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Robots Ride Camels in Kuwait

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the camel-jewelry dept.

naken writes to tell us that Kuwait recently held its first regional camel race using robot jockeys. The change was made after human rights groups got child jockeys banned in Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE."

7 of 50 comments (clear)

  1. They got it wrong... by DavidHOzAu · · Score: 5, Funny

    From the Article:
    child jockeys were banned from the lucrative sport following criticism by human rights groups.
    Great. If I'm under four and know how to ride a camel better than anyone else, I can't race. My rights have been infringed to protect human rights. Way to go, guys.

    1. Re:They got it wrong... by luvirini · · Score: 4, Informative
      The problem was that many kids were bought from their parents in other countries and brought for the races, maltreated with too little food and so on.. to be as low weight as possible.

      That was a horrible practice.

  2. Re:Human rights? by nursegirl · · Score: 3, Informative
    The issue is that human rights groups had found that the vast majority of these kids had been abducted from their families and put into forced slave labour on these camel farms. So yes, if US soccer teams start abducting kids to play little league, maybe the human rights groups should get involved.

    Particularly if they use electric shocks on kids if they don't do their work properly.

  3. Re:How odd... by smilingman · · Score: 4, Informative

    I could have sworn CNN had a Reuters article on this very same thing over a year ago. Could anyone help prove me with a link? Maybe I'm just losing it... ...though some would argue I never had it in the first place.

    You probably have seen it before, it's a dupe.

  4. Re:Human rights? by nursegirl · · Score: 3, Informative

    While the Unicef site does say bought, Asia Child Rights, the Bangladesh Human Rights Network and the United Nations Commission on Human Rights all agree that both happened pretty frequently. In fact, the organization I cited in the gp post got involved because of trying to track an abducted child from Pakistan who ended up in the UAE.

  5. Wired News has an article about this... by antdude · · Score: 3, Informative

    See here.

    --
    Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
  6. Re:How odd... by DavidHOzAu · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You probably have seen it before, it's a dupe.
    Ladies and gentlemen, uh, we've just gone off topic, but what you've read so far speaks for itself. The innocent discussion has apparently been taken over - 'conquered' if you will - by an inferior race of photographic-memory slashdotters. It's difficult to tell at the moment whether they will troll the entire website or merely flame it.

    I am certainly not surprised: the prior article was in April last year; dupes will inevitably be here. And I, for one, will never welcome our photographic-memory overlords. I'd like to remind our editors that as an average slashdotter with common sense, I can be helpful in rounding up other idiots to languish in the off topic viewing range.