AEGAEUM JOURNAL ISSN NO: 0776-3808

CHILD ABUSE IN ’S FREE THE CHILDREN: A YOUNG MAN FIGHTS AGAINST CHILD LABOR AND PROVES THAT CHILDREN CAN CHANGE THE WORLD DR. P. PANDIA RAJAMMAL FACULTY OF ENGLISH KALASALINGAM ACADEMY OF RESEARCH AND EDUCATION DEEMED TO BE UNIVERSITY

A. SHARULAKSHMI III BA ENGLISH KALASALINGAM ACADEMY OF RESEARCH AND EDUCATION DEEMED TO BE UNIVERSITY

Abstract: Craig Kielburger is a Canadian author, speaker, social entrepreneur and human rights activist in . He was also a children’s rights activist. He is the co-founder of the organizations ‘Free the Children’Craig Kielbuger contacted many human rights organizations to speak about child labour during which he got a relationship with Alam Rahman. Both of them spoke about and child labour for more than two hours. Craig formed the Free the Children organisation with his friends. Then he did more actions to stop child labour in the world.

KEY WORDS: social entrepreneur, human rights, activist, child labour and abuse

Craig Kielburger was born on December 17, 1982 in Thronhill, Ontrio, Canada. His parents, Theresa and Fred Kielburger both of them were teachers. He had one elder brother, Marc Kielburger. Craig Kielburger studied at Blessed Scalabrini Catholic School, in Thornhill, Canada, and Mary Ward Catholic Secondary School in Scarborough, , Canada. In 2002, he started his higher studies in Peace and Conflict Studies in the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at . He completed Kellogg-Schulich - Executive MBA Program at New , in 2009, as the youngest graduate. Craig Kielburger is a Canadian author, speaker, social entrepreneur and human rights activist in Canada. He was also a children’s rights activist. He is the co-founder of the organizations ‘Free the Children’ later renamed as ‘We Charity’, and ‘Me to We’.

Craig Kielbuger contacted many human rights organizations to speak about child labour during which he got a relationship with Alam Rahman. Both of them spoke about Iqbal Masih and child labour for more than two hours. Craig formed the Free the Children

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organisation with his friends. Then he did more actions to stop child labour in the world. One day Craig met Dr. Panuddha Boonpala, a woman from the International Labour Organization in Geneva. She told Craig, “If you really want to understand the issue of child labour, then you should go to South and meet the children yourself.” Craig decided to make a trip to South Asia to know about the issue of child labour. After facing many struggles, he started the trip with Alam Rahman. First, he went to Dhaka, the capital of . There they saw poverty. They went to the largest slum to understand their living conditions. They came to know that eighty percent of rickshaw drivers are from slums because of poverty. They found one informal school. It is different, rather than trying to get the child Swiss-based organisation group was taking school towards their working place. There Craig met one boy who had a wound on his ankle but had not consulted a doctor, as he did not have money. Alam and Craig met many organizations for children. In Bangladesh, many females were illiterate because they had no problem with young girls working. One woman from the organisation of children said it. Girls were mostly working as domestic workers. More than five thousand children were working full hours for low wages in the garment industries in Bangladesh. Then Craig went to Thailand. He read much about the so-called “sex trade” involving children. It was common in Thailand. Alam wanted solid evidence. Craig, Alam, and Mick decided to get involved in the operation. Mick was a police officer in Australia. He came to Thailand to do undercover work for a human rights organization in order to gather evidence against the sexual business especially of children. They went to Patpong, the world's most notorious district. There were many nude dance clubs and massage parlours. Mick told more things about child labour and sex trade. He said that people came to Thailand from all over the world in search of sex.

Girls did not want to be prostitutes but they were kidnapped from the hill tribes in northern Thailand and brought there to work in the brothel. There were many Paedophiles, people who were sexually attracted to children. Pimps set the highest prizes for the youngest children because they were free of AIDs. It was an evil thing. None of the girls had families to go to. Some mothers of these girls are also abused by evil men. In some families, the man of the family had kidnapped the women in the brothel. Craig felt awkward collecting the evidence but for him it is an important thing. There were also many kids working in the train stations as menial porters, in fabric factories, and child made shoe, rather than sex trade. When the Fireworks factory exploded in West Bengal, many children were injured in the explosion. It was worst thing. Over one and half million children worked in the fireworks

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factory in . Many of the children suffered from lung and kidney disease because of the sulphur phosphorus and other chemicals they inhaled every day. In Calcutta, Craig and Alam participated in the march against the fire explosion in West Bengal fire factory. There also parents, university students and many. They marched through the city of Calcutta to stop the child labour. In the protest, the Marcher shouted “Aatishbaddzi band karo, bal majdoori band karo!” and the followers echoed “Band karo! Band karo!” which means “Stop using fire crackers! Ban child labour!” It was the first time that Craig was involved in a political demonstration.

The tragedy is that one mother who participated in the march had lost her children in the fireworks factory explosion. Their bodies were unrecognizable. In another case, the owners of the same factory had convinced a young boy to quit the school and work for them but he was killed on the first day of his job in the same devastating blast. Through the march, Craig came to know that children could see the march not as the game or the diversion for the afternoon. They were marching for their future life. The march moved into the centre of the city. There was traffic, beside the TV crews and newspaper reporters and other audience. The ordinary people on the street read the signs and symbols in the boards that the protestors had in their hand and asked questions to each other. When they were marching, one young girl ran after them to sell food. It was an ironic condition. The march came to a stop in front of the government office of West Bengal. A chain of police blocked all entrances. The protesters sat down. They raised voice against the child labour and for free and compulsory primary education. Soon the protest came to end.

In India, there were many tea stalls. Craig met a twelve-year-old boy, in one of the tea stalls. He was amazed at seeing the boy’s hard work. The boy placed a huge teapot on red- hot coal and poured boiling milk into it from the cauldron. When Craig spoke to that boy, he came to know that the boy was working from four in the morning to nine o'clock at night every day. He quit his school because his father needed him to help at the tea stall. Craig encountered many kids in the largest market in Calcutta. There were kids working everywhere. Many helped to offload the produce; others sold it in the stall. He saw a six- year-old boy in the market. He told them that he made only a few rupees a day and used it to buy food for his family. He said that he worked here until ten at night, and then he went home to eat with his mother. He did not go to school because his teacher beat him for coming late and for not doing his homework. He was not able to do his homework because until night he worked in the market. Thus, when he came to home, he was too tired. If he

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tried to do it, he would wake up late in morning and reach the school late. In some schools, staff was very rude to the poor.

Craig and Alam then travelled to Kathmandu, in Nepal. There they had the first official meeting with Child Workers in Nepal (CWIN) organisation, headed by Gauri Pardhan. The CWIN organisation has worked throughout Nepal to oppose the widespread exploitation of children. It estimated that in a country of eighteen million, there were close to four million children under the age of fourteen involved in full-time or part-time labour. The children worked as farm labourers, to working in carpet and garment industries, to domestic servitude, to the trafficking of young girls out of the country to the brothels of India and Thailand. Craig and Alam spent much of their time in Nepal with the CWIN project to help the street children of Kathmandu. When they walked at night, they had seen these children hanging out near the hotels, restaurants, and the other spot the tourists frequently visited. Most of the children were nine to fifteen years old but some of them were as young as six. Their appearance: unruly hair, dirty clothes covering their thin bodies, faces always scared or bearing sores. These kids known as “kathe” in Nepal had made the streets their home. CWIN estimates that there are fifteen thousand kids on the street of Kathmandu. Kids were not able to survive on the streets of Kathmandu because some people often beat and rob them. These kids faced the cold winters, hunger and lived without a home.

Craig met another boy in Kathmandu. The boy’s age was not more than eight years old. He told his story of how he entered the work to Craig. He was born in a small village in the hills of Nepal. When he was a baby, his father deserted him and his mother. Then his mother remarried and got another child. The new husband was a drug addict. One-day, a stranger showed up in the village. The man had come to buy the children and take them away with him. Then he would resell the kids as labourers. The boy’s parents took the money and gave him to that man. Then the boy was taken to the teashop. He used to wash cups and glasses. If he broke one, his master would yell at him, call him stupid, and then beat him up. After several months, the boy escaped from the teashop. He ended up in the street. The only skill he had was washing teacups. Then he found a job in another teashop, but this man was ruder than the first one. The boy tried to escape many times but every time he was caught by the master and beaten, then he became sick. When the man came to know that the boy was dying, he left the boy in the street. The street kids, who discovered him, told a worker from the CWIN organisation that they had found a dead body in a black alley. When they saw the

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boy was still alive, they took him to the hospital where he recovered. The boy said to Craig, “They all thought I would die. But I didn’t”, the boy said proudly.

The next day, Craig saw vehicles that looked like a cross between a taxi and a minibus, with room. The name of the vehicles was tempo. The young boy was standing on the back bumper of the tempo. Craig asked the guide that he could talk to some of these children. The guide took them to a street in the centre of Kathmandu. It was the place that many of the tempos came to be refuelled. The vehicle could carry eight or ten people. The passenger got in and off through the open doorway at the back. Tempo owners hired young boys because they were lightweight and cheap labour, to announce the stops, to direct the passengers, collect fares and to stop any one from jumping off without paying. When tempos are in motion, the boys stand on the back step and hang into the frame of the open doorway. It was not an easy or safe job. There Craig, Alam and the guide met one boy. He was waiting for his workday to begin. He was twelve years old and had an infection on his mouth and chin. The boy worked twelve hours a day for thirty rupees. The boy said that he wanted to become a tempo driver. On the roadside, Craig saw a young girl sitting in the ground and selling oranges and small candies from a broad, flat basket. Whenever the cars stopped or caught in the traffic, she would run window to window with her basket and sell the thing. She worked long hours in the blazing sun, breathing smoke and carbon monoxide. It was painful for her. The girl also took care of her baby sister. The baby was less than a year old. She tried to entertain her sister to keep sitting. Craig and Alam came to know that she had gone to school only for two months in her whole life because she wanted to take care of her younger sister. Like this young girl, many girls kept at home for the same reason, and it was the same in every household. More than eighty-eight per cent of Nepalese girls were under fourteen years of age and illiterate. More than sixty percent of boys also lived in the same condition. They were denied an education, because parents saw no value in it; girls were expected to marry and take care of the home and raise children.

Craig learned about how the loan sharks arrived in the villages of Nepal to secure girls by loading money to their families. The land sharks tricked the girls and their parents by telling them they will become waiters or factory workers. However, they sold the girls off to the brothels. It was a cruel and hideous crime. Many found themselves infected with AIDs. Seven thousand young Nepalese girls were trafficked each year. Many girls were sent to the brothels to Bombay and Bangkok and other cities in countries nearby. Craig saw another working child. The child was a girl, not yet a teenager. This girl was using the hammer to

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break the old bricks to manufacture the new one. She worked long hours for food and shelter. The girl wanted to become a teacher, when she was older. In Varanasi, Craig and Alam had a chance to involve in the raid at a carpet factory, to release the children from bondage with . They went with strong forces to the carpet factory. The carpet factory was found far away, in an isolated village. After, they released the children they shared their feelings and pains. The children said that they ate only one meal a day. The master of these children kept them hungry because the hunger would take away their sleep. The evil master got more work from the children. Working in the carpet industry, many children often suffered from health problems. These include breathing difficulties from inhaling the carpet fibres, arthritis in his fingers from tying the string knots. Munnilal was a boy who worked in the carpet factory. He went to school with his friend Mikindre. His parents could not read and write. Therefore, they wanted him to learn, but he quit the school because someone had cheated his parents. The man said that the boy could go to school and learn carpet weaving in his spare time. He would also get money for his work and back to home. However, the man beat him. He longed for his mother and cried a lot. Munnilal told Craig that he wanted to become a police officer because he wanted to beat up the carpet masters who beat him. There were twenty-two children rescued from the carpet factory. Many of them were between eight to twelve years old. The children belonged to the same village. Then the children reached their home and started their life happily.

Craig met Nagashir in Mukti Ashram, Delhi. He shared his horrific story. When he and his younger brother tried to escape from the carpet factory where the two of them were enslaved, both of them were caught and punished. He showed the marks where they had burned him with the hot iron on his legs and arm and against his throat. He started to work in the carpet factory at the age of seven. Craig also learned another boy’s story in the Mukti Ashram. His name was Mohan. Mohan also worked in the carpet factory. He did not eat good food. The masters of the carpet factory do not give them money for their work. He worked twelve hours per day. They do not allow them to sleep. If they sleep, the master will hit them. Mohan worked with his elder brother. When they try to escape, the masters beat them. In the factory where the Mohan worked two children were killed by the owner and thrown into the river. Mohan started to work when he was five.

In Islamabad, , Craig and Alam had met a nine-year-old boy working as an electrician, another boy sweeping the street and a group of street children. Craig and Alam spoke with two boys one was eight and the other was ten. The older boy was holding a

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screwdriver in his hand and leaning under the hood of the car. He was a shepherd in the village. It was in a tribal region in Pakistan. His relatives decided to send him to learn something better than being a shepherd. He was well treated in the place where he was working. He learned the training but he liked to learn other things like reading and maths. It was not the abusive work such as firework factories. He was working to support his family. It was good that he was at least learning a trade. The next place was . There he had known more about Iqbal Masih, his hero, who had motivated him to become involved in the issue of child labour. He had become an international spokesperson for children’s rights through his contact with the Bonded Labour Liberation Frant (BLLF); an organisation fighting to free the Pakistani workers from slave labour. Ehsan Ullah Khan was a head of this organisation. He first began to organise workers to fight against their enslaved labour in brick kilns. Khan had discovered that entire families worked twelve to fifteen hours a day in the heat to repay small loans from the brick kiln. It had taken many years, sometimes generations. The debts called peshgi, increased with each passing day. Workers charged for their mistakes. They charged for their food, often at rated many times in actual cost. Original loans of fifteen rupees often rose to thirteen thousand rupees and more. Families treated like property. They also abused physically and sexually. When they fell ill, they denied medical care. In 1987, workers in one of the brick kilns spoke out against their owner, because the owner often tortured the labourers and raped the women and children. Then Khan moved to help, he took the case to the Supreme Court as a violation against the constitution of Pakistan. He had done the case with Asthma Jahangr, young female lawyer and general secretary with the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

In September 1988, a new law passed that declared the peshgi illegal. It was a great victory. Then BLLF organisation spread then new law in Pakistan, especially the children. Khan met Iqbal in one of the demonstration. Iqbal’s real name was Iqbal Alphonse, Masih means the Christians in Pakistan. At the age of six he sold by his mother into bondage. Every night he can come to home because the factory situated near his home. He worked fifteen hours a day, morning four to seven at night. He worked with his brother Patras Masih. Iqbal had been working as a bonded laboured for Arshand since 1986. He sold by his mother into bondage to pay a wedding of an older son, Aslam. This was usual in Pakistan. In that demonstration, Iqbal has shared his experience in front of the crowd. He told that his fingers hurt from tying the knots hour after hour, and his legs pained him every day from crouching as long as fifteen hour in the carpet loom. Khan impressed by Iqbal’s speech.

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Then Iqbal learned to read and write in freedom school of BLLF organisation in Lahore. Iqbal spoke at rallies and led demonstrations. He openly criticized the bosses of the carpet factories and the brick kilns. He became one of the BLLF’s most important spokesmen in the campaign against child and bonded labour in Pakistan.

In November 1994, Iqbal travelled to Sweden with Khan to speak to the students, the media and human rights group. He telecasted on the television and told consumers to buy carpets from Pakistan because they were made with the blood of children. He participated in a documentary film by Magnus Bergmar called ‘The Carpet’ in which Iqbal told the world about the abuse of children in the carpet industries. Iqbal said, “I am no longer scared of the factory owner, he is scared of me”. In the United States, he received the Reebok Youth in Action Award for his work in helping to free children. He said to the American press, “Don’t buy carpets made by child labours''. Then the sales of the carpets started to drop. In April 1995, on Easter Sunday, only five months after his return from the United States, Iqbal, a Roman Catholic, travelled to with two cousins, Faryad and Liqat, who lived in the direction of Lahore. For some reason, Iqbal got off the bus with his cousins to the field to bring dinner to Amanat Masih, Loaqat’s father. Three of them were riding the same bike. Iqbal was on the front handlebar, Faryad in the middle, and Liaqat on the back. On an abandoned stretch of road leading to the fields, Iqbal was shot dead. Craig said that from his travels in developing countries. I have learnt that it is difficult to guess the age of the children with any accuracy. Hard work, poor nutrition, lack of sunlight can all affect their growth. Because of malnutrition, children look younger than their actual age. Then Craig went to visit a brick kiln. The place was very hot. The debt of people, who worked in the brick kilns, passed down from generation to generation. He met a boy in the brick kiln. He worked here because his grandmother took out the loan that forced the family into bondage and continued to enslave them. He did not go outside the area of the brick kiln and did not

Craig met another young girl. Her name was Vedavalli, an eight-year-old girl. She worked as a domestic worker with his older sister. The house owner was given a place to sleep and food to eat. She worked from morning eight to ten at night. She worked as a domestic labour because his father has tuberculosis. Her mother also worked as a beedi roller, which means cigarette. The poverty is the main reason of the child labour. The domestic life includes cooking, sweeping, polishing, washing, cloth, grinding spiced, cleaning the toilets and much more. In a plastic recycling company, he met one eight-year- old girl. She worked with the syringes. It was a dangerous one. She wore nothing in her

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hands or legs for production. His name was Muniannal. She quit her school because of poverty. She worked eleven hours a day. She did not know about the effects of the virus. This work may cause diseases to her.

Craig had an experience to face the media and press. He spoke with many organisations about the child labour. He came to South Asia to see the child and find how to exit the child labour. Craig really proved that a young man can change the world. Age is not the matter, our interest is the main thing. Now they run many schools, colleges and charity for the children.

WORKS CITED:

 Hilowitz, Janet Eve. Labelling Child Labour Products: A Preliminary Study. International Labour Office, 1997. Print.  Hulme, Kyle. The History of Prostitution in Thailand. Cultural Trip, Retrieved 2019. Print.  Kielburger, Craig, Major, Kevin. Free the Children: A Young Man Fights Against Child Labor and Proves That Children Can Change the World. Harper Colllins puplishers, 1998. Print.  Rashid, S. “Strategies to Reduce Exclusion Among Population Living in Urban Slum Settlements in Bangladesh”. Journal of Health, Population and Nutrition. Vol. 27. Print.  Singh, Amar Nath. Child Labour in India: Socio-economic perspective. Shipra Publication, 1997. Print.

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