UAE Royals Face Slavery Lawsuit
September 15, 2006
It has been long in coming but finally someone has decided to hold the UAE royals to account. Aljazeera reports:
A lawsuit accusing rulers of the United Arab Emirates of enslaving and forcing tens of thousands of young boys to work under brutal conditions as camel jockeys over the past three decades has been filed in the US.
The civil lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages, was filed last week by unnamed parents of boys as young as two years who were allegedly abducted, enslaved and sold to serve as camel jockeys.
The lawsuit claims that the boys were taken largely from Bangladesh, Pakistan and elsewhere, held at desert camps and forced to work in the UAE and other Gulf nations.
“The defendants robbed parents of their children and boys of their childhoods, their futures and sometimes their lives, for the craven purposes of entertainment and financial gain,” the lawsuit alleged.
It claims some boys were sexually abused, given limited food and sleep, and injected with hormones to prevent their growth.
Royals targeted
The lawsuit said Sheikh Muhammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, and Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the deputy ruler, were the most active perpetrators of the crimes.
“Sheikh Muhammad and Sheikh Hamdan treated their camels better than they treated their slave boys for the simple reason that the camels were far more valuable,” the lawsuit said.
It was filed in Miami because the members of the royal family maintain hundreds of horses at farms in Ocala in Florida, and because there is no venue outside the US in which the plaintiffs can possibly get redress for being trafficked internationally and enslaved.
John Andres Thornton, the Miami Beach-based co-counsel for the children, said the ruler of Dubai had been served with the lawsuit on Monday while buying horses in Kentucky.
Camel racing is a popular Arab sport, and using children as camel jockeys was banned by the UAE in 1993, but young boys could still be seen riding in televised races for years afterwards and up to 30,000 children are believed to have been enslaved for such purposes.
The problem was highlighted in the US state department’s June 2005 Trafficking in Persons Report.
Calls to the UAE embassy in Washington were not answered,
with no possibility to leave a message after hours.
October 31, 2006 at 4:10 am
Unbelievable! This is not only a lawsuit against the Sheikhs, But Dubai and the UAE as a whole is being targeted by this slanderous bid to make it look like a tyrannical state:
1. The whole history of the UAE is only about is only abut 34 years long, and this practice has been banned in the UAE since 1993.
2. There has even been a famous investment in robot jockeys, which shows a sincerity of will on the part of the rulers for change
3. “there is no venue outside the US in which the plaintiffs can possibly get redress for being trafficked internationally and enslaved” That’s because there is a mood of hostility, against Arabs and Muslims, there at the moment, (which is why they don’t file these lawsuit in Africa for example where the people are exploited much more than anywhere else) and they will do anything to fuel the Idea that they are the Beacons of Freedom on this barren earth.
They have become the Bullies of the world, who is going to file a significant lawsuit against America for all the deaths of Iraqi children during the sanctions?
What about the current war in Iraq (655,000 deaths)? And Bush is clueless about this, when they asked him about the number, he estimated it to be about 30,000! Were the people there worth more to Bush than horses on his ranch! What about Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana?
4. “Calls to the UAE embassy in Washington were not answered, with no possibility to leave a message after hours” It’s unbelievable what you can find in “news articles” these days… Couldn’t they have called the embassy during working hours? Or called the next day? This betrays the malice and lack of objectivity behind all of this!
Needless to say the enslavement of these children needs to stop. It is however a dying phenomenon in the UAE, most people here don’t even know about it, we might as well sew America for killing the Indians and Occupying their land.
and Until the US closes Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghuraib down, and until its get rid even of Racism from it’s own institutions. It has no Moral Authority over the Arabs or anyone else for that matter.
December 1, 2006 at 6:49 pm
In reply to Omar.A:
You know it’s very funny that whenever human rights issues in the Gulf arise, the only comeback that’s available is as cliche as “people that live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones”. As immature as that reply is, it’s sadly the only thing available at their disposal. As the Gulf countries do little to none to stop slave-like conditions to their workers (increasing rates of suicide, crimes, abuse and murder even among asian expats), only to benefit from the bitter equlibrium that is provided for them that their maltreatment in the Gulf is still better off for them than their native countries, it’s still amazing that they still result to such humility waivers.
July 12, 2007 at 4:19 pm
In this regard the best role was played by a Pakistani human rights lawyer, Mr Ansar Burney who practically worked and got released thousands of innocent underage children from Modern day Slavery and private prisons.
Mr Ansar Burney is the one and only who practically worked in Middle Eastern countries to save thousands of children from slavery to to get them out from private prisons of Sheikhs.
The HBO TV has made a documentry on his historical role to save these children.
The State Department of the United States of America in 2005 in recognition to historical and selfless efforts to save these children from Middle Eastern Shaikhs declared him as International ‘HERO’
October 1, 2008 at 7:51 am
I think that the whole issue is nothing but another effort to damage the image of the UAE in the face of H.H. the Sheikh Mohammed and the Crown Prince Hamdan. No matter how many efforts, those people have achieved something that nobody did in the world. Materially and ethically they gave glory to their country. This is the deep reason of this lawsuit against them, under the papers and behind the lines. When you cannot compeet you spit. But do you spit on you at the end of the story?