By Judi McLeod
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Pressing pre-schoolers into slave service as camel jockeys is worse than anything imagined by the creative genius of celebrated author Charles Dickens.
Children forced into slave labour in 1800s sweatshops were a theme of Dickens' books.
In the 21st century it seems that Sheikh Mohammed al Maktoum is giving new meaning to the exploitation of children.
and if it's true that Dubai's regal ruler engages in the crime of using kidnapped children as camel jockeys, he should get slapped with more than a lawsuit.
"Sheikh Mohammed was served Monday with court papers while attending a horse show where he spent an estimated $30 million on thoroughbred yearlings." (aBC News, Sept. 14, 2006).
This modern day Midas of the United arab Emirates is being sued for the enslavement of little boys.
"The lawsuit, brought as a class action, alleged Sheikh Mohammed and his brother were part of a conspiracy "to buy boys in the slave trade, hold them in bondage in brutal camps in the desert" as part of a flourishing camel racing sport among arab sheikhs.
Scruples seem lost on sporting sheikhs.
Wasn't Uday, the son of Saddam, big on obscenity in the name of sports?
When Uday Hussein ran Iraqi sport, athletes were tortured just for losing.
Dubbed "the Butcher's Boy", Hussein Jr. cut his baby teeth on playing with disarmed grenades. "By 10 he was accompanying his father to the torture chamber at Qasr-al-Nihayyah (the so-called Palace of the End, where any political enemies, including deposed King Faisal 11, were killed) to watch Saddam deal with dissidents. By 16, he bragged of committing his first murder, telling classmates he had killed a teacher who had upbraided him in front of a girlfriend." (cnnsi.printthis.clickability.com).
and now we have a leader of another royal family indulging obscenities in the name of entertaining his brothers.
Sheikh Mohammed al Maktoum, it seems, thinks that children are the same kind of commodities as the thoroughbreds he showcases in his private stables.
as for babies racing camels, the lawsuit calls it "one of the greatest humanitarian crimes of the last 50 years", involving thousands of boys as young as four who were prized because they weighed less than 44 pounds.
Disbelief and derision were the original reactions of some western bloggers when the lawsuit against the Sheikh was revealed.
"How are these boys being abused? Maybe they have fun being camel jockeys--kinda seems like fun to me," posted one.
But the United States State Department in a report on human trafficking last year cited the practice of using young boys as camel jockeys.
"Children trafficked to the Gulf States in the Middle East are forced to race camels of the entertainment elite. These children were training under the shadow of Dubai's skyline in early 2005," the State Department report said.
The State Department report, while not specifically naming the Sheikh, says the trafficking of young boys as camel jockeys "has burgeoned in the Gulf states, which, with the discovery of oil and the associated surge in wealth, transformed camel racing from a traditional Bedouin sports pastime to a multi-million dollar activity."
The report concluded that the government of the United arab Emirates "has failed to take significant action to address its trafficking problems and to protect victims."
Meanwhile, if Sheikh Mohammed and his brother are found guilty, they and their sporting Sheikh friends should be forced to jockey camels the rest of their days.
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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