Prafulla Samantara: indigenous land rights' champion

Samantara with the Dongria Kondh/ Credit: Goldman Environmental Prize

 

 

Prafulla Samantara has been threatened, kidnapped and jailed trying to stop a huge mining project on sacred tribal land in Odisha, India.  But he is not afraid and, at 65, not ready to retire. ‘I will keep on fighting until my last breath. I cannot betray the people, the cause,’ he told me when I met him in London in late Spring.

The Indian social justice activist won the 2017 Goldman Environmental Prize  for Asia for his 12-year campaign to block the mine and for securing indigenous communities’ voting rights on such projects.

From a young age, he witnessed the impact of mining and industrial development on small farming communities and the growing inequalities between rich and poor. ‘I’ve seen working people and those at the bottom of society being exploited and suffering. Equality and justice became my guiding principles.’

Yet he recognizes that development is necessary, but not at all costs. ‘In India, 60 million people have been displaced over the last 60 years because of big projects such as mining and dams. Indigenous people are not consulted. They are marginalized, even though they are the owners and guardians of natural resources.’

Odisha, the eastern Indian state on the Bay of Bengal where he grew up, is known for its pristine forests, high mountain peaks and numerous rivers; but also for its vast reserve of minerals – almost a third of the state is under mining concessions.

The Odisha Mining Company had agreed a deal with London-based Vedanta Resources to gouge a $2 billion open-pit bauxite mine on the Dongria Kondh’s land without consulting them. 

‘The Dongria Kondh don’t believe in religion, but in nature. The Niyamgiri Hills are their gods. They get everything from them: their entire livelihood and their social and cultural identity. They believe it’s their duty to protect them at all cost.’ The mine would not only have destroyed their homeland, but also polluted water for millions downstream as far as the Bay of Bengal, and destroyed large areas of protected forests which are home to rare wildlife including elephants and the Bengal tiger. In anticipation of receiving the mining licences, Vedanta illegally annexed 148 acres of forest and bulldozed 12 villages.

You can read my article on Samantara for New Internationalist here.

World Leprosy Day 2014 - shining a light on the ‘hidden’ disease

A young woman affected by leprosy in Myanmar (Burma) is benefiting from a new mobile prostheses clinic.
Credit: Leprosy Mission

This Sunday, 26 January, is World Leprosy Day 2014. Few people might take notice; few might even know that leprosy still exits today. But it does.

For me, World Leprosy Day always has a special resonance because when I was very young – just after high school – I worked in a leprosy centre for a few months. It was in Polambakkam in beautiful Tamil Nadu in the south of India.  At the time, the multidrug therapy hadn’t been developed yet and the stigma of the disease was so strong that very few Indian medics wanted to work there, so volunteers like me were brought in to help clean infected wounds and bandage damaged limbs.

Leprosy has now been curable for the past 25 years or so, but is still a global problem, affecting more than 15 million people worldwide  (including 100 in the UK), and each year, at least a quarter of a million new cases are detected - that is almost one person diagnosed every two minutes (World Health Organization). Over half of all newly-reported cases occur in India. And the stigma is still as damaging as it was when I was young.

On World Leprosy Day, the Leprosy Mission England and Wales, an international organization working to eradicate the causes and consequences of the disease, wants to “shine a light on this hidden disease.” Here is their message:

• Did you know there are still leprosy colonies in the world today where people are ‘sent’ or ‘seek refuge’?  There are 850 in India.

• Did you know that stigma surrounding leprosy in many parts of the world today is akin to what it was during Biblical times?  Even beggars begging for their own survival will often shun a leprosy-affected person.

• Did you know that leprosy is completely curable with a simple combination of antibiotics?  Yet 85 per cent of people in Delhi, India - still believe there is no cure.

We’re confident that leprosy rates would be slashed across the world today were it not still shrouded in age-old stigma.  Three million people would not be living with irreversible disabilities as a result of late treatment of the disease.

What other disease sees someone outcast from their family, sacked from their job, thrown off public transport and pushed to the very fringes of society?

The tragedy is when leprosy is ‘hidden’. It damages and disables, slowly destroying each aspect of a person’s life.  If it wasn’t for stigma and misunderstandings surrounding leprosy then people would seek treatment and all healthcare professionals would recognise its symptoms.

Leprosy is a disease.  Those affected deserve dignity not discrimination. Please spread the word.

For more information, click here.

Child trafficking in India - Rubina's return

Rubina's emotional reunion with her beloved grandmother/Fjona Hill

India is the fourth most dangerous country in the world for women, right after Afghanistan, DRC and Pakistan, according to a newly released global survey by the Thompson Reuters Foundation (I wrote a blogpost about the report a couple of weeks ago).  This unexpected distinction for the world’s largest democracy is due largely to the high numbers of women and girls trafficked in the country every year.  

It is estimated that 100 million people, mostly women and girls, were involved in trafficking in India in 2009 alone, according to the report.  Across the world, some of 1.2 million children are trafficked every year into prostitution, forced labour, child marriage, begging and other slavery-like conditions.

Rubina is one of them.  She was just ten when her father took her away from their small rural village in India’s Andhra Pradesh and sold her as a domestic slave in nearby Bangalore.

Photographer Fjona Hill followed her return home, after the little girl ran away and was taken to a Government’s Girls Home. There, Oasis, an NGO working with trafficked children, gave her counselling, traced her parents and brought her home. 

Although Rubina was luckier than most trafficked children, her story is fairly typical.

She lived with her parents, two young sisters and an elder bother in Chinampalle, a small Muslim village of 500 mud huts, where people eke out a meagre living off farming and stone mining.

Her father, a stone miner, could only find work two or three days a week, while her mother worked as a coolie (carrier) and toiled in the fields.  The family often went without food, and was in debt.  Rubina frequently bunked school and her father was convinced she was mentally unstable.  

Rubina arrives at her village and looks for her family/ Fjona Hill

  

Like most trafficked victims, Rubina had no idea what awaited her in Bangalore. Her father had told her he was taking her to an Islamic school, but sold her to a lady as a domestic servant instead.

In her case, the “dalal”, as recruiters are known in India, was her father – and that is not uncommon. Many children from poor families are sold by parents and relatives, who might not grasp the full implication of their actions.   Dalals can also be friends, neighbours, people who have been trafficked themselves, as well as corrupt police officers, passport officials and taxi/rickshaw drivers.  They haunt bus stops, railway stations and streets of deprived areas looking for potential victims, and use drugs, abduction, kidnapping, persuasion and deception to catch them.

Rubina kneels at her mother's feet as she explains where she had been taken by her father. A woman from the village looks on/Fjona Hill

 Rubina managed to escape, something few achieve, and was welcomed back into her village. The village elders disciplined the father. If she had been trafficked as a sex worker instead of a domestic servant, she might have been rejected by her family or her family would have been forced to leave their village because of the stigma and shame brought onto the household.

Oasis workers have been visiting Rubina recently. “She is now doing well and going to school, and the whole village are keeping an eye on her,” says Anita Kanaiya, Oasis executive director. 

For more information on Oasis, click here and to donate to the charity, click here.

Afghanistan is world’s most dangerous place for women – followed by DRC, Pakistan, India and Somalia

Afghanistan, Congo and Pakistan are the world's most dangerous countries for women in 2011 due to a barrage of threats ranging from violence and rape to dismal healthcare and "honour killings", an international expert poll showed today. India and Somalia are the next worst places to be a woman.

The global report is shocking and also depressing for showing dismal lack of progress. When will things change? Most of these terrible situations, statistics and suffering are well documented – what more do we need?

The survey has been compiled by the Thomson Reuters Foundation to mark the launch of TrustLaw Women, a website aimed at providing free legal advice for women's groups around the world.

Not surprisingly Afghanistan is named as the world’s most dangerous country for women because of its high levels of violence, poor healthcare and poverty. And the war was supposed to improve the plight of Afghan women…

“Afghanistan has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. That aside, it is also a context that gives a woman minimal opportunity for education, health access, reproductive choice, etc. The lack of hope of the situation of women improving in the near future, as opposed to countries such as Sierra Leone and Southern Sudan, makes the situation comparatively even worse," says Dhammika Perera of International Rescue Committee.

Continuing conflict, Nato airstrikes and cultural practices also combine to make Afghanistan a very dangerous place for women. "In addition, women who do attempt to speak out or take on public roles that challenge ingrained gender stereotypes of what is acceptable for women to do or not, such as working as policewomen or news broadcasters, are often intimidated or killed," says Antonella Notari, head of Women Change Makers,  a group that supports women social entrepreneurs around the world. 

 

The second worse place goes to the Democratic Republic of Congo for the staggering level of sexual violence in the lawless eastern part of the country. One recent US study claimed that more than 400,000 women are raped there each year. The UN has called Congo the rape capital of the world.

Pakistan comes next on the basis of cultural, tribal and religious practices harmful to women. "These include acid attacks, child and forced marriage and punishment or retribution by stoning or other physical abuse," the poll finds.

The fourth worse place goes to India, which is more surprising for a country emerging into an economic super-power and a country not at war. India’s inclusion to the danger list is due to its high level of female infanticide and sex trafficking.

And Somalia completes the list. The country, in a state in political disintegration, suffers high levels of maternal mortality, rape, female genital mutilation and limited access to education and healthcare.

The poll asked 213 experts from five continents to rank countries on issues like overall perception of danger, access to healthcare, violence, cultural discrimination and human trafficking.

"This survey shows that 'hidden dangers' like a lack of education or terrible access to healthcare are as deadly, if not more so, than physical dangers like rape and murder which usually grab the headlines," Monique Villa, chief executive of Thomson-Reuters Foundation, says.

For more information, go to the TrustLaw website, which provides in-depth information, statistics, interviews and videos on the study. Also read the Guardian’s article by Owen Bowcott. The piece also provides links to case studies in all five countries.

 

The Bleeding Wound of Nepal: sex trafficking

This is a story I am researching and hope to be able to cover on location:

Draped along the spine of the Himalayas, Nepal is a land of sublime scenery and deep, rich culture. It is also a country from where some 10,000 girls disappear each year. Most never come back.

The majority of them, aged 14 to 16, are trafficked to India, where they are sold into slavery or debt bondage to brothels in Mumbai and Kolkata .These tsukris, as these young slave prostitutes are called, are totally confined within the brothel for an average of two years, after which they are allowed out only with guardians. They end their period of bondage at 18 to 22 years old when they have “repaid their debt.” During that time, the brothel owner has made a profit four to 20 times the price paid for the trafficked girl.

When they are finally freed, the tsukris are no longer girls, but older, shop-worn women with “less market value” - often mentally and physically scarred, ill or HIV positive. Unable to return home to Nepal because of the stigma of prostitution, most remain in India. There, illegal, isolated and with no other means of surviving, nearly all return to sex work, this time as independents. The most entrepreneurial of them become brothel owners, buying their own tsukris - and so the system perpetuates itself. A few, however, have managed to go back to Nepal, where they patrol the border, trying to prevent other girls from being trafficked.

Although slavery was long ago legally abolished in the State of Nepal, and despite national and international efforts to prevent trafficking, the number of girls trafficked from Nepal has significantly increased over the last decade. A Nepali newspaper called it: “The Bleeding Wound of Nepal.” UNICEF estimates that 300,000 Nepalese women and girls have been sold into forced prostitution mostly to India, but also within Nepal and to Gulf countries, and their numbers are swollen every year by new arrivals.

Girls are trafficked from all over the country, but mostly from poor rural villages. Rural communities live in extreme poverty and life for women is harsh. (Nepal is one of the rare countries in the world where men outlive women). Women are expected to work harder than men, but are considered an economic hindrance and have no voice. They are also poorer and have limited access to education and health care. Their precarious situation makes them more vulnerable to being lured away with promises of employment, marriage or a better life across the border. Others are simply sold by their families, who may not know the full horror of what awaits them in India. The border between Nepal and India in vast (1,100-miles long) and porous and towns across the border create a natural market for trafficking. Trafficking, of course, is immensely profitable...

A few women are fighting back: Maiti Nepal, a local charity in Danghadi, Kaili, is trying to intercept trafficked girls at the border before they can reach their final destination in Indian brothels. They rely on young women - some are former trafficked persons - patrolling the border at checkpoints, working in conjunction with the police to interrogate suspicious parties. Former trafficked women say they can always spot a trafficked girl, having been there themselves.