We all wake up to the sky that breathes life. To some, however, it’s the doomed dawn of systemic misery once more. Firing the clay bricks envelopes not just the health, but the soul. How identity loops to choke the subject is the dilemma of the common man. The headlines read the mere survival to be detached from humanity. They are chained to life-long agony and tracing the footsteps echoes the eclipse of brutal shadows that haunt generations.
How much longer will they be wronged?
The sectarian marginalisation and systemic exploitation targets minorities through the predatory mechanism of the peshgi system. It fuels the bondage market to inescapable labour that violates human rights. They are signed away to wretchedness; the ashes are not just from the running furnace.
The despicable structure stems from the post-partition’s failed reforms to land and agrarian displacements. In the 1960s, brick kiln owners offered people suffering from the declining economy to work at the ghastly rates. The workers had no choice but to rely on advance payments for sustenance. The misuse of accounts and records by the owners due to illiteracy led to the workers bound to repay the loans. The debt never ended. The burden never uplifted.
It emanated into an institutionalised slavery, which was first challenged by Iqbal Masih. As the 12 year old advocated against bonded child slavery, he was shot and silenced forever. The system kept on breathing. Leaving the victims in anguish. However, the case illuminated awareness and prevailed in global impact for human rights.
Beneath the veil of entrenched social prejudice and oppression, the realities are daunting. The ingrained isolation ensures the minorities are at the doorways. The herding of Christian and Hindu families into the practice reveals failures. The pathway to education is shut off, eventually barring certain communities to enter lucrative professions.
The communities are systemically denied from national documentation. The refusal of identification solidifies the barriers aforementioned. They become the alienated other, not formally recognised as a citizen. This highlights the gatekeeping that is pursued by the failure of action in this nation. The biometric CNIC is a membership card that admits your presence to spaces. The key to ‘luxury’. The access to biometric is also logically barred off, since the workers spending their entirety in rough conditions and abrasive materials without protective gear face the eventual erasure of their fingerprints. The loss of ‘identity’. The unwanted that carry the society. The apathetic society.
The kilns are located in faraway areas, which geographically secludes them to accessible facilities. Screenings discard applications that invalidate prerequisites that are exclusive in nature. The stratification that occurs from the apparent walls- has had the everlasting assurance to set the bondage market in stone.
Syed Ayaz Hussain, a lawyer for the Bonded Labour Liberation Front, believes thousands of brick kiln workers are being coerced into selling their kidneys. The workers are approached and are offered a valuable sum in exchange for their organs. Stressed by the finances and lifestyle conditions, they resolve to pay off the loan through selling a kidney. They are routinely underpaid for their organs, and have to resume working in severe lethargy. The loop continues. The extraction is violent, the practice and the consequences determine how the vultures deem them nonhuman.
Women forever face the double burden. They are economically dependent on the man, since they are unlikely to be paid for the labour they conduct. The low wages are paid to the man. The mental and physical abuse whilst in their home and in the kilns reflect the imposed vulnerability. Harassment and sexual violence prevails the cloak of misery. According to a report by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, around 35% of women workers at brick kilns are abused and harassed by their bosses. The minorities intertwining with the gender reflect the atrocities in the nation. The anecdotes by victims are heartshattering- where the owners repeatedly perform and proclaim the destructive principle of being above the law. The roots of child brides are also highlighted. To pay off loans, girls are sold. Sentenced to utter doom, there’s no end to the lengths this barbarity extends to. Violence, dependence and savagery are words that can not encapsulate the true extent of the reality.
This is influenced by the lack of State oversight and accountability. The refusal to intervene poses a hazardous reality.
Child labour can not be overlooked. Their childhood is stripped away, working in dire circumstances. Hazardous conditions, long working hours and low wages- proves the multitude of injustice. Research highlights 72% of workers have their own children working with them, an average age of 10, and some as young as 5. Article 11(3) and child labour laws exist to protect through numerous safeguards yet the lack of acknowledgment discloses the shocking truth. The dripping sweat of dissolved innocence should serve as a horror. Even if they don’t work, they are not studying, they are not living.
True abolition needs to be sought. To restructure and to eradicate the torment- multifaceted approach is ideal. One-off remedy will prove catastrophic- deeply rooted systems demand intricate attention to nuances and complexities. Thorough accountability of existing records, state mobilisation for the workers, recognition of the communities and strict removal of the modern slavery through labour union advocacies details a few.
Burnt futures are foreseeable; let the conscience dismantle the towering smoke. The path we take is built by hardship, let us regroup to equality.
