Child Crusaders: The Literature of Global Childhood

Abstract

The headline reads "Child's Death Stirs Another's Crusade" (Coleman B1). The article, which appeared in the Boston Globe in March 2001, is one of hundreds published since the mid-1990s in the American and Canadian press focusing on the figure of Pakistani youth activist Iqbal Masih. Born into an impoverished family, Masih worked as a debt-bonded laborer in the Pakistani carpet industry from the time he was a small child in the 1980s. After weaving carpets for six years, Masih heroically escaped his employers with the help of a nongovernmental organization, the Bonded Labor Liberation Front (BLLF). Not long after, working with the BLLF, the preadolescent Masih became an internationally renowned advocate for child workers. Eventually, in 1994, when he was twelve years old, he traveled to Boston to receive the Reebok Human Rights Youth in Action Award. Only five months later, he was killed under mysterious circumstances near his home in Muridke, Pakistan. Although there is controversy surrounding the cause of his death, it is often reported that he was murdered for speaking out against the powerful rug industry, "killed by people who wanted to silence a small voice who was a threat to huge profits" (Grow 2B).