20/4/10; The Australian; No Internet Text
The black descendants of slaves in Mexico struggle against entrenched racismAAlexis Okeowo found when she travelled to Veracruz on the Gulf coast for More Intelligent Life magazine. About 200,000 African slaves were imported into Mexico by the Spanish in the 16th and 17th centuries to work in silver mines, sugar plantations and cattle ranches. But after Mexico won its independence, “the needs of these black Mexicans were ignored”.
17/12/09; http://www.sojo.net/
If I kill a dog, I will get in trouble. If I kill you, I won’t get in any trouble. No one knows you are here. You don’t exist.
- Threats made by a human trafficker to Flor, a 37-year-old survivor of modern American slavery, who came to the U.S. to earn money after losing a child to starvation in Mexico. She was forced to work 17 to 19 hours a day for no pay in a sewing sweatshop. “People feel if you come in illegally, anything that happens to you is your fault,” said Lisette Arsuaga, with the Los Angeles-based Coalition to Abolish Slavery & Trafficking. “Slavery is not an immigration issue. It’s a civil rights issue. There’s no justification for making someone a slave.” (Source: Kansas City Star)
Justin Fung; 25/9/09
Two hundred years after slavery was declared illegal in Great Britain, and 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation in the United States, an estimated 27 million people remain enslaved around the world. And most people remain unaware of this reality. Two weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Labor released a report documenting goods on the U.S. market that had been produced by child and/or forced labor. The report highlighted 122 goods in 58 countries, and confirmed what many in the anti-human trafficking movement already know — that goods tainted by child and/or forced labor are commonly found in American homes. Our chocolate contains cocoa harvested by slave labor on farms in the Ivory Coast; our clothing contains cotton grown with slave labor in Egypt, Brazil, and Uzbekistan; enslaved Haitian workers harvest sugarcane in the Dominican Republic, which is the largest exporter of sugar to the U.S.; our cell phones, laptops, and many other electronics require tantalum, known in its ore form as coltan, a mineral that poor farmers are forced to mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Michael Mullins; 22/6/09
The Stolen controversy at this month’s Sydney Film Festival underlined how difficult it is to even acknowledge that slavery exists. The film alleges that 38-year-old Fatim Salam is a slave, and that slavery is a significant problem among western Saharan refugees. Salam has lived in a refugee camp in Algeria since she was three years old. Members of the Sahrawi Polisario Front, which runs the camp, brought her to Sydney to deny she is a slave, and to denounce the film. Australian Catholic Religious Against Trafficking in Humans (ACRATH) is the anti-slavery advocacy initiative of Australia’s Catholic Religious orders. Its purpose includes informing the public that slavery exists today, not only in countries like Algeria, but right here in Australia. ACRATH says women and children are continually trafficked to Australia from Southeast Asia, South Korea and China. Some leave their homelands voluntarily to work in brothels, while others are forced or deceived into coming. They are slaves, but often do not see themselves as such. They are reluctant to seek help, due to lack of trust, self-blame, or ‘training’ by traffickers.
Olivier Knox; 19/6/09
The US Senate approved a fiercely worded resolution formally apologising for the “fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery” of African-Americans. The unanimous voice vote came five months after Barack Obama became the first black US president, and ahead of the June 19 “Juneteenth” celebration of the emancipation of African-Americans at the end of the US Civil War in 1865. The non-binding resolution now heads to the House of Representatives, where a similar resolution passed by voice vote in July 2008, only to wither in the upper chamber. House approval, which could come as early as next week, would make it the first time the entire US Congress has formally apologised on behalf of the American people for one of the grimmest wrongs in US history.
Valerie Elverton Dixon; 3/4/09;
Dr. Valerie Elverton Dixon is an independent scholar who publishes lectures and essays at JustPeaceTheory.com. She received her Ph.D. in religion and society from Temple University and taught Christian ethics at United Theological Seminary and Andover Newton Theological School.
She is a girl whose father sold her to strangers. They took her far from home, and now she is a prostitute. He works for no money paying off the debt of a long dead ancestor. Another man works in a field, stolen from his home to labor for the profit of people whose language he does not speak. All are slaves today. Yet, they could have been slaves at almost any moment in human history. Slavery has been so widespread that if we look deeply enough into our history, we will see our enslaved ancestors. They have also been known by the name of serf, peon, indentured servant.
Nasser Arrabyee; 26/2/09
A judge has been suspended from work for approving documents of selling a man as a slave to another man in Yemen; sources at the Ministry of Justice said. The sources said that the Judge Hadi Abu Assaj was suspended by the Supreme Judicial Council upon a request from the Minister of Justice, Dr. Shaif Al Al Aghbari. Documents of a slavery case were indorsed last year by the court of Kuaidena in Hajja province north of the country where the Judge works. The suspension of the Judge came after many local and Arab human rights groups demanded that all people involved and responsible for such a slavery case be held accountable and punished.
Lucy Battersby; 13/1/09
Thirty million people are still trapped in slavery around the world today, according to a visiting anti-slavery advocate. Forced labour exists in the sex and hospitality industries and in the production of food sold in Australia, including chocolate. “Trafficking operates everywhere. It is here in Melbourne, it is across Australia and every country in the world,” Steve Chalke said yesterday.
“The slave trade has not ended. It is a far bigger problem than it ever was 200 years ago.”Yesterday, Mr Chalke spoke to young Christians at Federation Square for the Salvation Army, which helps victims of trafficking in Australia. More than 600 youths joined a peace march from Melbourne High School to the square, where they heard speeches from Stop the Traffik founders.
Mr Chalke runs several church-based charities and started Stop the Traffik on the 2007 anniversary of the 1807 Slave Trade Act, which abolished the British slave trade.
Christopher Pyne; 21/12/08
As Christmas nears, spare a thought for the hundreds of thousands of children in Ghana and on the Ivory Coast who are forced to work as slave labourers. They are kidnapped, taken from their families and their schools. They are sold as slaves. Some are sent far away; some forced into prostitution. Some are forced to march as child soldiers in armies of mercenary thugs. Thousands upon thousands are forced to cut cocoa used in the production of chocolate. Some of these children are as young as six.
28/10/08
West African judges on Monday fined the state of Niger the equivalent of 15,000 euros for failing to protect a woman sold into slavery aged 12, in a landmark ruling with implications across the region. The Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States recognised that the young woman, Adidjatou Mani Koraou, now 24, had been “a victim of slavery.” It held “the Republic of Niger responsible for the inaction” of its administrative and legal services, in a ruling read out by a court official. Judges fined Niger 10 million CFA francs (15,000 euros, 18,600 US dollars). The woman’s lawyers had claimed five times’ that amount in damages.
Archbishop Celestino Migliore, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, General Debate of the 63rd session of the General Assembly, New York, 30/9/08
“The United Nations was not created to be a global government but is the product of the political will of individual member States. Thus, it is the child orphaned by HIV/AIDS, the boys and girls sold or forced into slavery, those who wake each morning not knowing if today they will be persecuted for their faith or the color of their skin, who continue to cry out for an institution and leaders who will back their words with actions, commitments and results. These voices, which are too often ignored, must finally be listened to, so that we can move beyond political, geographical and historical divisions and create an organization which reflects our best intentions rather than our various failings.”
Yuko Narushima; 8/8/08
More slaves are alive today than were shipped out of Africa for the Atlantic slave trade during the last millennium, says Kevin Bales, an American academic on modern slavery. The professor of sociology and author of several books on the topic said global conditions had produced a market for slaves which continued to boom, including in Australia. “The population explosion, combined with the economic and social vulnerability of large numbers of people in the Third World, means that there is a glut of slaves on the market,” he said. Internationally, there are 27 million people who work without pay, under the control of violence or threat, or as slaves.
George Monbiot, 4/6/08
I realize now that I didn’t have a hope. I had almost reached the stage when two of the biggest gorillas I have ever seen swept me up and carried me out of the tent. It was humiliating, but it could have been worse. The guard on the other side of the stage, half hidden in the curtains, had spent the lecture touching something under his left armpit. Perhaps he had bubos. I had no intention of arresting John Bolton, the former undersecretary of state at the US State Department, when I arrived at the Hay festival. But during a panel discussion about the Iraq war, I remarked that the greatest crime of the 21st century had become so normalized that one of its authors was due to visit the festival to promote his book. I proposed that someone should attempt a citizens’ arrest, in the hope of instilling a fear of punishment among those who plan illegal wars.
Tony P. Hall; Sojourners Magazine: 9-10/’02; He is a U.S. representative from Ohio;
June 19 — the day 135 years ago when the last Americans held captive learned of their freedom — has become the day celebrated in many black communities as their second Independence Day. Congress recently agreed that this “June tenth” celebration “is an important and enriching part of the country’s history and heritage, and it provides an opportunity for all Americans to learn more about their common past and to better understand the experiences that have shaped the United States.” The president is now considering making June tenth a national holiday.Over the years, Congress has taken many steps with an eye on race issues. Most have been proud strides forward. Some have been notorious leaps backward. But not one has been an apology for slavery itself, for a Constitution and laws that encouraged this “peculiar institution” that few now dispute is the greatest stain on our country’s history.
