*** This is the 2nd speech I ever gave ***

Iqbal Masih (1983-1995)


Introduction:

About 12 years ago, when my family moved to Lebanon, I discovered that children were not treated in poor countries as they are in rich countries.
Every day, I would see children on the street, knocking on cars' windows, to beg for money.
This made me want to learn more about this situation.
One day, surfing the web, I found a web site about Iqbal, a young pakistani boy, born the same year I was, 1983, who escaped his employer, and started a crusade against child labor.
I found his life so interesting, that I would like to share it with you today.
First, I will first talk about the beginning of his life, how he became a slave.
Then I will explain how he started fighting for his freedom,
and finally I will say a few words about how he was killed at the age of 12, and how his work heightened awareness of child servitude in products Americans buy.


1.How Iqbal became a debt-slave



We have all heard the stories of how slavery was ended in 1865, but in fact, it still exists today.
Iqbal was a debt-slave. This means that, at 4 years old, he was sold to his employer in exchange of an advance of less than $15, so his mother could pay for her medical expenses.
The problem was that he needed 5000 rupies to pay for all the expenses, but since he didn't earn more than 30 a day (the equivalent of a few cents for us), he was his employer's slave for the rest of his life.
When he would go to work, he would see a black board where his debt was written. Everyday, the number would rise.
He had to work for his employer anytime he wanted. He would even be woken up at night, during his sleep, after a hard day of work without any food, to go back to the factory.
And since his family is very poor, is rarely had anything to eat there, except some tea and bread.
As you can see in the pictures, eventhough Iqbal was 11 years old at the time, he looked like he was barely 8.
His employer was extremely cruel, but Iqbal's mother couldn't do anything because of the debt she owed him: it forced her to obey.
Everytimes Iqbal would fall alseep at work, he'd be awaken with blows from a rug fork.
According to childrensworld.com, 250 million working children are still in the same situation today.


2.How Iqbal started to fight for his freedom.

As we can read on the U.N's pakistani website, a lot of underage children are used as slave in Pakistan, eventhough this country ratified the Convention about children's rights in 1989, and participates in the program for the abolition of children's work.

Unfortunately, the population does not try to change their situation because they don't think it will make any difference, and policemen are corrupted by the employers anyway.
The life expectency of these kids is very low, and many do not reach 18 years old.

In october 1992, Iqbal learned about the law against child slavery and ran away. He went to a Bonded Labour Liberation Front meeting.
There, he addressed the crowd and spoke out for the first time against child labor.
The BLLF's leader helped Iqbal be free, and allowed him to finally go to school, where he was very successful.
Together, they will fight for the cause of slave children. They liberated around 3000 of them. Iqbal travelled a lot to speak about his cause.

The website children's world.com reported that the most difficult part of it for Iqbal was to get a passport, because, like many poor people, he was not registered in his city's books, and so there was no proof that he even existed.

He stayed in Sweden for 5 weeks, where he was the host of many TV programs. He also came to the US but couldn't go to London, because the British Embassy refused to give him a visa.
He was awared the World's Children Prize, a prize from Reebok in december 1994, he became “person of the week” on ABC., and won the prize for the defense of human rights in the U.S, in 2000.
A university in Boston offered him a full scholarship for a law degree. A world of opportunities suddenly opened up for Iqbal.


3.How Iqbal died, and the path he opened.

On the 16th of april 1995, Iqbal was coming back home after church with some friends. Half way to their destination, he got shot by 120 shotgun pellets and died. He paid with his life the denounciation of a system that exploits millions of children.
His actions clearly threatened the profits of the carpet mafia, who, before his death, made him several death treats.
But the Pakistani police closed the case. The authorities said that Iqbal caught a farmer having sex with his goat, that it lead to a fight where Iqbal was killed.

His sister, Sobia, remembers her brother used to say he wanted to be a lawyer. “I'll free the poor children from the carpet factories, and the brick mills. I'll give them education so that their lives can change. Then, the poor children will have a better future”. He also used to say: “children should have pens in their hands, not tools”.

Every year in sweden, the saturday closest to the day Iqbal died, children and adults let go of balloons to show that they remember Iqbal and that they will keep fighting against child slavery until the day it ends.
A canadian boy, Craig, who was also 12 when Iqbal died, started quickly after the assassination an organization “Free the children”, who has today a website on the internet, freethechildren.org.
He travelled around the world, spoke about child labour and visited working children; he appeared on TV, talked to politicians, and testified to a US Congressional committee.

The junior high school students he met with in Quincy, Massachusetts launched a campaign, Kids Campaign to Build a School for Iqbal, spanning the U.S. and several countries after his death to raise money to build a school in his name in the providence where he lived and died.

Reebok gave the UNICEF a grant of $250,000. Paul Fireman, Chairman and CEO of Reebok International said "Iqbal's determination to see that all children have access to education inspired us back in 1994, and continues to inspire us today. With this grant, we honor Iqbal's dream to end child labor and to ensure that all children are in classrooms."

Many website about child slavery and Iqbal can be found on the net, and, according to http://www.stopchildlabor.org, many people today boycott brands that are knowingly made by slaves.
Many consumers in the United States vowed to not buy carpets from Pakistan and other countries where child labor is prevalent unless they can be assured the carpets are made by adults. A growing number of Americans refuse to be a party to a marketplace that promotes the slavery of children.

Iqbal opened the path to a better world for children, and many people try to keep his memory alive, while trying to put an end to child slavery in general.
I believe that Iqbal is the proof that fighting for your beliefs can sometimes be dangerous, but, even in the worse cases, it is never completely useless.

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