Iqbal Masih: Enslaved, Empowered, Assassinated | #412

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I'm Saruti. I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red Handed, where we've got deja vu. it hasn't happened much no but in the last decade of podcasting we've somehow managed to have the podcast god smile on us we haven't lost too many recordings um i think we've only ever lost one before this.

I'm trying to remember. I remember we re-recorded the Swedish case. Yes, we did. But I don't know if that was because of sound. No, it's because we were really tired. Oh, yes. Oh, my God, you're so right. We recorded it and we listened back to it and we were like...

this is shit. Yes, exactly. We literally are just like, we look, sound like zombies. We sound like zombies. So you're right, we did. That's how good the quality control here is. And that was in the duvet days. So that was back under the... Duvet Scoliotis Central. Absolutely. So, no, this one, it's not so much about quality control. It's because the SD card went walkabout.

We have searched everywhere. We've turned our office upside down. We've turned our houses upside down. But something that is the size of, you know, half a 5p, it's gone. The only thing that has made me feel better about this is... I remembered that he's not there anymore, but one of the producers of QI, who also works on Fish, he was like, there is the one time we ever got Stephen Fry on No Such Thing as a Fish.

Someone lost the SD card. And now it just lives on in legend in the QIHQ of the mythical SD card with the lost Holy Grail episode that nobody will ever hear. Do you know what, actually? We sometimes, in our occasional...

moments where like wouldn't it just be easier to do a fucking guested show where you get a bunch of celebrities on and you let them talk and then the listeners go through the roof because all their listeners listen the one good thing Hannah is that it is just the two of us so if we do lose an SD card like we have done

At least we know someone famous wasn't on there who we will never, ever get to come back into the studio. It was just us. So we're back again. Yeah. So long live the legend of the last episode of No Such Thing As It Finished. Absolutely. But you don't have to. live wondering about any legendary missing red-handed episodes because we'll just re-record them so let's do that shall we i'll be a bitch about it yeah i'll do it and uh you know good thing it's not about like

Horrible child slavery or anything. Oh, wait. Today, nearly 50 million people live in slavery. That's one in every 150 people on this planet right now. trapped in forced labour. And roughly a quarter of those are children. The top ten countries with the highest prevalence of modern slavery at the moment include North Korea, Eritrea,

Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Tajikistan, United Arab Emirates, Russia, Afghanistan and Kuwait. Now we're not talking about hidden underground slavery that nobody knows about. We are talking about state-sponsored systemic industrial slavery. Just take the kafala system in Saudi Arabia. An extremely wealthy... supposedly modernizing nation. So now imagine what might happen if somebody speaks out against such a system of slavery that is so deeply rooted, so normalized, so accepted.

and so lucrative to powerful people. Now imagine that the person speaking out is a 12 year old boy. We've all heard of Malala and her bravery in the face of the Taliban. But how many of us have heard of Iqbal Masi? If you haven't, or even if you have, this episode is Crucial Listening. We'll deep dive into the disgusting world of child labour in Pakistan and how...

This one 12 year old boy sold into slavery by his own parents escaped, fought the system that held him captive, saved tens of thousands of other young children, fought for their rights on the international stage. and as a result ended up being assassinated before he could even become a teenager. According to Pakistani police, the man responsible for this assassination was just a random farm worker.

hopped up on cannabis, who accidentally shot a kid that he didn't even know. But nobody really believes that. Most people think that Iqbal was assassinated by the carpet cartels. And don't let that jovial name fool you. These are child labour gangs. And it's a particular gang that Iqbal had spent years fighting on the global stage. Others...

including members of his own family, believed that Iqbal was actually killed by the group who had helped him escape slavery. One thing's for sure, Iqbal Masi was silenced.

Rikbal Masi was born on the 1st of January 1982 in a small village near Muradiki, a city in Punjab, eastern Pakistan. His father, Saif, and his mum, Inayat. And the rest of the Masi family lived in a two-bedroomed house within a dusty walled compound. Like a lot of Pakistani boys, Iqbal Masi loved cricket, football and riding his bike.

He also had a passion for learning and was hoping to go to school when the time came. But unfortunately for Iqbal, school wasn't really on the cards. In rural Pakistan, a lot of children don't really get to have much of a childhood. And Iqbal was no different. By the time Iqbal was just four years old he was considered ready to work and help provide for the family. And when we say work we don't mean

Just some sort of, like, Montessori helping mum out with the housework or helping dad work in the fields. No, no. Age four. It was considered high time for Iqbal to get an actual job. Why so young? Well, because Iqbal's oldest brother was getting married. In Pakistan, while it's traditional for the family of the bride to foot the bill for any nuptials, getting married on the groom's side can be...

A pretty pricey business even still. And Iqbal's family barely had the money to keep up with basic living costs. So they looked to borrow it. And Saif asked his brother to speak to the local. which translates to contractor. But I think you said the last time we recorded this, it's more like broker. Yeah, I feel like if I'm understanding it correctly, it's like, yeah, a fixer.

What do you need? I'll do it. So a combination of somebody who works in recruitment, does payday loans, runs a startup, all of the bad things. And the Thakadar was more than happy to offer Saif a loan of 600 rupees, which today would be the equivalent of about 80 quid or $110. But in return, the Thakadar took four-year-old Iqbal to work in his carpet factory.

until the loan was paid off. In the West, we call this bonded labour, or debt slavery, when an individual services as a labourer are exchanged for a loan which is worked off. supposedly over time, that individual's rights and liberties are often at the mercy of the person who loaned the money, and they're only given back once the loan has been repaid, either by the recipient of the money,

or by the hours worked by the bonded labourer. Now to us, obviously the concept of a family putting up their own four-year-old child as collateral for a loan sounds fucking nuts. That's because it is. But to understand how and why it was seen as completely normal for Saif and Inayat to do this, we should take a closer look at Pakistan's history and culture.

When Akbar's family sent him to the carpet factory, he entered a complicated system of bonded labour and money lending known as Peshki, which has become an integral part of Pakistani culture, especially in rural areas. Peshki is a holdover from a different time, before the Brits turned up, when what we now call Pakistan was ruled over by wealthy landowners and tribal chiefs. Back then, the local economy ran on a system similar to Europe in the Middle Ages.

where a few wealthy individuals owned most of the land, employing local peasants to tend crops and livestock. And just like here in Europe, these wealthy landowners would not only own the land the peasants worked, but also the houses they lived in and the food they ate and the clothes that they wore. As a result, the landowners effectively owned the peasants themselves, or at least held control over their lives. The workers had no choice but to work.

for the landowners or they'd be left without a home or income. Think back to all of those times you visited a sleepy village or town in Middle England and been told that the entire area was once owned by a single family until a couple of hundred years ago. That family owned the local mill, the local farm, the local shops, the local school. And essentially, they owned the labour and services of everyone in that local area. It was basically the same thing in Pakistan. It still is.

Yeah, exactly. Because here in Europe, thanks to a whole bunch of factors like education and the Industrial Revolution, meant that the standard of living and the opportunity for social mobility actually became a reality. And if you've listened to our shorthand on the Black Death, the plague also helped, because those long-existing feudal systems eventually fell down, or at least began to change.

Have you heard Jimmy Carr's take on the Black Death and the priesthood? No. So he reckons, right, and I think I agree, that pre the Black Death, priests were essentially diplomatically elected officials for... their parish, right? Everyone was like, oh, good bloke, great bloke. But then, because more priests died in the Black Death than anyone else because they were going around giving people last rites, all the good ones...

were culled, basically. So then there was this massive power vacuum when the plague went away. So they're like, oh, he's got three teeth. He can be the priest. And that's when everything started to go really horribly wrong.

My friend sent me this screenshot the other day about, you know, people who think that it's SPF that causes skin cancer and not the sun. Eyebrow. Exactly. And she lives in Cape Town. Her children are in nursery with... people who believe that to be true so they don't spf their children and then she has to talk to them in the playground you live in africa i know someone had put some like story of like the perils of spf or whatever she was like

what do we think this is about and i was like but people just want things to say because if they don't have things to say they have to admit that we're all just meatbags on a spinning rock like it's just like that's it like you've just but if the thing you're putting your whole weight behind and the skin of your children is that SPF is actually the thing causing skin cancer, then I kind of wish that the priests were the only ones that were literate, you know? I do not understand.

This has nothing to do with anything in this episode, but I do not understand the whole SPF, like, conspiracy theory. Is it... Is it being helmed by... Big sink. Big Botox. Ooh, maybe. And they're like... Everybody's really got on this whole prevention is better than cure situation. And by cure, I don't mean you have to cure your wrinkles. Obviously not. It's just a little joke. But maybe there I go. Everybody's wearing too much SPF and nobody's getting wrinkly as quickly as they used to.

Maybe we'll say that it's the SPF giving everybody skin cancer. And then we'll get people to come here and pump their faces full of botulism. I'm on board. I'm on board with that. I guess, like, I haven't spent any time speaking to these people, but I imagine their starting point might be, well...

People have only just started getting skin cancer in the last 50 years. They've only just sort of known what it is. I think people just died before. And also, we burned a hole in the episode later. That's also that. Which will be closed in 50 years. Yeah, that's something to look forward to. Yeah, because we stopped using CFCs when everyone told us to. Good. Well done. See, the planet can heal itself. Slight detour. Sorry. No, back on track.

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Basically, when those things changed in Europe, when the feudal system began to fall, people no longer wanted to be tied down, working for the same family their parents had worked for. living in this same little village and being completely dependent on one wealthy individual to provide them with everything. So, just like many of you may have seen in Downton Abbey, I've never actually watched it, but I have on good authority.

that that is a big plotline of it. Basically, those wealthy families stopped holding so much power over the local community. And serfdom and feudalism was down, capitalism was up. Still, though, for various reasons... Mostly thanks to tribalism, religiosity and a lack of education. Those old systems didn't fall down in the same way in Pakistan. I would also add corruption. Well, I'm going to let you say that.

with your brown face and i'm gonna keep my white one shut as a result some rural villages are still owned by the same wealthy families and locals still live and die working for them some working the land and some working in factories and that's why Peschke, bonded labour, has been able to persist to this day. But despite effectively being owned by a local land or factory mogul,

A lot of poor, rurally living families still see Peski as a good thing, or at the very least a legitimate option. It's seen as safe and secure and reliable. As a result, a report published by the British government in 2019 estimated that there are roughly 20 million bonded labourers globally, about 85% of whom are in India, Nepal and Pakistan.

Families who enter their children into bonded labour are often convinced to do so by recruiters who work for the factory owners. These recruiters will go from village to village looking for young children to add to the workforce. Often these recruiters may be ex-bonded labour children themselves and will sell these families a dream that their child will get access to work experience, education, may even get a small wage while they work to pay off the loan.

And it's definitely like a big part of the con. Like, I'm sure they're sending these guys out being like, look, my family did this to me and look how I turned out. I'm wearing, you know, a nice shirt and nice trousers and look how well I've done for myself. It's just like a big fat fucking Ponzi scheme. Except instead of people just losing money, these children are being abused. It's horrific. Because, as you can probably imagine, this dream that these recruiters sell the families...

It's not exactly how it plays out. Firstly, the children are treated incredibly poorly. And on top of that, the families are charged extortionately high interest rates and additional payments for... looking after their child in what is essentially a fucking Victorian workhouse. As a result, many families are completely unable to pay off the loan.

Because the interest rate and the care of the child payments mean the loan actually grows faster than they can pay it off. All of which means many children stay in bonded labour for their entire childhoods and sometimes their entire. So just let that sink in. Some family could send their child off to a situation like this for the cost of 600 rupees, 80 quid, but that child could then end up in bonded servitude.

being a slave for the rest of their lives because of 80 quid. And that is how it was in 1986. Not 86, 1986.

Four-year-old Iqbal ended up being picked up at four in the morning for his first day of work. When he arrived at the factory, Iqbal took his place on a rough wooden bench, behind a carpet loom with a few other young boys. For the first few months, Iqbal and the other boys trained as apprentices. They were taught the process of setting up a weaving needle to create the intricate rugs that were made at the factory and sold to local exporters who sold them on to Europe and then the US.

The conditions in this factory, like all such factories, were abysmal. Not only did Iqbal and the other boys work from four in the morning until seven at night, but also the rooms in the factory were completely sealed. This was in an effort to protect the rugs from insects. All the windows and doors were therefore blacked out and no air could pass through from the outside.

The factory was also swelteringly hot and sticky from sweat and poor ventilation. The sharp knives and tools that Iqbal and the other boys used would also often cut their fingers and palms. and the wounds would quickly become infected in the heat. Four-year-old Iqbal found it hard to learn the difficult patterns and techniques needed to weave the rugs, and since he was also an active child who struggled to concentrate.

The factory enforcers would often chain him to his loom to stop him from wandering off. And despite this tiny child's poor work ethic, eventually Iqbal completed his apprenticeship. and was put out onto the factory floor, an equally hot and sticky room which was larger and filled with 20 looms all run by small boys around his age. And that was where Iqbal spent the next six years of his life.

In the factory 15 hours a day, with only a 30-minute break, where he was fed a small bowl of dal and rice, the cost of which was, of course, added to his debt. Over these six years... Iqbal's brothers and sisters watched as the young, excitable and active young boy became a shadow of his former self. When he was dropped home after a long day at the factory, he no longer had the energy for cricket or riding his bike.

He just slept. Once at the factory, Iqbal was so tired that he fell asleep while working, almost lost a finger. The factory manager was furious at the child for staining a rug with his blood. So he pushed Iqbal's finger into hot oil and slapped him across the face for crying out in pain. And then Iqbal was sent straight back to the loom.

Like many of the children, Iqbal would routinely become sick, but the children never let it affect their work. If you were caught slacking, you were lashed on your back. And if you were sick, the managers took you to a room and hung you upside down by your ankles. Unsurprisingly, these working conditions and the severe malnutrition left Iqbal physically stunted. As he got older, his body didn't keep up, leaving him extremely small for his age. Amazingly, what wasn't stunted was his attitude.

Iqbal was known as one of the talkback boys, who stood up to the managers and the enforcers. He complained about the conditions and spoke back when he was shouted at. As a result, he was regularly beaten within an inch of his life, but he never stopped. As Iqbal's situation worsened and it became clear that his debt would probably stick with him for the rest of his life, the young boy rebelled more and more. He began regularly sneaking out of the factory and running into the city.

Sometimes he would just spend the day walking around, although once or twice he did try and find some help. Once, Iqbal ran all the way to the local police station, where he told an officer there what was going on. Iqbal was flooded with relief. When the man asked him about the conditions at the factory, Anikbal told him all about the beatings, lashings and scaldings with hot oil. Finally, the officer said, come with me. Anikbal jumped into the back seat of his police car.

But the officer didn't take Iqbal home. He took him straight back to the factory, where the officer was given a big fat reward for Iqbal's return. And the little boy was taken to a dark room and beaten. But Iqbal never stopped trying to escape, even though every time he made it into the city somebody found him and took him back to the factory. Every time he would be beaten and every time he was told that the next time he'd be killed.

But as soon as another opportunity presented itself, he would be off again. As you can imagine, every escape attempt also meant more money being added to his debt, until the possibility of ever paying it off became totally impossible. And just to make everything worse, Iqbal's dad Saif abandoned his family. So, with Iqbal's mum now struggling more than ever to keep up, she went to the factory owner to secure yet more loans.

Eventually, Iqbal's peshki reached around 13,000 rupees, roughly 1,500 pounds in today's money. By the time Iqbal was 10 years old, he was a fierce young boy.

His hands were calloused and he raged with hate for the factory and his owners. During his various escape attempts, Iqbal had heard rumour of the BLLF, or... Bonded Labour Liberation Front. This group in Pakistan had been founded by a man named Esen Ullah Khan, a human rights activist who had dedicated his life to ending bonded labour.

By the time he came to lead the BLLF, Khan had been fighting for workers' rights as a journalist and campaigner since 1967. He'd organised strikes and peaceful protests that made real change to Pakistan's labour laws. and provided basic human rights for bonded labourers across South Asia, not just Pakistan. In 1987, Khan organised workers from the infamous brick kilns.

where bonded labourers are forced to work long hours in incredibly dangerous conditions. And note I said are, not were, because brick kilns are most certainly still operational today. Children sit in the baking sun, pushing clay with their bare hands into moulds and leaving them out to dry. Khan took these labourers and helped them present a case to the Pakistani Supreme Court.

which eventually acknowledged the prevalence of debt labour and declared that brickmakers should apply for a civic court ruling to leave their workplaces if they were held under Peski. Iqbal didn't know any of this. In fact, he wasn't quite sure who the BLLF were, or why the factory enforcers kept telling him and the other boys to stay away from them. But he figured that if the enforcers wanted him to stay away...

then he should probably go and have a look. So one day in 1993, at just 10 years old, Iqbal escaped yet again and attended a Freedom Day celebration hosted by the BLLF and Aishan Khan. Iqbal stood in the corner of a crowded square and learned all about bonded labour. As he listened to Khan and the other speakers, Iqbal jaw dropped. They said that his peski wasn't just wrong. It was illegal.

just a year before the Pakistani government had actually cancelled the debt that his family owed to the factory owner. Then, in a moment of pure luck and fate, a man that honestly sounds like... It's happening in a movie because it just feels so right place, right time, right fucking kid. That Esen Khan spots Iqbal curled up in the corner and called out to him.

Khan asked Iqbal to come onto the stage and tell the crowd about his situation. And Iqbal did. He spoke angrily about who the factory owner was and how much his family owed. and the conditions he had been forced to work in. And he told them all that he was never going back to bonded labour. After the meeting, Iqbal spoke to a lawyer from the BLLF.

who wrote him a letter to send to the factory owner, which he promised would grant Iqbal his freedom. And probably many a kid, many an adult, many a person would have taken that opportunity and run away. But it wasn't enough for Iqbal. He wanted to go back to the factory in person so he could help the other boys escape as well. And that's exactly what he did.

After this escape, Khan and the BLLF arranged for a ten-year-old Iqbal to attend school on their Freedom Campus in Lahore. Iqbal was overjoyed, couldn't believe how much his life had changed in just a few weeks. During the day he studied hard and in the evenings he went out and actually played with other kids. Sometimes he went to the cinema or just sat in front of the TV watching cartoons like a normal kid would.

And as Iqbal learned to read and write, his vocabulary and vision grew to match his passion. And he famously told his classmates that he wanted to be the Abraham Lincoln of Pakistan and free all the slave children. Little did he know, Iqbal Massey would end up with a lot more in common with Abraham Lincoln than he may have thought. Iqbal's passion and ambition propelled him.

Quickly, he joined the BLLF volunteers. And when he wasn't studying, he was out learning how to campaign and protest. And, yeah, it was just like, and I don't mean this in a cynical way, but like the perfect find for Khan. 100%. Because that day he stands up on that platform in front of a massive crowd of people next to a man like Khan who has spent decades of his life.

campaigning, protesting, speaking out, who's a journalist and activist. Iqbal, as a child, is able to have the confidence to go up there, tell his story in a compelling way. And understand even what Khan is saying and how this is going to help him save himself and also the other kids. And then with that education that he gets, how he is able to absolutely transform so much. And I think we have already recorded this episode.

But I forget that he dies tragically so young and how much he achieved before that even happened. Because Iqbal was a natural born revolutionary within months. He was versed in every damning statistic and every illegal practice. As a 10-year-old boy, he started doing what the authorities were obviously too corrupt and too lazy to have been doing. Iqbal went to...

countless factories and spoke to thousands of other children trapped in bonded labour, and he helped many of them escape their hell. Before long, he wasn't just out on the streets. He was also attending functions and talks with Khan. And at these talks, Iqbal told journalists and political leaders from across the world about what he had suffered as a bonded child labourer. He told them about the beatings, the heat, the hours, and showed them.

his ten-year-old's scarred and battered hands. Quickly, it became clear that Iqbal's talks were hitting harder than anything the BLLF had done before. Their organisation had spoken endlessly about child labour and bonded labour across Asia, and it had fallen on mostly deaf ears. But hearing it from a child who had experienced it firsthand resonated with leaders.

Within a year of having escaped, Iqbal was talking internationally about his experience and was a guest speaker at an international labour convention in Stockholm. He attended the conference and made headlines across the world, once again eloquently and powerfully describing his life in the factory and touring Swedish schools to spread his message. But... Ridding Pakistan of child labour was never going to be easy. It was only in 1991 that Pakistan brought in the Employment of Children Act.

which prohibited the employment of anyone under the age of 14. However, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan estimated that in the 1990s, so after this act was passed, 11 million children were still... working in the country, half of whom were under the age of 10. Like most countries where slavery persists, corruption is rife and governance is weak.

Children who find themselves in these situations like carpet factories, brick kilns or other manufacturing centres are also often poor and completely ignored. While boys are sent off to these horrific workhouses. The girls are often sent to be domestic servants, but their plight, make no mistake, is equally nightmarish, with rape and physical abuse all too common.

And so, with so many people standing to lose so much, as Iqbal's fame grew, he started to receive death threats from back home. Factory owners were uniting against him, and they wanted him silenced. Hundreds of letters arrived at his dorm describing the myriad ways he was going to be tortured and killed if he didn't shut up. But Iqbal told the BLLF that he didn't care and that it just fuelled him.

convincing him that he must be making a difference, or they wouldn't be so angry. Iqbal ploughed on, and soon his work was recognised on the world stage. He received the Reebok Human Rights Award.

which honoured activists under the age of 30 who were making a difference across the world, while also using the factories that employ them. Don't want our very astute and intelligent listeners to think that we don't see the irony in that. Yeah, I mean... this is the thing isn't it it's like we obviously had that conversation with emily kenway a very long time ago about modern slavery and the point still stands you know it can have all of the fucking rubber

stamps of approval that they're, you know, slavery free, this, that and the other. But there is literally no way. And this isn't me excusing these brands, by the way, I'm just saying. There is literally no way for you as a consumer to trust a brand when they tell you that no slavery was used in their entire pipeline. The head of supply chain at, you know, insert major retailer.

Even they, no matter what they say, they can't know. No, there is no way because take even a company that is making trainers, right? They can say, we don't use sweatshops to make them. which I would question because a lot of them outsource them to China. How do you know which factories China is using? China's probably using the fucking Uyghur concentration camps that they're currently running to manufacture the shoes. But even if you have your own factory,

out in china and you know it's above board you've got people stationed there who know there's no sweatshop how do you know where the rubber's coming from it's probably coming from a place in which children or people are being abused where slavery is rampant to make that rubber even if it's not there

How do you know that the cotton you're using is being picked from a farm where slave labour isn't being used? There is no way to know. Exactly. And obviously there's a lot of that which is difficult to, not difficult, impossible to completely illuminate. but equally pick any sort of event to do with any sort of sustainability, whatever.

They get private jets there. Like, it's all such a farce. It's all such a farce. And even stuff where... Leonardo DiCaprio was at Jeff Dezos' wedding. Get in the fucking... This is why... This is why... I mean, this is why celebrity is dead. Full stop. I just think. Who wants to be lectured to by fucking Joaquin Phoenix while he stands up there and cries about cows while he probably gets off a private jet? Get in the fucking bin.

And any brand that tells you, oh, this is 100% sustainable and recyclable, like down to the glue, down to the glue you use on your packaging, is it? Because your packaging may have been made by recycled paper. But if there's glue on there, most glue, non-recyclable, straight in the bin.

Like our own government telling us like, oh, this is all getting recycled. No, it's not. We sell it to fucking India and Pakistan and like random other countries to like deal with and burn our rubbish. Like, and this is also, you know, I'm not going to get into it because like we're going off on a tangent, but like.

all the greenwashing of like oh net zero I'm like nah we just send all of our production to some other country and then say that we're net zero it's like okay if it makes you feel better I don't want to sound like defeatist about the slavery side of things, coming back to the point of this episode. I also just recognise that any brand that's telling you that, they're full of shit because they don't know. They're full of shit because it's impossible. If they're saying anything but...

We accept that we are not going to be able to tell you 100% that we can eradicate it, but we are trying our absolute best. If they are saying anything other than that, they are lying and they know they are. Absolutely. So yeah, a bit of a bummer. A lot of a bummer. Everyone knows that the best...

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Iqbal Masi stepped off a plane at Boston Airport with Esen Khan. Iqbal wore a traditional Salvar kameez, but of course with a big puffy jacket over the top as he shivered against the cold Boston air. Sharon Cohen, vice president of Reebok's PR team, was there to greet Iqbal. Cohen's team had spent months following the little boy, who was now 11 years old, and known around the globe. Sharon was so awestruck as Iqbal walked over that she blurted out...

I've read so much about you. I don't know whether to speak to you as a child or as a man. To a chick bar reply simply, I am a child. I don't know how it was delivered. He's right, but I do empathise with Sharon. Yeah, yeah. I feel like during the whole concept of this episode, during the first record, during the second record, I still find it so hard to believe that he is as young as he is. And I sometimes want to refer to him as a man, but he never stops being a child.

Because he dies so young. And I think, like you said at the start, everybody knows Malala, right? And I don't think everybody is aware as much of what Iqbal did. But if you Google him, I think most people at least our age would recognize his face. I agree. So Iqbal spent the next week being shown around Boston by the Reebok team. The little boy loved the big city, and he liked that there were so many tall buildings and Christmas trees. It was like something out of a film.

The team took him to see The Lion King at the IMAX, thinking that it would absolutely blow his tiny mind. But Iqbal told them that while he did like the film very much, they should remember that Pakistan has films as well. Iqbal was also taken to a department store to see rugs very similar to the ones he used to make in the factory. None of these rugs in that department store had the rug mark certification.

A label for rugs that are verified to have been made ethically. Supposedly. Iqbal suspected that they had certainly been made by kids. And he was probably right. He couldn't believe that they were being sold in the US for hundreds of dollars when he got paid just $4 a week to make them. It would have taken Iqbal about 10 years to purchase a single rug made by one of his fellow bonded workers.

For the next few days, Iqbal went on a tour of Massachusetts, and he visited several schools to talk about his experiences in the factory. He made his biggest connection with the kids of Broadmeadows Middle School in the city of Quincy. The students were all from lower income families and had been through serious struggles of their own. And they spent the day asking each other questions. Iqbal asked about life in the US and the students asked him about his time at the factory.

At the end of the day, the kids surprised Iqbal with some presents that they'd got together, including a backpack, a school shirt, an honorary school membership, a friendship bracelet, three gumballs, some instant hot chocolate, some white rice. The Reebok Foundation also took Iqbal to a world-class children's hospital to be checked over by the doctors. His body was still scarred from his time in the factory.

even after a year of freedom. And he was diagnosed with physical dwarfism, which is when a person is notably small in stature, but as a result of environmental factors, like malnutrition, rather than genetic ones.

The doctors told the foundation that Iqbal's growth plates were still open, and with some hormone therapy, he might be able to regain some stature. That evening, they took Iqbal out for pizza to celebrate. But, Iqbal... wasn't keen it didn't taste like anything he was used to back home i often think about stuff like that where like i have very specific things that because i grew up eating them i think they're the best thing ever

But I suspect, kind of like if you only watch Mrs. Doubtfire at 35 for the first time, you don't really get it. If you try them later in life. And it's not Boston, is it? But Chicago. Oh, my God. Deep dish. When I went to Chicago, I've only ever ordered a deep dish in Chicago once. And I was like, what the fresh hell is this? It's wild.

I've never, I've never had one. Oh, it was. It is literally a pie. It's a cheese pie. You cut it and it all just comes pouring out. I was like. Wow. I could never. It's. It's quite shocking. You're not built for cheese, though, whereas I, as a Western European, am very specifically bred only for cheese. Absolutely. Smashed it. Apparently, I hear a famine thing that we can process.

Lactose, whereas a lot of Asians can't because very specifically there was some sort of prehistoric famine where you only survived if you could drink milk. I heard it originated from the Dutch. That sounds right. Yeah. I believe they had a bunch of cows. And then they colonized the whole world. Well, you know, everyone was at it. Why we have kebabs and KFC.

Anyway, after Iqbal had decided that pizza wasn't for him, their rest of the day was for an awards ceremony. And Iqbal accepted his award and spoke to a room packed full of hundreds of journalists. During his speech, he held up a pen and a knife, and as he lifted the pen, Iqbal told the silent audience that this is the tool of a child. Then he lifted his knife and said, this is the tool of a child in bonded labour.

That afternoon, he gave countless interviews to reporters, all stunned by the passionate young boy, who, despite the gifts, the films and the fancy hotels, couldn't wait to get back to Pakistan and return to campaigning for kids to be free. Before Iqbal left the States, he was presented with a few final gifts. $10,000 from Reebok, which Khan insisted be kept in the US in an account in Iqbal's name, a full university scholarship, and most meaningfully to Iqbal.

656 individual letters addressed to Pakistan's then-Prime Minister Berazir Bhutto and then-US President Bill Clinton. The letters had been collected by students from Broadmeadows Middle School. who had canvassed the city of Quincy in Iqbal's name. Love those kids. Yeah. Gotta fucking love those kids. I wonder where they are now. I know. Whoever you were, well done. Because they come through again, as we'll find out.

at the end of the episode, but just smashing kids there, really. Iqbal returned to the Freedom Campus in Lahore in January 1995 as an absolute hero. He had brought the bonded labour crisis to the world stage. Now it wasn't just a national problem, but an international one. And now companies across the world were pledging to sign up to the rug mark.

and other certificates to verify that they weren't using child labour. And so the child labour factories were starting to close by the day. However, as Iqbal's reach and success widened, so did the death threats. Factory owners across Pakistan who had lost everything were holding meetings and rallies against this child, trying to take away Iqbal's power and his voice. But Iqbal refused to stop.

He continued to visit factories every day and tell the children that worked in them that legally they were free and that the factory owners had no right to keep them there anymore. When his friends asked if he was scared, Iqbal would always reply, I'm not afraid of the owner any longer. Now he is afraid of me. In April 1995, Iqbal took a little break.

and he went home to Muridiki to visit his family for Easter. Iqbal's family were Christian, and having him back for the festival meant the whole world to them. His mum was so proud of her son. He'd become the first person in their family to get any kind of education. And that day, his little sister spent the whole day following him around wherever he went. On the 16th of April, Iqbal went to visit his cousin, called Liyakat, who lived nearby.

Iqbal arrived at his house around 7pm, just in time to join Liyakat and his mate Fayyad, as they set off to take Liyakat's father, Aminat, some dinner. Like they did every single night. The three boys all hopped on the same bicycle and headed off to a nearby farm. Aminat was an illiterate labourer who had worked the same fields his entire life. The kind of man that Iqbal was destined to become had he not escaped.

As the sun faded that day, Aminat chatted away to his fellow workers, excitedly telling them all about his nephew Iqbal who was coming to visit. He was the wonder kid taking on Pakistan's child labour factories. And guess what? Today he was coming to bring Aminat his dinner. But that night, Iqbal, Le'Ekat and Fayyad never arrived. Just before Aminat was expecting to see his son.

A colleague of his called Ashraf, who they all called Hero, said he wasn't feeling very well and needed to go home to drink some tea. And so Hero asked to borrow Amonat's donkey cart and set off in the same direction. that the kids would be coming from. A few minutes later, shots rang out across the fields and children's screams followed them. Amanat dropped his tools and sprinted towards the cries.

When he rounded the corner, he found his donkey cart lying in the road, the donkey bucking wildly. A few metres away were all three children. Theokat was unharmed. Fyad was clutching his arm as blood poured out of it. And Iqbal was lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood. He'd been shot in the back with a shotgun and died instantly. Iqbal's Death

caused instant outrage across Pakistan and hit headlines across the world. The next day he was buried in a small graveyard near the family home. 800 people arrived for the ceremony. including journalists from far and wide. In the days that followed, 3,000 children marched on Lahore, screaming for change in Iqbal's name. The Pakistani Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, raged against Iqbal's death.

and declared that Iqbal's family would receive payment from the government to help with the loss. Sadly, little did she know that she would also, not long after, be assassinated. Eshin Khan, head of the BLLF, called a press conference and told the watching world that it was clear Iqbal only had one enemy, the carpet mafia. But...

Two investigations, one from the Pakistani police and another from Pakistan's Human Rights Commission, concluded that Ashraf, aka Hero, had acted alone. According to both investigations, Ashraf confessed to the murder immediately after being caught. He told them that as he was donkey carting his way down the road, he was pretty high on cannabis leaf paste, which is called bang locally. Ammonet's donkey had started playing up and he got off the cart to start hitting it.

And that was when the three children rounded the corner and started to shout at him. So, according to Ashraf's confession, in a moment of panic, he took the shotgun which he'd mysteriously picked up as he left the fields and shot the children. yeah we'll go on to talk about like this decision and like what other people thought but i think it's very obvious that the reason the police and like

The officials don't want to delve any deeper into this, have absolutely no curiosity about this. It's just because it's an incredibly high-profile case, one that not only within Pakistan but internationally had a lot of eyes on it.

They just didn't want to dig any deeper. They didn't want to open that can of worms. They were just like, hey, look, this guy did it. Telling me that guy confessed even if he had been paid to do this, which is what I strongly believe happened. They would have just beaten him.

until he gave them the story that they wanted. Like, there is no doubt in my mind that that would have happened. And they just didn't want to start picking through this. I'm sure, you know, you might be wondering, well, like, surely... The carpet mafia haven't got enough money to pay off the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. Maybe not. Their motivations are probably just not wanting to be exposed for not doing a good job investigating it.

or to open up a can of worms that they wouldn't be able to close. No, exactly. And like there's, you know, high profile, powerful people will be exposed in the end because they're everywhere. If you pull at that thread of the carpet mafia... There are going to be very important, very wealthy, very powerful people who are going to be exposed for corruption, extortion, anything you can imagine. And they don't want that to happen. And that's why it doesn't.

So this conclusion from the Pakistani police and the Human Rights Commission divided Pakistan and even Iqbal's own family. A rumour spread that it was actually Esen Khan and the BLLF. the foundation Iqbal had worked so closely with, that it ordered the hit. But why would the BLLF ever want to hurt their poster boy? The rumour was that it was because of Iqbal's money.

including that $10,000 that Reebok had given him. The thinking was that this money would be passed down to Khan after Iqbal's death. But that just wasn't true. Iqbal's $10,000 had been safely deposited in a US bank account. which could only be accessed by Iqbal when it came time to pay for his education. And remember, it was actually Khan that had told him not to take the money to Pakistan and to leave it in the US. And the BLLF and Khan had no need for Iqbal's money anyway.

The press alone that Iqbal had brought had set up the BLLF to keep fighting bonded labour for a lifetime. And on top of that, they had been given a separate $20,000 by Reebok to fund their organisation anyway. This idea of BLLF involvement had been spread across Pakistan by factory owners and the press. And it had even convinced members of Iqbal's own family.

Iqbal's older brother still maintains that Iqbal's murder was paid for by the BLLF, and Iqbal's mother initially told the press that she didn't believe that the carpet factories were involved. She did later change her mind. and moved to live on a campus run by the BLF which to some people who believe that conspiracy theory would have made that just look more suspicious but it's like do you want to look at the BLF trying to help Iqbal's family or silence them for murdering

They're fucking golden goose, even if you're super cynical, for $10,000. But unfortunately, the rumours did stick and Eshan Khan received so many death threats and attacks that he ended up leaving Pakistan altogether. The 78-year-old still campaigns tirelessly to end child labour across South Asia. But he's never returned to Pakistan.

It's not all doom and gloom, though. Less than a year after Iqbal's murder, President Bill Clinton brought in a law banning the import and sale of any goods made by bonded child labourers. Which, as discussed, on the surface, looks like a good thing. But it is impossible to say that there is 100% no slavery in any supply chain. It just cannot be done. But there is proper good news.

The children of Brooks Meadow Middle School began a national campaign to build a school in Iqbal's name, and they raised $150,000 and ended up building the Iqbal Masi Education Centre in Kasoy in Pakistan. And they did that in 1996. That school takes in thousands of children every year. Who without it would end up in bonded labour? Not that things are anywhere near resolved.

In Pakistan, it is still estimated that 2.3 million people are living in modern slavery. And to my great shame, India is estimated to have a whopping 11 million people in the same situation as of 2021. So yes, just a gentle reminder of what's actually going on in the world right now, today, this very minute, in terms of slavery. And I wish I could tell you all.

As we've been saying throughout this episode, just buy slavery-free goods. Put those guys out of business. Buy the tuna can with the dolphin on it. Yeah, exactly. And also that kind of propaganda. And I'm not saying like fast fashion is acceptable or good. Of course not. But that idea of like, well, just buy more expensive stuff because they must be paying people better. They must not be using slavery. It's just, there is no guarantee.

And I really wish that wasn't the case, but it's just not that simple. And I hate to sound defeatist about it, but all we can really hope is that internationally more pressure is put on countries like this to tackle this issue. We have to just hope that the economies of these countries continue to boom, particularly in places like India and China, and that once that happens, they'll catch up with the rest of the world. But tragically, that won't be before.

Yet more generations of children are born, live and die under the yoke of modern slavery. So the next time someone gets their knickers in a twist about something really stupid, like... Is listening to true crime to go to sleep weird and indicative of you being a bad person with a broken brain? The retort to that is like, I think there are more important things to be worrying about, my friend. Quite. So there you go.

Hopefully you're all not too bummed out, but it is. And if you're asleep, I'm in your dreams. There you go. Very, very depressing episode. But there you go. I think the problem with this kind of case is that. Even as we tell it, I think it's very difficult for people to imagine that this is real, to believe that this is real, because it feels so far removed from our lives. I just finished watching the latest season of Squid Game.

Yesterday. Oh, did you? I haven't begun. Season one or any season. Oh, no. Season one or two I've watched. Okay. It's worth it. Okay. It's worth it. I think, you know. tangent I was going to talk about it under the duvet but yeah let's you know maybe slightly cheer everybody up before we end this episode but maybe not maybe you hated it I think a lot of people were like they hated season three or there was a lot of like criticism going into season three because

And I haven't checked on this, but I think what it is, is that it was sold to American producers. But then at the end, it was like directed by and it was definitely a Korean name. So I don't know.

But basically people had their like nickers in a twist because Cate Blanchett is like randomly does a cameo at the very, very end of the last episode. And I heard that Cate Blanchett was in it. And I watched the whole thing and I was like, no, she fucking isn't. And then like the end, she's in like the last.

five seconds right yeah it's worth a watch for sure it was really really good i really enjoyed it the baby plot line made me feel really unwell like i feel like they were obviously just trying to push the boundaries, push the boundaries, push the boundaries. I'd like, maybe I'm just feeling particularly sensitive right now, but I was like, well, this is, this is a bit much. So yeah. Well, that just filled up my evening. Exactly. So yeah. Enjoy.

something else because you probably didn't enjoy this and we will see you next week for something else goodbye bye Hello, I'm Alice Levine. And I'm Matt Ford. And we're the hosts of British Scandal. Our latest series has a very loose, festive theme. It's about the other virgin's baby. But we're not talking cosy stable in Bethlehem. We're talking roaring 1920s London. Christabel Russell is living her best life. She's married into an aristocratic family who want one thing, an heir.

And the tricky bit is the Russell marriage is a no-sex deal. So when Christabel becomes pregnant, is it a miracle? Cue a national scandal and sensational trial. Follow British Scandal wherever you get your podcasts or listen early and ad-free. On Wondery+. In 1993, three eight-year-old boys were brutally murdered in West Memphis, Arkansas, as the small-town local police struggled to solve the crime.

Rumors soon spread that the killings were the work of a satanic cult. Suspicion landed on three local teenagers, but there was no real evidence linking them to the murders. Still, that would not protect them. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to life some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, three teenage boys are falsely accused of a vicious triple homicide.

But their story doesn't end with their trials or convictions. Instead, their plight will capture the imagination of the entire country and spark a campaign for justice that will last for almost two decades. Follow American Scandal on The Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of American Scandal The West Memphis Three early and ad-free right now on Wondery Plus.