Freeing the Slaves of Today's World April 2007
Slavery: Well over 100 years after the American Civil War ended, this terrible injustice is in the news again. Here are some very recent examples:
• On March 26 the United Nations, working with a large group of governments and social relief organizations, launched the Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking.
• In the last two months the state Legislatures of Virginia and Maryland voted to approve a public apology expressing the states’ “profound regret” for their role in slavery.
• In February, Amazing Grace, the movie biography of anti-slavery pioneer William Wilberforce, opened in movie theaters across the country. For many viewers, it was the first time they had ever heard the name of the man responsible for abolishing the slave trade in Great Britain and its colonies in 1807, well before Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.
So why all this discussion now? Isn’t slavery a dead issue? Ask a young boy named Nizam. He lives with his elderly great-uncle in a small and poor village in northern India. One day, a woman slave-broker approached Nizam and offered him sweets and promises of a better life. Before he knew what was happening, Nizam found himself being transported with other children ages 8 through 14 to work at a rug-weaving job.
Once he arrived at the workplace, Nizam was forced to work 12 to 15 hours a day, locked in, fed only what was necessary to keep him alive, and kept in constant fear of the consequences if he tried to escape, and not being paid fairly. His great-uncle had no idea where he had gone. He contacted local police but Nizam was not heard from for two years.
Finally his great-uncle heard from the Bal Vikas Ashram, a Catholic center that specializes in rescuing children who have been forced into slave labor. During 2002, the Ashram carried out 10 raids in this area and freed 78 child captives. Nizam was among those freed. After being freed, Nizam stayed for a while at the Catholic center, where he returned to school and began to learn the business of tailoring. He has also learned that children too have human rights and dignity. They cannot be forced into slavery and denied the education every child needs today. Nizam is now back with his family.
More Slaves Today than Ever Before in History
Nizam’s situation, unfortunately, is far from unique. Some official estimates say that 27 million people live in slavery worldwide today. Ten million are in India alone. In fact, there are more people in slavery today — in 2007 — than in any time in recorded history!
Slavery today, usually called “human trafficking,” refers to the buying and selling of human beings (including children) for the profit of other people. Victims of trafficking are usually recruited with promises, transported to another place, and then exploited. Oftentimes, victims are threatened with harm either to themselves or to their families if they try to run away. Typically they have no money, no official papers, and do not speak the local language. Most of the victims of trafficking are women or girls, many of whom are forced into slave labor, prostitution, or forced marriages.
The Profile of the Slavery Today
• Debt slavery (Also called bonded labor): occurs when someone takes a loan of money (often in a family emergency) in exchange for a guarantee to work for a period of time. The work is for long hours, every day, but the loan takes years to pay off or can never be paid off entirely. This is a common form of slavery in India.
• Early/forced marriage: women and girls married without their consent and forced into lives of slavery.
• Forced labor: Victims are offered paying jobs and then put into conditions of slavery instead.
• Child labor: Children 8-17 are forced to work 12- to 18-hour days with little or no compensation.
• Sex slavery: Unfortunately, this is the most common form of slavery today. The victims are sold into prostitution. The victims are often young girls aged 14-18. Today’s culture of impurity and sexual obsession has created an atmosphere where this type of abuse is growing.
• Combatant slavery: The victims, often children, are forced into an army and made to kill.
Why would anyone put themselves at risk of becoming a trafficking victim? The main reasons are:
• false and deceptive promises by trafficking “brokers”;
• poverty and lack of any other available jobs;
• the hope for finding a better standard of living elsewhere;
• civil wars or armed conflict in the home country.
And who would want to keep human beings — including children — in such bad conditions? Answer: persons who want to exploit other people in order to get money. Traffickers are usually breaking the laws of one or more countries when they do business. But governments do not prosecute these exploiters very vigorously, sometimes letting them off with a “slap on the wrist.”
Who’s Working to Stop Slavery Today?
Thankfully, there are organizations working to publicize this growing tragedy and to give a voice to the voiceless.
As mentioned above, the United Nations has begun a highly visible campaign to end human trafficking and slavery. First, the U.N. wants to raise public awareness of the problem. It also would like to encourage collaboration among different groups already working in different countries.
The U.N. has also created a legal document called a protocol, an agreement that 120 countries have signed, pledging to eliminate this exploitative activity. But these governments have not done much thus far to actually implement the agreement.
Another organization that is working to overcome modern slavery is the Catholic Church. Pope John Paul II denounced the crime of human exploitation many times. Pope Benedict XVI has also condemned human trafficking repeatedly. Moreover, the Holy See (or the Vatican) has sponsored several international conferences in recent years on the problem of human trafficking.
The Power of One
One remarkable individual working within the Church on this issue is Poor Clare Sister Eugenia Bonetti. Since 1991 she has dedicated her efforts toward rescuing “street women” in Italy. Many of the women and girls she works with are from foreign countries. Sister Eugenia also coordinates the work of many other nuns who help her in this project. The U.S. State Department recognized Sister Eugenia as one of six Heroes Acting to End Modern-Day Slavery in their annual report on the subject.
Sister Eugenia and the Poor Clare Missionaries show great fortitude in taking risks to help these young women get away from their captors. They go out into the streets at night to meet with the young girls and persuade them that help is available. They offer the girls escape and shelter at their convents. Sister Bonetti’s organization has shown great resourcefulness in helping some 5,000 get certificates to stay and work at decent jobs in Italy. Even though Sister Eugenia runs the risk of retaliation from the women’s exploiters, she says, “I have never worried about my security. My life has been given totally.”
What can we do to stop human trafficking?
Some products (such as rugs) are produced with a certification that identifies them as child labor-free goods, which means that buying them does not support the trafficking industry. We can choose to buy products made without child labor, thus not creating additional demand for child slavery.
We can also support effective non-governmental organizations that are already focusing their efforts to end slavery. Examples are found at freetheslaves.net, rugmark.org, and Catholic Relief Services (crs.org). An initiative that has come out of the making of the movie Amazing Grace is the “Amazing Change” campaign (theamazingchange.com), a coalition of several different groups working toward abolishing modern-day slavery.
We can also write to our congressmen expressing our concern for human trafficking, and asking these legislators to effectively address the issue. U.S. Sen. Paul Simon D-Ill., who died in 2003, spoke to the importance of reaching out to our elected officials. In speaking about the Rwanda genocide, Simon said “If every member of the House and Senate received 100 letters from people back home saying that we have to do something about Rwanda, when the crisis was first developing, then I think the response to the crisis would have been different.”
A very individual way we can help stop the slave trade today is by living the virtue of purity ourselves. As we have seen, sex slavery is the most common form of contemporary enslavement. It thrives in societies that promote a casual attitude to sex. The virtue of purity teaches us to respect others and never see them as objects for our selfish enjoyment. Purity frees a person from enslavement to his or her passions. By being pure ourselves and promoting a culture of purity we can help create a society where human beings will no longer be seen as things to be exploited but as persons deserving our care and protection.
There is much to be done to overcome modern slavery. There are initiatives to help rid the world of this evil. We should do our part, knowing that whatever we do to help our brothers and sisters we are doing to Christ.
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