Continuing struggles: The hunger of Thar that has taken 15 years of Mano Bheel’s life

The nomad was caught up in bonded labour and still fights to save his family.

KARACHI:  When Thar freezes over in the chilly winters, 200 kilometres away, self-exiled Mano Bheel also shivers in a shelter camp in Hyderabad. It has taken him 15 long years to cover that distance.

In between those 15 years and 200 kilometres, lie painful memories that continue to haunt - of cold nights, of starvation, of scorching hot days of migration, of gruelling slavery and, finally, of unending isolation.

"Whenever people migrate from Thar in search of livelihood, it terrifies me as I cannot help but think what their fate can be," the 64-year-old member of the Hindu scheduled caste tells The Express Tribune.

The migration he refers to is the seasonal movement of hundreds of families from the desert district to irrigated areas, brought to the limelight by the numerous deaths that have taken place in the most recent drought.



Bheel's story, even though not as recent, is a familiar one for the residents of the district. It starts in the 1980s, when he, along with 21 family members, started working for a landlord in an irrigated area in Naukot after a particularly harsh famine hit the desert. The decision was one that he still regrets today.

It wasn't until 1996 that a special taskforce of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, with the help of local administration, rescued Bheel and his family members, along with 71 other haris, from bonded labour at the farm of Abdul Rahman Mari.

On February 4, 1998, nine members of his family were kidnapped, allegedly by Mari, after the family refused to pay back a loan of Rs190,000.

Bheel's 70-year-old father, Khero, his 60-year-old mother, Akho, his 40-year-old wife, Motan, his 25-year-old brother, Talal, his two daughters, 13-year-old Momal and one-year-old Dhanee, his two sons, 10-year-old Chaman and eight-year-old Kanjee, and even his relative, Kirto. All of them taken away. All of them, for a mere Rs190,000.

The then chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, took suo motu notice of the incident on the complaint of a Swedish human rights activist, Torborg Isakssan.

Justice Chaudhry used all possible resources to rescue the victims - efforts that were interrupted when he was sacked on November 3, 2007. By the time he was restored two years later, the landlord had already been granted bail.

"The landlord, who had fled to Saudi Arabia, dared to return during Justice Chaudhry's deposition and even managed to obtain bail from a local court," says Bheel, blaming the Pakistan Peoples Party government for damaging his case by not arresting the influential landlord.

"No one seems ready to help me correct that mistake [of migrating]," he says. "Not the politicians, neither the police, nor the judiciary."

Bheel, however, approached the Sindh High Court in 2008 in a desperate attempt for justice but none has been forthcoming.

"A date [for hearing] is fixed at least once every month but its turn either comes by the end of the working hours or never at all," said advocate Waseem Iqbal, associated with the group providing free legal aid.

As Bheel hopes against hope and awaits justice, labour rights organisations claim the number of victims of bonded labour continue to rise due to lack of effective laws to curb the practice.

After the 18th Amend-ment, all provincial governments are required to legislate the anti-bonded labour laws, in keeping with the federal version of the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1992. The Sindh government, however, has so far failed to make its own laws. "The government actually wanted to legalise the (peshgi) advance system in its proposed law against bonded labour," said Dr Ghulam Haider of the Green Rural Development Organisation, which runs at least four camps for freed victims of bonded labourers. "Peshgi or loan system is the root of the menace [of slavery], and because labour rights bodies resisted such a move, the government has not prepared an amended draft of the proposed law."

Turning to justice

A common Thari’s life starts and ends in the desert but for Bheel those days are behind him. In his search for justice, he has travelled the length of the country, from southern Sindh right up to the highest echelon of the country’s power - the Supreme Court in Islamabad.

During this period, he has been unable to see his family members, and while the world knows him as the anti-slavery campaigner of Pakistan, he merely yearns to have his family back.

He claims to have staged the longest ever token hunger strike, for 1,227 days, outside the Hyderabad Press Club, which is ironically located close to various bonded labour rehabilitation camps.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 7^th, 2014.