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 There Are More Slaves In The World Today Than At Any Point In Recorded History
article
0094 added
14.06.05 words Chris Byrne
technical:
QED
 Do you ever bling with ‘baguettes’ (diamonds from Sierra Leone), drink
orange or tomato juice (from Florida, yes U.S.A), eat sugar (from
Myanmar a.k.a Burma), buy fireworks (from China), wear cotton (from
Egypt or Benin), or eat chocolate made from cocoa beans (from the Ivory
Coast)? It was reported in the September 2002 edition of National
Geographic magazine that (child) slave labour may have been involved in
the production process. Slavery and the slave trade are outlawed in the
1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and slavery is technically
illegal everywhere in the world. In Brazil, slaves make charcoal for use
in steel production for cars etc.
Slave labour is also reportedly used in the production of tea, coffee
and tobacco production worldwide. Freetheslaves.net states “Some of the
industries where slave labor is known or highly suspected are cocoa,
cotton, steel, oriental rugs, diamonds and silk.” There are estimated to
be 27-30 million slaves on this planet (nearly as large a number as the
population of Canada). We can find some of the trafficked slaves in the
brothels of Soho, London (above all those cool record shops and bars),
which are thought to be run by the Albanian mafia. It was reported
on cnn.com in 2001 that, “Almost 200,000 girls from Nepal, many of
them under the age of 14, are working as sex slaves in India.”
According to Theresa Loar, director of the U.S. Inter-Agency Council on
Women (quoted on freetheslaves.net) human trafficking is, "the fastest
growing criminal enterprise, after guns and drugs, in this country."
 It was reported on Miami.com in August 02 , that brothers Juan and
Ramiro Ramos and their cousin Jose Ramos, who supplied pickers for farms
around Lake Placid, were convicted in June 02 in federal court for
conspiring to hold some 700 workers as slaves. Five (farmworker) crew
bosses in Florida have been convicted on slavery charges in the past
four years. Slavery in the United States was abolished in 1863…
We often hear about ‘developing’ countries being in “debt slavery” to
the ‘developed world”, but it also happens to individuals in “debt
bondage / bonded labour” The vast majority of slaves (2/3rds = 15 to 20
million people) are bonded labourers in South Asia (India, Pakistan,
Bangladesh and Nepal). These people are held in bonded labor; a system
in which a person becomes bonded by accepting a loan from a moneylender
or inheriting a debt, for which they must work to repay. Workers are
then tricked or trapped into working for little / no pay, under
conditions that violate their human rights and from which they cannot
escape, often due to the threat of violence. Graham Kelder writes on
religion-online.org, “Contract slavery is the second most common form of
modern slavery. Workers are offered contracts that guarantee employment
in a workshop or mine or factory, but when the workers are transported
to their place of ‘employment’ they find themselves enslaved. If legal
questions are raised, the contract can be produced, but the reality is
that the ‘contract worker’ is a slave, threatened by violence, lacking
any freedom of movement, and paid nothing or virtually nothing. Contract
slavery is most often found in Brazil, Southeast Asia, some Arab states,
and some parts of the Indian subcontinent”.
 Another form of slavery is forced labour – people recruited illegally by
governments, political parties or private individuals and forced to work
involuntarily, usually under threat of violence. ‘Traditional’ or
chattel slavery still exists (although they constitute a very small
proportion of today’s slaves). The transport and/or trade of humans
(usually women or children) for economic gain and involving force and /
or deception is most often found in North / West Africa and some Arab
countries. Contracts are sometimes given to chattel slaves to conceal
their enslavement America was built by African slaves. Reparations for
this slavery is a political issue at the moment. There must also be
hundreds of millions of people who suffer under oppressive governments
in this world… Not to mention the mentally enslaved wage slaves in the
prosperous West…
 
What can we do?
1. Buy only Fair Trade Certified products: that guarantee that
producers of goods we purchase receive fair wages for their work. It’s
often not that much more expensive… a small price to pay?
2. Make sure you don’t purchase invest in companies using slaves.
3. Write to your MP and your supermarket.
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Chris Byrne
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