Kidnapped boy camel jockeys rescued from life of fear and misery

[emad]

Kidnapped boy camel jockeys rescued from life of fear and misery
By Peter Foster, South Asia Correspondent
(Filed: 06/08/2005)

Boy camel jockeys - often snatched as babies, mistreated and trained for races to amuse oil-rich sheikhs in the United Arab Emirates - are finally beginning to return home.

Since the 1970s, children have been taken in their tens of thousands from their homes in rural Pakistan, Bangladesh and India to work as featherweight jockeys in camel races, the UAE's de facto national sport.

They were kidnapped, conned or coerced from poor families, and then whisked off to desert lands where they were half-starved to give their mounts precious ounces of weight advantage.

After almost a decade of pressure by human rights groups and the United Nations children's fund, Unicef, the UAE authorities agreed last month to enforce a ban on the use of child jockeys.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/08/06/wboys06.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/08/06/ixworld.html

[rzemanfl]

1. I always thought camel jockey was a slur, like raghead or

wog.

[Glorfindel]

2. Some photos at link below...what a disgusting practice!

www.antislavery.org/homepage/resources/cameljockeysgallery/gallery.htm

[MercutioATC]

3. I thought they were using robots now...