IQBAL MASIH

                                                      A COURAGEOUS CHILD

                                           Iqbal Masih was born in 1983 and was four years old when his

                                                   father decided to sell him as a slave for 12 dollars to a carpet

                                                   producer.

                                                   It is the beginning of a never ending slavery: the interest rates

                                                   for the “loan” obtained in exchange for the child’s work will

                                                   only manage to increase the debt.

                                                   While beated, reprimanded and chained, Iqbal starts to work

                                                   more than 12 hours day. He is one of the many children who

                                                   weave carpets in Pakistan; their little hands are able and quick,

                                                   their salaries are ridiculous and children do not protest and can

                                                   be punished more easily.

                                                   One day in 1992 Iqbal and other children, without being seen,

                                                   managed to get out of the carpet factory in order to participate

                                                   to the celebration of the freedom day organised by the BLLF-

                                                   Fronte di Liberazione dal Lavoro Schiavizzato.

                                                   Perhaps for the first time Iqbal hears people talk about rights

                                                   and about children who live in slavery. Exactly as himself.

                                                   Spontaneously he decides not to tell his story: the following days

                                                   his story is published on the local newspapers. Iqbal decides not

                                                   to go back to work in the factory and a BLLF lawyer helps him

                                                   to write a “dismission” letter to present to his ex owner.

                                                   During a manifestation Iqbal gets in touch with Eshan Ullah

                                                   Khan, the BLLF leader, the trade unionist who will represent

                                                   his guide toward a new life dedicated to the defence of the rights

                                                   of children. 

                                                   Iqbal will then start to tell his story on television all over the

                                                   world and during some conventions organised at first in the

                                                   Asiatic countries and then in Stockholm and in Boston thus

                                                   becoming the simbol of the working children drama: “When

                                                   I will then grow up I want to be a lawyer in order to fight and

                                                   Help children not to work too much”. Iqbal starts studying

                                                   gain without stopping his work as a young unionist.

                                                   But the history of his freedom is brief. On April 16^th 1995  

                                                   somebody shoots at him while he goes running on his bicycle

                                                   in his native city Muridke with his cousins Liaqat and Faryad.

                                                   “An event organised by the carpet mafia” will say Ullah Khan

                                                   right after the murder. Somebody have felt menaced by Iqbal’s

                                                   activism and the police was accused to be colluded with the

                                                   murderers. As a matter of fact many details of that tragic

                                                   Sunday have not been eleared.

                                                   With the 15 thousand dollars which Iqbal received in Boston

                                                   during the month of December 1994 for the Reebok Award of

                                                   the Youth in Action, he wanted to build a school in order to

                                                   allow slave children to start studying again…