Consider: A man entered his son into 20 years of bonded labor at a brick kiln in order to receive funds for the burial of his other son, who had died due to poor medical care.

It is not an isolated case.

Christians in Pakistan, who face intense persecution as a small religious minority, also struggle in an oppressive system of bonded labor. Global Christian Relief (GCR), an advocacy organization dedicated to persecuted Christians worldwide, launched a project in early July to help liberate 50 Pakistani families from modern-day economic slavery. GCR estimates 3.5 million people are affected by this debt slavery.

Pakistan’s bonded labor system thrives off predatory loans with high interest rates. A family may take out a loan from brick-kiln owners for as little as $800 to $1,000, but can remain trapped afterward as brick-kiln workers for decades or generations, due to low wages and discrimination. A Global Christian Relief video on their liberation campaign featured the Iqbal family, who entered 15 years of servitude in the kilns to pay off a $898 debt incurred due to a C-section operation.

Christians, who make up less than 2% of the country’s population, face the daily threat of violence in Pakistan, which has been designated by the U.S. Commission on Religious Freedom (USCIRF) as a “country of particular concern.” According to the USCIRF 2024 annual report released this May, “religious freedom conditions in Pakistan continued to deteriorate. Religious minorities were targeted for their beliefs, including accusations of blasphemy, and were subject to mob violence, lynchings, and forced conversions.”

Pakistani Catholic Peter Bhatti, founder of the Canada-based organization International Christian Voice, explained that alongside of this religious oppression, many families are victimized by extreme poverty and difficult life circumstances. 

Bhatti, who is the brother of Servant of God and Catholic martyr Shahbaz Bhatti, emphasized that “most of the Christian and other religious minorities are from poor classes. … They cannot go anywhere to complain because of their poverty; nobody is able to listen to them. So they are living one generation, two generations, three generations as slaves to the brick-kiln owners.” 

Maria Lozano of Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), a Catholic organization that provides humanitarian and pastoral relief across the globe to persecuted Catholics, said that bonded labor often occurs alongside sexual abuse and slavery. In addition to bonded labor to brick kilns, many agricultural families suffer debt slavery at the hands of landlords as well. “It is really like ownership,” she said.

 

The Debt Trap

The debts these impoverished family incur are deliberately structured to grow over time, according to Andrew Crane, member of the Modern Slavery Engagement Forum at the Home Office for the U.K. government and professor of business at the University of Bath. He told the Register that in many situations, lenders “will increasingly add to the debt by charging them fees for accommodation, for food, for transport, for clothes, all kinds of things like that. Again, at rates they have no choice about which to pay.”

The plight is exacerbated for Christians in debt bondage. “Because of the blasphemy law, every religious minority will be an easy target for any person who wants to take revenge or give punishment. ... I hope and I pray to God that God can make a miracle … and create an atmosphere where everybody can live in peace and harmony,” Bhatti said.

This system of bonded labor has been practiced in Pakistan for decades and was even outlawed in 1992 by the Bonded Labor System Abolition Act, which has been widely unenforced. 

“Everybody knows what’s happening there, in the government sense,” David Curry, president and CEO of Global Christian Relief and former commissioner of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), told the Register. “This has been ongoing. But of course, this is fundamental to their building industry, so they don’t want these bricks to stop. And the brick-kiln owners, this is how they make their revenues, getting people into bonded slavery.”

Yet these systems of servitude are neither ethical nor financially beneficial, according to professor Monti Datta, political science professor at the University of Richmond whose research focuses on modern-day slavery. He underscored that slavery is ultimately bad for business and said, “Although they can be used as child labor, it would be infinitely more productive — in the moral and economic sense — if they could go to school, learn and find a career in the long run that would pay higher wages to everyone involved. … Freedom in the long run allows children to go to school, develop more advanced skills, and contribute much more to their communities and society.”

 

Finding Solutions

Global Christian Relief’s liberation efforts include providing valuable training and financial tools, with Curry explaining that for one of the persecuted Christians, “we gave him help to buy what would amount to a big trailer that he could move bricks on, move other product on. ... Now, all of a sudden, he’s going from not just being somebody who’s making bricks, but somebody who can move bricks on behalf of others and generate revenue that way.” In addition to basic financial classes and trainings, the goal is to provide those under debt slavery a path toward future success.

Curry shared that, through careful negotiation with the kiln owners, a limited number of families were already freed last year. They are now free agents, with tools to create an income-generating business. He explained, “Once they’re making the money themselves, so to speak, they’re actually working harder. So it’s building a good reputation with the people who run the brick factories. That’s our hope anyway.” It is through these relationships that GCR provides a potential future to those currently enslaved, since it is a delicate situation. 

Lozano similarly cited the importance of education as a pathway forward. “Education is the key,” she said. “It is the only way to get out from this vicious cycle. Many of the people that we are speaking of … they cannot read and write. … It is a system that is going deeper and deeper and breaking many families.” 

Crane also highlighted the need for addressing the roots of such exploitation, saying, “We need to tackle the fundamental causes of these, which are things such as vulnerability, which is caused by discrimination, by poverty, by all kinds of forms of inequality, by unfair immigration systems, and all kinds of things which can then be exploited by people.”

Ultimately, there is a pressing need for strong families. Lozano identified that due to the harsh working conditions, children are often left behind at home, “They are very vulnerable. ACN is trying to promote more family values, to create awareness of the importance for parents to be with their children. … The family is a piece that you have to protect.”

Improvement for Pakistani Christians requires systemic change, beginning with families and local communities being allowed to thrive without the scourge of debt slavery. As Curry explained to the Register, “We have to step-by-step walk through the rebuilding of their lives. They’ve been, some of them, working in these slave conditions all their life. … It’s the power of self-determination. People have the ability to change their life.”