AEGAEUM JOURNAL ISSN NO: 0776-3808 CHILD ABUSE IN CRAIG KIELBURGER’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 Canada. 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 Iqbal Masih 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, Toronto, Canada. In 2002, he started his higher studies in Peace and Conflict Studies in the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at University of Toronto. He completed Kellogg-Schulich - Executive MBA Program at New York University, 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 Volume 8, Issue 5, 2020 http://aegaeum.com/ Page No: 600 AEGAEUM JOURNAL ISSN NO: 0776-3808 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 Asia 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 Bangladesh. 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 Volume 8, Issue 5, 2020 http://aegaeum.com/ Page No: 601 AEGAEUM JOURNAL ISSN NO: 0776-3808 factory in India. 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 Volume 8, Issue 5, 2020 http://aegaeum.com/ Page No: 602 AEGAEUM JOURNAL ISSN NO: 0776-3808 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.