ONLY ON AP Pakistan girl "enslaved for debt"

(23 Dec 2016) The night Jeevti disappeared, her family slept outside to escape Pakistan's brutal summer heat. In the morning, the girl was gone, snatched by a wealthy landlord to whom her parents owed 1,000 US dollars. The girl is one of the estimated 1,000 Christian and Hindu girls taken from their homes every year in Muslim Pakistan for supposed repayments of debt. Most of them end up married off to older men and forcibly converted to Islam, according to the non-governmental organisation, South Asia Partnership. Jeevti's mother cries as she describes how her daughter disappeared. Tears streaming down her face, Ameri Kashi Kohli holds up two photos of her smiling daughters. Ameri says Jeevti was just 14 when she disappeared into the hands of the local land manager. Jeevti's age is disputed, however, with others saying she was 18 at the time. Ameri says she and her husband borrowed roughly 500 US dollars when they first began to work on the land. She claims the debt was repaid, but that, with no receipts to prove payment, the debt doubled. Ameri works as a day labourer cutting sugar cane and feed for animals in Pakistan's southern Sindh province. The region is dominated by powerful landowners whose holdings stretch for hundreds of acres. Narrow dirt tracks weave through vast fields, where Hindu women cut the crops, making less than a (US) dollar a day. Like Ameri, they're often indebted to the owners, kept as virtual slaves until they pay back their debt, which almost never happens. Law enforcement agencies don't support the poor and marginalised, according to Dr Ghulam Hyder of the Green Rural Development Organisation. The organisation works to free Pakistan's bonded labourers. More than two million Pakistanis live as "modern slaves", according to the 2016 Global Slavery Index. It ranks Pakistan in the top three offending countries which still enslave people, some as farm workers, others at brick kilns or as household staff. Jeevti's family turned to activist Veero Kohli to help find and free the girl. Kohli, who isn't related to the family, was born into slavery before fleeing bondage in 1999, walking for three days to safety. She sought out the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan to help her, before returning to the landowner to recover her children and free other families. Since then, Kohli has devoted herself to challenging Pakistan's powerful landowners, liberating thousands of families from bonded labour. Kohli's defiance has incensed many men in a country dominated by a centuries-old patriarchal culture. She has been beaten, arrested, her home burned down, her husband has been arrested, and three of her sons have been jailed. Five months ago, Kohli went with Ameri to the Piyaro Lund police station to seek help finding her daughter. Police told the mother Jeevti went willingly and instead of assisting, they called Hamid Brohi, the man who Ameri said had taken her daughter. According to Kohli, Brohi came alone, without the girl, and said she was "payment" for the money her parents owed him. Earlier this month, the activist returned to the same police station. Kohli was shown an affidavit, in which the girl said she had converted freely and married Brohi of her own free will. Jeevti, now called Fatima, said she couldn't meet her mother because she had converted to Islam and her family was Hindu. The girl cannot read or write; the signature on the statement she purportedly made of her own volition was a thumbprint. Police told Kohli there had been no investigation into Ameri's allegation that her daughter had been kidnapped. Nor was there any investigation into her age, in a province where the legal age for marriage is 18. "I married him because I wanted to," she said. You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/c5635434f8ad5e40c4e2f14ba6cc9922 Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork