Dubai (dpa) – Shortly after sunrise and again before sunset every day, Sheizad and the other little riders are strapped to the backs of camels for endless hours of training at the racetracks amid the sand dunes and glittering skyscrapers of this rich Arab emirate.
Behind a camel’s hump, the frail figures of some of the children – most of them only five or six years old – are virtually invisible. Despite a government ban seven years ago against the use of young children as camel jockeys, the practice is still widespread in Dubai and the rest of the United Arab Emirates.
Hundreds of children are forced or lured into a life of virtual slavery as jockeys in several Gulf countries, where camel racing has been a traditional sport. Most of the children come from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Sudan – countries bound together by poverty.
Sheizad, from Bangladesh, is too young even to know his age, which cannot be more than five.
On a warm afternoon, he arrived at the Camel Race Track in Dubai, together with other young waifs in the back of a van. Nearly all of them are dirty, barefoot and looking like orphans robbed of their childhoods.
By contrast, at the nearby Nad Al-Sheba track which hosts the 6 million-dollar Dubai World Cup every year, horses usually arrive in clean, air-conditioned comfort.
Most of these children have either been abducted by unscrupulous traffickers who sell them to agents in the United Arab Emirates for 20,000 dirhams (5,500 dollars), have been sold by poor parents or relatives, or lured here under false pretences.
These include promises to their parents that the children will get good work and education, said Ansar Burney, a human rights activist from Pakistan who has helped return some of the children to their families.
The agents, most of them from the Indian subcontinent, are the middlemen between the kidnappers and local sheikhs or powerful families who keep the children and train them between eight or nine hours a day, said Burney.
“The people in charge of the children mistreat them, and they beat them. While they give very good food to the camels, the children are not even allowed a proper meal for fear that they will gain too much weight and be heavy for the camels,” Burney told Deutsche Presse- Agentur dpa during an interview.
Often, the children are forced onto crash diets in order to lose weight before an important race.
The small jockeys are bound to a camel’s back, often using adhesive straps. But sometimes the kids slip off and either get trapped underneath the camel or are trampled. It is not uncommon for children to fall off or get dragged along, sometimes to their deaths, according to a 1999 report from the London-based human rights group Antislavery International.
“The children work hard and long hours. They usually go to sleep between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m., and get up at 4 a.m. for the start of their daily training an hour later,” said Burney, who heads the Ansar Burney Welfare Trust.
The children’s training extents until 11 a.m. or 12 a.m. and then in the afternoon between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m., said Burney, who has often visited the Emirates over the past few years to investigate and rescue kidnapped children.
“We have recovered hundreds of children in the past three years. The UAE government is very interested in ending the trafficking of children, but is difficult to stop children entering the country when they arrive with couples that pose for their parents,” Burney said.
Last week, he helped police in the UAE rescue two Pakistani brothers, ages four and six, kidnapped three months ago and brought here illegally.
The use of children in the camel races has been illegal in the UAE since 1993. The regulations prohibit children from racing camels, and call for jockeys to weigh at least 45 kilograms in keeping with international standards for horse jockeys.
Once Sheizan is atop a camel, his tactic is to utter a series of bloodcurdling screams from the outset, whipping the animal as much as he can in order to make it run faster.
But if Sheizan’s camel comes first in the race, no wealth or fame awaits the child. All the honours will go to the camel’s owner.
