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WASHINGTON,
Aug 29 (IPS) - The World Conference Against Racism, starting Friday
in Durban, South Africa, should shine a harsh light on caste discrimination,
which affects hundreds of millions of people around the world, says
Human Rights Watch (HRW).
The
New York-based rights watchdog, in a 60-page report released in
advance of the Aug. 31-Sep. 7 Durban talks, argues that although
South Asia should be the major focus of delegates concerned about
caste discrimination, similar problems exist for groups of people
in Japan, Senegal, Mauritania, Nigeria and elsewhere in West Africa,
as well as throughout the Indian Diaspora, from the Pacific Islands
to the Caribbean, Britain, and North America.
The
report, 'Caste Discrimination: A Global Concern,' assails the Indian
government for persistent efforts to delete caste discrimination
from the conference agenda by arguing that the problem falls outside
the conference's mandate.
Successive
international bodies working under the aegis of the 1965 International
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination,
according to the report, have affirmed that caste discrimination
falls under their authority.
The
report also notes that Nepal, despite problems similar to India's,
has taken a much more constructive approach by admitting that discrimination
against lower casts remains a major problem in the Himalayan kingdom
and declaring that the issue should be taken up in Durban.
HRW
emphatically agrees. ''Over 250 million people worldwide continue
to suffer under what is a hidden apartheid of segregation, modern-day
slavery, and other extreme forms of discrimination, exploitation
and violence,'' it says. ''Caste imposes enormous obstacles to their
full attainment of civil, political, economic, social, and cultural
rights.''
Caste,
according to HRW, is the basis for the definition and exclusion
of population groups by reason of their descent. Lower castes are
almost always indistinguishable in physical appearance from higher-caste
communities.
In
addition to often determining the occupations of its members, caste
divisions also dominate in housing, marriage, and general social
action. Violation of such divisions can be punished by social ostracism,
economic boycotts, and even physical violence.
Earlier
this month, an upper-caste Brahmin boy and a lower-caste Jat girl,
who refused to end an intercaste relationship, were publicly lynched
in front of hundreds of spectators by members of their own families
in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
And on the night of Dec. 1, 1997, an upper-caste landlord militia,
known as senas, shot dead 16 children, 27 women, and 18 men in a
lower-caste district in Bihar, apparently because of the villagers'
suspected support for rebels demanding more equitable land distribution
in the area.
Indeed,
violence against lower castes, called Dalits or ''untouchables'',
in India has escalated in recent years in response to growing Dalit
rights movements. The report notes that senas have been permitted
to operate against Dalits ''with virtual impunity'' and often with
the support of local police.
Some
160 million people, one-sixth of India's population, are Dalits.
They endure a ''near complete ostracisation, particularly in rural
villages. They are often unable to cross the line dividing their
part of the village from others occupied by higher casts; they may
not use the same wells or visit the same temples, and their children
are frequently made to sit at the back of classrooms,'' HRW says.
When,
last January, a devastating earthquake hit Gujarat, killing 30,000
people and leaving homeless more than one million, the government
actually set up separate camps for upper- and lower-caste Hindus,
according to HRW. In addition, both Dalit and Muslim populations
were not provided the same access to adequate shelter, electricity,
running water, and other supplies as were made available to upper
castes - all of this, 50 years after the Indian constitution formally
abolished ''untouchability.''
Caste
discrimination, however, is by no means limited to India. It is
pervasive, especially among Hindus, in neighbouring Bangladesh,
Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.
In
Sri Lanka, there are two caste systems, one for the majority, mostly
Buddhist Sinhalese and another for the island's main Tamil communities,
which, as in India, are predominantly Hindu.
In
the former, Rodiya caste members, historically required to beg for
a living and wear specific attire, continue to live in segregated
communities with little or no interaction with upper castes, the
report says. They are now confined mainly to menial wage labour
as sanitation workers and hospital attendants.
Sanitation
jobs - including street cleaning and the handling of human waste
and animal remains - are almost exclusively performed by Dalits
in India, Bangladesh and Nepal, as well as Sri Lanka, HRW says.
In November, 1999, the Indian government brought in 200 Dalit manual
scavengers from New Delhi to dispose of animal carcasses after a
cyclone hit Orissa state, because higher caste members refused to
do so, even for higher wages.
Despite
laws guaranteeing equal education and other economic and social
benefits, Dalits generally are less educated and leave school earlier
than the children of other castes. They also are much less likely
to own land and far more likely to suffer debt bondage than the
general population, according to the report, which stresses that
low-caste women suffer the greatest discrimination of all.
Outside
South Asia and the Indian Diaspora, discrimination against the Buraku
people in Japan, the Osu people of Nigeria's Igbo ethnic group,
and certain groups in Senegal and Mauritania are also covered in
the report.
While
the Buraku system was official abolished in 1871, discrimination
against the roughly three million members of the group - historically
confined to jobs considered ''unclean'' by Shintoists and Buddhists
- still suffer discrimination. They often live in segregated communities
and continue to suffer job discrimination and verbal abuse in public,
according to the report.
In
Igbo communities in southeastern Nigeria, those members categorized
as Osu are generally shunned as pariahs and denied social equality,
despite laws on the books that outlaw such discrimination. Mostly
landless, Osu can traditionally marry only within their caste and
are buried in separate cemeteries.
Lower
castes in Senegal and elsewhere in West Africa are organised primarily
along occupational lines, the most well known of which is that of
the griot, which are inherited. In Mauritania, a caste-like designation
of slave applies to certain groups, particularly Haratines, who
are Arabic speakers of sub-Saharan African origin, as part of a
traditional system of unpaid servitude. (END/IPS/NA/HD/JL/AA/01)
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