Despite efforts to curb child slavery in India’s spinning mills the practice continues and 60% of the victims are Dalits – says newly released report.
In the latest of a series of blocks on foreign funding to human rights NGOs, the Indian Government has revoked the foreign funding (FCRA) license from Dalit rights NGO Navsarjan Trust. The revocation of the license means that Navsarjan can no longer receive funding from foreign donors and the organisation has had to ask its 80 staff to resign.
In its 2016 Report on the “Annual Report on human rights and democracy in the world and the European Union’s policy on the matter” the European Parliament (EP) raises deep concern over grave violations of Dalit human rights. The report calls for an EU policy development on caste discrimination.
On the outskirts of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home city, the stench from cow carcasses littering the roadside is overpowering as India’s lowest social caste keeps up protests against deep-rooted discrimination.
The US State Department published its Report 2015 on human rights practices in India, which provides a comprehensive overview of the human rights situation in the country. The report covers areas of deprivation of life, detention, torture, trial procedures, violence, freedom of speech, assembly and religion, cultural rights, freedom of movement, refugees, political rights, workers’ rights, and discrimination against vulnerable groups, including women, Dalits, indigenous, LGBTI, children, people with disabilities and those affected by HIV/AIDS.
In a victory for the Dalit movement in India and for all committed to justice and equality, a historic act amending the ‘Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) legislation has been passed by the upper house of parliament December 21st 2015, after the lower house passed it in August, 2015. The National Coalition on Strengthening PoA Act (NCSPA) have struggled for six years to ensure amendments to this act strengthening the rights of the victims and witnesses, improving access to justice and introducing preventative measures.
The suicide of 26 year-old Indian PHD student, Rohith Vemula, is both a human tragedy and a symbol of centuries of systemic abuse and injustice metered out at India’s Dalits. “My birth is my fatal accident,” writes Rohith Vemula in his suicide note. This notion rings true for far too many Dalits in India, destined for discrimination from birth.
In an effort to raise global awareness and engagement on the issue of caste-based violence and discrimination, particularly against Dalit women, a group of Dalit women leaders have toured through Germany and the United States this past month with more tour dates coming up. The women are using visual storytelling through photographs and videos, participating in seminars and engaging on social media via #dalitwomenfight to bring their message to an international audience.
The new report ‘Cotton’s Forgotten Children’, released by the Stop Child Labour Campaign and the India Committee on the Netherlands (ICN), finds that almost half a million children in India work as child labourers in the cottonseed production industry. Most of them are Dalits, Adivasis or other low caste children (OBCs). The report warns that most of these children are not in school and are subjected to hazardous work and harmful chemicals.
Women being beaten, raped, stripped naked and paraded through their villages and a rape case as barbaric as the 2012 Nirbhaya case. These and a whole host of other atrocities were what the women marching for self-respect, and to end violence against Dalit and Adivasi women in the state of Odisha, India, came across on their path to justice.
An amendment to India’s new Child Labour Prohibition Act that seeks to permit children under 14 to work in ‘family enterprises’, has been proposed by the Government. Child rights activists in India, including Nobel prize winner Kailash Satyarthi, say that the amendment will push millions of children into child labour and thereby out of an education, particularly Dalit, Adivasi and Muslim children.
In April two Dalit women received prestigious awards for their work defending the rights of Dalits in India. Manjula Pradeep, Director of the large Gujarat based NGO Navsarjan Trust, received the Femina Women 2015 Social Impact Award and Beena J. Pallical of the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights received the Dr. Ambedkar Award 2015.