Nepal belatedly takes action on slavery following Srijana Chaudhary tragedy (The Guardian)
“When Gangu Chaudhary got a call to come to Kathmandu from his home in western Nepal, all he knew was that his 12-year-old daughter, Srijana, had fallen sick. He arrived at the family house where she had been working to be told that his daughter had doused herself in kerosene and then set herself alight, dying of her injuries shortly afterwards.
“Srijana was a ‘kamlari’, a domestic slave.
“As bonded labourers working off debts, Srijana’s family remains trapped in the quasi-feudal caste system still operating in parts of the country.
“Since the 1950s, young girls from Nepal’s Tharu community have been sold or given away by their families as a way of repaying debts to higher-caste families. Many face years of menial and unpaid domestic labour, violence and abuse. Chaudhary says that he was pressured by his landlord to hand over his daughter in exchange for some land. He never saw her again.
“But now, two months after her body was cremated, Srijana’s death could mark a turning point in Nepal’s battle to end this ancient form of slavery. Last week, the government pledged to end the enslavement of all remaining kamlari girls by the end of the month, help to rehabilitate them once free, and prosecute the families that had enslaved them.
“The government’s decision followed a wave of protests and strikes, in the capital and across southern Nepal, over continued discrimination against kamlaris. The unrest was prompted by the refusal of the police to investigate Srijana’s death, which was ruled suicide. [...]
“Officially, all forms of bonded labour, including the kamlari system, have been banned in Nepal since 2000.
“Yet campaigners believe that thousands of young girls like Srijana are still living as indentured slaves throughout the country.
“‘It is the powerful politicians from the upper castes who typically keep kamlaris, so they have no incentive to abolish the system,’ says Churna Chaudhary, the executive director of Backward Education Society, which has been campaigning for an end to all forms of bonded labour since 1985.”
See also on anti-caste:
NEPAL: IMPOVERISHED LOW-CASTE WOMEN THROWN INTO TRADITIONAL CASTE-BASED SERVITUDE (March 21, 2011)
and
CHILDREN AND CASTE-BASED BONDED LABOR IN NEPAL (February 26, 2011)
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