Iqbal Masih

Iqbal Masih (Punjabi: اقبال مسیح; 1 January 1983 – 16 April 1995) was a Pakistani Christian child labourer and activist who campaigned against abusive child labour in Pakistan.
He was assassinated on 16 April 1995. On 23 March 2022 (Pakistan Day), he was posthumously awarded the Tamgha-e-Shujaat by the government of Pakistan.
Iqbal Masih was born on 1 January 1983 in Muridke, a village outside of Lahore in Punjab, Pakistan, into a poor Catholic Christian family. His parents were Saif Masih, a labourer, and Inayat Bibi, who worked as a house cleaner. Saif later abandoned the family, leaving Inayat to work and Iqbal's older sisters to take care of him and his siblings.
In 1986, Saif Masih was to marry off one of his sons but he lacked savings and was unable to finance this: banks would not provide loans while government aid programs were few. He took a loan of 600 rupees from a thekedar (carpet factory owner), using the only collateral he had, his children. The loan was to be paid off by four-year-old Iqbal's labor, and included undisclosed interest and expenses, an institution known as peshgi. Due to the illegality of selling children, the transaction was informal, allowing the loaner to add arbitrary expenses to the loan without oversight.
Expenses were to include the cost of a year of training (during which Iqbal would not be paid), tools, food and fines for any mistakes Iqbal was to make. He was paid 1 rupee a day. Due to the high interest rate at which the loan was taken, it stood at 13,000 rupees prior to his escape.
At the carpet maker's, Iqbal was chained to a loom and made to work as much as 14 hours a day. He was fed little and beaten, more than other children because of his attempts at escaping and refusal to work. These conditions stunted his growth; he had the height and weight of a 6-year-old when he was 12.
Explaining the background behind bonded labourers in Pakistan, American professor C. Christine Fair states that "Large numbers of Christians in the Punjab and Sindh, in particular, are trapped in bonded labour or slavery in work like brick kilns and carpet-weaving. Around 80% of brick kiln workers in some areas are Christians working to pay off family debts long since paid in absolute terms, yet who are illiterate and remain powerless to do anything about their circumstances. The plight of Pakistan's bonded labourers came to international attention briefly with the murder of 12-year-old Christian Iqbal Masih in 1995".
At the age of 10, Iqbal escaped his slavery, after learning that bonded labour had been declared illegal by the Supreme Court of Pakistan. He escaped and attempted to report his employer Ashad to the police, but the police brought him back to the factory seeking a finder's fee for returning escaped bonded labourers. Iqbal escaped a second time and attended the Bonded Labour Liberation Front (BLLF) school for former child slaves and quickly completed a four-year education in only two years. Iqbal helped over 3,000 Pakistani children that were in bonded labour escape to freedom and made speeches about child labour all over the world.
He expressed a desire to become a lawyer to better equip him to free bonded labourers, and he visited other countries, including Sweden and the United States, to share his story, encouraging others to join the fight to eradicate child slavery.
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."
Iqbal was fatally shot by the "carpet mafia," a gang that killed slaves if they ran away from a carpet factory, while visiting relatives in Muridke on 16 April 1995, Easter Sunday. He was only 12 years old. His funeral was attended by approximately 800 mourners. A protest of 3,000 people, half of whom were younger than 12, took place in Lahore demanding an end to child labor in the week that followed.
His mother said she did not believe her son had been the victim of a plot by the "carpet mafia". However, the BLLF disagreed because Iqbal had received death threats from individuals connected to the Pakistani carpet industry, the most recent of which had been two weeks prior to 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.