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Monday Blues – Camel Jockey Terror Kids and Further Proof That God Doesn't Exist

I don't mean to be a total bummer on a sunny day like today, but I just read a new report about child trafficking and HOLY SHIT the stories are brutal. There's the one about the Chinese gangs who force street children to beg, sometimes breaking their arms and legs because maimed kids are more pitiful and generate more alms. That's pretty grim. However, the bit that really proves that God doesn’t exist is the sad tale of this little guy. You might already know about the cruel treatment of child camel jockeys in the Middle East, but recent reports indicate that their wretched lives have gotten wretcheder…

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Over 30,000 boys aged from four to ten are imprisoned at desert
racetracks across the Saudi peninsular. Originally from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Somalia, they are trafficked to the Middle East after being sold by their parents into a life of servitude as camel jockeys.

Roped to these galloping beasts,
many fall off, break bones and are trampled to death. The boys are
whipped when they lose, starved to keep their weight down, injected
with growth-stunting hormones, and often sexually abused. And just when
you think the emotional and physical scarring could not get any worse for
these camel jockey kids, it does.

International condemnation forced offending countries like the UAE,
Kuwait and Qatar to ban children from camel racing. These governments
made a big media hoopla when they dispatched some kids back to their home
countries, even slipping them a bit of cash as compensation. But
repatriation has not necessarily led to their rehabilitation or reintegration back into society.

Many boys were simply handed back to the unscrupulous parents
who sold them in the first place. In Bangladesh some boys were resold as camel jockeys and
trafficked right back to the Middle East. In Pakistan some boys ended up
being handed over to madrassas (religious schools) and orphanages
funded and controlled by extremist groups. Local human rights organisations report that some of these kids are being physically and sexually abused by
mullahs in their charge. Talk about having a tough childhood!

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To replace child camel jockeys in Qatar, they’ve developed a robot jockey which is basically a mannequin holding a remote-controlled whip.

Here's a selection of photos from The Trafficking in Persons Report 2008 (download in full here)…

Men bid to buy the virginity of Nita, above left,

age 14. She is from a sex slave caste in India, which encourages girls to be prostituted as soon as they hit puberty.

Young children crush stones with hammers in a quarry in Ghana.

Two young ethnic Karen boys serving as child

soldiers in Burma.


At age 17, this Lithuanian was trafficked into prostitution in London having been promised a holiday trip. She escaped—after a year—but relies on alcohol to help forget.


In a Long Island mansion, this Indonesian maid and another woman
were enslaved, beaten, scalded, and humiliated. Domestic servitude, or trafficking into private homes, is often difficult to detect.


Thirty-two year old “Sandro,” from the interior of
Mexico, was guided by Mexican traffickers to a “safe house” where he was tied to a bed and raped about 20 times. He was then transported, at gun point, to another “safe” house in San Diego and forced into domestic servitude. He was later rescued and has since received temporary residency in the United States.

Some of the over 1,000 people enslaved for over a year in a brick kiln in China’s Shanxi Province and beaten by their employers.

This Nigerian-born girl, trafficked to Paris, was beaten up

the night before the photo was taken. To repay debts of up to $50,000, most are prostituted.

An Asian tourist in Cambodia picks up two young female street hawkers at a tourist site. Many countries where child sex tourism is a problem profile Western tourists, however predators come from everywhere.