing
c/o Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
Geneva
SWITZERLAND
Dear Special Rapporteur
Last September I attended a meeting in New Delhi about bonded labour, at which you spoke about protection mechanisms at the international level.
I am contacting you today because Anti-Slavery International has just received reports that hundreds of dwellings being used by former bonded labourers in neighbouring Nepal have just been destroyed at the orders of government officials, and we believe your urgent intervention is needed to prevent further house destruction.
In July last year the Government of the Kingdom of Nepal announced that the system of bonded labour which was prevalent in much of the country was to come to an end. During the following months, many employers of the tens of thousands of bonded labourers in the Kingdom expelled both the workers and their families from their land.
The Government has undertaken to provide former bonded labourers with land to live on and to cultivate some food for themselves and their families. However, there has been no agreement yet as to the exact amount of land. Former bonded labourers and their supporters have asked for more land per family than the Government appears willing to grant, and have been demonstrating in support of their demands. Since July and August last year, they have been living under plastic and cardboard in makeshift camps waiting for land to be distributed.
Recently, they moved to occupy land owned by the Government, because the planting season is approaching, and if they do not plant they will not eat. Other landless peasants then encroached on the same land.
Yesterday and today we received reports that, last weekend, huts in Kailali and Bardiya Districts in Far Western Nepal occupied by
ex-bonded labourers were burnt, apparently on the orders of government officials. We do not have exact details about the numbers affected in Kailali, but we have been informed that, in Bardiya District, an encampment of over 3,500 dwellings, of which 500-800 belonged to former bonded labourers, was destroyed by fire.
In another part of Bardiya, a camp with approximately 382 bonded labour families was set alight. We know that this information is reliable – it comes from two organisations, one locally-based named Backward Society Education (BASE), and Save the Children Fund –US, based in Kathmandu
We urge you to investigate these reports and to call on the Government of the Kingdom of Nepal to give an undertaking than no further dwellings, whether of former bonded labourers, or any other persons will be destroyed in this way, and that the problem of the landless and destitute ex-bonded labourers is solved by the allocation of land and other resources for resettlement.
Yours sincerely,
Mike Dottridge
Director
Anti-Slavery International, London
|
