HYDERABAD: Munoo Bheel has been observing a protest in front of the Hyderabad Press Club since Jan 19 against the alleged kidnapping of nine members of his family by an influential landlord of Jhol, Sanghar district.

According to Munoo Bheel, he and his family tilled the lands of the landlord for many years but he did not pay them their share from the sale of the crops they raised on his lands according to the Sindh Tenancy Law.

He had run away from the lands of the landlord and with help from the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan he got his family members freed from the private jail of the landlord under orders of the Sindh High Court.

But he says that after some months the landlord and his armed men raided their home in village Waryam Memon Deh in Mirpurkhas district in 1998 and kidnapped his father, mother and children, who were made hostage by the landlord and compelled to do forced labour on his lands.

Munoo Bheel’s case is typical of the sufferings of peasants. The Kolhi, Bheel and Meghwar minority communities are widely spread in the districts of Mirpurkhas, Tharparkar, Badin and Sanghar as also in Taluka Tando Allahyar of Hyderabad district. They are given subsistence allowance by the landlords in the shape of food-grain.

According to the Tenancy Act, a peasant is entitled to half of the agriculture produce he raises on fields. But in the areas mentioned above, the peasants say they are denied their share and given barely enough to live on.

A peasant, Dhoorio, says he had raised bananas on 25 acres of land of one landlord in the Deh. When the crop had ripened, a contractor had offered Rs50,000 per acre of bananas which came to about Rs1,250,000 for 25 acres and the peasant’s share should have been half of it. But the landlord refused to pay him his share and ejected him from the lands.

The landlords give an advance to the peasants for making kutcha houses. This advance is never cleared and continues to soar. The landlords do not allow the peasants to leave his lands, and on resistance, put their families under constant watch of his ‘kamdars’ (field managers) and watchmen.

Peasants freed by the HRCP have alleged that landlords and their ‘kamdars’ also molested and abused their womenfolk.

The HRCP’s Sindh Task Force has so far recovered nearly 15,000 peasants from the private jails of landlords. It has arranged settlement of liberated Haris in several camps.

Apart from the HRCP, the Sindh Taraqqi Passand Party and Sindhi Qaumi Saath have also helped to free about 3,000 Haris from the clutches of landlords of Tando Allahyar Taluka of Hyderabad district.

These liberated Haris are living in the area called Qadir Nagar in Qasimabad since then and working as labourers in and around the city. But they continue to feel insecure and fear being kidnapped by their former landlords.