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DailyMail: Turkey Child slaves’ making uniforms for Isis: Inside the Turkish sweatshop

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Slave shop turkey

Lost Generation: The children should be at school, but their parents send them to work in the factory to earn 100 Turkish Lira per week

DailyMail EXCLUSIVE – ‘Child slaves’ making uniforms for Isis: Inside the Turkish sweatshop where children as young as nine work 12 hours a day stitching combat gear used in battle by Islamic State.

Syrian refugee children forced to work in a military uniform sweatshop that sells camouflage to ISIS

Unable to go to school and desperate for money on the Turkish border the boys work 12 hour days for £10

Factory owner Abu Zakour has no problem selling uniforms to ISIS: ‘It doesn’t matter where my customers are from’

He also supplies Al Qaeda group Jabhat al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham and other rebel FSA fighters with military garb

Drawing slowly on his cheap cigarettes, 35-year-old Abu Zakour is hardened as he describes how he employs children as young as nine to stitch the uniforms that end up on the backs of frontline ISIS fighters.

The Syrian boys – and a couple of girls hidden upstairs – are paid a minimum of 40 Turkish lira (£10) a day to stitch, cut and measure out the camouflage material and help their older colleagues piece together the uniforms that get smuggled across the border to rebel groups.

‘My kids are in a school run by an NGO,’ he said, speaking exclusively to MailOnline from his office in the Turkish border town of Antakya. ‘These children could go too but their parents want them to earn money, so what can I do?’

Child labour: A young boy at work making uniforms in Turkey that apparently find their way to Isis soldiers. ‘The only reason that these children work with me is for the money – If there were no war in Syria, these children would be in school—and school would be a much better option for them,’ factory owner Abu Zakour told MailOnline.

So young: About ten children are employed making uniforms being smuggled into Syria to sell to Isisi fighters. They should be in school but their parents send them to work, 

Abu Zakour is a simple businessman – not a revolutionary ideologue or an ISIS sympathiser – but he is also seemingly untroubled by the ethics of kitting out ISIS in camouflage, or by hiring children to do it.

His hulking shape and assertive demeanor marks him as a man not to be messed with. He lived under brutal ISIS rule until he managed to escape Raqqa just six months ago.

Originally from Aleppo, the entrepreneur escaped the incessant shelling of the now destroyed city for the relative safety of Raqqa – the de facto Syrian capital of the terror group. 

While the city was ruled by fanatics, it provided an escape from the daily bombardment of President Assad’s warplanes – until the US-led coalition ramped up bombings on the ISIS nerve centre.

‘I had children working with me in Raqqa too. ISIS wanted children going to Shariah schools, but no one sent their children because there was a lot of bombing. 

‘The first time I was arrested, it was for cigarettes. They found cigarette butts on the floor but just gave me a warning—the second time, they found the ashtray, jailed me three days and gave me 40 lashes. I was arrested a third time, also for smoking…They made a huge problem for people. 

‘In the end, I took my things, and I left. We fled,’ he says from his office in the ‘Halep Garaj’ covered market in Antakya. Out front his shop boasts mannequins dressed in camouflage and smart glass cabinets displaying ‘adventure kit’ – torches, binoculars, pocket knives, gloves and webbing.

Lighting another cigarette he reveals his order sheet and shares his logistical woes of stocking the Syrian rebels with military gear – ISIS are far from his only customers.

‘The main problem for the military clothes are the roads—all of the roads in Syria and from Turkey to Syria are closed.

‘Of course we made far more money with the military clothes than the civilian clothes. There is a big difference between the military clothes and the civilian clothes, but what can we do? Where there is work, there is work.’

From his modest factory in Antakya – which finally shut up shop earlier this year after tightened controls put a stop to smuggling his wares through the border – his workers pay strict attention to the differing stylistic demands of the multitudes of rebel groups in northern Syria.

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480.000 modern slaves in Turkey

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slaves in turkeyAccording to the 2016 Global Slavery Index, about 45.8 million people in 167 countries are trapped in modern versions of enslavement. The report also reveals that 480.000 people in Turkey live like modern slaves.

Australia-based human rights organization Walk Free Foundation released the 2016 Global Slavery Index report yesterday. According to the report, while there were 35.8 million people who were born into enslavement, kidnapped for commercial sexual exploitation, bonded by indebtedness or subjected forced labor in 2014, this number reached 45.8 million in 2016. In the report, it is also stated that 480.000 people in Turkey live like modern slaves.

According BBC Turkish’s report, Walk Free’s 2016 data is obtained through the studies of Gallup research company. Gallup conducted researches in 167 countries and interviewed with 42.000 people in 25 countries.

The report defines the modern slavery as the following: “Modern slavery is when one person possesses or controls another person in such a way as to significantly deprive that person of their individual liberty, with the intention of exploiting that person through their use, profit, transfer or disposal.”

What is modern slavery?

In modern slavery, people are stripped off their freedom through threats, violence, coercion, abuse of power or deception. And those people cannot get free from the enslaving conditions.

Founder of Walk Free Andrew Forest spoke about the report and said that the number seems to be increased partly because of the improved data collection, but the immigrants and people who are displaced worldwide became more open to different versions of slavery.

Situation in the world

The highest estimated prevalence of modern slavery by the proportion of its population is found in North Korea, Uzbekistan, Cambodia, India and Qatar. There are labor camps in North Korea, where 1 in every 20 people live as modern slaves. The number of modern slaves in China, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Uzbekistan combined constitutes 58% of the modern slaves in the world.

Only in India, 18.4 million people live as modern slaves.

Situation in Turkey

According to the report, there are 48.000 people who live like modern slaves in Turkey. The list is sorted from the worst to the best and Turkey is the 20th country in the list.

The countries where modern slavery is found least are Luxembourg, Ireland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Data from Europe

Walk Free states that in Europe modern slavery is rarely found, but forced labor and sexual abuse are common. The effects of refugee and immigrant influx in Europe is not known yet.

According to the report, the countries that show the least effort for fighting against modern slavery are North Korea, Iran, Eritrea, Equatorial Guinea and Hong Kong. And the countries showing the most effort are Holland, the US, England, Sweden and Austria.

ISIS putting price tags on Iraqi children, selling them as slaves – UN

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Iraqi-childrenISIS has stepped up the use of children in its bloody campaign of terror, the United Nations says — subjecting them to horrors that include putting price tags on them to sell as slaves, CNN reported.

A report released this week focused on children in Iraq, as well as the responsibility of that nation’s government for ensuring the safety and security of young civilians in the conflict. But it certainly doesn’t preclude similar things happening in Syria, where ISIS is also entrenched and also has been blamed for various atrocities.

In reference to Iraq, at least, the U.N. report found that the terrorist group is resorting more and more to brutal acts such as enslaving, raping, beheading, crucifying and burying people alive. Some of those affected are children.

“We have had reports of children, especially children that are mentally challenged, who have been used as suicide bombers, most probably without them even understanding what has happened or what they have to expect,” said Renate Winter, an expert with the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child.

Some as young as age 8 are getting training to become soldiers, she said.

“Children of minorities have been captured in places where the so-called ISIL has its strength, have been sold in market with tags, price tags on them, have been sold as slaves,” Winter said.

People of the Yazidi faith — which draws from Christianity, Judaism and the ancient monotheistic religion of Zoroastrianism, and which some Muslims consider devil worship — have long faced persecution, though by comparison ISIS’ cruelty to them has been extraordinary. Kurdistan Regional Government adviser Nazand Begikhani, for instance, has said Yazidi “women have been treated like cattle, … subjected to physical and sexual violence, including systematic rape and sex slavery.”

Yazidi children haven’t fared much better at the hands of ISIS. An earlier U.N. report described how militants rounded up all Yazidi males “older than 10 years of age at the local school, took them outside the village by pickup trucks, and shot them.”