IQBAL MASIH

IQBAL MASIH

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IQBAL

IIqbal masih was a poor child from pakistan at four years old , his father sold him for 12£ to a carpet factory where he worked 12 hours a day, chained to a loom and beaten

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IQBAL'S LIFE

When Iqbal was 6 years old , he escaped and began a campaign against child bonded labour . In 1994 he was in the USA , where he visited ''broad meadows middle school '' in quincy , massachuttes .When Iqbal was only twelve years old ,he came back to Pakistan and was shot dead by the carpet mafia while he was riding his bike near his grandmother's house

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ACTIVIES FOR THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD

In 1994 he received the Reebok Human Rights Award in Boston, and in his acceptance speech he said: "I am one of those millions of children who are suffering in Pakistan through bonded labour and child labour, but I am lucky that due to the efforts of Bonded Labour Liberation Front, I go out in freedom I am standing in front of you here today. After my freedom, I joined BLLF School and I am studying in that school now. For us slave children, Ehsan Ullah Khan and BLLF have done the same work that Abraham Lincoln did for the slaves of America. Today, you are free and I am free too

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AFTER HIS DEATH

Following his death, Pakistani economic elites responded to declining carpet sales by denying that they were using bonded child labour in their factories and by employing the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to brutally harass and arrest activists working for the BLLF. The Pakistani press conducted a smear campaign against the BLLF, arguing that child labourers received high wages and favourable working conditions.

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AWARDS

A high school in Quincy, organized immediately after his death a fundraiser, which allowed the establishment of a school in Kasur. In the Western world, several schools, parks, gardens, streets and squares were named after him. In the year-end message of December 31, 1997, the President of the Italian Republic Luigi Scalfaro recalled the great sacrifice of Iqbal Masih. In 2000 she received the World's Children's Prize for Children's Rights

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