Child Camel Jockeys

While flipping channels last night, I was fortunate enough to come across a dose of reality. A documentary by HBO featuring a trip with the renowned Pakistani human rights activist, Ansar Barni, showing how little children ages 3-10 are used as camel jockeys in United Arab Emirates (UAE) opened my eyes as to what happens in one of the richest countries in the Middle East. UAE has, for a long time now, been seen as progressive Middle Eastern country which relies more on tourism and foreign investment than on oil. Many peoples’ opinions about UAE might change should they choose to read this article further. You are thus warned.

Step out of the modern city of Abu Dhabi and walk a bit into the desert. You will come across steel barricaded and barbed-wire laced enclosures in the desert. You might wonder what is that is kept inside those enclosures. Let me answer that for you; Children. The prison camps house children as little 3 and as old as 10 along with their trainers and overseers. One might ask why is this barbaric slavery rampant. The answer is camel racing. Camel racing, along with horse racing, is one of the most favorite pastimes of the sheikhs and princes of the Middle East. They spend millions of dollars on camel and horse breeding and have full fledged hospitals and exercise centers for camels and horses. Which is why, what I learnt from the documentary is all the more shocking.

The sheikhs of the UAE not only spend money on acquiring camels and breeding them, they, unfortunately, also pay huge sums of money to acquire children for camel racing. The light weight children make good camel racers as it the easier it is for the camel to run. Children from places like the subcontinent, where poor parents cannot afford families sell their children to child-smugglers. Some are just snatched or kidnapped from poor places and shipped to UAE where a child from the subcontinent goes for $500. A prized camel on the other hand is worth $1.5 million plus in the UAE.

The way these children live in these so called camps is another source of anguish and concern. Children sleep either on bare sandy ground or in rooms crammed with their trainers. Some of these children are sexually molested at the hands of these so called masters. They cook dinner and bring tea to their masters two to three times a day. They are given just enough food to stay alive. This is so their weight remains low to aid in camel riding. Some children who try to escape are hung by steel chains from the ceiling and whipped with camel whips, literally. The documentary showed how a little 3 year old Pakistani boy who kept crying for his mother, was chained to the wall and whipped and told to live with it now since this was his fate. This is the state of humanity in some places of the world.

In 1993 the UAE government banned jockeys under the age of 15 but that is only on paper, as Ansar Barni says. Children are still being used in UAE as camel jockeys. The UAE government refuses to accept that there are child camel jockeys. The documentary showed how Mr.Barni snatched 23 children in the dead of night and “smuggled” them outside the UAE to their freedom. He needs more help and more conscientous people to help solve this human rights catastrophe. Let us spread the world. Let us try to increase public awareness of this inhumane and barbaric activity in a place that calls itself Islamic. We as humans have the power to correct this. The question is, will we choose to look from the sidelines or will we take a stand. The ball, my fellow human beings, is in our court.