Slave labor: a disgrace to humanity

The deadly collapse of Rana Plaza garment factory complex in Bangladesh on April 24, 2013 (Photo: AFP)

A dreadful, black day passed silently in Bangladesh last week with little to no remembrance, largely because the Covid-19 pandemic has put everything on the back burner.

Seven years ago, on April 24, 2013, Rana Plaza garment factory complex collapsed at Savar, an industrial suburb near capital Dhaka. One of the worst industrial disasters in history brutally killed more than 1,100 workers and injured thousands more.

We soon realized that the Rana Plaza collapse was an accident but an avoidable tragedy — the greed of the complex owner and factory management forced poor workers to return to work and die despite cracks in the building appearing a day before.

On that day I stood near the ill-fated building benumbed as frantic rescue attempts were made to pull survivors from the concrete rubble.

In the following weeks I was heartbroken to witness families and relatives crying after identifying dear ones among dozens of decomposed bodies.

I became speechless when partially and fully paralyzed workers and orphaned children of Rana Plaza workers narrated their plight.

As a human being, I felt ashamed and disgraced to witness this unacceptable tragedy, which I believe was a collective failure of humanity.

Bangladesh tea workers: A legacy of neglect and servitude

A worker at a tea estate in Srimangal in Bangladesh's Moulvibazar district. Despite a production boom, tea workers live a life of misery due to poor wages and denial of basic rights. (Photo: Stephan Uttom/UCA News)

It's been nearly three decades and counting since Sabuj Tanti started working as a laborer at Khadim Tea Estate in the Sylhet district of northeast Bangladesh.

"This is our ancestral profession and we have no vocational skills. That's why we have been stuck here for more than 150 years," he told UCA News.

Sabuj, 43, a lower-caste Hindu from Tanti community, is the fifth generation of tea workers from his family. Yet this father of four daughters wants all his children to get out of the tea estate. Three of his daughters, except the youngest of two-and-half years-old, go to school.

"I don't want my daughters to become tea workers like me. I want them to get an education and have a better life. I didn't have the opportunity to get an education, so I have been stuck in the tea estate forever," he said.

Sabuj sees no future in the tea industry under the current circumstances.

Forgotten and invisible: modern-day slaves

Indian sex workers look out from their brothel in the red light district of Kamathipura in Mumbai. Socially conservative India, Bangladesh and Pakistan do not permit legal prostitution but all have brothels spilling with sex workers. (Photo: AFP)

In today’s modern world overshadowed by extravagant globalization, materialism and consumerism, it is very common for people to forget about people who are less fortunate.

These people with relative fortune and comfort might get a jolt if asked what they think about slavery and slaves. In most cases, the answer is likely to be simple: slavery was abolished in the 19th century.

The British parliament passed its Slavery Abolition Act in 1833 and the US government made the 13th amendment to the constitution in 1865, marking the official abolition of slavery.

However, slavery didn’t end with its abolition 154 years ago. It has just changed forms and continues to plague millions of people in the world today.  

The International Day for the Abolition of Slavery on Dec. 2 passed almost unnoticed in much of the globe as if our world today has almost pulled itself out of the curse of slavery.
The reality is that about 40 million people are trapped in various forms of modern-day slavery and one in every four victims are children, according to the United Nations.

A guiding light for Bangladesh's marginalized communities

Sister Salome Nanuar, CSC (Photo: Rock Ronald Rozario)

As a child Salome Nanuar assumed she would end up becoming a poor and marginalized tea estate worker like her parents.

She was born in 1971, the third of six children of an ethnic Kharia family, at Barmachhera village at Srimangal, a tea plantation hub in the Moulvibazar district of northeastern Bangladesh.

Nearly five decades on, Salome has become a Holy Cross nun, dedicating her life as a teacher, catechist and hostels, in the service of socio-economically downtrodden communities, including tea workers.

Sister Salome’s father died when she was at grade four in primary school.

Thanks to support from her two elder brothers and sister in-laws, all of them tea workers, she was able to continue her education.

The biggest support came from the local St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, the oldest and largest parish in predominantly tribal Sylhet Diocese, set up in 1950 by Holy Cross missionary priest Father Vincent Delevi.

No relief for Bangladesh's most vulnerable communities

An elderly female tea-plucker works in one of Bangladesh's many tea gardens in this file image. (Photo by Mufty Munir/AFP)

There are many venerable communities in Bangladesh, among them suffering the worst are those working on tea plantations in conditions akin to slavery, the Biharis who are scorned for siding with West Pakistan during Bangladesh's Liberation War of 1971 and the stateless Rohingya who have fled neighboring Myanmar.

These communities find themselves facing dire challenges with historical roots that are hard to untangle.  

Bangladesh loses sight of own refugee past

Rohingya Children at a refugee camp in Bangladesh (photo: Dr. Habib Siddiqui)

Bangladesh, one of the world’s poorest and most densely populated countries, rarely makes international headlines for good reasons, so if you see something hit the wires of the international press, prepare yourself for the worst.

Whether it is an expose of the country’s dire poverty or the toxicity of the drinking water; whether the lack of infrastructure or political unrest; bad news is a safe bet from a country where half the 160 million population can’t read and earns only about 50 cents per day.

But some issues are more pressing, if not more widely reported, in the country.

One example is the issue of refugees – a longstanding issue that has again come to the fore with the outbreak of violence in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state.

Allegedly sparked by the rape and murder of a young Buddhist girl and the subsequent retaliatory killing of 10 Muslims, the violence drove hundreds of Rohingya towards the Bangladesh border.

Authorities on the Bangladeshi side have continued to refuse entry to Rohingya refugees, despite incurring criticism from Human Rights Watch, the UN Office for the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the US State Department.

Since last week, border guards have turned back boats carrying hundreds of refugees seeking a safe haven – though authorities did provide food and water before sending them on their way.

Apart from its international commitments as a member of the United Nations and the dictates of common decency, has the country forgotten the assistance it received at a time of great need?

An estimated 10 million people fled to India during the 1971 war of liberation.

Foreign Minister Dipu Moni defended the refusal of entry to the Rohingya by saying, “Bangladesh never signed any kind of international act, convention or law for allowing and giving shelter to refugees. That’s why we are not bound to provide shelter to Rohingyas.”

The statement fails to address the most critical issues, ones that have deep historical roots.

In 1978 and again in 1991, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees fled Rakhine state to Bangladesh to escape sectarian violence that some have equated to ethnic cleansing by the then military junta ruling Myanmar.

Many later returned, but a large number refused out of fear for their safety. Bangladesh authorities say that about half a million Rohingya refugees still remain in Bangladesh, residing in largely makeshift camps in the southeastern border districts.

The UNHCR puts the figure at between 200,000 and 300,000, with only 28,000 granted official refugee status.

Authorities are obviously trying to prevent another influx of refugees that may not want to return once order is restored.

Despite maintaining a presence in Myanmar since at least the 7th century, the Rohingya have been denied citizenship by their government, which refuses to include them in a list of 135 recognized ethnic minorities.

Today the Rohingya are numbered among the world’s most persecuted minorities, unrecognized as citizens at home and unwanted abroad.

Descendents of ethnic Rakhine, Bengali and Arab seafarers, they continue to be unwelcome in Bangladesh as well.

Relegated to ill-equipped and unhealthy camps, and subject to exploitation and abuse by border security guards as well as local residents, the Rohingya receive little in the way of official support from the government, which sees them as an additional burden on a country already groaning under the substantial weight of other social and political problems.

The Rohingya problem is not without precedent.

Bangladesh’s three million ethnic tribals continue to fight for their rights despite being recognized as citizens of the country.

And what of the 160,000 Bihari Muslim refugees who fled to the former East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) from India after the partition? They have always considered themselves citizens of Pakistan, though they were not born there and most have never even visited that country.

They have been locked in the country since Bangladesh broke away from Pakistan in 1971, proving that dividing countries on religious grounds was a historic blunder.

For more than 40 years, the Rohingya have endured international neglect and dire living conditions. Bangladesh remains adamant about its refugee policy, and efforts by the international community have to date been largely ineffective.

The international community must decide on a better course of action. The limbo in which the Rohingya have lived for so long is not sustainable. And tensions in western Myanmar, and Bangladesh’s resistance to change its position on refugees, will likely spell even more bad news for the country.

The Third Eye is the pseudonym for a Dhaka-based journalist and analyst

Read the original post here- Bangladesh loses sight of own refugee past

In search of a homeland

I’ve just watched a classic Bengali film called Ontorjatra – Inner Journey.

It’s about the emigrants’ search for a homeland and a sense of place, so it resonates strongly in Bangladesh.

Many Bangladeshis leave the country every year, mostly heading for the US and Europe. Once settled there, they start calling themselves citizens of that particular country and enjoy all the benefits of being a Westerner. While the first generation of immigrants are alive, they will naturally call Bangladesh their homeland, but will the successive generations?

This applies to Bangladesh’s immigrants as well as its emigrants, as there are at least three communities here which are virtually stateless.

Around 500,000 tea workers in the northwest are tribespeople brought from various Indian states during British rule, lured by the British tea planters for a better life which never materialized.

Most of them are poor and landless, living a life that is segregated from the majority of native Bengali people, in allocated shanties called ‘worker lines’. Cut off from their roots after the partitioning of India, they are slowly forgetting their language and culture.

Then there are about 160,000 Muslims from the Indian state of Bihar who left their home for West Pakistan after partition. For over 40 years they have been forced to live as refugees in ill-equipped camps across the country. I’ve seen how they have to live; it’s an animal existence.

They call Pakistan their homeland, even though they were not born there and have never seen it. There have been a few repatriation initiatives but nothing concrete.

Finally, the Rohingya Muslim refugees in the southeast have always called Rakhine state in Myanmar their home. But they have been consistently denied citizenship, generally persecuted and are officially stateless.

Rohingyas can trace their roots in Myanmar since the 8^th century but the majority of people in Rakhine, who are Buddhists, consider them to be foreigners and deny them citizenship.

So what does patriotism mean? Is homeland just a fiction that exists only in someone’s imagination? I think it may well be.

For tea workers, there’s no place to call home

I’ve just come back from northwestern Sylhet, a hilly and densely forested region famous for its tea plantations.

The poor souls who work on them could well be the ultimate definition of “displaced people.”

They were brought there from various Indian states after the British colonists set up the first tea gardens in the 1850’s. Almost all of them were landless tribespeople. They were told they would be taken to a beautiful place where they could find a home and be richly rewarded for shaking a lovely plant; a story not far from the yarn that many modern day traffickers spin.

In reality, their homes were – as they are now - unsanitary mud-walled homes called ‘worker lines.’

The daily wage is 48 taka (about 50 cents) plus a meager daily ration of food and a minimal amount of medical care. And the house is theirs only as long as one of the family has a job there. If that person dies, they face a very uncertainty future.

Some of them are Catholics and the Church has been battling constantly for the last 60 years to set up schools for them. The plantation owners positively discourage education, for fear that it will make the workers discontented.

And all the time, the business is declining. Tea, the second most popular beverage in the world after water, was once a major export of Bangladesh. But those days are gone. Out of a total annual production of 50 million kgs, only 10 million are exported. If for any reason a tea garden or factory is closed, the family has no option but to go begging.

They have no other vocational skills. And they no longer have roots. Since the partition of India in 1946 and Bangladesh liberation in 1971 most of them have forgotten their language and lost touch with their original culture.

It’s ironic that you often see photos and videos of women plucking tea leaves. They’re used in calendars and advertisements and they look colorful and charming. Very few people know what their everyday reality is.