HONY raises $2million for brick kiln workers in Pakistan

For the past few days, he’s been trying to raise money to fight Pakistan’s modern version of slavery: the bonded labour at brick kilns. Within the past four days, over $2.2 million dollars have been donated.

The woman leading the charge against the bonded labour practice is Syeda Ghulam Fatima, the head of the Bonded Labour Liberation Front whom Stanton dubbed “The Harriet Tubman of Pakistan”. They are cheaper than concrete so nearly everything is… They also shed light on an issue the country is facing that is not readily covered in the media: forced bonded labor – a frighteningly common type of modern-day slavery. “She has been shot, electrocuted, and beaten numerous times for her activism”, Stanton posted on the HONY Facebook page.

“It’s like quicksand. They only pay you 200 rupees per 1,000 bricks, and it all goes to them, and the debt keeps growing”, said one unnamed man from Lahore. Known more for its poignant pictures and stories from everyday people, the page had shared pictures and stories from Pakistani workers working as forced labourers.

On his trip here, he talked to a family stuck in bonded labor.

“Throughout rural Pakistan, illiterate and desperate laborers are tricked into accepting small loans in exchange for agreeing to work at brick kilns for a small period of time”, Stanton wrote in one of a series of posts dedicated to the exploitation. She describes the owners of brick kilns as powerful, rich men who ensure their friends are elected to legislatures and who bribe and intimidate the police.

These are the parts of Pakistani life that don’t typically make the headlines. We tried to raise the money to save her. We sold our cattle.

Impoverished laborers throughout Pakistan often work in brick kilns to pay off old family debts, toiling without running water or even bathrooms, according to an Associated Press article from a year ago. Quite literally, she places herself between the workers and their owners.

The plight of Pakistan’s bonded kiln workers has been well documented in the past, but Humans of New York brought them – and Fatima – direct to the Facebook feeds of its 14.8 million followers. “Soon my debt will pass on to the next generation”.

Ms Fatima said she had been attacked and threatened so many times that she said she no longer fears death.

He later posted Fatima’s response: “I don’t think I have the words to tell you how grateful we are”. If this woman assisted by thousands of donors succeeds in giving education and rehabilitation to trapped workers, the system of bonded labour will automatically collapse.