I felt embarrassed about falling to the rank of slave until I took a look around. Now that I've found out the truth about slavery, I should be relieved to suffer as a metaphor.
What most people don't know is that there are about 27 million slaves -- real slaves -- in the world today (see the UN website). That's more than at the height of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the late 1700's. I'm talking about men, women, and children in forced labor for zero pay who are beaten, raped or murdered if they try to escape.
The US government is starting to do something about it. Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell signed three bills on Tuesday, May 31st, 2011 that could put human traffickers in jail for life. Among the crowd watching was Tina Frundt who was forced into prostitution at the age of 14. At the time, she blamed herself for not listening to the man she thought loved her when he told her to have sex with his friend and for being raped. Tina has since founded Courtney's House -- a nonprofit safe haven for child sex trafficking victims.
Not everyone is ignoring modern-day slavery. Hillary Clinton takes a stance on it in the 2010 Trafficking in Persons Report, and the UN has set up the Voluntary Trust Fund for Victims of Trafficking in Persons to combat this hell on earth.
Now that you are aware of the slaves, you will start to see them everywhere and on every level. What kind of personality does it take to want to control someone else? I'm sure you know some. Maybe you are a control freak yourself: Would you want to have a slave? It's sad. We have bought into a slave culture. Nietzsche had it right in Beyond Good and Evil:
The collective impression of such future Europeans will probably be that of numerous, talkative, weak-willed, and very handy workmen who REQUIRE a master, a commander, as they require their daily bread; while, therefore, the democratising of Europe will tend to the production of a type prepared for SLAVERY in the most subtle sense of the term.
If only it were just subtle. Control. Betrayal begets jealousy. The impetus for writing Travelling Light, my novel about modern-day slavery, was a murder case on a Mediterranean island in which the authorities immediately declared that no foul play was suspected without an investigation. No one was interested in the case because the victim was a prostitute. Most of the men on the island cheated and betrayed their wives, but we couldn't leave without our children. Instead of banding together with other women, we played right into it being jealous of each other -- this is how you get sucked into a slave mentality. I remember thinking, Why not write about women who fight back? Or about Friendship between a man and woman? Maybe if I wrote about it, it would happen. It started on Styxos...
Writing a novel is therapeutic. Now looking back, I wonder, What was I jealous over? Someone without a soul? Because it must be some kind of soullessness that keeps betrayers from seeing any innate value in having unless they can make other people feel the lack. A profound disinterest in people and things. A blind spot, only being able to see yourself in terms of someone else's pain. It makes my blood boil just thinking about those wasted tears.
Now it's time to put energy into something useful. Most of today's slaves toil under debt bondage incurred by 'lenders' often for generations. Today, slaves are forced to destroy coastal ecosystems and to mine profitable metals for industry spreading mercury into the environments of Ghana and Congo. Slave laborers raze entire forests in Western Africa and the Amazon. There is a direct correlation between damage to our environment and the erosion of our human rights; buying the fruits of slavery degrades our freedom.
Another form of slavery, human trafficking, is the fastest growing criminal industry on the planet and is predicted to outgrow drug trafficking in the near future. Human traffickers prey on children and women prostituted into the sex industry.
Free the Slaves has found slavery practiced in every country in the world except Iceland and Greenland. The organization has calculated that it would cost $10.8 billion to eradicate slavery, the same amount Americans spend on potato chips and pretzels in one year. They estimate it costs an average of $400 to sustainably free one slave. At those prices, it's clear that it would be relatively cheap to eradicate slavery if we wanted to. Our generation could shut down this hell on earth, if it wanted to.
Why don't we? Is it that we thrive on having a lower class, on showing off our bells and whistles like Christmas trees? Then we wonder why people hate us. It took me a year of living Down Under and the World Trade Center attack to figure out what the Aussies meant by 'over the top'.
The only way out of this Nietzschean slave mentality is by curing ourselves first. Just don't buy it. Now the thought of someone dissing me triggers disinterest: nothing can grow there, time to get on with my freedom. I might not feel this way when I'm dying (actually, I have indigestion right now), but as long as I can keep on, there's too much that needs to be done.
J.L. Morin is the author of Travelling Light, to be published July 31, 2011 by Harvard Square Editions.
Follow J. L. Morin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/harvardsquareed
Supriya Dwivedi: Bollywood Trumps Sex Trafficking in Canadian News Coverage
Unfree labour - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
EU to Consider Forced Labor in Uzbekistan
Couple Charged with Domestic Servitude and Forced Labor of Housekeeper
Forced labour complaints up in Myanmar
Labour trafficking, not sex trafficking needs more attention
Tour Company Accused of Child Sex Traffic
Sex-traffickers groomed girls with cash, alcohol and car rides, court hears
Labour trafficking, not sex trafficking needs more attention
India ranked 4th as world's most dangerous countries for women
In 2006 I watched television documetary which highlighted how easy it was to bribe police a south american country to tip off the those who ran a brothel which provided 8/9 year old to perform sexual acts with north american and european men. In this case the reporters helped to identify the dishonest officer and the brothel was eventually successfully raided. But I'm sure that another replaced it shortly thereafter.
However, I agree with earlier posters who said that buying the slaves is not the solution as the slave owners would probably use the money to buy/or kidnap and house more slaves. I agree with the person who said that poverty is one of the causes, but it is only one, this is a complex problem and one that has been around for centuries.
Susan Weinstein
If modern-day slavery were abolished, I don't see them calling for reparations or blaming the white man for their problems assimilating into society....they'd just be happy to be free, without the loss of more than 620,000 souls that gave their lives to make it possible.
I wish the world could start over. There is too much suffering.
...sigh...
In parts of Africa and Asia, renegade armies attack villages, killing the adults and very young children and taking those in the 7 to 15 range to use as child soldiers, human shields, sex slaves, cooks and so on. This is also slavery.
In a number of Asian and South American countries, girls are offered factory or nanny jobs and find themselves installed in brothels instead.
It is indeed a very wide ranging problem. We're spoiled. We don't even think about the billions of people who are living on less than $3 US a day. We don't think of, say, the one billion people who do not have access to as much as a mere 20 litres (5 gallons) of fresh water a day (and the UN considers "access to fresh water" as living within a mile of a treated water source).
Slavery is most often practiced in countries where it's easy to talk a child with no family into selling themselves for some meals and clothes or parents who love their children into giving up one or two to owners who will give them a "better" life where at least they don't go hungry as often. Slavery will never be eradicated until poverty is better addressed - otherwise even if you were to "free" every enslaved person today, you would have millions more to save next year.
I don't believe for a moment the Federal Gov't or Dept of Justice is working as hard as it COULD to see this type of crime wiped out let alone discouraged by people here or abroad working in our name.http://thecommonills.blogspot.com/2011/06/rape-theft-public-harm-kbr.html
Either they do or do not do this. You cannot convict a company or a person because of "allegations" made by unnamed people with ulterior motives.
Don't trivialize slavery comparing it to the struggles of Americans at this time; most of us have accepted the rules of living in the US; we get to keep our Tvs and cars. There will be a time, and it seems to becoming sooner than ever to address the oppression in this country
That is not trivializing, the point is that sex slavery and all the rest of it would probably not exist as does today if people were empowered. Another point, have you ever thought why Bill Gates didn't offer to end slavery? He is raising billions for vaccines, and that is wonderful. Doing that at this point for slavery would be futile because the world is loaded with slaves, including you. Bad investment.
With all due respect, your understanding of slavery escapes me. I may well be a slave to the decisions I've made in my life. My choice.
The slavery in this article is not based on freedom to choose and make their own decisions; in turn, accepting the decisions to being a slave to their job, their home etc
Slavery is about being a piece of property controlled by other individuals that force you into actions against your will, with no alternatives accept escape or death. This dynamic will persist with empowered peoples or not because someone is always marginalized
I don't understand your Bill Gates theory; but since you have insight into me that I am a slave, I will bow to your superior intelligence and magical abilities
In that new scenario, one would begin to see frequent kidnappings, with the criminal counting up the ransom multiplied by the number of captives. The pay-off to "redeem" the captives would mimic the market in Mexico City, where it is said that one can buy back anything stolen within a few hours.
A "free slave" is a worker, tax payer and family person. What I have in common with your slave type, is that I have no control over my future. My life is dependent upon the "invisible wealthy" and the "powerful". With regard to the Middle East issues, the same thing would happen here in the West if we attempted it; our internet would be altered; spied on, and arrested for civil disobedience. We might not be shot, but we will suffer consequences.
Now my question to you is, how can you expect slavery, to be eradicated by a free slave? We can't even stop the Canadian Government from causing one of the biggest ecological disasters in the world at the Alberta Tar Sands? Let's think why we cannot change what we have a right to change, before we think we can alter the rights of others. We all indeed have lost our ability to effect change. That change has to come from the top down, and I do not ever see that going to happen in my life time.