This is the full complaint issued against UAE’s “Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoumâ€?
This Complaint seeks redress against individuals who abducted and trafficked thousands of small boys from South Asia and Africa to the United Arab Emirates and other Arab states and enslaved them to work as camel jockeys, camel trainers and camel tenders in the desolation and heat of the Arabian Peninsula. Boys as young as two years old were stolen from their parents, trafficked to foreign lands, and put under the watch of brutal overseers in camel camps throughout the region. These claims are brought to punish the perpetrators and compensate the victims of child slavery and an international slave trade in small children that seems unimaginable in the 2 1st century.
Camel racing has been a favored Arab pastime for centuries. As wealth grew in the oil rich Arabian Peninsula, camel racing grew and took on the trappings of an established sport patronized by the richest and most powerful sheikhs. So that their camels could run faster and enter into training at a younger age, the sheikhs began using small boys as jockeys and training riders. Despite the eventual enactment of legal weight and age limits, child jockeys weighing less than 20 kilograms, or 44 pounds, and usually between four years old and adolescence, became and remained the standard in races for much of the past thirty years. Boys as young as three years old were used in training to accustom juvenile camels to carry a rider, and were at the same time trained themselves to be jockeys.
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