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The official blog of Fausta's Blog Talk Radio show.

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Maybe Dick Durbin should read about child camel jockeys
Twenty-two child camel jockeys who returned from the United Arab Emirates last week are undergoing psychotherapy to help them deal with their traumatic experiences in the Gulf
The boys were evidently traumatised by the abject conditions under which they were kept by the camel and racetrack owners.

The boys were crowded into huts and slept on hard floors.
. . .
Shaukat recalls getting only a piece of bread and tea for breakfast and some rice with lentils for the rest of the day.
. . .
"My sheikh did not torture me," he says. "Of course, sometimes he would slap me or beat me if I stole something from him or made a mistake."

'Not scared'

Independent researchers, including documentary makers have, however, talked of severe torture methods that involved boys being hung from chains and flogged with camel whips.

Children fell off camels all the time, but if you didn't break a limb you just got up and continued.
All this is related to modern-time slavery: "The Child Protection and Welfare Bureau's assistant director, Zubair Ahmad Shad, tells the BBC news website that the practice of sending young children to the Gulf to work as camel jockeys was linked to human trafficking."

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