Hungry for change: Peasant leader on hunger strike for 120 days falls unconscious

Admitted to Polyclinic, Sehto has gone hungry to protest water pilferage in Khairpur.


Waqas Naeem September 19, 2012

ISLAMABAD:


It took 120 days of hunger to bring the resolute Ghulam Rasool Sehto down. The president of the Sindh Hari Committee was taken to Polyclinic Hospital on Sunday night after falling unconscious at his protest camp outside Islamabad Press Club.


He had been on a hunger strike to protest the water shortage faced by farmers in Sindh’s Khairpur District.

Dr Fareedullah Shah, the doctor on duty at the hospital, said Sehto has experienced severe weight loss and is suffering from potassium deficiency.

Sehto’s immunity has been reduced, which could make him vulnerable to infections, Shah said, adding that medical staff tried to feed him through tubes but he resisted.

Sehto is protesting over 400 dysfunctional tube wells in Khairpur District and the almost 41,000 non-functional primary schools in Sindh, but his most important demand is to end water pilferage in the province, particularly Khairpur.

“It’s an artificial shortage created in some 30 canals because influential feudal lords and elected representatives steal water from the canals through their own diversionary water courses,” he alleged.

Sehto started his hunger strike in Khairpur over three months ago. He had called off three previous hunger strikes after promises were made by the provincial and district officials.

The promises were never kept. He moved to Islamabad over Eid in August after seeing no response from the local authorities.

“The Supreme Court is the only hope I see now,” Sehto said from his hospital bed.

On September 11, Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry took suo motu notice of the water pilferage and asked the Sindh irrigation secretary to report on the issue.

Sehto said according to his information, the irrigation secretary has told the Supreme Court that a case regarding the water shortage is pending in the Sindh High Court (SHC).

However, he said, the SHC case is a “drama” staged by local officials and influential feudal lords to prevent the Supreme Court from following up on the issue.

He said he had called off his previous hunger strike after Khairpur’s district commissioner had promised him a hearing in the SHC, but
the court did not even hear the case on the appointed date.

“These bigwigs just play with the law,” he said.

Member National Assembly Dr Nafisa Shah is from Khairpur District. In a phone interview, she told The Express Tribune she was unaware Sehto was in Islamabad, but said she was willing to meet him if he was willing to call off his strike.

“Some of his demands are relatively okay and the Sindh government has moved on them,” she said.

Sehto, on the other hand, said political parties have tried to avoid the water shortage issue despite protests all over Sindh. He thinks Rangers should be deployed in areas suffering from water pilferage, a demand Shah found unreasonable.

She said she agrees with Sehto that over the years some areas have gone dry, possibly due to mismanagement, and that she has also taken up these issues with the irrigation staff herself.

But she claimed that some areas have a natural water shortage and because of water logging, it is not possible for all the tube wells to be operational at all times.

Meanwhile, Sehto said he’s not going to break his hunger strike until steps are taken to provide relief to the Sindhi farmers.

“If I have decided to risk my life, why only for Khairpur?” he said. “We speak about all of Sindh where 3 million acres of land have been deprived of water.”

Published in The Express Tribune, September 19th, 2012. 

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