November 20, 2024
Pakistan’s brickmaking industry employs over 3 million men, women, and children…often indentured laborers… who produce 82 billion bricks by hand per year. This back-breaking work is dangerous and the child and bonded labor work in an unhealthy environment. The air is toxic and most families live in 9″ x 12″ huts with poor water and no sanitation facilities. Many children die before the age of five, and if they survive, they remain uneducated. Because of poverty and illiteracy, child and early marriages are forced marriages. Further, women are frequently raped and sexually abused. Christian and Dalit women are particularly vulnerable – marginalized because of being women and because of belonging to religious minority groups and a caste.
Economic insecurity drives workers to take on risky jobs or loans from unscrupulous employers. Employers then exploit these workers by forcing them into labor-intensive jobs to repay their debts with no written contract to record the arrangement. Over 90% of brick kiln workers are estimated to have taken an advance loan that traps them in bonded labor to their employers. Kiln workers borrow money to pay for their expenses or to support a family member, and they become slaves to their employers. They are locked into agreements with often unclear terms that are only fully known by the employer, who forces them to make bricks every day until the debt is paid.
Debt interest accumulates quickly, and repayment terms are arbitrarily changed by the employer to keep workers in a cycle of debt. When a debtor dies, the spouse and children inherit the debt, forcing them into generational slavery. There are even reports of organ harvesting in brick kilns as a payment for the debt owed by a family.
The practice disproportionately affects religious minorities in Muslim-majority Pakistan according to a report issued in 2024 by Britain’s All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Pakistani Minorities. While religious minorities are estimated to be only 5% of Pakistan’s population, the percentage of religious minorities working in brick kilns is often as high as 50%. Many marginalized Hindus, Christians, and non-majority Muslim groups are trapped in this work and face pressure to forcibly convert.
According to the APPG report, most kilns are located in suburban or remote areas, and those living and working at the kiln lack:
- Access to quality healthcare
- Alternate employment opportunities
- Water, sanitation, and other infrastructure
- Accessibility to education
- Access to information
- Transportation
Here is one of the chilling witness testimonies published in the APPG report on slave labor in Pakistan’s brick kilns:
Sara’s testimony My name is Sara (her name has been changed to protect her identity), a widow, with three children. I got married 13 years ago. When we got married, we were already suffering from poverty and unemployment. When our daughter was born, my husband decided to take a loan from the brick kiln owner and work for him until we had paid back. A dark night came to my life, one night when my husband was on the way to Brick Kiln, suddenly he saw some movement, thieves who had come to rob. They saw my husband and they shot him with a gun. My husband died on the spot.
It was the worst time I have ever experienced in my life, and I had to go through a lot of pain and hardships during this time. The attitude of the people around me changed a lot in a negative way, in the absence of my husband. The brick kiln’s owner and manager started abusing me verbally first and then sexually. I had to bear their harsh and abusive language, sometimes they would beat me with wooden sticks or iron rods, especially whenever I used to refuse their demands for sex. The owner used to call his friends whenever he wanted, and they would drink alcohol until they were drunk, then take me to their place forcefully and abuse me and torture me like wild animals, one .by one raping me. I would cry and beg them to stop but they never listened to my pleas and did whatever they wanted to do, to satisfy their lust. Even after raping me, they would not be satisfied and used to torture me by touching my private body parts. Sometimes as many as nine men took turns in raping me.
I was so hopeless and helpless that sometimes I used to think I should commit suicide, but my kids were the only motivation for me to live. I was even more worried, thinking they were growing up. I was particularly worried about my daughter N, who was 10 years old. I was afraid that these animals would abuse and rape my daughter as well, as they had raped me. They were using my body like a toy for their lustful satisfaction. I was helpless because I had to pay their loan which was a huge amount for me.
After my husband was murdered, I took another loan of about 200,000 rupees in order to file the case against the murderers of my husband, because I wanted justice for my husband, and I wanted to see his murderers behind bars. But I was not fortunate enough to get justice. I started receiving threats from the murderer of my husband, that unless I withdrew the case, they would kill me and my children, just as they had killed my husband. I had no choice but to withdraw the case.
I strongly believe in my God, and I never gave up because I knew He would never leave us among these animals and if there is Pharoh, then definitely Moses will come to show the power of God. One day God heard my cries and responded to my tears. And sent a team to help me and my children get freedom from the evil custody of the brick kiln owner. I wish my husband was with us today, on the day of our freedom from this hell (name anonymized)
Pakistan has passed legislation to outlaw bonded labor – another word for slavery – but the implementation of this legislation has proved to be difficult. There is a gap between policy and practice. Laws and enforcement mechanisms against modern-day slavery exist in Pakistan but they are rarely, if ever, enforced due to historical and cultural practices, corruption, crippling poverty, and a lack of enforcement capacity.
‘Bonded by Brick’: The Reality of Modern-Day Slavery in Pakistan brings this oft-hidden situation to light in a three-part documentary series produced by Arsha Farrukh, a Pakistan-based multimedia journalist. One of the films highlights the story of Syeda Ghulam Fatima, a human rights activist and General Secretary of Bonded Labour Liberation Front Pakistan. She has devoted her life to ending bonded labor across the country, freeing 85,000 people from bondage. Fatima has been shot, electrocuted, and beaten numerous times because of her activism, but nothing stops her from fighting for the freedom of millions of people who are working as modern-day slaves, mostly in brick kilns. “Bonded labor is a system of dehumanization that deprives workers and their families of all their rights,” says Fatima. “It’s a vicious circle of poverty, ignorance, mental and physical servitude that [persists] from generation to generation.”
Churches and Christian-led charities are doing critical and courageous work among the kiln workers in terms of education, legal help, paying off debt, housing, and provision of alternative skills. And several advocates and NGOs in the region are focused on the root causes that force millions of people in Pakistan into bonded labor.
21Wilberforce is doing public and private advocacy on this issue in Pakistan which violates fundamental human rights and dignity. 21Wilberforce is working to educate and mobilize American congressional offices on this issue. We are connecting these Members of Congress with advocates on the ground to learn about the issue and how they can take action by advocating for the U.S. State Department to support enforcement mechanisms in Pakistan to stop this horrific practice.