Tea estate workers seek 'basic rights' as citizens

The 1.5 million-strong Malaiyaha community is landless, overworked and underpaid, say activists

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(UCAN) Hundreds of people from Sri Lanka's historically oppressed Malaiyaha (hill country) community held demonstrations to emphasize their basic rights as citizens of the country.

"We demand that Malaiyaha Tamil people be accepted as free and equal Sri Lankan citizens," said Shalini Manori, a 54-year-old tea estate worker, who participated in the June 1 demonstration in Hatton town.

The majority of the community's 1.5 million people work in tea and rubber estates, contributing to the country's crucial foreign exchange earnings as Sri Lanka accounts for close to 20 percent of global tea exports.

But its tea workers are landless and the poorest, and live under a constant threat of forced displacement as they lack land and housing rights, their leaders say. Most worker-families live on the estates in 400-square-foot rooms in abject poverty.