Kamalari and the Convention of Child Rights in Nepal

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                                                                            Kamalari and the Convention of Child Rights in Nepal                                                Date: 17-6-2013

International Day for Protection of Children calls to honor children’s wellbeing. UNICEF, Save the Children and other such world leading organizations raise millions of dollars as donation, pledging to help provide emergency food, healthcare, help vulnerable children survive by protecting them and get them to school. Since 1950, United Nations Children’s Fund has raised $170 million as the driving force to build a better world enshrining the rights of children in their policies.

While such institutions are engaged in celebrating June 12^th as the International Child Labor Day, the Tharus, Janajatis and the Dalit communities hang down their heads in shame, suffering the consequences of the gruesome incidents continually inflicted upon their children while justice is totally out of bound for them.

Lack of Action

Imagine the deceased Shrijana Chaudhary, as the daughter of PM/Chief Justice Khil Raj Regmi. Would his family and community demand justice in the streets? How would the tools of justice work for the likes of Shankar Pokhrel, if his daughter was wiled away for the want of a better education, but conditioned to work as a low caste, in the house of a so called high caste? 

Envision a parent’s deprivation in a “naya, niaya Nepal”, of the right to provide the minimal food, shelter, education for the survival of their children. Visualize that you were forced by circumstances of poverty, to let go off your child, to an unknown destination as an indentured servant, exposed to intimidation, misuse, abuse, exploitation, violence and finally death. 

The ghastly murder of Shrijana Chaudhary, a 12 year old girl, immolated while being employed illegally in the house of government employee, engineer Yubaraj Poudel in Lalitpur is a tragic story. The gross misuse of state power and physical violence ensued by the police to thwart the peaceful demonstrators of the Kamalari movement from 28^th May to 8th June was atrociously ugly.

After their petition to the President, Vice President, Prime Minister, the Home Minister, Human Rights and the UN was ignored; confrontation with the state policy became an inevitable tug of war between the powerful and the powerless. Four days of “bandh” was called in Kailali, Kanchanpur, Dang, Banke, and Bardiya in unison to back the Mukta Kamalari girls from the two hundred and fifty thousand, technically freed bonded laborers. They were convinced that the long march to Kathmandu was a price worth paying for justice.

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Historical Abuse and Struggle

The Mukta Kamalari Movement (The Free Slavery Movement) is a continuation of their determination to end the injustice and undemocratic practice of modern day slavery; consolidated for more than two centuries, capturing the horrors of new Nepal. In pursuit of their indigenous land rights, they have been exposed to social, political and economic violence due to subjugation by the state policy.

Marginalized, Discriminated, Exploited and Displaced

Tharus being the largest indigenous group were conditioned to slavery by the practice and enforcement of the land grabbing act of the Civil Code in 1853. The Land Reform Act of 1964 gradually moved the high caste from the mid hills by dint of state power and succeeded in seizing the land of the Tharus by forgery and cunning. In due course, the Tharus were rendered landless in their own homes by the transference of 70 percent of land to Brahmin zamindars, 10 percent to Chhetris and 15 percent to Janajati and Tharu landlords.

By absence of land rights and the “sanskritization”, of the Nepal Hindu state, the history of a cultured, self- sufficient people from the Shakyamuni Buddha, Ashoka and the Koli heritage were diminished to Kamalaris, the poorest family of sharecroppers. With the subsistence of Rs 1.65 per day and four and a half quintal grains per annum, per family, until 2000, they were unable to feed their family. They were confined to wholesale indebted slavery; man-woman-children were sold as indentured servants at a convenient price to zamindars (landlords).

The high caste governments have repeatedly ignored the agitation for pluralistic policy of an inclusive Nepal, allowing the rule of law to slip in the fissures of social chaos. The government of G P Koirala in 2000, prepared for partial freedom, branding the Kamlaris to cattle treatment of red-blue-green-white categories, further dividing their cause and issues.

Past agreements failed to prescribe the deliverance of the Kamalaris. Their Nepali citizenry serves little to fulfill their identity rights and for the most part, are abused beyond logical human grounds of dignity. At their best, they are used as vote banks by the major parties. The fact remains that most of the land holdings in the terai would go fallow without the diligence of the Tharus and Kamalaris.

This heinous crime is a fatal flaw in the unraveling of the constitution of Nepal. International agencies cannot be apologetic, without guaranteeing their best in these nightmare solutions, refusing to endorse the participation of the civil rights sector to contribute more fully. Offering the tone-deaf argument that they are here only to endorse policies with the government will be a decisive victory for a stalemate solution for a critical problem facing many ordinary women and children in the conveyor belt of violence and injustice.

Convention

The sponsors and supporters, domestic and international must secure advantage to guarantee a solution for these children/women who come from the lowest rung of society. To silence the horror of Shrijana Chaudhary and the cry for justice in the backdrop of the Convention on the Rights of Children ((CRC) , to which, Nepal Government is a signatory, is to camouflage the gross misuse and abuse of substantial policies lost in the implementation to really impact the children of the marginalized, discriminated and exploited population in Nepal.

The Kamalaris will be poor as long as the business of poverty sells. While caste becomes the commodity, class is the seductive branding of society. This is beyond human rights, this is murder and repression. The Kamlari Tharu demands for fair prosecution of the convicted with compensation for the bereaved and for their political, social and economic security ought to be accountable through the law.

By:

Rukmini Chaudhary

Shakun Sherchand