Shafeeq Masih* faced an impossible choice: remain trapped for ever by the debt he owed to the owner of the brick kiln where he worked, just outside the Pakistani city of Lahore, or try to pay it off by selling the only thing he had of any value: one of his kidneys.
The brick kiln owner was harassing him to repay the debt, which he claimed stood at 900,000 rupees (£2,420), but however hard he worked, it just kept growing. Masih knew the owner was fiddling the books but says, “whatever they put in writing, we can’t question that. They see us as slaves. We just have to obey.”
With his children to feed and elderly parents to care for, Masih could see no way out. So when a stranger turned up at the brick kiln and offered to give him 400,000 rupees for one of his kidneys, he reluctantly agreed.
There are an estimated 20,000 brick kilns in Pakistan, employing as many as five million workers, the vast majority of whom are believed to be in debt bondage
A short while later, he was bundled into a car and told to put on a pair of glasses covered in black tape. As he was driven away, he felt a glimmer of hope. Perhaps now he could finally rid himself of debt, and give his children a better future. But that is not how things turned out.
When he awoke from the procedure, he was given 300,000 rupees, not the promised 400,000. Days later and still in pain, he returned to the brick kiln and handed all the money over to the brick kiln owner. “I hoped he would raise my wages or let me go,” says Masih, but the owner sent him back to work.
Clockwise from top left: Shafeeq Masih, 43: ‘The brick kiln owners see us as slaves. We cannot leave or go anywhere without their permission’; Sania Bibi, 50: ‘A stranger showed me many dreams. He promised a big bag of notes. But I only got 100,000 rupees (£270). My heart’s broken’; unnamed worker: ‘The brick kiln owner refused to give us further loans. Then a stranger came and trapped me. Now I regret it. I only got 250,000 rupees. When I gave it to the brick kiln owner, he took it but my debt remained the same’; former worker, 45: ‘I feared I would die [from the operation] but took the risk for the sake of my children’
Two years later, Masih says nothing has changed except that he is no longer as strong as he used to be. “I can’t work hard now without pain,” he says and so he struggles to make as many bricks as before. And he is as deep in debt as he was before his kidney was taken.
It is illegal to buy or sell an organ anywhere in the world (except in Iran), which makes it difficult to establish the scale of the crime, but Syed Ayaz Hussain, a lawyer for the Bonded Labour Liberation Front, a Pakistani organisation which has fought for the rights of brick kiln workers for more than 35 years, believes thousands of brick kiln workers are being coerced into selling their kidneys. “You can find workers who have sold a kidney at almost any brick kiln you visit,” he says. The Guardian interviewed seven victims in one day. They describe the practice as commonplace. “The whole country is doing it,” says one.
It is a crime that has been perpetrated for decades. Among those who spoke to the Guardian, one sold his kidney 20 years ago and another as recently as last summer. Most were paid between 100,000 and 300,000 rupees, but almost all say they received less than promised.
Female workers have to produce bricks and look after their families. They are particularly vulnerable to abuse and harassment from brick kiln owners, according Pakistan’s National Commission for Human Rights
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The trade in brick kiln workers’ kidneys is likely to constitute a form of human trafficking. While most workers agree to sell their kidneys, it is a decision driven by debt, poverty and fear. “It’s difficult to give away a part of your body, but there was no other way,” says one. Under international law, the consent of the victim is irrelevant if coercion, deception or the abuse of a person’s vulnerability is used to obtain the organ.
Hussain, who walks with a limp after he says he was shot in the leg by a brick kiln owner he was taking to court in 1992, believes some owners are in on the crime and take a cut of the profits. The pattern is always the same, he says. Owners begin to harass a targeted worker to repay their debts, and then an agent arrives to befriend them and convince them to sell their kidney.
The districts surrounding Lahore are dotted with thousands of brick kilns, marked by tall chimneys belching smoke into the already polluted air. Around each, hundreds of workers crouch, packing mud into rectangular moulds before flipping them over to turn out brick after brick. Whole families are at work, from elderly grandparents to children as young as six, caked in mud and dust. It is a scene repeated across Pakistan, where by some estimates, between 4 million and 5 million people work at brick kilns.
Syed Ayaz Hussain, a lawyer with the Bonded Labour Liberation Front, believes thousands of brick kiln workers are being coerced into selling their kidneys
The brick kiln industry offers impoverished workers something few other businesses do: an advance against future wages. But what appears to be a benefit is actually a trap. “These cash advances are seldom documented, often deliberately manipulated, and subsequently become tools for prolonged exploitation and control,” says Pakistan’s National Commission for Human Rights (NCHR) in a recent report. The practice is widely recognised as debt bondage, a contemporary form of slavery.
Brick kiln owners typically deduct up to half of workers’ wages in the name of repaying the debt, leaving them with as little as 800 rupees (£2.15) for every 1,000 bricks they make. A family can make about 2,000 bricks a day. Additional and excessive deductions are made for costs such as the electricity workers use in the tiny huts where they live. With such low wages, workers are forced to borrow more money to pay for daily expenses and one-off costs such as medical treatment and weddings.
Once the bricks have been shaped, they are loaded into the kiln to be baked
Workers at brick kilns near Lahore earn as little as 800 rupees (£2.15) for every 1,000 bricks they make. Low wages and fraudulent deductions turn small loans into huge debts, forcing workers to consider selling a kidney
Workers also allege some brick kiln owners falsify their accounts by inflating their debts and undercounting the number of bricks they make, but feel powerless to challenge them, in part because they are often illiterate and from so-called lower castes or minority groups such as Christians.
The system is kept in place by threats, intimidation and assaults, particularly directed at women and “frequently escalating into brutal physical violence meant to punish, silence and dominate”, says the NCHR.
And so, despite years of toil, small initial loans turn into vast sums which are impossible to repay. When a worker dies, these debts are passed on to their children.
Children start working from as young as six, and have little chance of leaving for the rest of their lives. One of the main reasons workers give for selling their kidneys is to try to secure a better future for their children
Children start working in the brick kilns from as young as six, and have little chance of leaving for the rest of their lives. One of the main reasons workers give for selling their kidneys is to try to secure a better future for their children.
When Sania Bibi* started making bricks at the age of 10, her family owed just 200,000 rupees. Forty years later, the brick kiln owner tells them they owe him 3.5m rupees.
Like Masih, Bibi was approached by a stranger offering money for one of her kidneys. “He showed me many dreams. My only thought was to get out of the system. I thought I could pay off the debt and my children could go to school. I made the decision immediately,” she says.
The stranger promised Bibi “a big bag of notes” but she only received 100,000 rupees. “Afterwards I regretted it. I should not have done it,” she says. “I’m in the same condition, the same place. Nothing’s changed. My children couldn’t get freedom. My heart’s broken.”
* The names of brick kiln workers have been changed
Pollution from the brick dust and long hours working in the heat mean workers suffer from respiratory and other health problems
