The Arab sheikhs on their annual bird hunts in Pakistan also run side errands: kidnapping or buying little boys for use in sport.
Intense media interest forced many of the Gulf kingdoms to ban the use of children under 15 for camel racing. “The move failed miserably because child traffickers simply got fake passports which stated a four-year-old’s age as 16,” says Mr Burney.Most of the repatriated children hail from the south-east Punjab districts of Bahawalpur, Dera Ghazi Khan and Rahimyar Khan… These districts are the preferred hunting grounds for Gulf sheikhs, some of whom go there every year to hunt the houbara bustard… The three districts are also home to the Cholistan – one of Pakistan’s two main deserts and one of the few areas in the country where camels are regularly used for travel and trade. [Link]
These 40,000 kids are imprisoned, and many are raped:
… the boys are kept in terrible prison-like conditions where they are deliberately underfed to keep them light so the camels can run faster. [Link]It is not uncommon for child jockeys to fall off and be injured while racing, and their illegal status means race track owners are often reluctant to take them to hospital… the boys often arrive with broken hands or broken legs. And many, he says, have been sodomised.
One boy shows me the scar he was left with after being trampled by a camel. Crudely stitched, it stretches from his chest down to his hips… “There was a child in the camp, and because he wanted to leave the camp and go to Dubai, one of the racetrack owners ran over the child in a truck and killed him,” he tells me. [Link]
Addicted to petro-riyals, the Pakistani government turns a blind eye:
It is easy to convince parents here to part with their children for a camel jockey’s wage. They may get a meagre $82 a month but it is a sum a family would struggle for months to earn… the government is reluctant to act for fear of causing diplomatic embarrassment to valued Arab friends… [Link]
Some have begun testing robot jockeys to put a dent in the slave trade:
“The mechanical jockey is light in weight and receives orders from the instructor via a remote control system fixed on the back of the camel,” the statement says. Illustrations previously released show a system capable of leaning from side to side and pulling on the reins… An unnamed Swiss company was reportedly paid $1.3m to develop the robotic jockeys, which will be sold for around $5500 each.Iagnemma says making a robotic jockey that could automatically control a camel during a race would be an even more interesting problem. “The logical extension is to develop an autonomous jockey,” he says. “And then, I guess, a robot camel.” [Link]
Maybe someday they’ll develop a robot child-abusing oil zillionaire…but how will they program it to be as evil as the real thing?
The blue collar workers in UAE are not treated much better than these child camel jockeys.
Barbaric. There is another reason for using children as young as possible in these races. The younger the children , the more they cry, while being strapped to a running camel. The more the children cry, the more camels get agitated and run faster. Repulsive , isn’t it?
…Develop an artificial intelligence program that allows the bot to adapt to its surrounding and then put it in a perverse society where the women are second class citizens and the men don’t have to work to build a productive society since they’ve been bequeathed the worlds’s most important natural resource.
I was going to mention this in the bird hunting post….hopefully there will be a day when no desi has to go to the Gulf for a job.
I cannot wait for the oil to ran out. This will teach them a lesson.
I’d love to see these child abusers have to race through the desert with bits in their mouths … and camels on top.
Seems like these Gulf sheiks are systematic abusers of other people of color, South Asian examples being these boys and the Sri Lankan maidservants (there are earlier posts on SM).
This makes me sick. Completely and utterly sick. Where will they go? Does the UN do anything about this?
I need to find out.
I know they work on trafficking in general, and perhaps extend to this particular. If you contact Andolan, they might be able to tell you.
This is the real world friends. This is what happens when we allow ourselves to be ruled by a monied elite. Those who control money systems and the energy supplies that feed them can operate with impunity.
When centralized resources and money systems are done away with, then there may be the chance for real freedom in this world. Until such time, expect things to get worse.
http://www.antislavery.org/archive/submission/submission2005-cameljockeys.htm
Many things on their website.
ASI, among others, works a lot on this issue. It is sometimes approached through work on trafficking, but also through work on child labour, especially through the framework of International Labour Organization Convention 182 which details the “worst forms” of child labour. Actually, trafficking is listed as one of the worst forms, but a recently ratifed protocol to the convention on transnational organized crime has established trafficking as a separate issue in some ways. Also, insofar as this relates to bondage, there are many grass roots and local civil society organizations which do work on these issues. This is important to know as some South Asian countries deviate from international law definitions of bondage and worst forms on matters of principle. I am not an expert on this ssue, but you might look at this site also to see in what cotnext this issue is dealt with mroe broadly.
http://www.sparcpk.org/
keep me inform of diferent types of child rights violation in pakistan. LLM(INTERNATIONAL LAW)
These sheikhs can feel the tragic trauma, if their own child to be the jockeys.