Slavery: the evil goes on

In 2007, the bicentenary commemoration of William Wilberforce’s parliamentary achievement will prompt numerous activities here and abroad, celebrating his vision, courage, resilience and dogged determination to end the barbaric slave trade in the British Empire.

There will rightly be many events recording the evils of that grisly phenomenon and the unimaginable suffering inflicted on hundreds of thousands of innocent Africans.

How should we respond to this era of our history? Should we focus on the evils of the past? Or should we emphasise the continuing evil of slavery today with a commitment to completing William Wilberforce’s mission to eradicate slavery? These options are not mutually exclusive. But we must not dwell so much on the past that the horror and reality of modern slavery are forgotten. That would be a betrayal of everything for which Wilberforce worked.

Some 27 million people are estimated to be suffering some form of slavery today. A book recently published, This Immoral Trade: Slavery in the 21st Century, describes different aspects of modern slavery. But as it is hard for statistics to convey the horror of this barbaric phenomenon, we also present examples of the experience of being a slave today, in three of the countries where slavery persists: Sudan, Uganda and Burma.

Sudan. Slavery has been practised in Sudan over the centuries. Now, since the National Islamic Front (NIF) regime took power by military coup in 1989, it has used slavery as a weapon of war. In border areas between northern and southern Sudan, such as Bahr-El-Ghazal and the Nuba Mountains, the NIF encouraged government troops, jihad warriors (mujahadin) and local tribesmen (murahaleen) to take tens of thousands of women and children, into slavery. This practice has been documented by many independent investigators, including Gasper Biro, the UN Special Rapporteur on Sudan. Although there is now a ceasefire in the south and the Nuba Mountains, many of those abducted have still not returned to their homes.

One former slave Kuei Kiir Deng, aged 26, described her experience:

‘On 3 March 1995 my husband and I were by the river in Nyal Chor. Suddenly government soldiers, who were riding on horseback, attacked us. They shot my husband dead and they gouged my eye out. They tied my hands together and tied me to a horse and forced me to go north with them. I was not given any food and the journey was very difficult. There were thorns along the path and my skin was cut as I walked.

‘I was taken to El Muglad to stay with a slave owner called Mohammed and his two wives. They did very bad things to me. They would beat me if I refused to do anything that they said and I had to work whenever they told me. The slave owner forced me to have sex with him whenever he wanted. If I tried to refuse, he would beat me. I have an eight-month-old baby from him. For three years I have been subjected to his continual sexual abuse. I have just managed to get here three days ago. It has been a very hard time, but I have to tell you what happened to me because it is not right to hide these things and people must know what is happening.’

Uganda. In recent years, much of Uganda has become relatively stable and prosperous — except for the north, where the Lord’s Resistance Army has devastated the region. It has also abducted at least 20,000 children. Many have been killed and their stories will never be known. But the stories of those who have escaped are chilling. Monica speaks for countless others.

Aged 18, in 2003, she was abducted from her home in Pader at night. Her brother had already been abducted — she eventually met him a year later in Sudan, before they were separated again. She was tied up, beaten and shot in the leg during an ambush. She was not given any treatment. She was taken to Sudan for military training and was ‘given’ to Commander Palaro. She became pregnant and gave birth with no help at all — as she puts it, ‘I was just treated like an animal’.

She had to go to fight in Uganda, carrying her baby with her and was ordered to carry out abductions, especially children. If any resisted, they were immediately killed. She has had to kill time and again — ‘in a battle, one has to kill’.

Although she is now free, she is still plagued by nightmare of those she killed.

Burma (Myanmar). The country is currently ruled by a notorious military junta with the Orwellian name ‘The State Peace and Development Council’ (SPDC), which oppresses all who oppose it, as well as ethnic groups such as the Karen, Karenni, Shan, Mon, Rohingya, Chin and Kachin peoples.

They are subjected to forced labour in conditions so harsh that many perish — a policy documented by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and other independent organisations. Elderly people and pregnant women have to carry up to 30kg of rice or ammunition for SPDC soldiers from dawn to dusk, with little rest and virtually no food or water. If they grow weary they are beaten and may be killed. Others are used as human minesweepers, forced to walk in front of columns of SPDC soldiers, often dying in the process. Others suffer sexual exploitation: many reports give chilling evidence of systematic use of rape and sexual slavery as weapons of war.

A 35-year old married woman with two children from a village in Karen State described her experiences of forced labour:

‘My husband died or was killed when acting as a forced porter for the SPDC. I was never told how he died or allowed to see his body. At the time of his death, my two sons were aged seven and one. My husband, a rice farmer, had had to work many times as a porter, usually for two-three weeks at a time. Portering could only be avoided or deferred by paying the local SPDC commander.

‘Porters would all have to provide their own food, work for nine-ten hours per day and had to carry loads of 50-60 kg. Those unable to work such hours or to carry such loads were firstly beaten, usually with rifles; then, if they still could not or would not comply, they were shot.

‘I had to do portering duties twice after my husband’s death, leaving my children with relatives while I was away. There were about 100 porters in my group and about 70% of them were women. We started work at 8am and had a 15-minute break at mid-day and then worked until 4pm. We slept on mats on the jungle floor and soldiers would come at night and take any women they chose for the night (I was not one of them). My task was to carry rocks and stones to build a road and a railway.’

The Scale, Scope and Types

of Modern Slavery

Chattel Slavery is the classic form, in which slave-owners maintain ownership of human beings through force and violence. Contemporary examples are found in Sudan and in Mauritania.

Debt Bondage is commonly associated with widespread, crippling poverty, where families are forced to offer the labour of family members as collateral against a financial loan. Once trapped, it is very hard to escape and debts may pass from one generation to the next. As many as 15-20 million people may suffer this kind of slavery today.

Forced Labour

An ILO Report in 2005 claimed that about 12.3 million people are in forced labour worldwide; about 2.4 million of them are victims of trafficking, and their labour generates profits of over $30bn. The largest numbers are in poor Asian countries and Latin America, but there are more than 350,000 cases in the industrialised world.

Sex Slaves and Human Trafficking

Vulnerable people, trapped in poverty with endemic unemployment, are often lured by offers of work and a better life to leave home or to sell their children to traders. These are then often ruthlessly exploited and forced into prostitution, becoming ‘sex slaves’.

A growing cause of concern is the trafficking of young women to European countries, including the UK; in the USA, the CIA estimates that as many as 50-60,000 girls and women may be brought in as slaves for sexual exploitation every year.

What then must we do?

Wilberforce used not only parliament, but also national and international diplomacy and publicity. We now have international agreements and organisations undreamt of in his time, such as The Slavery Convention of 1927, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, international and national organisations, including the ILO. The US State Department is required by United States Congress to publish its Trafficking in Persons Report each year — the information is available: we cannot plead ignorance.

International protest brought down apartheid. Why have we been so silent about slavery? It is at least as great an evil. We should have a dream — for a similar movement to end the suffering and shame of twenty-first century slavery. There could be no better way to celebrate Wilberforce’s political victory than to complete the mission to which he dedicated his life. He played his part; will we play ours?

Baroness Cox is Chief Executive of HART [Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust] and the author, along with Dr John Marks, of This Immoral Trade: Slavery in the 21st Century, Monarch Books, 2006.