United Nations Economic and Social Council
Commission on Human Rights
Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and protection of Minorities
Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery
22nd Session
Geneva, June 1997
Report by: Shakeel Ahmed Pathan
Co-ordinator, Special Task Force for Sindh
Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP)

Bonded labour, a contemporary form of slavery according to the UN definition, is still unfortunately prevalent in certain sectors in Pakistan, such as brick manufacture, construction, sports goods manufacture and carpet-weaving. It is prevalent despite the fact that the country's Constitution forbids slavery, and despite debt bondage having been declared abolished in 1992 under the Bonded Labour (Abolition) Act.

One area of the practice's ugliest manifestations is in agriculture. This sector of the national economy is still largely an informal and unregulated one. The tenancy laws that exist are easily dodged by the landlords who exercise great influence over the revenue and other local officials. That the peasantry is invariably in dire need of a livelihood and is illiterate and unresourceful enables the landlord to do with it just about what he wills. Bonded labour is especially prevalent in Sindh Province, and the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, through its Special Task Force for Sindh (of which I have been Co-ordinator for the past six years) has undertaken in-depth investigations of the problem. A measure of the significance of this work and the extent to which it threatens vested interests is illustrated by the death threats I have received by telephone and in person - even the presence of the police and a magistrate.

Briefly, the system works as follows:

(1) When a landlord takes on a tenant (or hires a farm hand) he makes sure that the arrangement is not entered in the official record. Thus he can deny with impunity all the tenancy rights and protection that legally become the tenant's due after three years of tenancy.

(2) According to law, provision of seeds, use of tractor, etc. is the responsibility of the landlord. But, in practice, he charges these to the tenant, and thus the latter's debt begins. The price amount and the interest on it are fixed by the landlord himself. All incidental expenses, such as for medicine, are also added to the debt, and the accounts are kept by the landlord's own managers. The debt thus soon mounts to a level to become unrepayable by the tenant. The increase continues, so that he becomes bonded for ever, and for one generation after another.

(3) According to law, the tenant's share of the crop should range from one-third to one-half of the produce. But, in practice, the tenant and his family are allowed no more than a daily subsistence - in the form of a fixed quantity of flour per head. Their meal thus usually consists of bread soaked in water.

(4) It is not just the tenant but his whole family which becomes bonded. Every member, down to the child who has begun to walk, has to contribute to the defraying of the accumulating debt, and to remain a hostage because of that outstanding and burgeoning obligation. Child labour too thus becomes an integral element of agricultural bonded labour.

(5) In some cases the tenant and his family are heavily guarded round the clock lest they should flee, and in the most extreme cases, they are kept in "private jails". Such "jails" are mostly found in lower Sindh, ie, Sanghar, Umerkot, Thatta, Badin, Mirpurkhas, Hyderabad, Tharparkar. Such jails are used to discipline and punish workers who challenge authority or demand to leave the land, or ask for their remuneration. When working in the fields they are even sometimes chained in iron fetters. They are like hard currency, held under lock and key.

(6) They make thatched shelters for themselves on the zamindar's (landlord's) land, and live in both harsh and unhygienic conditions.

(7) Their women and young girls are a customary recourse for the sexual appetite of the landlord and his men.

(8) Slave-trade is also a common feature. A landowner in need of additional hands, or some particular pair of hands, shops for these among fellow-landowners. If a bargain is struck it is on the basis of the amount of debt the seller claims is owed to him by the tenant or the farm-hand in demand and the loss he would suffer in future by losing the latter's services.

(9) The victims of bondage are mostly people of the lowest of the Scheduled Castes - those belonging to such tribes as Bhil, Kohli and Meghwar. Their backwardness makes them ready prey, and their traditional skill in farming and their capacity for hard work make them objects of jealous possession. HRCP's Task Force in Hyderabad launched a concerted campaign over the past two years for the exposure of the practice and the release of the bonded labour from their bondage of several years - even of generations. By quoting the existing law - Bonded Labour (Abolition) Act, 1992 - it was able initially to compel a measure of cooperation from the local administration and get about a thousand haris (bonded labourers) and their families released. But later the landlords rallied together and launched a powerful counter-movement. This caused the administration to back down. That, and the difficulties in the rehabilitation of the released haris forced a temporary setback to the campaign. HRCP estimates that there are still upwards of 3,000 haris held in bondage in Sindh.

In June 1996 HRCP sent out a team to investigate the phenomenon. It reported as follows on the landed aristocracy's influence over the administration:

"The Sindh Tenancy Act, which obliged landlords to get haris working for three consecutive years on their lands registered as permanent haris, with well defined rights....has been blatantly violated. They could not have done this without bribing the tapedar, who is the authority responsible for registering the names of haris in khasra gardavari [the official land record]....A number of landlords have themselves earlier been members of the administration, or their sons and relatives happen to be highly placed government functionaries. There is thus a nexus between the landlord and the administration entrusted with the task of enforcing tenancy laws. A majority of the big landlords are represented in the Assemblies [the national and provincial parliaments] and as they have a tendency to join whichever government happens to be in power they continue to have close links with the administration...

"The mukhtiarkar appointed under the Sindh Tenancy Act as a tribunal for the settlement of disputes between tenants and landlords is a taluqa [area] revenue official in league with the landlord and not an independent arbitrator. It was brought to the notice of the HRCP mission that big landlords often get the mukhtiarkars of their own choice appointed in their areas. Many mukhtiarkars are themselves landlords indulging in the same malpractices they might be called upon to declare illegal. The appeal from the mukhtiarkar goes to the assistant collector or deputy commissioner who again are members of the administration often in collusion with the landlords. It has been maintained that during the last 46 years [of the Tenancy Law] not a single tribunal has ever met or heard or decided any cases...

" Clearly, if the evil survives it is not so much from lack of concern on the part of the State and the successive governments as because of the self-perpetuating compulsions and logic of the inherited social and economic structures and the pressures they generate. There is need to reinforce the will of the Pakistan government and guide it towards a resolve to reform the system and to rigorously implement its own laws.

Last year's report of the Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery referred in Section IV to bonded labour, and reported in paragraph 24 that the Working Group noted "with satisfaction....the promulgation of laws against bonded labour, and appeals to Governments to adopt all the necessary measures to implement and follow up the implementation of such laws", referring, in Pakistan's case, to the 1992 law. I am concerned at the authorities' lack of will to implement this law. It is high time to go much further than expressing satisfaction that a law against bonded labour exists. The Working Group should consider investigating on the ground the reasons why Pakistani government officials are not implementing the law and try to identify ways of helping them to do so.

Internationally, it will be helpful for this Working Group of the UN Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities to:

(a) examine the scale and nature of the problem in Pakistan;

(b) identify ways of restructuring the tenancy system, re-ordering the relationships and enforcing the laws;

(c) suggest measures for rehabilitation of those freed from bonded labour; and,

(d) recommend UN technical assistance in the matter.

In addition, the government of Pakistan may be asked for a special report under the Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery, to which it is a signatory. The report should not be legalistic, but should take cognisance of the situation on the ground and the possible ways of its correction.