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UAE - Camel Jockey Slave Kids
Welcome to paradise!
Dubai - any of the hipper guidebooks will advise - is the 'Bangkok of the Middle East', populated by thousands of Russian, Armenian, Indian and Iranian prostitutes controlled by various transnational gangs and mafias. (The city, conveniently, is also a world centre for money laundering with an estimated 10 percent of real estate changing hands in cash-only transactions.)
Sheikh Mohammed and his thoroughly modern regime, of course, disavow any connection to this burgeoning red-light industry although insiders know that the women are essential to keeping all those five-star hotels full of European and Arab businessmen. But the sheikh himself has been personally linked to Dubai's most scandalous vice: child slavery.
Camel racing is a local passion in the Emirates, and in June 2004 Anti-Slavery International released photos of preschool-age child jockeys in Dubai. HBO Real Sports simultaneously reported that the jockeys, 'some as young as three - are kidnapped or sold into slavery, starved, beaten and raped'. Some of the tiny jockeys were shown at a Dubai camel track owned by the al-Maktoums.
Sheikh Mo - as he's affectionately known to Dubai's expats - who fancies himself a prophet of modernisation, likes to impress visitors with clever proverbs and heavy aphorisms. A favourite: 'Anyone who does not attempt to change the future will stay a captive of the past.' Yet the future that he is building in Dubai, to the applause of billionaires and transnational corporations everywhere, looks like nothing so much as a nightmare of the past - Walt Disney meets Albert Speer on the shores of Araby.
Comment
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Comment by Dallas the Phallus on May 16, 2012 at 1:33pm -
ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY DISGUSTING.
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Comment by Hope on May 16, 2012 at 11:17am -
Good thing that they banned the child jockeys now:
from wiki:
Banning the use of child jockeys
The United Arab Emirates was the first to ban the use of children under 15 as jockeys in camel racing when Sheikh Hamdan bin Zayed Al Nahyan announced the ban on 29 July 2002.[6] In 2009 the UAE paid compensation to 879 former jockeys.[7] The UAE now issues penalties such as jail and banning for those found using children as jockeys. However, international observers have reported violations of this ban.[8]
In Qatar, the Emir of Qatar, Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani, banned child jockeys in 2005[9] and directed that, by 2007, all camel races would be directed by robotic jockeys.
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Comment by Michel on May 16, 2012 at 10:44am -
Thanks for posting this Mohamed.
But what good can we expect from people who hold power by virtue of medieval values?
'Anyone who does not attempt to change the future will stay a captive of the past.'
This Sheik Mo is a certified hypocrite!
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Comment by Hope on May 16, 2012 at 10:41am
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I blame their families.
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Comment by Hope on May 16, 2012 at 10:39am
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Those kids are from "Balochistan" they do this for money since they are immigrants and poor..I don't think that they are slaves or they are been treated like slaves not at all..I think their families forced them to work...I konw that cuz we have many of them here in Saudi Arabia.. They are selling watermelons on streets and all that, they poor and illegal immigrants btw.
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Comment by Apostate Mohamed on May 16, 2012 at 9:59am
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