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UNICEF trying to halt camel-racing slave trade

Eight-year-old Mohammad Irfan still remembers how one of his friends fell from a camel and was crushed beneath the feet of another galloping animal during a race in the United Arab Emirates.

"The race was not stopped. Later, I found out the child had died. He was four or five years old," Irfan tells reporters as he plays with a mobile phone at a human rights group's office in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi.

Irfan's case is not isolated. He returned to his homeland with 11 other young camel jockeys in early June and another batch of 22 arrived in Pakistan from the oil-rich Arab sheikhdom on Tuesday.

Stung by criticism from the United States and human rights groups, a number of Gulf states have recently pledged to crack down on the problem of children being smuggled in from poorer countries to take part in the popular "sport".

The UAE signed a repatriation agreement with the United Nations Childrens' Fund (UNICEF) in May and now plans to use robots instead of children to take part in the still-popular sport.

Officials said another 270 children, some sold off by their poverty-stricken families, were in camps set up by the UAE government and will be repatriated once their travel documents are ready.

"But some 3,000 innocent jockeys are still missing in the UAE and could have been shifted to some other Arab countries for the same purpose," says Ansar

Burney, a rights activist in Karachi whose group is looking after Irfan and many others.

The scars the children bear are both physical and mental. Irfan and three others still have marks of injuries on their ankles and other parts of their bodies.

For many of the children, however, their ordeal has continued on their return to Pakistan, as their families have failed to collect them and they are placed in protective custody.

Many parents are afraid of trouble from the authorities. Poor parents have been known to sell their children to human traffickers for as little as just 2,100 dollars.

But other children are kidnapped or their parents fall victims to conmen.

As Zubaid recounts his story, a man enters the welfare group's office and identifies himself as Hakim Ali. He says he is Zubaid and Babar's father.

"They are my children, they were fraudulently taken by two people in my neighbourhood. I have come to take them back," says Hakim, from Rahim Yar Khan, a desert town in Pakistan's central Punjab province.

"Three years back these people came to me with a job for me and my wife to be a guard and maid in Dubai. I paid them some 150,000 rupees(US$2,500) for visa and documentation," adds Hakim.

"They asked me to send my wife and two children first, which I did. But it was my biggest mistake."

Aid worker Burney listens to his story but says he will not hand over the children until he has had confirmation from police and local officials. He will also try to arrange a DNA test, he adds.

Other children are not even this lucky. Twelve-year-old Zubair from Gujrat says his father was murdered after the boy escaped from an agent who was about to sell him in Dubai in 2003.

"I was kidnapped by three persons while I was going to school. They made me sniff something and I fell unconsious. When I opened my eyes I found myself in another country, which I later came to know was Dubai," Zubair says.

"I don't know what happened but while we were going somewhere in a car I saw a policeman and I started shouting."

His abductors dumped him in the street and he remained in a police lock-up for several months until October, when Burney arranged his release.

But a few days after his return to Pakistan, his father was killed in Gujrat, allegedly by the kidnap gang.

"Some of these children from poor families in Africa and South Asia were sold by their parents for cash, but most were cheated in the name of better jobs in the UAE," Burney says angrily.

"This human trafficking is not possible without the involvement of police, immigration officials of their home countries and the UAE officials."

In most cases, Burney adds, no one is ever punished.

"It's the worst kind of slavery," he says.
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