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A generation of LOST children
Mubin S Khan reveals how a generation of young Bangladeshi children has been trafficked to the Middle East to work as camel jockeys, and the predators that are eyeing them upon their return…
photo by GMB Akash
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I am sitting in front of a family. The eldest boy is 17 and is called Kamal though the name his parents had given him was Manzoor. Kamal was born in Dhaka but he no longer knows Bangla and in fact speaks a mix of Hindu, Urdu and Arabic. He has sand-coloured skin, thick curly brown hair, a thin, wiry moustache, and large dull eyes which he never lifts to look up, speaking, only when spoken to, in a low, monotonous tone. He has lived in the UAE for the last ten years, has worked as a camel jockey and later as a jockey trainer and has very little recollection of how he ended up there. In fact, he was not even aware that he had travelled all the way from Bangladesh to the United Arab Emirates, until his mother had travelled all the way there to find him.
Kamal is among thousands of young boys kidnapped from South Asian countries every year and taken to the Middle East to live a life of slavery as camel jockeys. They are a generation of children stolen from their parents, starved to keep their statures light and short, and discarded by their owners when they reach the age of ten. Although the UAE government banned the use of children as jockeys as early as 1993, the law was not enforced until this year. In the face of economic sanctions the UAE have finally agreed to replace the children with robots. And as the repatriations happen, in waves, the scale of the problem is revealing its full extent. In 2005 alone over 500 Bangladeshi children have been estimated to be currently residing in refugee camps in the UAE. More than 40,000 young children are reported to be in use as jockeys in the Middle East at any given time, say human rights groups.
All these years later, Kamal suddenly finds himself in the midst of hundreds of other boys, all of whom recently found themselves unemployed, taken to camps, and finally deported to the country they had been abducted from. Kidnapped at an age which most of them have very little memory of, they have spent years in hard labour, living in harsh conditions of the desert, poorly fed, exposed to abuse and fatal injuries, they are back to where it all began. They speak none of the local languages, they have no connections to their past, they know no other vocation. Their lives have just begun, again.
There are two young boys beside Kamal. Saddam, the youngest, stands barely above three and a half feet, and yet, he has exhausted his usefulness as a camel jockey after having spent a few years in the trade. The camel owners only use children between the ages of 5-9, say industry insiders. Nurul Islam, the same age as Saddam, also a former jockey, is officially the youngest in the family, but in truth, he is not even a part of the family. Shefali, the mother, while arranging to travel to Dubai to find her eldest son, had cut a deal with the trafficker to provide two boys if she was to go an expense free trip, and had borrowed Nurul Islam from his mother, alongside Saddam.
It all began ten years ago when Kamal, then only seven, disappeared on his way back home from school in Dhaka’s Shahajadpur. Shefali — his mother — working at the time as a household help, as well as her husband Johor Islam were distraught at losing their eldest son. None of them had any clue as to what happened to Kamal.
A few weeks later, a news item appeared in the local papers which showed a photograph of a few Bangladeshi boys who had been arrested from a hotel room in India along with a trafficker. Shefali and Johor were shocked to see Kamal in the photograph. From the news item they also discovered the name of certain Jamal Hossain whom they knew as someone who often frequented the Nutunbazaar neighbourhood.
Kamal, meanwhile, vaguely recalls an incident in a hotel after hearing about the incident from his mother. He has no idea how he landed in Dubai, but does remember a plane ride with Jamal Hossain, his ‘fake’ father. Jamal had apparently promised Kamal that he was being taken to Dubai to study in a good school. His passport at the time claimed his name as Kamal Jamal.
In Dubai, Kamal was handed over to an ‘Arbab’, a dealer of jockeys, and Jamal had promised to take him away after a few days. Jamal would make two short appearances later on, one after eight months another after six years, but never to take him back.
For the first year of his stay Kamal spent his time in a house in the city of Umm Al Quwain alongside Sudanese and Mauritian children, learning how to ride a camel.
‘The trainer took his time to train us slowly starting with short leisurely rides. That is probably why I survived so long without any major injury,’ says Kamal, speaking of injuries most young jockeys become victims of.
A year later Kamal was sold to a camel owner who started him racing. Holed up in a desert, Kamal regularly trained to ride camels, sometimes taking short rides, called tamarin, to keep the camels in shape while he regularly clocked his speed on the stopwatch to work on his match performance.
‘I would have to wake up at three in the morning because the camels ran faster in the cool weather. Bare foot I would wince in pain when my feet touched the cold sand. There were a few of us, each assigned different aspects of looking after the camel like cleaning its droppings or feeding it. We were purposely given very little to eat, little packets of vegetables and dry bread that were brought in as supplies once a month, to keep our weights in check,’ remembers Mamun, a fellow 14-year old jockey recently returned from the UAE. Jockeys cannot exceed the weight of twenty kilograms as it would deter the camels from running fast.
Kamal would start with a monthly salary of 200 dirham (Tk.4,600) which he rarely received. In time Kamal would become a champion racer travelling to almost all the major cities in the Middle East including Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Doha, Kuwait, Jeddah earning as much 600 - 700 Dirhams in salary plus tips. Now he is awaiting a transfer of money from his UAE accounts to the amount of 20,600 dirham.
Back home, Shefali sought out Jamal Hossain at a local market. Jamal warned her against police and courts and instead promised her that if she managed to gather two boys to travel with her, she could go to Dubai to her son for free. ‘My husband insisted that I go and Nurul Islam’s mother, who was a friend and who had also made separate plans to go to Dubai, offered her son to me. Together we boarded a plane from Dhaka six years ago,’ says Shefali.
Jamal Hossain, however, had played a double game once again. In Dubai Shefali realised that instead of uniting her with her son Jamal had now sold her and her two sons to another Arbab. However, luckily for Shefali, this Arbab took heed to her tearful pleas and took it upon himself to find Kamal. Nine months later, Shefali was once again united with the son she had lost seven years earlier, and strangely, it was Kamal who recognised his mother before she did.
Shefali rented a small house, found work at different residences as house help, while her three sons, Kamal, Saddam, and the borrowed Nurul Islam made their earning as jockeys. The young boys would get a once a year holiday during Eid while Kamal, who had graduated to become jockey, was allowed more liberty.
Using children as camel jockey has been banned in the UAE since 1993. A further law that came into effect in September 2002, restricted the use of children under the age of 15 or under the weight of 45 kilograms as jockeys. Yet, the national sport of UAE, a tradition more than 2,000 years old was undeterred by such laws as well as the glare of the international agencies and media.
‘Despite efforts from human rights organisations from Pakistan, Bangladesh and the West the UAE authorities have paid very little attention to this problem,’ says Mominul Islam Shuruz, senior fact finding officer of Bangladesh National Women’s Lawyers Association, an organisation which, alongside the Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Foreign Affairs are primarily responsible for securing the recent return of over 200 camel jockeys from the UAE.
‘A recent report by Transparency International early this year ranked the UAE amongst countries who have the worst record in upholding the Child Rights Convention. It served as a wake up call for the UAE authorities who could find themselves under international sanctions because of this,’ adds Shuruz.
Kamal, Saddam, Nurul Amin and Shefali suddenly found themselves rounded up and sent to a camp at Banias in the UAE. In fact, Shuruz, accompanied by Sk. Abdur Rouf, Deputy Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, and Nurul Islam, Senior Assistant Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, went to Abu Dhabi in May 5 to finalise the repatriation of the 223 registered Bangladeshi camel jockeys living in three camps in Mafraq, Sewahan, and Banias. On August 11, the first batch of people arrived in Dhaka from Abu Dhabi. There were 74 people in the group, 38 of whom were jockeys. Shefali and her family were amongst the first group. A total of 219 people have so far arrived from Abu Dhabi, 110 of whom were jockeys.
Camel racing is a Middle Eastern tradition from ancient times. In recent years, it has emerged as a leisure event, held usually on Fridays, or on national holidays, similar to the Derby. Races can both be a major occasion where the champion camels have been gathered at the famous tracks or for the entertainment of a guest or a race organised impromptu if two friends meet after many years. Generally, two kinds of camels are used in racing, the white or golden ‘Anafi’ and the brown or black ‘Boushari’. The camels are usually well fed on oats, bran, dates and cows milk. However, close to the race date, their diet is cut short so that they weigh light. More importantly, the jockeys need to weigh even lighter, usually under twenty kilograms, and that is where the use of young boys comes in. These boys, usually in the age bracket of four to six are underfed to maximise their use as a jockey. It is also believed that the cries of pain and anguish from the children generally make a camel run faster during a race.
In the ancient times, the Arabs used their own children for the races. Since the 1980’s however, with the region’s rise in economic stature, young Arab boys were no longer available for racing. ‘The traffickers entered the foray right then,’ says Shuruz. ‘Young, poor and malnutritioned children from neighbouring countries Ethiopia, Mauritius, Somalia and Sudan were at first used. Slowly, children from Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka entered the Middle East, trafficked through the traditional smuggling routes,’ adds Shuruz.
Poverty serves as the main reason behind the children being smuggled out of their own countries. The economic benefits in smuggling in children is so high for the people in these countries, alongside poor legislation and enforcement, that it makes it virtually impossible to stop the trafficking of jockeys from this end. Children can either be drugged and kidnapped from playfields or schools, lured out of their houses by family members, relatives, or neighbours, but in a high number of cases they are directly sent or sold off with the direct connivance of their parents.
‘BNWLA has not been able to file a single lawsuit in this regard. The cases are really complicated as is the case of Kamal. His mother can sue Jamal for kidnapping her son but at the same time she herself is responsible for kidnapping Nurul Amin,’ says Shuruz. ‘A lot of these children are directly sent in search of a livelihood,’ adds Shuruz.
In fact, one major misconception that all these children are trafficked has been proven wrong by the stories of recently repatriated people. Among the 219 recent returnees in August, only 110 are jockeys the rest are family members. ‘A number of parents have visibly taken part in sending their children. However, what happens in most cases is that the mothers are at first offered a job as a household help in the Middle East and are asked to take at least two children along. Once they are there, the traffickers come and take away the children. So, from a legal point of view, the documents show that the mothers are the ones responsible for trafficking in their own children,’ says Shuruz.
In recent weeks this has given rise to a new problem. The Special Branch of Police and immigration officials, some of whom had allegedly played a part in the trafficking are now threatening to apprehend parents of repatriated jockeys.
‘Some of these women had been shown as wives of the traffickers themselves, without their knowledge. Sensing their own guilt as well as an opportunity to make some money, law enforcing officials have now turned on them,’ says Shuruz.
However, this is not the only front in which the returnees are facing problems. The traffickers are aware that a lot of these people have returned with a lot of money, and are now claiming that they will refuse to divorce these woman (the passports have been attained with fake marriage certificates) until they are paid a significant amount of money. ‘People as high up as a village chairman are sometimes siding with the traffickers,’ says Shuruz.
Off date, three cases have been filed at the Airport Police Station against alleged traffickers. A senior official of the Special Branch however says that the cases are not what they seem on face value. ‘It is unfortunate that victims are now being arrested. However, on paper work, this is the only primary move we can make. In fact, after booking them we can go into the details and discover the main culprits. With out that, we do not have a clue,’ says the official.
What has troubled legislators, international organisations and human rights organisations over the years, is the way the children are being used in the Middle Eastern countries. ‘The children are underfed, kept in unhygienic conditions in the middle of deserts, ill-treated during training, and left under the patronage of a few individuals in far away deserts, where they are susceptible to sexual abuse,’ says Shuruz. ‘Camel racing itself exposes them to serious injuries including injury to their sexual organs, internal bleeding, damage to the spine or legs when they fall off camels, being crushed to death or prolonged exhaustion and fatigue which can lead to further complications like permanent mental trauma. Usually, with the use of young boys as jockeys being illegal, cases have been reported were children were left to die in deserts instead of receiving medical attention. Some are even buried in unmarked graves,’ he adds.
A recent report in a clinical journal on sports medicine in the UK found that children younger than nine and some as young as five have been treated for camel racing injuries at a hospital in the UAE. Seventeen of the boys treated between 1992 and 2003 were left with permanent disabilities and three died. The report further said that 40 per cent of the injuries they looked at were severe enough to require long term treatment, with an average hospital stay of six days. Most were injuries to the arms, legs and head and were caused by falls. The most severe occurred when the camel fell down on top of the thrown rider.
Mamun remembers stories of an incident which happened a year and a half before he arrived at his camp. Two boys had died, one after being refused food the other during a race when he lost balance and cracked his neck, his neck lolling about, his young dead body jumping up and down as the race went on. Mamun himself was not excused from the dangers. ‘I was racing down the track during one of the races when my camel rode off track and collided into a car that was driving parallel to the course. I now have a disjointed ankle,’ says Mamun.
He was one of the luckier ones. In August 1999, a four-year-old jockey from Bangladesh was found abandoned and close to death in the desert. In 2000, Anti-Slavery International reported the case of a four-year-old jockey from Bangladesh whose employer burnt him on his legs for under-performing. The boy was left crippled.
For years, children have disappeared from their homes, have had to live in inhuman conditions to make a living and to satisfy the whims of the Sheikhs and have met grievous and fatal ends. But the question haunting people now is not so much on how to prevent it, as using children as camel jockeys seems to have finally stopped with the introduction of Japanese robots simulating their activities, but what to do with them now. The children have returned in three batches and a further five batches are scheduled to arrive. They are currently being kept at a safehouse in Agargaon and are slowly being sent back to their original homes with either their families coming to claim them or BNWLA officials searching for their homes. BNWLA and the government are left wondering on how to involve themselves in their re-integration process.
I look at Kamal. He is 17 and hardly knows a single word in Bengali. He knows nothing about Bangladesh, only told that he was born there, he remembers nothing about his family, only told he was with them once. He knows camels, the desert, Urdu and Arabic. Even if someone spoke his language he interacts very little, only answers questions. Does not look anyone in the eye. I ask him what he will do now, he only shrugs. It is not as if he appears unhappy, but he doesn’t seem happy either; only disinterested. His passions, emotions, understanding does not belong to this place. Mamun on the other hand looks quite scared, thrown into a completely alien world. He has been told that education is his only way out. That is what he is banking all his hopes on now. They have a quite a few hard years ahead of them, may be, in some cases, scarier than the ones they have been rescued from.
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