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A brief look at human rights
IT WAS heartening to hear from Dr. Bernard D'Sami recently that Loyola offers a paper on Human Rights as part of its M.A. History course. And, happily, the course throws the students into the thick of the murky world we live in, getting them to document human rights violations they have found in Madras. The findings of 19 students over a two-year period — March 1999 to April 2001 — have been documented in abbreviated form in a slim booklet titled `Chennai Watch'.
`Chennai Watch' reports that there are about 15,000 "child labourers", who come from the city's 150 slums, nearly 7,000 of them in the 11-15 age group working in factories and 4,500 in the 5-10 age group in small scale industries, and 1,25,000 street children, about a fifth of them rag pickers and about a half shoeshine boys, vendors, coolies and beggars. It points out that the 900 Sri Lankan refugee families in Muttukadu, Kovalam and Puzhal live in "camps... no more meant for human existence, all the temporary sheds built in 1983 in shambles".
Looking at other issues, `Chennai Watch' records that between January 2000 and February 2001, political parties, trade unions and other organisations held 94 processions and 64 major agitations, but it says several non-political rallies were "arbitrarily refused permission" or their organisers were charged on some pretext or the other. I was intrigued to note the comment: "The procession is a democratic process to demonstrate the protest. No one can prevent anyone in peaceful demonstration." Obviously the writer does not consider it important that the silent majority inconvenienced by such processions — of whatever hue or for whatever purpose — have the right NOT to be inconvenienced or hindered in any way.
In other studies, `Chennai Watch' refers to over 500 huts destroyed as part of the eviction process in seven slums in the city during one year and the next year slum dwellers being evicted from about 3,200 houses on the city's canal banks, mainly for the MRTS project, and getting 2,800 houses allotted to them in Thuraipakkam. It lists 445 slum fires in 14 months of 2001-2, with losses of over Rs. 35 lakhs in all, most of it in about 40 major fires, in eight of which there were casualties. Recorded also are 166 crimes against women in 2000, including 14 cases of rape, 16 cases of molestation and 16 cases of dowry deaths.
The most telling comment is on "disappearances, torture and custodial deaths" which "have not come down". `Chennai Watch' records seven custodial deaths in a 20-month period and discusses half a dozen cases of alleged police violence and harassment, including "torture of an innocent father" and torture of a nine-year old child.
In recording these cases of human rights violations — and whether some of them indeed are, could be a matter of debate — the course certainly helps create a greater awareness of human rights amongst its takers.
But it raises other questions: Is there another side to the story in at least some of these cases and is it discussed and, secondly, having painstaking recorded the data on these subjects, what next, apart from the necessary academic credits?
S.MUTHAIAH
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