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by Amal Jayasinghe

ISLAMABAD, (AFP) When a Pakistan camel jockey reaches the age of seven he is already too old for the job. So even younger children are now being smuggled to the Arab desert for a national sport that ends in tragedy for most.

For the traffickers, it is child's play to slip through the loop holes in the archaic law in this Islamic republic while a toothless legal system tries to keep up with smart slave traders.

Pakistan's Federal Investigations Agency (FIA) is worried that younger boys and girls are bound for the desert, fears which were realised this month when a Dubai-bound woman was caught with five children, aged three to seven.

"This is the first time we are seeing such young children being smuggled out through the airport," FIA chief at the Islamabad international airport, Sadar Azim told AFP. The woman was taking the children to Dubai where they would be strapped onto camels to take part in the national sport of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Azim said. She will be charged under immigration laws for tampering with her passport to fraudulently include the names of children who are not hers.

Police in Karachi last week rescued two boys aged five and seven just before they were to be smuggled out of the country. The two had been grabbed from their parents. Another 21 young children who were about to be smuggled out were rescued from traffickers in the city of Lahore by local police.

The camel race industry is not interested in just any child. They must be very young and very scrawny.

Child jockeys usually outlive their usefulness when they reach about seven years of age or weigh more than 15 to 17 kilos (33 to 37 pounds). Which ever comes first, the child is thrown from the saddle to the streets.

Officially, the use of child jockeys and jockeys weighing less than 45 kilograms (100 pounds) has been banned in the UAE since January 1993, but activists say violations of the law are rampant.

No skills are required of a child jockey, merely lightness, and good lungs. He or she must be terrified enough to scream. That makes the beast run faster and thrills their Arab masters.

Many of children die before the race is over, either from fear, being tossed by the camel, or by being dragged to death after being dislodged from the rope that is meant to hold the child in place.

Human rights groups have documented cases of young children left to die in the Arab desert after camel race accidents.

"Sometimes bleeding owing to constant pressure on the back and smashing of the genitals was common and painful," said a recent report by the Karachi-based Lawyers for Human Rights and Legal Aid (LHRLA).

"Most of the young jockeys became impotent because of the friction and there was no medical services available to them."

Many children are smuggled through Pakistan's south-western border and taken through Iran, as authorities have no right to question when children are taken abroad unless they detect some irregularity with the travel documents.

In May last year, a six-year-old Pakistani boy, Amir Abbas, fell off a camel and died in the UAE city of Al Ain. Rights activists believe many more camel jockey fatalities go unreported.

The LHRLA believes thousands of Pakistani children are taken to the desert to be made into camel jockeys.

During a 10-month period last year, some 287 Pakistani boys were kidnapped from their parents, LHRLA President Zia Ahmed Awan told AFP.

Some parents are known to have sold their children for a few hundred dollars. "The problem (of child camel jockeys) is not going down," Awan said. "In fact, it is getting worse."

However, he said rights activists saw a silver lining with proposed child protection legislation that would bring Pakistan in line with international conventions protecting children.

The draft laws propose stiffer penalties for child abuse and propose to change the definition of a child to anyone under 18, instead of 14 as the law says in relation to certain circumstances.

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Copyright 2001 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
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