[child-rights] Child slaves abandoned to India's silk industry

Burns, Beatings and 12-Hour Days for Bonded Children

(London, January 23, 2003) The Indian government is failing to protect the
rights of hundreds of thousands of children who toil as virtual slaves in
the country's silk industry, Human Rights Watch said in a new report
released today (http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/india/).

The 85-page report, "Small Change: Bonded Child Labor in India's Silk
Industry,"calls on the Indian government to implement its national laws to
free and rehabilitate these "bonded children." Bound to their employers in
exchange for a loan to their families, they are unable to leave while in
debt and earn so little they may never be free. A majority of them are
Dalits, so-called untouchables at the bottom of India's caste system.

"The Indian government claims there are no bonded children in India," said
Zama Coursen-Neff, counsel to Human Rights Watch's children's rights
division. "In fact, they're everywhere. They are easy to find."

Human Rights Watch interviewed children, employers, government officials
and members of nongovernmental organizations in three states that form the
core of India's sari and silk industries: Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and
Tamil Nadu.

At every stage of the silk industry, bonded children as young as five years
old work 12 or more hours a day, six and a half or seven days a week.
Children making silk thread dip their hands in boiling water that burns and
blisters them. They breathe smoke and fumes from machinery, handle dead
worms that cause infections, and guide twisting threads that cut their
fingers. As they assist weavers, children sit at cramped looms in damp, dim
rooms. They do not go to school and are often beaten by their employers. By
the time they reach adulthood, they are impoverished, illiterate, and often
crippled by the work, the report said. 		

Human Rights Watch first investigated bonded child labor in India in 1996.
Since then, the Supreme Court made rehabilitation of child workers a legal
requirement, and India's National Human Rights Commission has successfully
pressured some local governments to act.

"The government has taken a number of steps in the right direction since
our first investigation. The National Human Rights Commission's involvement
is especially encouraging," Coursen-Neff said. "However, many of the small
improvements are now being rolled back."

High-level government officials interviewed by Human Rights Watch denied
that children were bonded or work in factories; they claimed to have
therefore shifted their focus to raising public awareness about child
labor, instead of freeing children and prosecuting employers.

"Most government efforts never reached beyond high-profile industries like
carpets and beedi cigarettes," said Coursen-Neff. "Instead of living up to
its promises, the Indian government is starting to backtrack, claiming the
problem is being solved. Our research shows that it is not."

Human Rights Watch also urged the government to recognize and address the
connection between caste and bondage. Coursen-Neff pointed out that
caste-based violence and discrimination, not just poverty, keep many Dalit
families in bondage.

"Caste is one of the foundations of the bonded labor system," said
Coursen-Neff. "Dalits are denied access to land, forced to work in
degrading conditions, and expected to perform free labor. Upper-caste
communities inflict violence and economic boycotts on Dalits who challenge
their expected social roles, keeping Dalit families in bondage and a
perpetual state of poverty."

Human Rights Watch called on international donors to pressure the national
and state governments in India to enforce the child labor and bonded labor
laws. International donors are increasingly funding some schools for former
child workers.

"Funding schools is important, but international donors should do more,"
said Coursen-Neff. "Donors must pressure the Indian government to enforce
its own laws to free bonded children. Otherwise, schools won't reach
children who can't leave work voluntarily-those who are working under force."

Human Rights Watch also called on the national and state governments to
greatly expand cooperation with nongovernmental organizations to address
the problem of bonded child labor.


Major Silk States:

Karnataka, in the south, is India's primary producer of silk thread. There,
production still depends on bonded children. Most are under age 14 and are
Dalit or Muslim. In 2001, the state government promulgated an ambitious
plan to eliminate all child labor, but it was not in operation at the time
of Human Rights Watch's investigation one year later. A nine-year-old boy
bonded in Karnataka told Human Rights Watch: "At work the supervisor used
to beat me with a belt. He tied me up and beat me with a belt on my back.
He did this two or three times. . . . He tied a chain that was attached to
the wall to my leg. . . . [The owner beat me] if I didn't do my work
properly."

In the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, most attention has been paid to
child labor in the carpet industry, not silk. While bonded child labor in
carpets has not been eliminated, vigilance from the National Human Rights
Commission and pressure from domestic and international activists has
provoked the government to better enforce the law and to provide schools
and other social services. Much less attention has been paid to silk
weaving, where child labor that was in factories has been pushed into
individual homes. A 14 year-old boy who worked as a weaver's assistant in
Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, told Human Rights Watch that he could not leave
his loom owner because he was paying off a loan, which in two years he had
only reduced from Rs. 2,500 (U.S. $52) to Rs. 475 (U.S. $9.90). "The owner
pays [a small salary] but deducts for the advance [loan]," he said. "He
deducts but won't write off the whole advance. . . . We only make enough to
eat."

In Tamil Nadu in the south, which has successfully identified more bonded
laborers than any other state, most state initiatives have focused on
children working in match and fireworks manufacture. However, the state
government has simply abandoned Supreme Court-mandated rehabilitation of
child workers for those children found after 1997, in clear violation of
the court's order. In Kanchipuram district, a major silk sari weaving area
in Tamil Nadu, child bondage flourishes openly. A 13 year-old girl working
in a silk weaving factory in Kanchipuram told Human Rights Watch: "Always
[the weavers and owners] are beating me-I don't like to work. They always
scold and shout. They beat me on the back and head. They are always
knocking their fists on my head or hitting me with a comb [wood piece in
the loom]. . . . We don't play at all."

Silk thread and silk fabric are also produced in other states in India.

In addition to India, Human Rights Watch has also investigated bonded labor
in Pakistan and Japan and has advocated for prosecution of offenders and
rehabilitation of bonded laborers in Nepal and Sri Lanka. 		

Human Rights Watch Press release