[nukkad] The poor are less human--Children as camel jockeys

["Dr.M.C. Gupta" <>]

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*Naheed Anjum - Journalist **  *



  Saturday, May 17, 2008, Jamadi-ul-Awwal 11, 1429 A.H.

Editor-in-Chief: Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman


*16 CAMEL JOCKEY KIDS TO GET TREATMENT IN USA*



Saturday, May 17, 2008By Atif NadeemLAHOREAT least 16 of the repatriated
Pakistani camel jockey children from the UAE will visit the United States to
get modern medical treatment, as their health conditions are not still
stable, The News has learnt. The sources said some of the US
non-governmental organizations, working for human rights, were concerned
about the health condition of some of 16 children who could not recuperate
despite the earnest efforts of the doctors at the various hospitals. These
US NGOs will take up the issue of human rights violation with the UAE
government, as the sport of the camel jockey is considered as the most
hazardous pastime which has claimed lives of many of the innocent children
hailing from the third world countries. The sources said some members of the
legal community of the US were interested in starting a litigation procedure
to sue the UAE government in a bid to stop illegal practice of use of
children in the sport of camel jockey in UAE. The sources said names of
these were still avoided to release, as they could be traced by those people
who could subvert the children's visit to the US by instigating their
parents not to send their children to the US. Some of the children, who were
repatriated from the UAE, were escaping back to UAE, as their parents were
compelling them to go to UAE so that they could earn money for them. These
children are living in private prisons as a continued-practice of slavery in
UAE. The UAE government gave a compensation of $1000 to each of the 73
Pakistani child camel jockeys who were rescued from the Emirates in 2005.
These jockeys, aged four to 10 years, are ruthlessly tied to camels and made
to take part in races. They were freed in May 2005 following an agreement
between UNICEF and the UAE government to help return and reunite underage
camel racers with their families in their home countries, he added. The UAE
government also banned the use of children under 18 or weighing less than 45
kg as camel jockeys.Rackets of human traffickers smuggled innocent children
to the UAE from poor third world countries where they were either sold
deliberately by their parents to the traffickers in order to use the money
to support the rest of their family or support their own drug or drink
habits while others were kidnapped and brought to the UAE by the smuggling
agents. While talking to this scribe, Ansar Burney, who left for Geneva on a
ten-day visit, said that the US human rights organization had contacted to
the families of the children who were used as camel jockeys in the UAE. He
said he had facilitated those NGOs in this regard. He said he would meet
some of the Members of Parliament in London to discuss human rights issues,
especially the matter of underage child camel jockeys in UAE and other
Middle Eastern countries, as thousands of former child camel jockeys were
still missing in UAE. He blamed that a many evidences suggested that there
were still a common use of innocent underage children as jockeys even after
the ban imposed on them in UAE. He said there were still at least 2400 camel
jockey children, hailing from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and
many other African countries, missing in the UAE, as only 1100 jockeys were
recovered and repatriated from the UAE few years ago. Burney said Dubai and
Abu Dhabi were the centres of this activity with four of the main stadiums
located near the palaces of the rulers. The ruling families were said to own
most of the camel camps, he alleged. These children, living wretched lives,
were abused and tortured daily and they had to live and sleep in hot and
crowded huts made from corrugated irons sheets without electricity in the
high desert temperatures of above 52 degrees centigrade. The food they were
given in the camps was unhygienic and worse than what was fed to the racing
camels. The children were forced to race on the camels two or three times a
day in the boiling hot temperatures of the desert after which they had to
serve their masters, do whatever chores they were given and were also
sexually abused by the men running the camps. During training, these
children, mostly boys but also some girls, often fell down and were badly
injured or crushed to death and they were never taken to hospital. The
children were fastened to camels with ropes to stop them from falling but
the ride was so rough that many did fall. Burney said that, during the last
few years, he had managed to rescue hundreds of such children from the
slavery and rehabilitated them in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Yemen,
India, Sudan, Ethiopia and other parts of the world. "Children as young as
one and a half years are used and abused by these people with no regret of
their actions or any fear of god. It is a gruesome idea that torturing
children and making them disabled at such a young age is considered an
enjoyable sport", Ansar Burney stated. "They do not use their own children
because they know what happens to the children who are camel jockeys. They
use the 'imported' children. For some reason, they seemed to believe that
children from poorer families or poorer countries were somehow lesser
human", he said.

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