Slavery has been abolished? No, slavery still continues today.

By Dr. LESLIE JERMYN.

Slave ships crisscrossing the Atlantic with their human cargo of misery and desperation have been consigned to the dustbin of history. The trans-Atlantic slave trade turned the corner in 1838 when Britain banned slavery and other European and American powers followed suit. The cruel stories of the transportation of eleven million Black Africans on European vessels to the New World raised moral questions in the corridors of power. Little by little, whilst huge profits were being made, the morality of the institution was being questioned and the anti-slavery movement gathered force. The work that began in London in 1787 with the founding of the London Anti-Slavery Society (now known as Anti-Slavery International) remains unfinished today. Over 200 years later, slavery is a daily reality for millions of world citizens. Modern slaves often do not leave their own countries once captured or trapped, and if they do, they are more likely to do so on airplanes or buses carrying official work visas. Since slavery is officially outlawed around the world, slave traders work underground or disguise their business as labour contracting. Whether acknowledged as such or not, the practice of using slave labour flourishes in certain industries. The American Anti-Slavery Group estimates (in 1999) that there are at least 27 million slaves in the modern world. Other estimates put the figure as high as 200 million. Whatever their number, they are living and dying in every region of the world.

The United Nations defines a slave as anyone whose movement or decision-making abilities are

curtailed such that they do not have right to choose employers. This rather broad definition is designed to encompass the types of slave labour that characterize the twentieth century institution, such as bonded labour, serfdom, servile marriage, child labour, migrant labour and forced labour. It also still includes the more traditional form, chattel slavery, in which one person is subject to the will of another and treated like property. Although chattel slavery is now relatively uncommon, its nineteenth century stepchild, debt bondage, is, in one form or another, the most common form of slavery today. Debt bondage is the practice of exchanging labour (that of the debtor or members of his/her family) for a loan. Technically, there is nothing illegal about this exchange but the lines are crossed when labourers are underage, conditions of work are hazardous, labour is not remunerated at standard rates, debts are artificially or illegally created or inflated, and/or workers are held or sold against their will. The people most vulnerable to this type of slavery are women working as domestics or sex workers, children and migrant labourers.

Perhaps the most notorious examples of modern chattel slavery are those of Mauritania and the Sudan. In the Sudan, a civil war has raged between the Arabized north and African south for 33 of the 43 years since independence from Britain in 1956. The tactics of cultural annihilation practiced by the Islamic government include raiding non-Islamic Dinka and Nuba villages in the south for slaves who are then sold in the north. These people have suffered branding, rape, castration and female

circumcision and number an estimated 100,000. In Mauritania, the situation is different. The dominant ethnic group is the White Moors or Beydanes who have traditionally held Black Moors or Abid as slaves. The Abid have lived in slavery to the Beydanes for centuries and modern slaves are born into their lowly position. They are often abused and can be bought and sold at the will of their owners. Full chattel slaves number approximately 80-90,000 while another 200-300,000 are classified as ‘other slaves’. Both countries have resisted international efforts to document slavery within their borders and neither country has made any significant efforts to abolish the practice despite international outcry. Though not a country unto themselves, the Tuareg nomads of the Sahara also hold chattel slaves and like the Abid in Mauritania, they are born and will die in slavery. Their numbers are unknown.

There are numerous examples of situations of debt-bonded labour that approach chattel slavery in the severity of treatment and loss of human rights. Brazilian families are continuing to search for missing male relatives who left to work in the Amazon region and have not been heard from since. They are generally poor men from the northeast who follow recruiters promising decent wages and good working conditions. Once they arrive, they are stripped of their identity papers and forced to work clearing jungle for little to no pay. They are charged for everything including tools, transport, food and lodging and told they have to work off the debt. They are often chained together while they work and sleep in guarded compounds. Those who try to escape are killed. The government has outlawed this type of slavery, but there have been few prosecutions and there is no witness protection programme for those who are brave enough to testify against powerful landowners.

On the other side of the planet, ten million Indian people work in farming and manufacturing industries under similar conditions. They generally come from the lower strata of Indian society such as the untouchables, indigenous or tribal peoples, poor women and children. Some have been ‘sold’ into bondage by a relative who accepts a loan in exchange for their labour, while others are born into debt and into bondage. Hundreds of thousands face identical circumstances in Nepal and millions more live in bondage in Bangladesh and Pakistan.

These are all examples of people being exploited within their own countries. The situation is often worse when workers migrate and become vulnerable outsiders. Known as braceros, approximately 300,000

Haitians are trapped in bonded work in the Dominican Republic. Their tragedy begins when they manage to scrape together enough money for a three-month visa to work in the sugar cane plantations of the DR. The braceros live on the plantations in villages with no sewage or public services. Their pay is frequently withheld and they are forced to buy food at inflated prices using company issued coupons and tokens. When they cannot afford to extend their work permits, they become illegal and even more vulnerable to exploitation. They fear expulsion from the country without backpay and this keeps them from organizing or demanding better treatment. The Dominican government has amended its labour code ostensibly to protect these workers, but government cane plantations continue to be among the worst offenders.

Among the most abused of modern migrant labourers are women. Poor women from around the world cross borders on the promise of steady employment at good rates. Chinese and Philippine women accept debts of $6-7,000US to acquire jobs on Saipan, one of the islands that make up the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a United States territory since 1976. Saipan is an Export Production Zone that caters to such US American brand names as Polo, The Gap, Jones New York, Liz Claiborne, Calvin Klein, Disney and JC Penny. The women are often told that they are going to the US only to find themselves living in guarded barracks, working without pay in Saipan. They are forced to sign shadow contracts that restrict their freedom to leave, organize or change employers. Some have been forced to abort children if they become pregnant. Needless to say, US labour standards and practices are not honoured here.

Women from South and Southeast Asia and Africa also migrate to the Middle East, particularly Israel and the United Arab Emirates, and richer centers in Asia like Singapore and Kuala Lumpur to become domestic servants. Like their counterparts in Saipan, they are often misled and mistreated once they arrive and are indebted to recruitment agents by the cost of their journey. Their employers confiscate their papers to make them dependent and there have been many cases of physical and sexual abuse.

The other major wave of female migration involves the sex trade. Thailand is notorious for its sex tourism industry, but what many clients fail to realize is that the prostitutes and dancers are often underage and are working against their will. Young girls from northern Thailand, Burma and Cambodia are ‘bought’, lured or abducted by intermediaries working for Thai brothels. The girls are raped and beaten until they succumb to the routine of prostitution work. They are exposed to STD’s, are often drug addicted and have no recognized rights. This industry caters largely to foreigners from other parts of Asia, Europe and North America. Notably, a number of countries – including the UK since 1997 – have passed laws that make it illegal for citizens to engage in sexual acts with minors when they are abroad.

These laws do nothing to protect adult women in the same circumstances, however, and thousands of young women from Eastern Europe now find themselves trapped in Israeli and Western European brothels. Facing a hopeless employment situation at home, these women are signing up for work abroad as exotic dancers and models. When they arrive their passports are stolen and they are forced to work as prostitutes or are sold as sex slaves. The numbers of enslaved Eastern European women are unknown, but 400,000 women have left the Ukraine alone in the last ten years. An auction of semi-naked women was raided in 1997 in Italy and, in Israel, where the sale of humans is not illegal, European women are worth $500-1,000US each. Many Eastern European sex slaves hope for capture by the police since it is the only way they are likely to be able to return home.

If the plight of women were not horrifying enough, that of poor children around the world is chilling. Children are working in conditions of slavery nearly everywhere one finds poverty or crises. In West Africa, children from Benin and Togo are being exported to wealthier countries like the Ivory Coast and Nigeria as domestic chattel slaves. Cambodian and Vietnamese children are purchased or abducted to work as beggars in Thailand. These children are sometimes mutilated to earn more money and are always malnourished to keep them dependent on the agents who control them. In war torn Uganda, Amnesty International estimates that there are at least 8,000 abducted children working as soldiers for the rebel army, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). Children of both sexes are made to fight while girls are also abused sexually by male soldiers. The LRA supports the Sudanese government against Sudan’s rebel forces in the south and the Sudanese Army reciprocates by returning runaway child soldiers.

The ILO estimates that 250 million children work worldwide. Not all of them are abducted, sold, abused or enslaved, but many sacrifice their childhood in order to survive in a world of poverty and economic insecurity. On a positive note, the carpet making industry of Pakistan has succumbed to international pressure and has agreed to work with the ILO to phase out the use of child labour over a three-year period beginning in December of 1998. This will hopefully free half to one million child debt slaves from appalling labour conditions.

Ships with their cargos of human misery and desperation no longer navigate the Middle Passage. Slavery today is subtler and less visible. The change in social attitudes over the past two hundred years has forced traders, governments and cultural institutions that support slavery to work behind a veil of denial and subterfuge. But, anywhere there is poverty, desperation or crisis, there are middlemen to negotiate, buy, lure, abduct or entrap their victims into slavery. The world market still runs on the profit principle and the sizeable market niche, the trade in human lives and labour, is still viable.
© Dr. Leslie Jermyn and The Global Aware Cooperative. Reproduction requires permission of the copyright owner.

Mali: Native Bella or Black Tamarshak, slaves to white Tamarshak, owned by the household in which they live.

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