Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Being born in a bounded labour family, life was not less than a challenge as my whole tribe was politically, socially and economically deprived.

On one side, we were Hindus while on the other we were under the black shadow of feudalism. This was told by Veerji Kohli, a rights activist and a lawyer belonging from the marginalised community of Thar. He was in an exclusive interview with Daily Times in Islamabad.

“I decided not to surrender to the rules set by feudals and challenged their rules as thousands of people from Thar were taken as bounded labour. Their basic rights were being violated,” he said.

Veerji Kohli expressed how he and others carried identities which were thousands of years old as was the the land of Sufi saints Rahman Baba, Bulleh Shah, Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai and others who promoted pluralism and interfaith harmony on this land but now some forces were trying to “cut us from these roots but we will never allow them”.

Kohli belongs to the marginalised community of interior Sindh working for the rights of minorities as well as for the bounded labourers working in Thar under the siege of feudal heads. He was imprisoned for 11 months in a fake murder case and then released!

Daily Times asked about his involvement in the fake murder case, to which Kohli replied, “In 2010, a girl was abducted and then raped by the son of a powerful man in Sindh. When we provide legal support to the girl in that case, the court ordered their arrest and later he was punished by the court in that very case but his family was very powerful that’s why he involved me in a fake murder case to take revenge and I was arrested. In those days, I was living in Hyderabad which is 500 kilometres away from Thar but I was an activist and they were feudals of the area so there was no one to listen to me and i faced 11 months imprisonment in that case. However, due to lack of evidence, I was released.”

Is working against human rights violation a life risking job in Pakistan?

“I was kidnapped and later tortured by the powerful people of the area. When I still didn’t compromise, they fired at my car to silence me but activism is my passion and I will continue working for it,” Kohli said.

“Jail was my new experience and I learnt a lot from there which fuelled my activism in a new way! People living in open environments can use media and other platforms to surface their voices but those behind the bars have no voice and I will work on judicial reforms in the country. I observe many cases in which an accused is imprisoned for 13 years but later the court realises and releases them. Their lives have already been destroyed. Most of the cases are pending in courts but no one is there to listen to them so I decided to start activism and form awareness campaigns for the judicial reforms. No one has the right to make someone a slave and those challenging the slavery mindset face a lot of troubles in Pakistan. We will work for humanity, interfaith harmony and for a progressive Pakistan where everyone has the right of freedom of expression. They are able to celebrate their cultures without threats of fundamentalists that’s our aim and we will achieve it because it’s the land of Bulleh Shah, Bhittai and Rehman Baba,” Kohli added.

Published in Daily Times, March 23^rd 2018.