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Iqbal Masih is known to most people in Pakistan as a campaigner for the rights of children. Iqbal was one of an estimated 8 million children who currently work as bonded labour. The bonding of labour is operated by a system of money lending and repayment. A money lender (who is usually a manufacturer or land owner) gives an advance of money or a loan, called peshgi, to a person. The debt plus interest is repaid with work.

Usually the debt is repaid with the work of one or more of the children from the family who took the loan. Although bonded labour was officially abolished in Pakistan in 1992, it is still happening. There are at least 250,000 children working in brick kiln yards, while in the carpet industry 500,000 of its 1 million workers are bonded children.

Profile of a Courageous Young Citizen

Iqbal Masih was born in Muridke, near Lahore in Pakistan. When he was four years old, his parents borrowed 600 rupees ($20) from a carpet manufacturer so that they could pay for their eldest son's wedding. The arrangement was that Iqbal would work at the carpet factory to pay off the debt. Consequently, Iqbal never went to school. Instead he worked 12 hours a day for 1 rupee a day. He was regularly beaten and after six years the debt had increased to 13,000 rupees, because the manufacturer had calculated the cost of Iqbal's maintenance, training and errors into the debt.

After he turned 10, Iqbal heard a speaker from the Bonded Labor Liberation Front (BLLF), a Pakistani community-based organisation dedicated to freeing children from such labour. Iqbal obtained a copy of their Charter of Freedom, a pamphlet about the rights of children. Iqbal used this to inform the factory owner that under the laws of Pakistan, he no longer owed him a debt and would no longer work. The factory owner's response was to drag him into the courtyard and severely beat him. Iqbal's family were threatened over their non-payment of the debt and were forced to leave Lahore.

Staying at a BLLF hostel, Iqbal then started school. In late 1993, in his spare time, he began to travel with human rights activists speaking out against the use of child labour. He spoke courageously at marketplaces, schools and factories. Suffering from stunted growth, Iqbal told of how he had been robbed of his childhood. He said that the children should not be afraid of the carpet masters but vice versa! He fearlessly urged children to break away from their masters. It is estimated that he inspired 3,000 children to liberate themselves as he had done.

Iqbal featured in an international documentary film denouncing the use of child labour and his campaigning led to the cancellation of many European export contracts. A 1993 investigation by the Pakistan Carpet Manufacturers and Exporters Association examining the decline in their export sales blamed the decline on 'subversive organisations' and singled out Iqbal as the 'child whose testimony is most objectionable and therefore most damaging to our industry.'

On April 16, 1995, Iqbal Masih, aged 13 years old was shot and killed while bicycling with his cousins in a village field. The circumstances surrounding his murder and the police and autopsy reports have left many questions unanswered. A week after his murder, 3,000 demonstrators, half of them under 12 years old, marched through Lahore calling for a ban on the import and sale of all carpets made by children.

Iqbal's school friends had nicknamed him Chief Justice because he had dreamt of becoming a lawyer in order to fight for children's rights. Although he never fulfilled his dream, in his short lifetime Iqbal Masih had become one of the most vocal and widely known campaigners for the rights of children in his country.

 

Questions and Activities Iqbal Masih was awarded the Reebok Human Rights Award. Imagine that you are presenting this award to the winner. Develop and present the speech you would deliver at the award presentation ceremony. Design the Iqbal Masih Home Page for a website devoted to his work. In small groups, develop what you would include in a 'Charter of Freedom'. Present this to the class on overhead transparencies. Design a monument to Iqbal Masih that you would like to see built in a children's park in Karachi, the capital city of Pakistan. Draw a diagram which details the work of the Bonded Labour Liberation Front (BLLF). Create a montage poster of words and phrases that illustrates how Iqbal Masih was an outstanding citizen of Pakistan.