Child labourers freed from granite pitsCotonou, Benin — Seventy-four child workers as young as four years old — their skin broken and palms callused from months of hauling granite — were receiving food, clothes and medical care in the west African state of Benin on Thursday after rescue from the traffickers who sold them into heavy labour.
Children told their rescuers that at least 13 of their young companions had died in the past three months — worn out by smashing and carrying rocks and sleeping, without adequate food, in the open, UN officials said.
“We would break the stones, and the men would come take them away in trucks,” one rescued boy, thin, filthy and heavily scratched, told Associated Press. He looked no more than 10.
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Child labour and cross-border labour-trafficking are not rare in West Africa — but rescue is. According to Nigerian police, more than 15,000 from impoverished Benin alone are at work in Nigeria's southeastern granite pits............
Cross-border labour-trafficking????????
Children that were sold???????
Huh???????
Sounds like slavery to me.