The Huffington Post’s “The Subhuman Conditions That Slaves And Child Laborers Face In India Are Worse Than You Imagined” article was written by Eleanor Goldberg on January 30, 2014.
Think our world has fully promoted civil rights? Think again. Looks like child labor laws have not been enforced yet in India unfortunately. Recently, the Harvard FXB Center for Health and Human Rights has conducted one of the largest research studies on modern slavery. Shockingly, according to statistics, they have found around 3,000 startling cases on forced labor in the Indian carpet industry alone. Horrifically, most of the businesses’ “workers” are kids. As quoted, the data discovered was only “the tip of the iceberg”. Factory owners and guards often denied the researchers access to many work sites, avoiding further evidence to be documented.
According to the “Tainted Carpets: Slavery and Child Labor in India’s Hand-Made Carpet Sector” report, the children trudge ten to twelve hours a day, six to seven days a week. Usually, they are crammed into filthy, contaminated, hot, and humid factory shacks to weave for the rest of their adolescence. They were even physically abused with frequent beatings with sharp tools like scissors. To top it off, most of the kids earned long-term health issues from the unbearable conditions of the workplace. Many suffered from eye disease or even a loss of vision due to the insufficient light. Others eventually developed spinal deformation due to countless hours bending over and sewing. They all have also experienced headaches, muscle pain, cuts, infections, malnutrition and serious psychological trauma - not quite the ideal childhood.
Bihar, a fourteen-year-old male weaver, pitifully reported “We work from seven in the morning until ten at night”; “I sleep on that mat over there. I want to go home but the owner will not let us leave”.
Hopefully, one day our world will gain its humanity back.
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