Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 1, 1993 TAG: 9308010211
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By VIJAY JOSHI ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEW DELHI, INDIA LENGTH: Long
In Pakistan and Bangladesh, small boys are sold as jockeys for camel races in Saudi Arabia. In Sri Lanka, at least 10,000 boy prostitutes work the beaches, offering themselves to Western male tourists.
Across the Indian subcontinent, home to one-fifth of humanity, millions of children live in virtual slavery, toiling for little or no pay in fields, factories, mines and stone quarries, or as domestic help.
Child labor is part of a feudal system embedded in South Asia's history, but pressures against it are rising. Welfare organizations have forced governments to acknowledge the problem. The United States and Germany threaten to boycott products made by children.
In societies where poverty is endemic, however, the issue is colored by the constant struggle with hunger. Critics say child labor perpetuates poverty, illiteracy, adult unemployment and overpopulation, but many people point out that not working can mean not eating.
To earn the equivalent of $1 a day, Mohammad Sohrab, 8, carries heavy loads of fish, rice and vegetables from the market to shoppers' homes in Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh.
"My mother is ill, my father is dead," said Sohrab, who lives in a slum with four younger brothers and sisters. "The family will starve if I don't work."
"I hate to work," he added. "I want to play like other children."
Bangladesh, an overcrowded land of 110 million people, has an estimated 4 million child laborers.
Sohrab's work is less exploitative than other jobs, such as prostitution, where young boys and girls are in growing demand.
Sujith Fernando was 8 years old when he met a German on a beach in Negombo, Sri Lanka, and became his lover for a price.
The German visits Sri Lanka three times a year to be with Sujith, who is now 19. He gives the young man 50 German marks ($33) a month and gifts, including a motorcycle, TV and video player. The average Sri Lankan laborer earns about $20 a month.
According to a UNESCO report, 10,000 boy prostitutes roam the beaches of Sri Lanka. Negombo, just north of the capital, Colombo, is advertised in European magazines for homosexuals as a "gay paradise." The government estimates 30,000 Sri Lankan children work as prostitutes, most of them boys.
India has the most working children of any country - 17 million, by government estimate, in a nation of 875 million. The Center of Concern for Child Labor in New Delhi puts the figure at about 45 million by comparing school enrollments and the number of school-age children.
Millions of children work as bonded laborers for no pay, either because their parents sold them or because they were tricked.
About 300,000 children work on carpet looms in the Bhadohi and Mirzapur districts in northern India, sitting in cramped rooms for up to 15 hours a day to earn five rupees (15 cents).
They inhale wool fluff. It gets into their ears. Many children say loom owners hang them upside down and beat them with tree branches as punishment for mistakes.
In Firozabad, about 50,000 children aged 6 to 16 work nine hours a day in glass factories near furnaces that reach 3,270 degrees. The air is heavy with smoke and dust. The children walk in bare feet on floors strewn with broken glass.
"We are not allowed to go to urinals or even allowed a break for lunch," said Chander Prakash, 10, who dropped out of school and began working early this year to help pay a family debt.
Like other youngsters in the glass factories, Chander is paid 35 rupees ($1) a day. Most adults get 90 rupees.
Factories producing matches, fireworks, brass locks, leather and cut gems also are notorious for employing children.
All countries of South Asia have laws against child labor, but enforcement is lax. In India and Sri Lanka, the ban does not cover agriculture, where government figures indicate 75 percent of working children are found.
In Pakistan, hundreds of children between 4 and 8 are sent to Arab nations and sold to wealthy sheiks as camel jockeys, according to the Human Rights Commission in Islamabad, the capital.
Children are used as jockeys because they are light and their shrieks of terror are thought to frighten the camels into running faster.
Liaquat, 10, worked as a jockey for five years, returning home in August 1992 after he lost an eye in an accident.
"The race had just started when my strap broke and I fell," he said. "When I came to in a hospital a month later, my left eye was permanently damaged."
Shehzad Pitras, 8, who spent a year in the United Arab Emirates, said: "We were given bad food and often beaten up if we did anything against their wishes."
Human rights groups estimate more than 8 million children work in Pakistan, a nation of 105 million, said Hussein Naqi of the Human Rights Commission.
Kailash Satyarthi, chairman of the South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude, says awareness of child labor is increasing. The International Labor Organization allocated $2.25 million this year as part of a program to fight it in India, whose carpet industry earns $130 million a year in foreign exchange.
Satyarthi has campaigned in Germany against the sale of carpets from factories that employ children. A bill in the U.S. Congress would ban products made by children.
"It is the first time in the world that a child's right is being synchronized with international trade," Satyarthi said.
by CNB