Of Modern Slavery and Same Old Slaves

Of Modern Slavery and Same Old Slaves

We all hear countless accusations and denunciations being hurled at what has come to be known as modern slavery. Talk of slavery and it is only on June 18/2009 that the US Senate issue a formal apology. One news report put it as follows:
"The Senate adopted a resolution Thursday (June 18) offering a formal apology for slavery and the era of "separate but equal" Jim Crow laws that followed. After the clerk finished reading the resolution (S Con Res 26) in full, Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin, the measure's sponsor, noted that Congress has never before issued a formal apology for slavery".
Americans sort of enjoy being surprised, a "we did not know that at all (whatever did we do to "Eye-ran"?)" type of denial. Ignorance is no excuse of course. The ongoing shock at Americans torturing prisoners is another self serving Ostrich politics. The world knows that America was torturing prisoners all the time. Forget Native Americans and scalping and using dried human skin/breasts/ for tobacco pouch--check out the Los Angeles Times article of June 18/2009 on torture:
"Torture, after all, is a venerable American tradition. We were water boarding captives in one of our earliest wars of occupation, the Philippine-American War, which cost as many as 1 million civilian lives. In 1902, Teddy Roosevelt himself wrote with laconic praise of "the old Filipino method."
The slave trade was as American as apple pie and as British as fish and chips. Belated apology does not a reparation make but how do you calculate money wise the damages that the slave trade made to a whole continent? The slave trade laid waste to Africa and damaged its future for long. Africa's call for reparation has been ignored royally. That African chiefs and Arab merchants took part in this nefarious trade must also be mentioned--after all Africans have always been at the centre of their own misery. Slavery was evil and enough commentary has been made on it thereby relieving me from the need to belabor the point. But what is this animal called modern slavery? Is it an animal, a vegetable or a mineral? Let us just say damn the slave trade because one of its bad consequences is that our tyrants are using it even now to excuse the pitiful state of poverty in which they have put us in. Take away the slave trade and colonialism and the African despots would not have had any external excuse for their drastic failure in assuring good governance.




Officially, slavery is dead and gone but as many things deemed dead it still exists and is in fact flourishing in new forms. Debt bondage and forced labor are realities in many countries from the Congo to Peru. In Niger, Mail and Mauritania for example, ethnic difference has led to a master and slave situation with people being considered as slaves at birth. Dalits or bonded laborers are in their millions in India and Pakistan. Many child slaves wear leg irons. In Mauritania, slavery was formally proclaimed dead on August 8/2007 and a fifth of the country's population, dark skinned Mauritanians known as Haratines, were supposed to be free from bondage but not many of them had radios and TV to even hear the news and slavery still thrives there. As one news report puts it: "Dark-skinned men, women and children known as Haratine carry out orders under the threat of being beaten. They work as laborers and shepherds, as servants and cooks, as nursemaids and security guards. They are penniless and uneducated. Their masters are pale-skinned, Arab-speaking Moors". Thousands of people from Africa and Asia are trafficked (this is the new word, mind you. that could make you imagine a paved congested highway leading to Eldorado) to the West and the Middle East to work as modern slaves. Some 200,000 people, mostly young women from Ethiopia, the Philippines, etc, are modern slaves in Lebanon, working as domestic maids and servants, unpaid, raped and beaten, with no rights and subjected to the crude racism that is very Lebanese. Modern-day slaves can be found labouring as "servants or concubines in Sudan, as child 'carpet slaves' in India, or as cane-cutters in Haiti and southern Pakistan, to name but a few instances". There are currently over 27 million people in bondage and slavery. UNICEF estimates that 200,000 children from West and Central Africa are sold as slaves every year.
This time around the slavery is modern not only because we live in modern times but also because the slaves go to their bondage sometimes willingly in search of work as it were. The slavery in Mauritania and other such places is as antique as 800 years ago but the modern slaves found in the West and the Middle East are different. No one abducted them, though they are indeed still trafficked. They themselves face up to danger (and many die in the Red Sea or the Mediterranean) to make their way to the lands of modern slavery. "Domestic workers" really means or refers to modern slaves in private houses and brothels. It is a multi million dollar business and as we all know our unelected leaders go where the money is to be found and they are the ones facilitating this traffic. Few modern slaves pick cotton, very few are lynched. Instead, they slave for 16 hours in rich people's houses and sweat factories and they are thrown into shark infested waters, beaten to death, pushed to suicide, drowned and shot by callous border guards. There are no galleys though the slave ships are still there crammed with hopeless souls. Modern day traffickers, ruthless employers and old time slave drivers share the same cruel streak.
All this said, we African must be the first to admit that modern slavery has its benefits. To begin with, it is modern even if this remains a mystery to us as many other things of this modern unfair world. Due to progress, modern slaves come cheap, they do not cost much. Modern slavery is not so much about color or race--it is about poverty and economic deprivation. It is not even about religion either as Moslem Saudis, Lebanese, Libyans, and even Sudanese and Yemenis hold as slaves Moslems from their own and from many other "Third World" countries. For once, we Africans, or blacks as we are called, can sigh with relief as others not so black are also subjected to modern slavery. What is so good about others suffering just as our ancestors did and as our kin in many places are still suffering? 27 million modern slaves and the number on the increase--maybe one day Africa's demand for reparation may be heard or is that a desperate hope? The more Disposable People abound in this modern world--meaning modern slaves-- there is more probability that the whole evil may end as more people suffer and if this modern slavery thing which has started to involve Eastern European women continues to trap more Europeans and then there may be some concern and protest. It is not forbidden to have big expectations. Slave labor is at the core of the destruction of the Amazon rain forest which means all these environmental and Green and ecology people may rise up against slavery. Of course, it could just be another Waiting for Godot. The role of Arabs in the old and modern slavery, the involvement of Europe and America in the old and modern slavery is continuous. We have no surprises, the culprits are known and that is one better thing. Know the culprit-- no sweat, we know them already. Modern slavery does not have many secrets and surprises. It is modern. And those who may be nostalgic of old style slavery can still travel to Mauritania, Nepal, India, Sudan and Pakistan.