Former slaves still bear hardship and exploitation

For decades families like Tharu’s worked as slaves for their landlords under the ‘kamaiya’ bonded labour system, but now, six years after the practice was eventually banned, life remains hard for many of the former slaves who continue to suffer exploitation.

“We are totally free from our landlords but the hardship and exploitation still remains the same,” Tharu said.

Tharu is also the name of the Nepalese ethnic group in the southwestern region of Nepal which was put into bonded labour for over 40 years.

During the early 1960s they were evicted from their own lands by the high-caste migrants from the hill areas after they started settling in the rich fertile lands of south Nepal, including Dang, Banke, Kailali, Bardiya and Kanchanpur districts, which are over 500 km west of the capital, Kathmandu.

The new settlers used violence and tricked the illiterate Tharu community into signing false loan documents, using their lands as collateral. In the process, most of the Tharus lost the land they had farmed for generations.

In order to buy seeds, food and other goods, the Tharus began taking loans from their new landlords. In a cruel irony, they were asked to work on the agricultural land they used to own until they had repaid the loans. But most could never clear their debts as the rate of loan interest kept rising every year. In this way, the Tharus were kept in perpetual servitude, working for 18 hours a day.

By 2000, prior to their liberation following the government ban against the slavery-like system, over 100,000 Tharus including the women and children were working as bonded labourers for their landlords, according to Backward Society Education (BASE), a local NGO that steered the movement against the exploitative system.

But in the past six years there have been few improvements in living conditions and the majority of former slaves continue to live below the poverty line with no source of income, according to BASE.

“Most of them are still landless with no proper housing and the situation is much worse for their children,” said BASE director, Churna Bahadur Chaudhary.

Chaudhary explained that thousands of children were engaged in hard labour as domestic servants, hotel cleaners, porters, construction labourers and factory workers to support their parents.

Although there is no accurate estimation, nearly 2,000 children of the former bonded labourers have been working under exploitative conditions in Nepalganj, a key city of western Nepal, 600 km from Kathmandu.

“What choice do we have? We are too old and weak to support our families,” said Tharu, trying hard to farm the infertile land donated by the government where he is unable to cultivate anything. His wife works 15 hours a day as a domestic helper in a private household for a meagre wage of US $5 per month.

“On most nights we sleep with an empty stomach and now even my children have become so used to it that they have stopped crying,” said Ram Prasad Tharu, who also received a small plot of land and lives in a makeshift hut built with twigs and bamboos.

“We have freedom from slavery but not from our misery,” said 14-year-old Sushma Tharu, who left school due to hardship.

The families are sheltered in huts, which are unsuitable during all seasons and are often in a vulnerable state due to heavy rainfall, scorching heat and chilly winters

Earlier, many Tharu families organised a huge protest rally in the capital, which they reached after an 18-hour journey in a local bus to get the attention of the government.

“All we want is the government to give us enough land and to build decent houses so that we, especially our children, can live like normal human beings,” said Ram Prasad Tharu, who has been waiting for the last six years for the government to fulfill its promise of rehabilitating them and providing support.

“Their conditions are deteriorating every day. There is a need to bring in humanitarian aid to give support, especially for the children,” said Chaudhary. He explained that there was an urgent need to sponsor children’s education, increase their access to health facilities and provide them with food.

Health problems like diarrhoea, malnutrition, Japanese encephalitis and malaria are quite common among the children, according to BASE, which has been campaigning for free schooling.

“The families are in great need of houses and they can be built quite cheaply and easily by the government and aid agencies,” said Anil Pant from Action Aid Nepal, which has already helped over 500 families by building low-cost houses. The poverty-focused NGO has also worked with local community organisations to help the families with income-generation activities.

“Their lives have drastically changed from slavery to freedom. They live with more dignity, are independent and no longer enslaved by their landlords. But their hardship is just too much for them to bear,” Pant added.

NN/JL/DS