posted
Real Sports on HBO is doing a story on trafficking of children for use as camel jockeys.
The show documented the conditions the children live under: starved and sleep-deprived to keep their weight down, forced to serve the trainers, branded, beaten, and hung from chains for punishment. Here's a site on the topic.
quote:"In the Middle East, young children's lives are put at risk for the entertainment of thousands of spectators at camel races. Children as young as six are trafficked from Asia or Africa to supply the demand for child jockeys. The camels are valuable assets, worth millions of dollars. The children are viewed as cheap and expendable.
"Following the deaths of many boys, from falls or being trampled, ASI mounted a successful campaign and the United Arab Emirates banned the practice. However, in 1997, newspapers reported the death in a race of another 10-year-old boy from Bangladesh. Children are still exploited to train the camels, and new trafficking routes have opened up from Africa."
I'm seldom surprised by the cruelties people subject children to, and unfortunately this isn't the worse thing that happens to them.
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*shakes head* Just when I think I have heard enough terrible things people do... I hear something else Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Folks, it is just the tip of the iceberg in the Middle East. Slavery still exists there and it is huge.
Posts: 2848 | Registered: Feb 2003
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A friend of mine - tall, blonde, good looking female - was in Egypt about 15 years ago - vacation with a tour group. She was kidnapped and her kidnappers were going to sell her into slavery. Somehow she was rescued. Not sure exactly how - she didn't like talking about it.
It's not just children, either.
Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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