Extract from the letter to CSR Ltd, Australia
Dear Sir,
I feel obligated to forward my book, Tears in Paradise, to you.
I respectfully draw your attention to the first part and chapters 7-9 of second part of my book. The first part covers the indenture period (1879-1916) in Fiji that implicates your company in exploitation of Indian indentured labourers, using horrific violence against them to increase productivity and the profitability of your company. In the second part of the book, chapters 7-9 recount ongoing deceit, deception and ruthless exploitation of Indo-Fijian sugarcane farmers.
Evidence adduced in this book bears ample testimony that CSR Company committed heinous crimes against the indentured labourers. It is neither possible nor intended to detail the specific incidents in this brief letter; the book itself provides damning evidence of a regime of violence that was not only horrendous but quite unnecessary. Indeed, the system was so carefully manipulated that the victims were in no position to mount any effective resistance.
This book highlights numerous instances of violence and violations against the indentured labourers committed during the indenture period. These include the following:
- habitually punching, kicking, whipping;
- pouring boiling water on a victim;
- forcing a person to drink kerosene to extort confession;
- kicking pot of boiling dal (lentils) on a victim;
- forcing a male person to wear woman’s clothes
- denial of the right to seek medical care when sick ;
- using child labour in the plantations (initially 10 years);
- restricting nursing mothers from feeding or caring for their children at appropriate times, resulting in Fiji recording the highest number of infant deaths among the countries using indentured
labour;
- forcing a woman to work 6 days after she had given birth and then bashing her unconscious for being unable to carry out the duties assigned to her;
- ritually overtasking the workers;
- depriving or reducing the workers’ earnings
- providing stable-like accommodation to the labourers.
The victims of the indenture system bore the rigours of a system that not only exploited them but also made them feel that they were serfs who should be grateful for the privilege to be in Fiji working for the sahibs. The shame was so overpowering that it also permeated the lives of their children who were unfortunate enough to be born during that gruesome period. Your company, with the connivance of the colonial government, took undue advantage of innocent people.
In essence, the practices of the CSR Company destroyed the lives of a whole generation of our people; it inflicted on them such ghastly physical and mental wounds that recovery within their lifetime was well nigh impossible for the majority.
I sincerely hope that you will be touched by the contents of this book and be moved to respond to this letter with an appropriate acknowledgement and expression of your remorse. In so doing, you will give an opportunity to a community that continues to be victims of political violence, to re-write its early history in a true light, dispelling the cloud of shame that had ominously hung over it.
I await your response.
Yours sincerely,
Rajendra Prasad,
Descendant of Indentured Labourers |
