இஸ்லாமிய தீண்டாமை: அல் அக்தும் ஜாதியினர் தீண்டத்தகாதார் என்ற இழிவு

அரபியாவில் இருக்கும் ஜாதிமுறையில் அரபுகள் செல்லும் இடமெல்லாம் கொண்டு செல்லும் ஜாதிவெறியாலும் தினந்தோறும் பாதிக்கப்படும் பெண்களை பற்றியும் ஜாதிவெறியால் நிகழும் இழிவுகளை பற்றியும் தொடர்ந்து பதிந்து வருகிறேன்.

They're considered untouchable. One Yemeni saying goes: “Clean your plate if it is touched by a dog, but break it if it’s touched by an Akhdam”.


நாய் தொட்டுவிட்டால் அந்த பாத்திரத்தை கழுவு. ஆனால் அக்தம் தொட்டுவிட்டால் அந்த பாத்திரத்தை உடைத்துபோடு என்பதுதான் அரபுகள் இவர்களை நடத்தும் விதம்.


ஏமனில் அல் அக்தம் என்று தீண்டத்தகாத மனிதர்களாக ஏமனின் மக்களே இழிவு செய்யப்பட்டு 500000க்கும் மேற்பட்ட மனிதர்கள் கொடுமைக்கு ஆளாக்கப்படுகிறார்கள்.

நன்றி கவ்ண்டர்கரண்ட்ஸ்

Caste In Yemen
By Marguerite Abadjian
25 April, 2004
Baltimore Sun

SANA’A, Yemen – The walled shantytown near the Old City here makes a
horrifying impression:

Houses made of refuse, families as large as 15 living in one room, children eating what appears to be dirt, pools of disease-laden water, piles of garbage and human waste buzzing with flies, the stench. The scene followed Aisha Sulaiman even after she was far away. She couldn’t forget it.

It is a place where children have gotten high snorting crushed glass. They
beg barefoot on the city streets – the soles of their feet callused and evidently immune to the blazing asphalt, fired by the incessant Yemeni sun.

Sulaiman, like many of the shantytown residents, belongs to the lowest
social caste in Yemen, the Akhdam. The Arabic word Akhdam means servants, and for centuries they have felt discrimination and isolation from mainstream society.

Though conditions have improved somewhat over the past few years, many in
mainstream society still stereotype them, considering them lowly, dirty,ill-mannered and immoral.

Even their plates are considered dirty. “Don’t eat with the Akhdam because worms come out of their plates,” the saying goes.

While there is no official record of the number of Akhdam in Yemen, they are considered to be the country’s largest and poorest minority. Unlike all others in Yemen, they do not belong to a tribe. They are poorly educated and are not allowed to marry into higher social castes.

Legends of Akhdam origins abound. The most credible is that they descend from Abyssinian soldiers who stayed in Yemen after a failed invasion in the sixth century AD. The soldiers, from ancient Ethiopia, were so hated they were forced to accept the worst jobs, such as transporting and disposing of human sewage and collecting garbage.

Today, the most common job for male Akhdam is street cleaning. They also work as porters, foot soldiers and shoemakers. Women and children beg.

Sulaiman was considerably better off than most because of her tenacity. Some of her relatives don’t believe women should be educated. They think women should sit at home, get married and have children, she says. But Sulaiman resisted and is halfway toward completing a university degree in philosophy. She is also determined not to have a large family that could lead to economic ruin.

Along the way, she has become a human rights trainer and educator, fighting for the rights of other Akhdam women and children who she believes suffer most. Her goal is to help the women become more self-confident and aware of their rights.

Many Akhdam do not share her hope for the future.

Tears come easily to the weathered eyes of Sai’ida Bin Sa’ad Ahmed Souhaib. She, along with five members of her family, lives in a one-room shelter in the Bab Al-Yemen (Yemen Gate) shantytown, one of the largest of 11 shantytowns in Sana’a.

Souhaib, a Yemeni, had a good job and life in Saudi Arabia in the 1970s but was forced to return to Yemen after her country supported Iraq in the Persian Gulf war. This was the fate of countless thousands of Yemenis. She returned, minus a husband who died there, and with no means to support her family.

“Now when I get hungry, I simply go out and beg,” she says. “All my children are on the streets.”

Souhaib and others in the shantytown say they are treated with contempt
outside their community.

Rawsha Hassan, 20, is another woman who lives in the Bab Al-Yemen shantytown. She, her parents and most of her 13 siblings live in a ramshackle
shelter there.

Hassan’s mother is a street sweeper in the center of the city. Her father, a former security guard, can no longer work. He can’t see well because of surgery gone wrong, she says.

Hassan’s sad, tired eyes peek through her luthma, a black veil revealing only the eyes, worn by most Yemeni women in public. She gazes at her dirty, dreary surroundings in the shantytown. She doesn’t want to bring children
into this world, she says.

In the shantytowns, men make important household decisions, even though, in many cases, the women and children bring in most of the income by begging.

Even the poorest families spend a significant amount of their money on qat, an amphetamine-like mild narcotic shrub that is chewed by men and women daily.

Hassan, like her mother, used to sweep the dusty streets of her capital city. But she stopped when a male cousin, also a sweeper, working the night shift was hit by a car whose driver didn’t even stop to look. Her cousin is disabled. Hassan now works as a janitor at a human rights organization. Although she makes less than her salary as a sweeper, she is happier.

Hassan would be even more content if she could continue her education. While in fifth grade she stopped because, as she recalls, her father told her school is not for girls. Also, Akhdam children are often rejected in schools for the same reasons adults are rejected in society, because they are considered unclean and immoral. Hassan is trying to get literacy training without her father’s knowledge.

Akhdam often have to resort to secrecy. While they are proud of their background among their peers, they usually do not advertise their social caste to outsiders. One successful Akhdam doctor, who has worked in a local hospital for years, does not reveal his social status, afraid he will lose his patients.

Officially, there are efforts to help the Akhdam. The Yemeni government is building a new housing project financed with international aid, says Noor Ba Aabad, assistant to the deputy minister of social affairs and labor.

There have been reports that owners of expensive villas near the housing
project intend to sell out because they don’t want to live near the Akhdam.

Ba Aabad, who has worked on women’s, children’s and poverty issues since
the 1970s, says she thinks the most important way to help the Akhdam is to
integrate them into mainstream society and improve their education.

While mainstream society is becoming more accepting of Akhdam, she says,
Akhdam have low self-esteem. It will take time to erase the effects of centuries of stereotyping, she says.

Society as a whole has to change its beliefs about Akhdam, says Jonathan
Puddifoot, country representative with Care International in Yemen. But the most disadvantaged group in Yemen has to find a way to rise above its
self-perceptions.

“The prejudice keeps them down,” he says, “and they keep themselves down as well.”

அரபியாவின் தீண்டத்தகாதவர்கள் - அல் அக்தும்

அரபு தீபகற்பத்தில் யேமனில் வாழும் தீண்டத்தகாதவர்கள் என்று ஒதுக்கி வைக்கப்பட்டுள்ள அல் அக்தும் ஜாதியினர் மிகவும் மோசமான சூழ்நிலையில் வாழ்கிறார்கள்.


http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/02/26/world/20080226YEMEN_index.html

In slums without hope, Yemen's untouchables
By Robert F. Worth Published: February 27, 2008


SANA, Yemen: By day, they sweep the streets of the Old City, ragged, dark-skinned men in orange jumpsuits. By night, they retreat to fetid slums on the edge of town.

They are known as "Al Akhdam" - the servants. Set apart by their African features, they form a kind of hereditary caste at the very bottom of the Yemeni social ladder.

Degrading myths pursue them: they eat their own dead; their women are all prostitutes. Worst of all, they are reviled as outsiders in their own country, descendants of an Ethiopian Army that is said to have crossed the Red Sea to oppress Yemen before the arrival of Islam.

"We are ready to work, but people say we are good for nothing but servants; they will not accept us," said Ali Izzil Muhammad Obaid, a 20-year-old man who lives in a filthy Akhdam shantytown on the edge of this capital. "So we have no hope."

In fact, the Akhdam - who prefer to be known as "Al Muhamasheen," or the marginalized ones - may have been in this southern corner of the Arabian Peninsula for as long as anyone, and their ethnic origins are unclear. Their debased status is a remnant of Yemen's old social hierarchy, which collapsed after the 1962 revolution struck down the thousand-year-old Imamate.

But where Yemen's other hereditary social classes, the sayyids and the judges and the sheiks, and even the lower orders like butchers and ironworkers, slowly dissolved, the Akhdam retained their separate position. There are more than a million of them among Yemen's fast-growing population of 22 million, concentrated in segregated slums in the major cities.

"All the doors are closed to us except sweeping streets and begging," Obaid said. "We are surviving, but we are not living."

The Akhdam have not been offered the kind of affirmative action programs that the Indian government has used to improve the lot of the Dalits, or untouchables, there. In part, that is because Yemen never had a formal caste system like India's.

As a result, the Akhdam have languished at the margins of society, suffering a persistent discrimination that flouts the egalitarian maxims of the Yemeni state.

Even the recent waves of immigrants from Ethiopia and Somalia, many of them desperately poor, have fared better than the Akhdam and do not share their stigma.

The Akhdam who work as street sweepers, for instance, are rarely granted contracts even after decades of work, despite the fact that all Yemeni civil servants are supposed to be granted contracts after six months, said Suha Bashren, a relief official with Oxfam here. They receive no benefits, and almost no time off.

"If any supervisor wants to dismiss them, they can do that," said Ali Abdullah Saeed Hawdal, who started working as a street sweeper in 1968. "The supervisors use violence against them with no fear of penalties. They treat them as people with no rights."

The living conditions of the Akhdam are appalling, even by the standards of Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the Arab world.

In one Akhdam shantytown on the edge of Sana, more than 7,000 people live crammed into a stinking warren of low concrete blocks next to a mountain of trash. Young children, many of them barefoot, run through narrow, muddy lanes full of human waste and garbage.

A young woman named Nouria Abdullah stood outside the tiny cubicle - perhaps 1.8 meters by 2.4 meters, or 6 feet by 8 feet, with a ceiling too low to allow her to stand up - where she lives with her husband and six children. Inside, a thin plastic sheet covered a dirt floor. A small plastic mirror hung on the wall, and a single filthy pillow lay in the corner.

Nearby, a single latrine, in a room approximately one square meter, serves about 50 people. The residents must carry water in plastic jugs from a tank on the edge of the slum, supplied by a charity group.

Wearing a brown dress, with a rag tied around her head, Abdullah said she and her family brought in no more than 1,000 Yemeni riyals a week, about $5. She begs for change, while her husband, Muhammad, gathers metal and electrical components from trash heaps and sells them.

Like most people in the shantytown, they have no documents, and they do not know how old they are.

"We are living like animals," Abdullah said. "We cook and sleep and live in the same room. We need other shelters."

When the winter rains come, the houses are flooded, she said. On the cold days in winter, the family burns trash to stay warm.

Richard Bramble, a British doctor who works in a charity-sponsored clinic inside the shantytown, said half of the deaths there over the past year were of children under the age of 5, and one-quarter were in the first month of life.

The death rates from preventable disease are even worse than the nationwide average in Yemen, where overall infant mortality is already an appalling 1 in 9, and maternal mortality is 1 in 10. Most of the women among the Akhdam start having children in their early teens, residents said.

Part of the problem, many members of the community say, is that most of the Akhdam have internalized their low status and do not try to better themselves, find real jobs or seek an education. Much of their meager income goes to buying qat, the plant whose leaves many Yemenis chew for its mildly narcotic effects.

"They do not even push their children to become soldiers," said Muhammad Abdu Ali, the director of the medical clinic in the shantytown and one of the Akhdam. "They have given up on changing their situation."

In the past two years, members of the Akhdam have begun to organize, creating a political front to lobby the government and seek development aid from charity groups. Earlier this month, hundreds of Akhdam demonstrated in the city of Taiz to protest their mistreatment, and afterward a government supervisor accused of stealing money from Akhdam street sweepers was fired.

But efforts to help the Akhdam have sometimes backfired. International donors have mostly preferred to work through Yemeni mediators, who have often misused or stolen the money intended for the Akhdam, said Rashad al-Khader, a Yemeni lawyer who has been representing the Akhdam for seven years.

The Yemeni government has occasionally built shelters for the Akhdam, but has not provided them documents for those shelters or the land, Khader said. And it has done little to help them improve their access to health care and education, despite a series of election-year promises to the community, according to Akhdam leaders.

The government does, however, seem embarrassed by the plight of the Akhdam, Khader said. When the new national political front was formed a few months ago, government officials insisted that its proposed name be changed - removing the term "the marginalized ones" in favor of "those in extreme poverty."

Some Akhdam have found ways to improve their station. Hawdal, after working as a street sweeper for 20 years, became a supervisor, and now lives in central Sana with his wife and five children in two rooms that are relatively clean, a world away from the slums at the city's edge.

He has sent all of his children to school, unlike most of the Akhdam, and one of them made it as far as ninth grade.

But Hawdal acknowledged sadly that all of his children had since dropped out. He was running out of money, he said. But that was not the only reason.

"They had no hope of doing anything except street sweeping," he said.

இஸ்லாமிய தீண்டாமையில் உழலும் அல் அக்தும் சிறுபான்மையினர்

அக்தம் என்றால் அரபி மொழியில் வேலையாள் என்று பொருளாம். அக்தம் என்று ஐந்து லட்சம் சிறுபான்மையினர் தீண்டாமையில் உழலுகின்றனர். யேமன் நாட்டின் மூன்று பெரிய ஜாதிகளையும் சேராதவர்கள் இந்த அக்தம் சிறுபான்மையினர். இவர்கள் நாலாம் ஜாதியாக யேமன் சமூகத்தில் தாழ்த்தப்பட்டவர்களாக வாழ்கின்றனர். இவர்கள் மீது எந்த ஒரு பாரபட்சமும் இல்லை என்று அரசாங்கம் சொன்னாலும், இவர்கள் தீண்டத்தகாதவர்களாகவே யேமனில் நடத்தப்படுகின்றனர்.

1962இல்தான் யேமனில் அடிமைமுறை ஒழிக்கப்பட்டது.

YEMEN: Hear Our Voices: "I hate my classmates calling me a servant"
05 Nov 2006 13:59:37 GMT
Source: IRIN

SANAA, 5 November (IRIN) - Akhdam [servants in Arabic] are, as the rest of Yemen's population, Arabic-speaking Muslims but because they do not belong to any of the three main Arab tribes that make up traditional Yemeni society, they are the lowest social caste in the country. They are marginalised and face economic hardship although the government says that it does not discriminate against them. Most of them live in mud-straw houses, tents, tin shacks and some are homeless. The majority are illiterate and are unemployed in the poverty-stricken country.

In most cases, Akhdam men, women and children survive by begging. Those with jobs work as road sweepers, porters, cobblers and shoe polishers.

Mainstream Yemeni society see them as slaves. According to legend, they are the descendants of Ethiopian invaders who briefly occupied Yemen some 1,500 years ago. With the abolition of slavery in Yemen in 1962, the Akhdam [singular khadem] are now all free but face widespread discrimination. It is estimated that there are some 500,000 Akhdam in Yemen [total population about 21.5 million]. Some 100,000 of Akhdam live on the outskirts of Sana'a.

IRIN spoke to three people from the Akhdam community who live in what is called "Akhdam City" in Sana'a, Yemen's capital.

Ahmed Yousof Mohammed Ali, 31. "I am married with three children. But I don't have a job. I live in poverty, and everyday I look for a job. If I find one, it is always to sweep the streets, or clean a house or office. I have to get any job so I can get food for my family. People have a bad image of us as we live isolated as if in a nest. We really need free education for our children as well as free medical services. If I don't have money, I can't go to hospital for medical treatment. The government should give us jobs as well.

Sharifa Ahmed ,60. "Every year, the General People's Congress [Yemen's ruling party in Yemen] gives us basic food. But this year the party hasn't offered us any support. Food is our main need. Our new house is better than the one we used to live in, but the situation now is worse than before. We have no water, no electricity and no food.

These three basic needs require money which we lack. At the end of each month, we have to pay water and electricity bills which we can't afford. Should we pay the [water and electricity] bills or should we pay for a visit to doctor, for textbooks, or above all, for a loaf of bread? We have had no water or electricity for three months as they have been cut off. Even charitable associations are no longer supporting us. How then can my husband and I maintain our 12 children?"

Fawaz Abdu Abdullah ,13. "The most difficult problem for me is when my classmates call me khadem [a servant]. I hate this the most and I hate them only for that very reason. I know they call me so deliberately to pick a quarrel with me, or provoke me or both.

Actually, we [the children of Akhdam community] don't have many friends.

I need a good education. Textbooks are not free. So far, the school administration has not given me any textbooks. Even our education is marginalised."

இஸ்லாமிய ஜாதிமுறை: அல் அக்தம்- அரபியாவில் தீண்டத்தகாத மனிதர்கள் என்று இழிவு

அரபியாவில் இருக்கும் ஜாதிமுறையில் அரபுகள் செல்லும் இடமெல்லாம் கொண்டு செல்லும் ஜாதிவெறியாலும் தினந்தோறும் பாதிக்கப்படும் பெண்களை பற்றியும் ஜாதிவெறியால் நிகழும் இழிவுகளை பற்றியும் தொடர்ந்து பதிந்து வருகிறேன்.

ஏமனில் அல் அக்தம் என்று தீண்டத்தகாத மனிதர்களாக ஏமனின் மக்களே இழிவு செய்யப்பட்டு 500000க்கும் மேற்பட்ட மனிதர்கள் கொடுமைக்கு ஆளாக்கப்படுகிறார்கள்.







நன்றி கவ்ண்டர்கரண்ட்ஸ்

Caste In Yemen
By Marguerite Abadjian
25 April, 2004
Baltimore Sun

SANA'A, Yemen - The walled shantytown near the Old City here makes a
horrifying impression:

Houses made of refuse, families as large as 15 living in one room, children eating what appears to be dirt, pools of disease-laden water, piles of garbage and human waste buzzing with flies, the stench. The scene followed Aisha Sulaiman even after she was far away. She couldn't forget it.

It is a place where children have gotten high snorting crushed glass. They
beg barefoot on the city streets - the soles of their feet callused and evidently immune to the blazing asphalt, fired by the incessant Yemeni sun.

Sulaiman, like many of the shantytown residents, belongs to the lowest
social caste in Yemen, the Akhdam. The Arabic word Akhdam means servants, and for centuries they have felt discrimination and isolation from mainstream society.

Though conditions have improved somewhat over the past few years, many in
mainstream society still stereotype them, considering them lowly, dirty,ill-mannered and immoral.

Even their plates are considered dirty. "Don't eat with the Akhdam because worms come out of their plates," the saying goes.

While there is no official record of the number of Akhdam in Yemen, they are considered to be the country's largest and poorest minority. Unlike all others in Yemen, they do not belong to a tribe. They are poorly educated and are not allowed to marry into higher social castes.

Legends of Akhdam origins abound. The most credible is that they descend from Abyssinian soldiers who stayed in Yemen after a failed invasion in the sixth century AD. The soldiers, from ancient Ethiopia, were so hated they were forced to accept the worst jobs, such as transporting and disposing of human sewage and collecting garbage.

Today, the most common job for male Akhdam is street cleaning. They also work as porters, foot soldiers and shoemakers. Women and children beg.

Sulaiman was considerably better off than most because of her tenacity. Some of her relatives don't believe women should be educated. They think women should sit at home, get married and have children, she says. But Sulaiman resisted and is halfway toward completing a university degree in philosophy. She is also determined not to have a large family that could lead to economic ruin.

Along the way, she has become a human rights trainer and educator, fighting for the rights of other Akhdam women and children who she believes suffer most. Her goal is to help the women become more self-confident and aware of their rights.

Many Akhdam do not share her hope for the future.

Tears come easily to the weathered eyes of Sai'ida Bin Sa'ad Ahmed Souhaib. She, along with five members of her family, lives in a one-room shelter in the Bab Al-Yemen (Yemen Gate) shantytown, one of the largest of 11 shantytowns in Sana'a.

Souhaib, a Yemeni, had a good job and life in Saudi Arabia in the 1970s but was forced to return to Yemen after her country supported Iraq in the Persian Gulf war. This was the fate of countless thousands of Yemenis. She returned, minus a husband who died there, and with no means to support her family.

"Now when I get hungry, I simply go out and beg," she says. "All my children are on the streets."

Souhaib and others in the shantytown say they are treated with contempt
outside their community.

Rawsha Hassan, 20, is another woman who lives in the Bab Al-Yemen shantytown. She, her parents and most of her 13 siblings live in a ramshackle
shelter there.

Hassan's mother is a street sweeper in the center of the city. Her father, a former security guard, can no longer work. He can't see well because of surgery gone wrong, she says.

Hassan's sad, tired eyes peek through her luthma, a black veil revealing only the eyes, worn by most Yemeni women in public. She gazes at her dirty, dreary surroundings in the shantytown. She doesn't want to bring children
into this world, she says.

In the shantytowns, men make important household decisions, even though, in many cases, the women and children bring in most of the income by begging.

Even the poorest families spend a significant amount of their money on qat, an amphetamine-like mild narcotic shrub that is chewed by men and women daily.

Hassan, like her mother, used to sweep the dusty streets of her capital city. But she stopped when a male cousin, also a sweeper, working the night shift was hit by a car whose driver didn't even stop to look. Her cousin is disabled. Hassan now works as a janitor at a human rights organization. Although she makes less than her salary as a sweeper, she is happier.

Hassan would be even more content if she could continue her education. While in fifth grade she stopped because, as she recalls, her father told her school is not for girls. Also, Akhdam children are often rejected in schools for the same reasons adults are rejected in society, because they are considered unclean and immoral. Hassan is trying to get literacy training without her father's knowledge.

Akhdam often have to resort to secrecy. While they are proud of their background among their peers, they usually do not advertise their social caste to outsiders. One successful Akhdam doctor, who has worked in a local hospital for years, does not reveal his social status, afraid he will lose his patients.

Officially, there are efforts to help the Akhdam. The Yemeni government is building a new housing project financed with international aid, says Noor Ba Aabad, assistant to the deputy minister of social affairs and labor.

There have been reports that owners of expensive villas near the housing
project intend to sell out because they don't want to live near the Akhdam.

Ba Aabad, who has worked on women's, children's and poverty issues since
the 1970s, says she thinks the most important way to help the Akhdam is to
integrate them into mainstream society and improve their education.

While mainstream society is becoming more accepting of Akhdam, she says,
Akhdam have low self-esteem. It will take time to erase the effects of centuries of stereotyping, she says.

Society as a whole has to change its beliefs about Akhdam, says Jonathan
Puddifoot, country representative with Care International in Yemen. But the most disadvantaged group in Yemen has to find a way to rise above its
self-perceptions.

"The prejudice keeps them down," he says, "and they keep themselves down as well."