Ehsan Ullah Khan

Ehsan Ullah Khan
Ehsan giving a speech in a High School in Santiago de compostela
Born	Muhammad Ehsan Ullah Khan (1947-02-09) February 9, 1947 (age 70) Gwadar, Baluchistan
Nationality	Pakistan
Education	Journalist
Alma mater	Punjab University
Occupation	Human Rights Activist

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 its country.

Khan was the founder and president of 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 1992 he freed Iqbal Masih, who was working in the carpet industry. On April 16, 1995 Iqbal was assassinated. The murder brought to light the work of those who had been denouncing that millions of children all over the world could not attend school because they had become profitable for big corporations that exploited them. Khan was the pioneer on this campaign.

He has raised slavery issues in the United Nations, through the Working Group for Contemporary Forms of Slavery and in International Labour Organization (ILO). Khan has been a speaker at many Conferences; he has been mentioned in many books, interviewed by a large number of social media, summoned to make a film on Iqbal's life, has been the leader of campaigns and the one who proposed Iqbal for Reebok international award in Boston.

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 installment on the debt the old man had incurred.

In September 1967 he formed Bhatta Mazdor Mahaz (BMM). The BMM was not only organizing actions and demonstrations of different kind against 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 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.