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July 1 Rescue Brings Freedom to 47 Slaves from Single Brick Kiln
Friday, 10 July 2009

CHENNAI, INDIA - Shankar’s day began in the dark hours before dawn, around two or three o’clock in the morning. Every day, he carried raw, unbaked bricks on his head to the kiln where they would be baked. He and his wife balanced the packed clay and straw molds – heavier than the final product – on their heads.

But perhaps the greatest joy came from knowing the newborn baby carried out of the brick kiln that afternoon would not need a release certificate – she was born on a day of freedom.
They labored with dozens of other families in a brick kiln – not free to leave, because they were held as slaves. The others who carried bricks from dark until dusk alongside Shankar have similar stories. Several had been living and working, trapped inside the facility, for as long as fifteen years.

Two brothers owned the facility and had been operating it for over twenty-five years. Twenty supervisors, or maestries, worked for the two brothers. Each maestry was responsible for obtaining, monitoring and tracking a set of laborers. The maestry in charge of Shankar and the others who carried and baked bricks was verbally and physically abusive – berating the workers and slapping them across the face when he was displeased.

IJM investigators learned about the conditions at the brick kiln in mid-June from a victim they had freed from another facility. They were able to covertly contact four of the laborers trapped inside. The laborers told the investigators about the conditions they faced. Once the IJM team had documented proof of the slavery at the kiln, they presented the case to the local government officials, who agreed to intervene and bring freedom to the many families trapped inside.

On July 1, 2009, IJM staff and local authorities drove to the brick kiln. When they entered the facility, the workers were scattered about the vast property, already hard at work. IJM and the authorities worked to gather the laborers together – and with IJM’s assistance, the victims gathered their belongings and piled into four large trucks, leaving the kiln where they had been enslaved.

Sixty-six individuals were taken out of the facility, including one woman who had just given birth to her sixth child - that very morning.

The team and trucks traveled to a government building, where the crimes at the kiln would be officially documented. At first, the newly freed laborers ate their lunches in silence. However, as the afternoon wore on, children started drawing and playing, and families began sharing their stories in the formal documentations with government officials. Five stations were set up to interview the victims and determine who was working in violation of the Indian law prohibiting forced labor. After several hours, the government official approved official release certificates, which cancelled all of their debts and declared them free.

Shankar and his wife were one of the twenty-one families liberated from lives bound up in the brick kiln. Forty-seven individuals received official release certificates from the government, including three children who had already begun laboring as slaves – a future that many of the other children living with their families in the facility would have likely faced as well. But perhaps the greatest joy came from knowing the newborn baby carried out of the brick kiln that afternoon would not need a release certificate – she was born on a day of freedom.