Ehsan Ullah Khan

Muhammad Ehsan Ullah Khan (born in Gwadar, Balochistan, February 9, 1947) is the founder of the Bonded Labour Liberation Front (BLLF) of Pakistan, an organization that has freed more than 100,000 slaves in that country.

Khan was the founder and president of the Brick Kiln Workers Front, and BLLF Global, a human rights organization that opposes slavery and child slavery in Pakistan and South Asia.

He is the national coordinator of Global March in Sweden.

In September 1967 he formed Bhatta Mazdor Mahaz (BMM).

The BMM was not only organizing actions and demonstrations of different kinds against the bonded system of labor, but it was also providing legal aid to give basic human rights to the bonded workers at the brick kilns for the first time in the history of South Asia.

Forced labor was common among many other groups, like agriculture, carpet making, and mine workers.

In 1982 he was jailed for six months and confined in a dark cell in Lahore Fort during Zia ul Haq's dictatorship from 1978 to 1988.

He was arrested and tortured after he had written an article about the genetic development of biological warfare germs in a government-controlled laboratory in Lahore.

Because of the torture, he lost almost all his hearing from one ear.

In an article, he denounced how bonded brick kiln workers had been used as guinea pigs and died due to experiments in a secret research project.

The charge against him was high treason, which carried the death penalty.

In 1987, he mobilized some workers to present their cause to the Supreme Court of Justice.

It was as a result of the pressure exerted by Ehsan and his movement that in 1988 a law declared peshgi (debt bondage system) illegal.

It was the BLLF that freed Iqbal from slavery, as well as other 40,000 children in Pakistan, and it was Khan who put the fight against children slavery up for discussion once slavery had been abolished in his country, twenty years after he had started his abolitionist struggle.

Khan feels that non-violence is the best of paths.

The importance of the role of children is emphasized in his development strategy, which is that "the victims should be empowered".

Khan states that "those children, who get a basic education, knowledge about their rights, and hope for their future, will themselves eliminate the slavery".

Working as a journalist, Khan was arrested many times due to his activities for human rights and freedom of the press.

In 1992 he freed Iqbal Masih, who was working in the carpet industry.

In December 1994, he accompanies Iqbal to the United States to receive an International Award in Boston, Massachusetts.

On April 16, 1995 Iqbal was assassinated.

His murder brought to light the work of campaigners against forced child labour.

Khan has raised slavery issues in the United Nations, through the Working Group for Contemporary Forms of Slavery and in the International Labour Organization (ILO).

Ullah Khan studied journalism at Punjab University, in Lahore.

While still a student, he began to organize brick kiln workers so that they rebelled against slavery.

After meeting Babba Kaala he became aware of the drama of slavery in his country.

His daughters had been kidnapped by the owner of the kiln on the pretext of not receiving the monthly instalment on the debt the old man had incurred.

Khan has been in exile in Europe since April 16, 1995, after the murder of Iqbal Masih.

Since he was forced to stay in Europe, he founded BLLF Global in 1996, to fight against slavery and child slavery all over the world.

Although his intention is to return to Pakistan and continue his work with his organization.

He applies for a visa every year at the embassy, but it is repeatedly denied.

They visited Broad Meadows Middle School in Quincy, where after Iqbal's murder, some students started a campaign to raise money for a school in Pakistan, that opened in February 1997 with the support of tens of thousands of children from all 50 states of the United States.

The sedition case was quashed in Lahore High Court on November 28, 2001, when the judge declared that the case was unlawful and the allegation was false.

However, the Pakistani government still does not allow him to return to Pakistan.

As Kailash Satyarthi, Peace Nobel Prize 2014, said about Ullah Khan, on May 7, 2015:

"Iqbal Masih was a martyr of child slavery but the man by my side is a martyr himself. No one fighting for children's rights has suffered as much as he has.

Ehsan is the only person exiled from his country for his struggle against child slavery.

He sacrificed everything for the cause: his family, his profession, his friends and his network of schools all over Pakistan.

He has been in jail 12 times and has been tortured several times, which caused him slight deafness.

His government accused him of high treason and condemned him to the death penalty for denouncing that in his country there were children working for foreign companies"