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 Posted: Sun Sep 07, 2008 2:42 pm
KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Nepal’s Maoist-led coalition government has abolished the Haliya system, a slavery-like condition, by freeing about 20,000 poor people from the hands of moneylenders and landlords, a cabinet minister said on Sunday.
Under the system, prevalent for decades in nine districts in western Nepal, moneylenders force poor villagers who borrow money from them to plough their land until they repay their debt.
They are offered low wages which are never enough to feed their families, let alone repay the loan, as labourers get trapped in the vicious cycle of debt.
“The government abolished the system on Saturday,” said Peace and Reconstruction Minister Janardan Sharma, a former Maoist rebel commander.
“Anyone who practises the system will be punished,” Sharma said, without spelling out the penalty.
He said the government had set up a panel to consider rehabilitation of these people and their families.
The Maoists waged a decade-long civil war against the monarchy until they signed a peace deal in 2006.
Early this year, they won a surprise victory in a constituent assembly election and are now heading a coalition government.
During the insurgency, which killed more than 13,000 people, the Maoists said they were fighting for the rights of the under-privileged and marginalised people in one of the world’s poorest countries.
They have vowed to initiate revolutionary land reforms in a country where more than 80 percent of its 26.4 million people eke out their living from farms.
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Posted: Sun Sep 07, 2008 5:19 pm
Honestly, it's hard to judge this from the outside with mainly Western standards. They did the right thing though, albeit it with much blood.
But then, we've killed over a million people in Iraq one way or another....and for what. Oil?
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Posted: Mon Sep 08, 2008 9:51 am
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Posted: Tue Sep 09, 2008 8:24 am
Demon Kagerou Honestly, it's hard to judge this from the outside with mainly Western standards. They did the right thing though, albeit it with much blood. But then, we've killed over a million people in Iraq one way or another....and for what. Oil? I think what happens next will determine if the ends justify the means, eh?
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Posted: Tue Sep 09, 2008 10:52 am
Demon Kagerou Honestly, it's hard to judge this from the outside with mainly Western standards. They did the right thing though, albeit it with much blood. But then, we've killed over a million people in Iraq one way or another....and for what. Oil? Yep. They had a better outcome....
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Posted: Thu Sep 11, 2008 10:04 pm
I'm damn proud to see Nepal doing what it's doing. If only they had managed to make Gurkhas illegal too, but it was thrown out.
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Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2008 1:26 pm
Demon Kagerou Honestly, it's hard to judge this from the outside with mainly Western standards. They did the right thing though, albeit it with much blood. But then, we've killed over a million people in Iraq one way or another....and for what. Oil? No sense crying over the useless who would just make general income of state anyway from any point.
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