Freed Families

Dave and Jean Mulder, in honor of a son, Jeremy Mulder, freed 30 members of the extended family of Anait Masih.

When I was informed that Gulshan had a fractured foot from a brick ( they are twice the size of our bricks here in St. Louis ) and that the brick master was still requiring her quota of 500 bricks a day, I couldn’t send her unfair ‘ransom’ to a pastor friend fast enough. In this video Gulshan is about to be informed by the pastor’s wife that she’s going to soon be free.

Gulshan and her two daughters loading their few possessions onto the donkey cart that will take her away from the bondage of the brick yard.

Hujra had been widowed for 35 years, most of those years in a brick yard in bonded labor with her two sons. After her Freedom she made me a traditional Pakistani Shalwar Kameez.

We visited with the family of Shahzad who are staying presently with Shazad’s mother, who had plenty of room and love. Shahzad is presently driving for a truck company. Shazahd’s wife said they went hungry many a day in the brick yard , and Shazahd said he repented every day for having ever taken a loan from a brick master. The mother was overcome with great joy, and then she began to cry and scream out as we prayed, for it seemed that spirits of grief were driven from her.

The Shazad family in 100 degree ten hour a day Pakistan summer heat. The mothers cannot even take breaks to nurture or teach their children. The only thing the children grow up knowing to do, is making bricks.

The certificate of debt, paid in full in the brick master’s office.

The Shazad family’s eighteen slave years produced only enough food to survive, with barely enough strength to make bricks, and pay for their few lifetime possessions that fit on the small donkey cart that will drove them away from the brick yard.

This is the Sohail family with their life’s possessions on a cart to freedom. We were ‘purchasing’ a family’s freedom every fifteen days prior to my coming the first time to Pakistan to empty out the Roshan brick yard of precious human beings.

Sohail had been in this brickyard ever since he was a boy, 27 years ago.

A family once enslaved, would have grown old in this brick yard, burdened with unlawful interest, for a nominal debt of Sohail’s father. It was not even allowed to have been buried in the ground with him, but placed upon the back of his son. In this photo Sohail is selling fruit from a used rickshaw with a loan he asked us for after Freedom Cry paid the unjust ransom for his family’s freedom.

Sohail had asked to borrow $200 for a used rickshaw and motorcycle, and he instantly began selling fruit along the roadside. Soon he was able to upgrade to a better rickshaw and motorcycle.

Our Pakistani director told me that Sohail was making better money than he was as an educator in a government school. And his wife and four daughters are no longer slaves in 100 degree summer heat or in the winter cold.

This was the last of the individual family’s freed from the Rohan brick yard until I arrived in person in August 2020 to pay ransom on the remaining nine. I was asked to render a ‘Freedom Merferd’.
***The character, ‘Merferd’ had some fans in Pakistan. The idea came; The brick yard’s name or brand is stamped on every brick, hence the brick branded with the word; FREEDOM in Merferd’s hand.***
The siblings were forced to continue a quota of brick making even after their mother had succumb to the high summer heat and in a hospital, with their father at her side. They were blessed to not lose their mother, as too many other children have.

A pastor had placed aFreedom Merferd banner I had sent ahead, as a promise of their release.

With ma and pa, their own courtyard, their own cow, the father does not have to slave ten hours a day suffering from asthma. Nor the children. The mother healed up after three days of heat stroke, and the father has got a real job!

We had freed three families with nine left to free. Here I am presenting the Roshan brick yard’s brick master, Muhammed Ramzan a large wad of a million 400,000Pakistani RUPPES ($9500 US.) It was surreal sitting next to him. My heart was softening toward this man. I sensed his countenance had changed. Having to let 13 well trained families of slaves go and having, by Pakistani standards, a large sum of money in one’s hand has to change something, but I was also sensing a softening of his soul. Other brick masters had been pressuring him not to let me ransom all the families in his kiln. It would make the industry look bad. That was not my intention, but so be it. Brick Master Mohammed Ramzan gave us a couple hundred back and I gave him a large bag of M N M’s and a merferd Graphic Novel coloring book.

I’m covered with rose petals that were thrown on me when I entered a hell that today for the families is a heaven on earth.

I can’t get over it… FOUR GENERATIONS in bonded labor in this brick yard. This was the best 13 grand I ever spent. It is the ONLY thirteen grand that I’d ever spent at once.

***An ice cream rickshaw man stopped on the side road next to the brick yard, and we bought all the kids icecream, the first time in their bonded labor life.***

I had gone from despising brick master Ramzun to becoming friends several years later. He had initially hesitated and had me wait outside the office. He was getting cold feet because other Brick Masters were calling him insisting that he NOT let me pay the freedom ransom and empty out his brickyard. It would not look good for the industry. I hadn’t thought about that, and glad if it did make the mafia brick yard industry look as bad as it is bad. I hadn’t flown 7500 miles to have him go back on our agreement. He kept his word.

***The day after I emptied out a brickyard of 13 families in bonded labor, some of them packed a local church where we met and celebrated.***

The Sadique family freed

More of the Sadique family working hard at the Roshan brick kiln.