Assam: ‘Foreigner’ parents in detention camps, children roll beedis to eke out a living

By: Syeda Ambia Zahan
GUWAHATI: Till three years ago, Rahima Begum, 24, from Dhubri spent her days by looking after her three children and making them learn the alphabets, while her husband was away for construction work.
But now Rahima spends eight hours a day rolling beedi (tobacco in tendu leaf). Her three children — Salma, 9, Faruk, 5, and Suleman (4) — also join in, rolling one bundle of beedi after another in the backyard of her house in Gaspara village, along the Indo-Bangla border, 16 km from Dhubri town.
“The younger one is not good in rolling beedis.But Salma and Faruk picked it up real quick. In fact, Salma is the quickest,” says Rahima, the wife of Abu Bakkar Siddique (30), who has been at the Goalpara detention camp for the past three years. Their children do not go to school as Rahima had hoped. After Siddique’s detention, she went returned to her father’s house in Gaspara.
Siddique was declared a foreigner in 2016 after he was caught by police while working as a construction worker in Jorhat district. The case went to the Supreme Court, but he was declared a foreigner. Suleman has never seen his father.
“I am waiting for him to come back from jail. I have been told that he would be released after completing three years. I am eager to send my children to school. They are already too old for primary school,” Rahima says, her children busy working on the beedi rolls — their mother has set them a target of rolling 500 beedis a day.
Like Salma, Faruk and Suleman, in another village of Sahebganj in Golakganj revenue circle of Dhubri, 12-year-old Anita Mandal (name changed) rolls about 1,200 beedis a day after her school.
Anita, a Class V student, spends four hours after school to earn about Rs 150 a day. On a holiday, she can roll up to 2,000 beedis. Her parents are in Kokrajhar detention camp.
The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986, prohibits the employment of children less than 14 years. So, none of the children has an identity card issued by the ministry of labour and employment that entitles “beedi” workers to certain benefits.
Sunita Changkakoti, chairperson of Assam State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (ASCPCR), told TOI, “The child rights commission and the state government have to prepare a guideline for every children, so that they can avail of all rights of children. We are definitely going to take up issues relating to rehabilitating these children and their rights at the earliest.”
Anita earns about Rs 2,500 a month by working as a beedi worker. “I wrap a scarf around my mouth so that the tobacco dust does not enter my mouth,” she says.
Of the 19 lakh left out of the NRC in Assam, 1.6 lakh are from the border district of Dhubri. Miguel Das Queah, executive director of Universal Team for Social Action and Help, an Assam-based child rights organization, said, “Rights of children whose parents are in detention camps, or who themselves are there, are not being protected the way it should be by the state. The understanding of child rights is very bleak from the point of view of police to everyone. We need to assist the government to help protect the rights of these children.”
According to a report tabled in Assam assembly, there are 31 children languishing in various detention camps in the state. UTSAH has filed an RTI application to know the status of the rights of children living in these camps and whose parents are lodged there.
Masud Zaman, an advocate from Dhubri town, who has been providing legal assistance to people in detention camps in Assam, feels the state government needs to come forward to protect the rights of children, who are being pushed into an uncertain future while identifying foreigners. “No law of any country has given the rights to the state to keep children away from their parents. The state might say these are not our children and are foreigners. However, till they live in our state, they are entitled to the universal rights for children. But I see the state is totally turning its back to these kids,” Zaman said.