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29 children enslaved at a circus rescued New Delhi: A voluntary organisation has rescued 29 children, including minors, working as bonded labour in a circus in Kerala. The children used to perform a range of complex and often life- threatening tricks, which included trapeze items, jumping through fire rings, sitting atop lions and even substituting as dartboards for knife-totting jugglers. Officials say most of the children are from Nepal, where extreme poverty has forced thousands of parents to sell their children, often for as less as 2,000 rupees ($50). Local crooks who double up as job contractors dupe gullible parents by promising only light household jobs for the children but instead push them into cheap labour involving extreme physical and mental torture. Amongst the rescued children, a 10- year-old girl has lost her mental balance after witnessing her father being beaten mercilessly for pleading to take her back. A seven-year-old boy was crippled after falling off a bike in the "Maut Ka Kua" or the well of death, where the child drives a motocycle in a huge wooden drum, with nothing but the breakneck speed preventing it from falling off. Kailash Satyarthi, chairperson of the NGO which rescued the children, slammed the government for turning a blind eye to the menace while it harped on a "feel good" factor pervading the nation. "The government on one hand talks about the feel good factor but on the other hand is not ready to even accept that slavery does exist in this country in its most ugliest form," Satyarthi told a news conference in New Delhi on Thursday. India
has officially prohibited the employment of children under 14. But
unofficial figures put the number of working children close to 50
million, the highest in the world. Enslaving as "Bonded labour" as
well was banned under a law passed by the parliament in 1976 but persists
to this day. Satyarthi said the problem was deep rooted and making
matters worse was the refusal by government authorities to accept
it as a matter needing grave and immediate attention. "But since Government
of India has time and again declared in international forum including
U.N. Human Rights and so on that they do not have any contemporary
form of slavery or bonded labour, so whenever we rescue the children
or even the adults, the thought is that they (government authorities)
do not want to admit that there are bonded labourers," he said. Under
the Bonded Labour Act, the children will now have to be relocated
to their native land and will be handed over to the Nepal Child Welfare
Organisation (NCFW). The Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save the Childhood
Movement), which is spearheading the campaign has demanded the federal
and provincial authorities crack down on the erring industries. But
in the face of lax laws and slow administrative procedures, it might
be years or even decades, before the offenders are penalised or even
caught. |