Dear Ms. Robinson
RE: CASTE IS STILL KILLING – PLEASE DO NOT IGNORE IT IN WCAR!
It is hard to believe that the caste system in India can still be so entrenched that a young couple were publicly hanged to death by their families on Monday because they were in love and from different castes. The whole village of Alipur in Uttar Pradesh and both sets of parents were supportive of the murders of the two, aged 20 and 18.
I understand that the problem goes much deeper than preventing inter-caste marriages. For a Dalit to drink from the upper caste well, enter an upper caste home, sit with upper caste students, worship in an upper caste temple, or do work outside of their caste-designated jobs, is to be guilty of a social crime punishable by rape, economic boycott, stripping and public parading, or murder. These atrocities happen every week in India, and often go unreported, uninvestigated, or ignored by police. Further, I am aware that this is in fact a global problem, with caste abuse prevalent all through South Asia as well as in Japan and West Africa.
So it has come as a shock to me that this enormous problem may not even be discussed at the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance beginning this month. Hundreds of millions of people around the world will wonder what the conference was for if it does not try to understand and respond to the discrimination they face every day because of the family they were born into. I urge you to use your good offices as Secretary General to the conference to ensure that another opportunity for the international community to address the caste system does not pass by. After 3,000 years of caste violence, the Dalits and other low caste people deserve this much.
Yours sincerely
Chandra Muzaffar
President,
International Movement for a Just World
Malaysia
