Amnesty International denounces Christians relegated to cleaning sewers
A detailed report on this long-standing phenomenon was released today: an “impure” job reserved for non-Muslims. Although they make up only 2% of the population, 80% of garbage collectors are Christians, with the rest being Hindus. At least 84 have died in the last five years due to outdated infrastructure and techniques: their lives are not worth the cost of modernization. Amnesty: “Pakistan must recognize caste discrimination as a form of racism.”
Milan (AsiaNews/Agencies) - Shafiq is 44 years old and lives in Pakistan. Every day, in order not to lose his job, he descends into the depths of the city's sewers, braving toxic gases, industrial waste, and excrement, manually clearing blocked drains.
“When you go down into the sewer, you have to put your self-respect aside,” he tells AFP. “People go to the bathroom, flush the toilet, and all the filth comes down on us.” Shafiq is a garbage collector and works in the sewer system, like many Christians in Pakistan.
Unlike their colleagues in the rest of the world, in the country where he works, this job is not associated with any kind of protection or dignity, forcing them into unnecessarily risky or humiliating conditions.
This is what Amnesty International points out in a new report denouncing their situation: the aim is to ensure that this job also meets minimum standards of dignity and safety.
There are several reasons why Shafiq is forced to do this job and why it is still so backward.
The main one is the continuing discrimination by the Muslim majority against Christian and Hindu minorities. In fact, according to Amnesty, 80% of garbage collectors are Christian—despite representing less than 2% of Pakistan's population—while the remaining 20% are Hindu. For the Muslim majority, cleaning sewers is an ‘unclean’ task to be reserved for the lowest classes.
Although the caste system no longer officially exists, institutionalized discrimination remains rampant: many job advertisements for sewer cleaners still specify ‘non-Muslims only’. The Centre for Law and Justice (a local NGO) has collected nearly 300 such advertisements over the past decade.
A man from Bahawalpur, a large city in the country, told Amnesty that he had an interview for a job as an electrician, but when they found out he was Christian, they only offered him a job as a garbage collector.
He accepted because he has to support his family. The stigma is confirmed in the language: “chuhra,” which traditionally referred to those who worked in sanitation, is now synonymous with Christian.
Other terms, such as “bhangi” (the historical name of a Dalit caste) and “jamadar” (a word in Urdu – the Pakistani language written with an alphabet similar to Arabic – which can be translated as janitor, but in Pakistani social perception takes on derogatory characteristics reminiscent of dirt), “issai” (derogatory for Christians) or even “kutta” (dog) reinforce the marginalization of these workers.
Discrimination is also reflected in the contemptuous conditions in which Christian and Hindu garbage collectors are forced to work. The Pakistani newspaper The Dawn has also collected several testimonies from sewer workers. Among them is Adil Masih, 22, who has been immersed in the sewers of Karachi at least 100 times in the last two years.
His goal is to do his job well, hoping to move from kachha (informal worker) to pucca (permanent employee) at the state-owned company he works for. He now earns 25,000 rupees (about 0) a month, which will become 32,000 rupees (about ) – the legally established minimum wage – when he becomes a regular employee.
“You have to be careful when you go down there. Not because of the army of cockroaches and the stench that greets you when you open the manhole cover or the rats swimming in the dirty water,” Adil explains, “but because you have to watch out for the blades and syringes floating on the surface or lying at the bottom.”
Obviously, going down into the sewers is a last resort. When the sewers become blocked, they first try to unblock them with a long bamboo pole; if that doesn't work, they try with their hands. The workers work in teams: one descends with a harness tied to a rope, and if something goes wrong or he has finished, he pulls the rope and those on the opposite side of the rope pull him back up.
According to the organization Sweepers Are Superheroes, at least 84 sanitation workers have died in Pakistan in the last five years. But the problem is not isolated to the country's borders: in India, one sanitation worker dies every five days, according to a 2018 report by the National Commission for Safai Karamcharis (a commission set up to monitor the conditions of these workers).
One of the reasons why unblocking sewers in Pakistan is so dangerous is, first and foremost, the backwardness of the system, which still does not rely on machinery. This delay could be linked to backward social beliefs which, in addition to keeping these jobs the preserve of the lowest classes, discourage the modernization of sewerage infrastructure and the techniques used.
According to some, it is right to reserve this treatment for the lowest castes. According to Amnesty, 76% of those interviewed fear sudden dismissal, and 70% say they cannot afford to refuse even the most dangerous tasks.
“The deeply unfair treatment of sanitation workers in Pakistan is a violation of human rights,” said Isabelle Lassée, Amnesty International's deputy regional director for South Asia.
"Many members of minority groups are forced into this work because of deep-rooted prejudices that leave them with no alternative. The problem is that the country's legal system still does not recognize caste discrimination as a form of racism."
To date, Pakistan does not have anti-discrimination legislation in line with the international conventions it has signed. Amnesty is therefore calling on the government to pass specific legislation against caste-based discrimination to ensure that these workers are guaranteed at least minimum standards of dignity, safety, and social justice.
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08/09/2018 04:35
08/04/2019 16:58
