After centuries
of living like slaves, the serfs of southern Pakistan are finally
rising up.
Thousands of people
locked by debt and chains to the country's biggest landlords are setting
themselves free and demanding better lives. Laborers who for generations
have been swapped and sold like animals are fleeing plantations, marching
in the streets and attacking their owners with rocks and sticks. They
are challenging one of the world's largest remaining bastions of feudal
serfdom, where the richest landlords include some of the country's
most powerful politicians.
"I was chained
to a rock, so I picked it up and put it on my shoulder and ran away,"
said Chetan Bheel, a laborer who escaped from a plantation near here.
"I had to get out of that place."
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