Author: dpa
Publication: Dawn, Karachi
Date: November 17, 2000
Shortly after sunrise
and again before sunset every day Sheizad and the other little riders are
strapped to the backs of camels for endless hours of training at the racetracks
amid the sand dunes and glittering skyscrapers of this rich Arab emirate.
Behind a camel's hump,
the frail figures of some of the children - most of them only five or six
years old - are virtually invisible. Despite a government ban seven
years ago against the use of young children as camel jockeys, the practice
is still widespread in Dubai and the rest of the United Arab Emirates.
Hundreds of children
are forced or lured into a life of virtual slavery as jockeys in several
Gulf countries, where camel racing has been a traditional sport.
Most of the children come from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and
Sudan - countries bound together by poverty.
Sheizad, from Bangladesh,
is too young even to know his age, which cannot be more than five.
On a warm afternoon,
he arrived at the Camel Race Track in Dubai, together with other young
waifs in the back of a van. Nearly all of them are dirty, barefoot
and looking like orphans robbed of their childhoods.
By contrast, at the nearby
Nad Al-Sheba track which hosts the six million-dollar Dubai World Cup every
year, horses usually arrive in clean, air-conditioned comfort.
Most of these children
have either been abducted by unscrupulous traffickers who sell them to
agents in the United Arab Emirates for 20,000 dirhams (approx Rs0.3 million),
or have been sold by poor parents or relatives, or lured here under false
pretences.
These include promises
to their parents that the children will get good work and education, said
Ansar Burney, a human rights activist from Pakistan who has helped return
some of the children to their families.
The agents, most of them
from the Indian subcontinent, are the middlemen between the kidnappers
and local sheikhs or powerful families who keep the children and train
them between eight or nine hours a day.
The people in charge
of the children mistreat them, and they beat them. While they give
very good food to the camels, the children are not even allowed a proper
meal for fear that they will gain too much weight and be heavy for the
camels.
Often, the children are
forced onto crash diets in order to lose weight before an important race.
The small jockeys are
bound to a camel's back, often using adhesive straps. But sometimes
the kids slip off and either get trapped underneath the camel or are trampled.
It is not uncommon for children to fall off or get dragged along, sometimes
to their deaths, according to a 1999 report from the London-based human
rights group Antislavery International.
The children work hard
and long hours. They usually go to sleep between 10pm and 11pm, and
get up at 4am for the start of their daily training an hour later.
The children's training
extents until 11am or 12am and then in the afternoon between 3pm and 6pm.
The use of children in
the camel races has been illegal in the UAE since 1993. The regulations
prohibit children from racing camels, and call for jockeys to weigh at
least 45 kilograms in keeping with international standards for horse jockeys.
Once Sheizan is atop
a camel, his tactic is to utter a series of bloodcurdling screams from
the outset, whipping the animal as much as he can in order to make it run
faster.
But if Sheizan's camel
comes first in the race, no wealth or fame awaits the child. All
the honours will go to the camel's owner.
