Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on March 26th, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Order, please. This is the Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development.

This is our ninth meeting. It is March 26, 2009, and we have two distinguished guests. I will introduce them in a moment, but first I want to take care of a little housekeeping.

There will be no meeting on April 28. This is being done because it is the national day of mourning for workers killed and injured on the job, and there is a conflict. There is an event going on that many members will want to attend at that time.

Mr. Marston has indicated that he would speak to this matter, so go ahead, Mr. Marston, please.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Yes, I really appreciate that, Mr. Chair, because this is a national day of mourning, as proclaimed in Parliament. It takes place all across our country. In Hamilton on that particular day we have an observance, and there is one here in Ottawa. If any members are interested, they may want to contact my office. There is a bus going to a monument here to mark the occasion.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Now let me turn to our main order of business today. We have two distinguished guests. Dr. Joseph D'souza is the president of Dalit Freedom Network Canada, and joining him today is Harvey Thiessen, who is the executive director of Operation Mobilization Canada.

My understanding is that Dr. D'souza will have a 10-minute presentation and that Mr. Thiessen is here to provide assistance, but does not actually have a formal presentation. Is that correct? All right.

In that case, Dr. D'souza, I invite you to begin, please.

[Dr. Joseph D'souza, President, Dalit Freedom Network Canada]

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I want to thank you for the privilege and honour of testifying before you on a very important subject that is related not only to India and its people, but also to the whole world.

We all know that for the past 60 years India has had a thriving democracy, great institutions of law, a tremendous judiciary, a great executive, and development on many fronts. As an Indian, I am very proud of the progress that we have made in the last 60 years and where we stand in the community of nations. I am very proud of all of the instruments of government that are available for executing law and justice.

However, we do have a huge social disease. It is called the caste system. Coming out of the caste system we have a group of people--formerly known as the untouchables, today known as the Dalits--who have been called human history's longest-standing slaves. Those of us who are aware know that caste is the socio-economic stratification of people in South Asia and in India.

Untouchability is a practice that our constitution outlawed in article 17, because it is a practice that is so heinous and so deplorable that it consigns 25% of our population by birth to a discriminatory status in society. There are nearly 180 million of scheduled caste, or untouchables, in India, and another 70 million tribals, all of them lumped outside the caste system and without rights of many kinds.

Let me illustrate for you the current problem we have with the Dalits in India. Every week 13 Dalits are murdered. Every week six Dalit homes are burned. Every day six Dalits are abducted and kidnapped. Every day three Dalit women are raped, and a crime is committed with impunity against Dalits every 18 minutes of the day.

We have stated that when it comes to the issue of modern slavery and degradation of human beings, the Dalits today stand as human history's and civilization's last-standing slave system. While we have the laws forbid untouchability, in practice, in the vast number of cases, there is neither enforcement of the law nor a change in the prejudiced attitude of society, and the fate of these millions continues to become worse as the decades go on.

Most of you here have probably seen Slumdog Millionaire, which won several Oscars and many other awards, including awards at the Toronto International Film Festival. Most of the Dalits in India are from the slumdog world. About 70% of India at this present time lives on less than one dollar a day. We have two Indias: the India that's shining, and the India of Slumdog Millionaire. By and large, a vast percentage of the Dalit people make up the world of the slumdog millionaire.

What is particularly terrifying and heartbreaking is that these same Dalits who are untouchables in every way--that is, with no access to religious places or to drinking water from the village well, with double the seating system in schools, and suffering from discrimination in the workplace and in the village, since every village is two villages--these same Dalits are the primary victims of human trafficking in India.

I want to point out to this committee that on the issue of human trafficking, India stands as the single largest nation where human trafficking is going on. In 2005, a U.S. State Department report said that India is the source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purpose of forced or bonded labour and commercial sexual exploitation. Here is the stark statistic: 2.3 million women and girls are trafficked in India for the sex trade. Out of that, 67% are Dalit women and girls, who are bought and sold in the sex trade. When it comes to bonded labour and bonded slavery, it's very difficult to give the statistics, but Human Rights Watch contends that there are anywhere between 20 million and 60 million bonded slaves and labourers in India, mostly children.

This problem of untouchability, Dalit discrimination, and caste discrimination has been going on for nearly 2,000 years. A great and noble effort was made by the founding fathers of our nation to deal with this problem through the constitutional banning of untouchability; later, privileges of affirmative action were given to the Dalits through the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes legislation. What do we find, 60 years on, since independence? A minuscule Dalit population has profited from the affirmative action. A minuscule population has found some protection, but for the vast majority nothing has changed.

A devastating report created by ActionAid in 2005 showed that 80% of India's villages not only practise but enforce--I repeat, enforce--the practice of untouchability. After years of campaigning, in New Delhi in 2007 the current Prime Minister of India, Dr. Manmohan Singh, became the first prime minister to publicly admit, in a Dalit conference, that the problem of untouchability is equal to the problem of apartheid in South Africa.

If you forget whatever I've said today, please do not forget that statement: the problem of untouchability in India is equal to the problem of apartheid in South Africa. The only difference, and it's a big difference, is that far more people are affected by this practice; as I said, it is 250 million, compared to those millions who suffered under the apartheid system in South Africa.

In closing this presentation, I have quotes from two men. One, the father of the Dalit liberation movement and a contemporary of Mahatma Gandhi, writing in the The New York Times, said in 1934:

The world will abolish the problem of slavery as seen in the West, but it will not be that easy to demolish the problem of untouchability. It will take nothing less than the concerted and united opinion of the whole world to bring an end to untouchability, India's modern slavery.

That is one statement, honourable members of this committee. The other statement is from another parliamentarian in the British Parliament 200 years ago. He was the man who fought and brought an end to the cross-Atlantic slave trade, William Wilberforce, a contemporary of Prime Minister Pitt. He proclaimed 200 years ago in the British Parliament that caste discrimination is “a system at war with truth and nature”.

It is at war with truth. What truth? The equality of all human beings.

What is it at war with, in terms of nature? It denies to another human being, just on the basis of birth and heredity and ensuing occupation, the equal freedoms we all enjoy as human beings.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thank you, Dr. D'souza.

We will commence with the questioning. I'll just mention that in order to make everything fit, I propose we return to our traditional practice of seven-minute first-round questions, followed by five minutes in the second round, and I encourage members to be as concise as they can be.

With that, Professor Cotler, please go ahead.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to thank Dr. D'souza for his testimony here today.

Dr. D'souza, I was in Durban for the World Conference against Racism in 2001. From your biography, I note that you might have been there as well. That conference, as you know, was intended to be a conference against racism and to give expression to the under-represented cases and causes, such as the case of the Dalits.

My own experience was that in fact the Dalit cause did not get appropriate representation at Durban. Could you comment on that?

Second, given the very compelling evidence you've provided today in terms of untouchable slavery, institutionalized discrimination, human trafficking, and the like, why is it that the Dalits are such an under-represented case and cause in the international human rights agenda?

[Dr. Joseph D'souza]

Thank you, sir.

You're right. Durban actually was the first global meeting at which Dalits finally managed at least to come and be present, even though they were not given a full place at the table for discussion.

Problem number two has been an ongoing battle with the Indian political establishment, which for the past 60 years, unfortunately, has by and large represented the interests of the upper castes. In terms of getting into the UN resolution, discrimination by descent is condemned by the UN resolution, and that should include discrimination based on caste, because caste is an issue of discrimination on the basis of birth, on the basis of who you are born and where you are born in the caste system. There is not a single Indian anywhere in the world, of whatever religion, who is not born into a particular caste and caste position. There is not a single Indian who does not know the position he was born into.

That was the Durban conference. My hope here is that Canada, in its interventions in the United Nations, will take the lead in UN deliberations. Another conference, Durban 2, is taking place soon under the auspices of the new human rights commission. It is a review, and my hope is that Canada will take the lead in bringing this issue to the fore.

You asked why, given the size and the scope of the problem, that it has not become the issue it should be. The answer to this, sir, is simply that apart from the last decade and a half, in the global sphere the Dalits have been completely voiceless. Today the Dalits of India are asking conscientized Indians of all professions, including politicians, and conscientized global society, to please become their voice. Because there is no voice, and because the propaganda machine works in another direction, this knowledge is not known.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

You have three minutes, Mr. Cotler.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

As someone who was at Durban and who spoke up there on behalf on the Dalits, I just want to say that they were not given a voice, and that was because the World Conference against Racism in Durban, which was supposed to be the first 21st century conference against racism in the name of human rights, turned into a conference against Israel and Jews. I mention that point because the government has taken the decision not to attend Durban 2 because it was going down the same road, to be a repeat of Durban 1, so it will not be a forum within which we will be able to make the case in cause.

My question to you is this: are there other arenas we should enter or other initiatives that you think we should be taking in that regard?

[Dr. Joseph D'souza]

Yes. There is an International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination in the UN, the CERD committee, at which a lot of nations have a voice. That committee has gone into detail. In a report released on March 9, 2007, when they called the Indian government before them, they raised a huge amount of very serious concerns. We would again urge Canada to use whatever influence it can to see that the recommendations of that committee are followed. India has been asked to come back in a year to give a report.

I'll read to you a couple of concerns that were raised by the CERD committee. On point number 13, it says:

The Committee urges the State party to intensify its efforts to enforce the Protection of Civil Rights Act (1955), especially in rural areas, including by effectively punishing acts of “Untouchability”, to take effective measures against segregation in public schools and residential segregation, and to ensure equal access for Dalits places of worship, hospitals, water sources and any other places or services intended for use by the general public.

This is nothing but a blatant description of apartheid in practice and the urging of this committee of the UN to do something about it.

Another one is in point 15, and then I'll stop. It says:

The Committee urges [the Indian government] to effectively prosecute and punish perpetrators of acts of sexual violence and exploitation of Dalit and tribal women, sanction anyone preventing or discouraging victims from reporting such incidents, including police and other law enforcement officers, [and] take preventive measures such as police training

to stop violence against Dalit women and girls.

Thank you, sir.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Mr. Dorion, please, you have the floor.

[Jean Dorion, Bloc, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

I am going to speak French.

In listening to you, I get the impression that a significant part of Indian society recognizes the falsehood on which this practice of untouchability is based. You mentioned that India's founding fathers made the system of untouchability illegal under the constitution.

Why is it that, 60 years after independence, no one has succeeded in solving the problem? How would the so-called higher castes be disadvantaged if the system of untouchability were abolished? Are there major economic interests behind untouchability or does it survive only because of the strength of religious and cultural traditions?

[Dr. Joseph D'souza]

Thank you, sir.

The situation with regard to the discrimination against the Dalits and their situation in view of a constitution that condemned untouchability in its practice is very similar to what happened in the United States with regard to the problem of racism and blatant slavery, even though there was a constitution that declared that all men were equal before God. Society itself never accepted that ideology but continued to operate on what they believed was the proper ideology, and that is the inequality of human beings.

This problem in India is a socio-economic construct. While we have a constitution that states one thing, we have a society that operates and runs on caste mores, caste policies, and caste guidelines. I'm embarrassed and ashamed to say that the problem of caste discrimination, which is unique to India, has been carried by Indians wherever they have gone, including to your great nation of Canada. That's because it is a societal way of looking at fellow human beings. Why don't we dismantle untouchability when it is in the interests of the nation? We constantly ask why a vast majority of the 250 million Dalits and tribals are still kept in oppressive situations.

There are definitely economic dimensions. If you accept the figure that there are close to anywhere from 40 million to 100 million bonded labourers of one kind or another in India, you can imagine the economic profit that cheap labour brings to everybody, and nobody wants to dismantle that system. Secondly, with the emergence of human trafficking and the sexual trade, and the complete vulnerability of Dalit women, girls and boys, and the fact that this is becoming a multi-billion dollar industry worldwide, again economics becomes a means of perpetuating the system. I am ashamed, embarrassed, and even heartbroken to inform you, sir, that in the state of Andhra Pradesh, where I live, there is village after village where you will not find one girl child above the age of five, because all the girl children in those Dalit tribal villages have been sold into sexual trafficking. So economics is one reason this situation continues.

The third thing, sir, is the grab for a slice of political power in India. The moment the Dalits and the tribals are empowered and exercise their political rights in their own way, and not because of what some landlord is telling them, the political equations in the country change. So there are political issues also at play, because of which this has continued. Every time, as a previous president said in recent years, Dalits have tried to assert their rights, there has been a tremendous backlash. In fact, today there are more atrocities against Dalits than there were even before independence. Those atrocities are linked with their trying to assert their rights, to which there is a backlash.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thank you. Unfortunately, the time has just expired.

Mr. Marston, please.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First of all, in Hamilton, my own community, we had an organization we called the Strengthening Hamilton's Community initiative. It came out of the fire bombing of a Hindu samaj. I served on that for three and a half years. The wonderful part of that tragedy was the bringing together of so many different communities. But one of the things I've learned is that racism is a learned behaviour and that education is probably the only way or the most significant way of dealing with it.

Mr. Cotler referred to Durban and what happened there. It's one of those sad times, because the interventions that could have taken place.... The report that came out of Durban is, for the most part, reasonable. The activities that took place outside of there were horrendous. I think anybody who pauses to think about things at all would be very troubled by it.

In my area as the human rights critic for the NDP, I'm often visited by delegations from countries in South America. They often talk about the paramilitaries, death squads, and things of that nature. They talk about impunity. When you first started speaking, you might have noticed that I started taking notes right away, because “impunity” is a word you don't usually associate with a democracy. That was very troubling to hear.

I would note that we have a copy of the Universal Periodic Review of India, which has been provided for us. I noticed the size of this. The one done in Canada is five times thicker than this, and yet you have to wonder what the difference is. Why is that happening in that fashion? Is there something systemic happening?

You mentioned, Dr. D'souza, the propaganda machine. I think the implication in your remarks was that this is a government machine. Are we saying that the government is involved with the systemic continuation of the caste system?

[Dr. Joseph D'souza]

What I'm saying is that there are forces in all of our political parties who, when they come to power, have a hidden agenda of perpetuating the caste system and holding to the caste system, and then giving the spin to the rest of the world that the caste system is gone from India.

When we began this campaign globally about a dozen years ago, I remember being in front of parliamentarians in Germany and their defence minister, in the middle of the testimony like this, just blurting out, “I thought the caste system was abolished at independence by Mahatma Gandhi.” Then I had to respond, and I said, “Madam, Mahatma Gandhi tried his best. The sad truth is the caste system is not demolished, but it is well, alive, and very strong in modern India.”

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

I'm holding in my hands a newspaper report, coincidentally, from today's Toronto Star. It's an article about Kumari Mayawati. This is a woman born into the Dalit caste. It says she was born into the lowest caste, and she's “trying to make history as she stirs controversy”. That is very much in line with what you're saying to us today. She is a 53-year-old school teacher who, just in being that, has raised herself from the normal expectations of how a Dalit would succeed.

What do you think her chances of actually succeeding are?

[Dr. Joseph D'souza]

She is one of the bright spots of current Dalit politics. She's single, herself a victim of social abuse, so she knows first-hand what it is not only to be Dalit but what it is to be abused as a woman. She has built in one state--the state of Uttar Pradesh, which has a significant Dalit population and a significant Muslim population--an alliance, which now makes her quite a formidable political power in that one state.

Given the nature of Indian politics, which is fast replicating what you have in Canada with what looks like coalition politics, one can say with certainty no one party will get a majority in the next elections. So in an era of coalition politics, anybody with 30 or 40 MPs out of the 550-plus in parliament can aspire to a prime minister's slot. That's where that story is coming from.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

So you really don't hold much....

[Dr. Joseph D'souza]

No.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Okay. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thank you very much, Mr. Marston.

Mr. Hiebert and Ms. Smith have indicated that they would like to divide the seven minutes that would normally just go to Mr. Hiebert.

I'll let you divide it as you see fit.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Dr. D'souza, for being here today.

Dr. D'souza, many Canadians will be familiar with the challenges of your organization if they've seen the movie Slumdog Millionaire, which you yourself referred to. Can you tell this committee whether the abuse, the maiming, and the trafficking of children and others in the movie was accurately portrayed? How common is this situation?

[Dr. Joseph D'souza]

I wrote a blog as soon as Slumdog came out, before it became an Oscar-winning and award-winning movie. I knew there would be controversy. In the blog, I wrote that this was an accurate description of life in India for the 70% majority, especially for the Dalits and for the tribals.

I can tell you about a case that has had national attention, that has taken the country by storm in terms of stirring up the national conscience. Eighteen months ago in Nithari, just outside of Delhi, a business-caste person was kidnapping children and then, if they were girls, sexually abusing them. They were also sexually abusing boys. Later on, they took some of the boys and sold their body parts, killing the whole lot and dumping them into a well, which the police discovered by accident.

Then you had parents coming on national television, saying, “I came to the police 18 months ago, when my child disappeared. The police wouldn't do anything. They wouldn't register the case. Now they are telling me that my child was one of those kidnapped and killed.”

This is, sadly, highly prevalent. Because of the Nithari case, which is now so much in the public eye, there was a recent report that in the capital city of New Delhi--in New Delhi--six children go missing daily. Two years ago, when the Nithari story burst out, national non-governmental organizations came up with the figure that India possibly has one million missing children--one million missing children who were kidnapped, abducted, blinded, amputated, and sold into the market.

At the Dalit Freedom Network, we wanted to look at the caste background of all of the children kidnapped in the Nithari case. We knew who the primary victims were. I'm disappointed to report to you that we have it on record that 70% of all of those children came from Dalit families. The rest came from what is called low-caste, or backward-caste, families. One family was a Muslim family. There was not a single upper-caste victim there.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

You mentioned in your testimony that this is a problem the world over. We're focusing on this issue in India, but can you give us any idea of the degree to which this problem has migrated to Canada?