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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: September 2007

Camel jockey civil rights case refiled in Kentucky after Florida dismissal

 

LEXINGTON, Ky.--Plaintiffs including the parents of five unnamed boys who were allegedly enslaved in Dubai as camel jockeys filed a class action lawsuit during the second week of September 2007 against Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid al Maktoum, brother of the ruler of Dubai.

The ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bid Rashid al Maktoum, was in Lexington, Kentucky, to attend the annual Keeneland September Yearling Sale, where the family has reportedly paid as much as $3 million for highly regarded thoroughbred horses.

The lawsuit alleges that Sheikh Hamdan was complicit in enslaving as many as 30,000 children during the past 30 years for use as camel jockeys--a misnomer, since the children, sometimes as young as four years of age, are tied to the backs of the racing camels, and have no ability to control them.

Many are thrown and injured, or even killed.

Foreign visitors including Prince Charles of Britain at one time were prominent at high-stakes camel races in Dubai and elsewhere in the oil-rich portions of the Middle East. Camel racing fell into disrepute, however, after human rights organizations documented that the jockeys are often bought from poor families in nations including Bangladesh and Sudan, with the promise that they would be given good jobs and an education. Rarely is the promise fulfilled.

The lives and fates of the camels, meanwhile, are similar to those of racehorses: winners live longer. Losers go to slaughter. Injuries are frequent. Drugging and other chicanery harmful to the animals is much more often alleged by losing bettors than proven-- and the political and economic influence of the camel racing stable owners, in nations with traditionally low regard for human rights, tends to thwart close policing.

The Kentucky case parallels a 2006 filing against both Sheikh Hamdan and Sheikh Mohammed in Miami. U.S. federal judge Cecilia Altonaga on July 30, 2007 ruled that because neither the sheikhs nor the plaintiffs reside in the U.S., and none of the alleged wrongful actions occurred in the U.S., the case should not be tried in a U.S. court.

"Although the new lawsuit does not specifically name anyone other than Sheikh Hamdan as a defendant," said Canadian Press, "it includes other unnamed defendants who are accused of being accomplices." The case was filed both in Florida and in Kentucky under the Alien Tort Statute, an 18th century federal law originally used against pirates and on behalf of sailors who were impressed into service against their will by the British Navy.

"The lawsuit had reached the highest levels of the U.S. government," Canadian Press said, "with the Emirates leaders appealing directly to President George W. Bush to intervene. The U.S. State Department served notice [in the Miami case] that it would do so, arguing that sovereign immunity protected the two sheiks from the lawsuit."