16 Facts About Iqbal Masih

Iqbal Masih was a Pakistani Christian child labourer and activist who campaigned against abusive child labour in 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.

Iqbal Masih's parents were Saif Masih, a labourer, and Inayat Bibi, who worked as a house cleaner.

In 1986, Saif Iqbal 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.

Iqbal Masih took a loan of 600 rupees from a, using the only collateral he had, his children.

Expenses were to include the cost of a year of training, tools, food and fines for any mistakes Iqbal Masih was to make.

At the carpet maker's, Iqbal Masih was chained to a loom and made to work as much as 14 hours a day.

Iqbal Masih was fed little and beaten, more than other children because of his attempts at escaping and refusal to work.

At the age of 10, Iqbal Masih escaped his slavery, after learning that bonded labour had been declared illegal by the Supreme Court of Pakistan.

Iqbal Masih 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 Masih escaped a second time and attended the Bonded Labour Liberation Front school for former child slaves and quickly completed a four-year education in only two years.

Iqbal Masih helped over 3,000 Pakistani children that were in bonded labour escape to freedom and made speeches about child labour all over the world.

Iqbal Masih 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.

Iqbal Masih 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.

Iqbal Masih's 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 Masih 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.