African Unification Front
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SLAVERY & SLAVE TRADE IN THE AFRICAN UNION
The use of religion, language, and political power, are a fundamental part in the perpetuation of slavery in the African Union. The process of enslvement is extremely abusive and the psychological violence especially is designed to produce produce docile captives. Neocolonialism and the international economic system play a vital role in African slavery, through the disrutions produced by lawless multinational corporations, through unfair terms of international trade, and through the general maginalization and exploitation of exploiation of African society. In April 1996, UN Special Representative for the Sudan, Gaspar Biro, reported "an alarming increase...in cases of slavery, servitude, slave trade, and forced labor."
Allegations that a Nigerian-registered ship had left a Benin port carrying 200 child slaves bound for Gabon made international headlines and shocked the world in 2001, renewing calls for efforts to end child slavery. A joint statement released by the Benin government and United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) confirmed that indeed at least a dozen of the 43 children eventually found on the ship, the Etireno, were slaves (the whereabouts of the other 150 children alleged to have been on board remains a mystery), hinting at the existence of a modern-day slave trade between Benin (once known as the infamous "Slave Coast") and other West African nations. Thousands of children are bought and held captive to labour in Cocoa, or in palm nut plantations.
THE SUDAN
Estimates put the number of people who have been enslaved in Sudan at 200,000. In the Sudan, northern militias, armed and organised by the Government in Khartoum, come down from the north on horseback to loot, burn and abduct women and children to sell as slaves. In 1996 the SPLA charged that the Government of Sudan and its paramilitary auxiliary militias use slavery to destroy the Southerner dimension of Sudanese identity. The Sudanese government permits international monitors to travel into Sudan to observe the slavery activity. The Sudan government is at war with the SPLA and the SSMA. Regular Sudanese Army troops fight alongside auxilliary militias including the PDF.
The Popular Defense Force is one of the institutions set up by Omar Beshir after his junta ousted an elected civilian government in June 1989, scrapped political parties and trade unions and established a radical Islamic regime. PDF recruits are sent to an advanced course in fighting techniques before being dispatched to zones in south Sudan to fight against the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA). With regard to auxilliary militias, in 1996 Omar Beshir said the government was bent on military training in line with Islamic commands to ready and mobilize forces to "intimidate the foes of Allah."
A language of hyperbole characterises all belligerant forces in Africa, and leaders on all sides in Sudan are given to making extravagant claims. The government has previously boasted of divine support; armies of angels were said to fight side by side with the government forces. The flora and fauna of the south were declared government-friendly; trees shouting Allahu Akbar in unison; monkeys self-sacrificially treading on land mines and detonating them. It is unlikely that these things are true, however, many desparate villagers and soldiers appear to talk as if they believe these and other fantastic occurances (confirmed instances of soldiers abandoning posts because of ghosts and supernatural phenomenon are not uncommon).
Selective interpretation of this kind of language by religious activists and by the international media, as well as interpretation of the statements and accusations made by either side have reduced the war to appear as matter of religion and ethnic rivalry, and have obscured critical elements such as dire poverty, dictatorship, cultural isolation, multinational corporate interests, and neocolonial pressures from the West and from Asia as key factors in the perpetuation of the violence, human rights abuses, and community dislocation. These conditions have excerbated social failure and it is in this context that slavery must be understood.
THE SLAVE-REDEMPTION TRADE
Many observers are puzzled about US activists' sharp focus on Sudan when experts estimate that 17 million children worldwide are being "held in conditions amounting to slavery," and on the African continent, child-trafficking plagues not only the war-ravaged societies of Angola, Congo and Sudan, but also impoverished nations of West and Central Africa. Christian groups led by the Zurich-based Christian Solidarity International, have purchased the freedom of thousands of Sudanese slaves since 1995, paying an average of $50 per person. The CSI has bought and redemeed over 11,000 slaves. But critics ask whether buying slaves (even for the purpose of freeing them) perpetuates the slavetrading economy, and wonder why Christian groups haven't brought the same efforts to bear in Angola, Congo and parts of West Africa, where many of the children bought and sold are also predominantly Christian.
On 8 July 1999, a UN agency accused a Christian human rights group of encouraging the slave trade in southern Sudan by handing over $100,000 (£64,000) to Arab traders to buy the freedom of more than 2,000 slaves. Julianna Lindsey, a spokeswoman for the United Nations Children's Fund - Operation Lifeline Sudan, said that, while she appreciated the benefits to the individuals concerned, there were fears that paying money to redeem slaves would serve only to support the market. "The issue is the same whether it is 500 or 2,000 slaves," she said. "Money in southern Sudan is very attractive and the people involved in the trade will use that." Slave-Redemption trade has encouraged more trafficking." There are also reports that the well-meaning redeemers are frequently exploited by people posing as slaves, who have never been abducted - as well as by families willing to sell their children or other relatives to slave traders several times over, if necessary, for financial gain.
THE LIFE OF A SLAVE
Life in slavery is one of appalling hardship and cruelty, where unpaid hard labour is often combined with physical and sexual abuse. The victims, mostly women and children are sold off far from their communities for as little as $15 each. Boys have been forcibly circumcised and girls subjected to ritual genital mutilation.
The boys work as cattle herders, or field hands in the plantations, the girls as domestic servants. Young African women reported stories of violence, rape and murder at the hands of their captors. "When one woman tried to escape, we were all beaten with axes and sticks," Ayak, an ex-slave, said. She was pregnant when she was abducted from her village of Rianwei in The Sudan, and remained in slavery for 4 years. "I fell unconscious. When I woke my leg was paralysed and I was bleeding. Then I lost my baby." She still walks with a limp but is lucky in one way - she has heard that her husband is still alive and hopes that he will accept the young baby she has brought home with her, the product of rape by her captor.
Amel has spent five years in captivity. She saw her husband die when they were captured, and had two of her three children taken from her when she arrived in the north. "I don't know what happened to them or if they are alive," she said. "When I asked my master about them, he would beat me." She too has a baby whose father was her captor.
Trafficking nightmare for Nigerian children
Excepts from BBC - January 10, 2001
The BBC has learnt that many of the hundreds of girls from Nigeria sold into sexual slavery in Europe each year have been trafficked through England.
Towards the end of 1996, two police officers in Hove in Sussex began reviewing old missing persons cases.
Over the coming months Detective Chief Inspector Chris Ambler and Detective Superintendent Dave Gaylor noticed a disturbing pattern emerging.
"There's no doubt this is modern day slavery," says DCI Chris Ambler.
"They are nothing more to the people who are using them than a commodity to make money."
Young girls were arriving from West Africa and claiming asylum at major British airports.
Because they were under 18, they were then taken into the care of social services and placed in children's homes or foster care.
Within a number of weeks, there would be a mysterious phone call and the girls would disappear.
The detectives established they were then being transported to a number of European countries, in particular Italy, where they were forced into prostitution.
In 1998, the Sussex Police police force launched Operation Newbridge.
With the help of Britain's National Crime Squad, two suspected traffickers have been arrested, and one person deported.
The children's ordeal begins in Benin City in Nigeria is a dusty, sweaty, frenetic and noisy place. Girls and boys are lured into sexual slavery with tales of riches in far-off lands.
Osamede Iguobaro was just 14 when she was approached at a local market. She was told she would earn big money pleating hair in Italy.
She was smuggled across a number of West African countries to the Ivory Coast where she was sold to a Nigerian woman - a "Madame" based in Italy.
Like so many other teenage girls, she was forced to become a prostitute.
The case is now before a Nigerian court but, even if convicted, the woman who sold her is likely to escape with a fine.
Grace Osakue, the founder of Girls Power Initiative, says the real tragedy of Osamede's story is just how routine it is.
They were starved and so this 13 and 14 year old girl had to urinate for each other to drink so they would not die
Jane Osagie, International Reproductive Rights Research Group
"Everyone is affected," she says.
"It's either a daughter of a family or a daughter of a friend who has been trafficked."
A rehabilitation centre has been opened in Benin City to offer some alternative to the children.
They are offered sewing, computer or literacy classes. Mismanagement of the Nigerian economy has created dire poverty throughout the country.
The average income has slumped to around $350 a year. The result is that traditional values and family ties are weakened to breaking point and the prospect of making money abroad is proving an irresistible lure.
Voodoo is used to bind girls to their 'sponsors'
Eki Igbenedion, the wife of the governor of Edo State, helped to raise funds for the skills centre after travelling to Italy to see for herself what "work" Nigerian girls are doing there.
"I don't know why it's not getting the attention it deserves because I think that since the slave trade was abolished many years back, it's coming back in a modern form," she says.
The teenagers are recruited by a local agent, a sponsor, who pays for their journey abroad, as well as the bribes and false documents necessary to get them there.
Voodoo is used to coerce the girls into working for their sponsors.
They are then transported on an often fatal journey through a number of West African countries until they reach their departure point where they are sold on to their "madame".
Jane Osagie, co-ordinator of Nigeria's International Reproductive Rights Research Group, has worked with a number of girls who have been trafficked.
"A lot of them die," she says. "A lot don't come back. There were two girls who were trafficked and because they refused to go into the trade, they were banned from eating."
"They were starved and so these 13 and 14- year-old girls had to urinate for each other to drink so they would not die."
Because the Italian authorities have become increasingly alert to direct flights from West Africa, the traffickers now use other European countries like Britain and France as staging posts.
Travelers arriving from other European Union states are subject to far less scrutiny and false documents have a greater chance of fooling immigration officers.
Bathed in the orange glow of late-night lights, hundreds of half-naked, high-heeled Nigerian girls and women sell sex.
With debts of up to $50,000, it can take two or three years working night and day to pay off the money.
The physical and psychological debts are enormous. Much responsibility lies with the Nigerian authorities, but Detective Superintendent Dave Gaylor, says the UK and Europe as a whole have a much larger role to play.
Greater police co-operation across borders, harsher sentences for the perpetrators and specific anti-trafficking legislation as well as increased resources would also reduce the exploitation and enslavement of young girls from Nigeria.
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