Labor Activist, 12, Killed in Pakistan

LAHORE, Pakistan — A 12-year-old boy who won a U.S. award for his part in the movement against child labor has been slain, police said Tuesday.

Iqbal Masih, who was given the Reebok Human Rights Award in December, was the president of the children’s wing of the Bonded Labor Liberation Front of Pakistan.

Police said an employee of a local landlord shot and killed Iqbal in his hometown of Muridke, near Lahore, the Punjab provincial capital, while the boy was on his way home Sunday.

Iqbal was among 3,000 bonded children freed from work in the carpet industry in 1992 as a result of a movement launched by the labor group.

The president of the labor group said the landlord suspected of ordering the killing had felt threatened by the movement against bonded labor in agriculture and feared the boy’s influence.