THE AMERICAN INTEREST: Pakistan Has More Than Two Million Slaves
There are an estimated 30 million slaves in the world today, more than at any other time in history. In case you missed it, earlier this month Real Clear World ran a profile of what slave labor looks like in Pakistan today. There are 1.8 million "debt laborers" in the country, and 2.2 million slaves over all (only India and China have more). The debt laborers are kept under the thumb of landlords who sell them back and forth and cook up ways of keeping them in bondage:
"Usually we remain in debt because we take amounts from them [the landlords] for feeding our children and other day to day expenses," he says, sitting outside his home, a mud hut sandwiched between an irrigation channel and the road. Nanji's only contact with the landlord is through the farm manager.
Money rarely changes hands between landlord and tenants. Instead all transactions are recorded in a register maintained by the landlord. Each harvest is meant to pay off part of the debt, but costs—many of which the landlord is meant to bear himself under the few laws that are meant to offer protection to laborers in Pakistan—are added to the debt with interest.
"The actual thing that is keeping people in bondage is the manipulation of the records. The "hari" is illiterate and uneducated and doesn't know how to keep the records," explained Ghulam Hyder, director of the Green Rural Development organization, a Sindh-based group working with bonded laborers, using the Sindhi term for tenant
Pakistan Has More Than Two Million Slaves - The American Interest
http://www.the-american-interest.com/blog/2014/06/22/pakistan-has-more-than-two-million-slaves/
