EuropaWorld 8/12/2000 Slavery: Ancient Scourge, Modern Vice

We in the West have a comfortable habit of dismissing evil practices in far away countries: 'we don't know much about that…' is a common response, which carries the unspoken rider '…..and neither do we want to.'

Voltaire was all too aware of this complacency when he wrote Candide, some two hundred and fifty years ago. In this book Candide meets on his travels a slave from a sugar plantation who is missing a hand and a leg. The hand he lost in a dangerous machine in the sugar cane mill; but it was the cruel slave master who had cut off his leg to prevent him from escaping. The miserable slave tells Candide 'this is the true price of the sugar you eat in Europe.'

Sugar is no longer produced by slaves but many products and services still are. Every country in the world has outlawed slavery yet there are still, in all probability more slaves at work today than ever was the case in Voltaire's time. The old champion of human rights would be disappointed, but perhaps not altogether surprised at humanity's slow and hesitant progress towards civilisation.

Now, as then, the principal motive for slavery is greed - whether of those who sell slaves, of those who use slaves to produce goods or those who, wanting to buy goods at the best price, ask no questions about their origin. The trafficker, the producer, the retailer and the consumer all participate. In so far as we eat the sugar, we help to cut off the legs.

Slavery today is found on every continent, even in the most civilised societies. It comes in many guises - forced and bonded labour, domestic service, the sex trade, child labour, illegal immigration, migrant workers on agricultural estates - all provide opportunities to create slave conditions. These can be characterised by dependency of the slave on the 'owner' for food, shelter, drugs, or 'protection', great difficulty of escape, little or no payment for the work and intimidation often accompanied by cruel, inhuman treatment.

Such conditions are easiest to arrange when slaves are young; the vulnerability of children makes them attractive targets. Control is also simpler when victims face an unfamiliar language and customs. If they are also in the country illegally escape becomes near impossible.

It helps if the slave master can openly use force as, for example, in Myanmar - as its military rulers have decided we should now call the former Burmese state. Two years ago an international commission there described a 'saga of untold misery and suffering, oppression and exploitation of large section of the population,' noting that 'the impunity with which government officials, in particular the military, treat the civilian population as an unlimited pool of unpaid forced labourers and servants at their disposal is part of a political system built on the use of force and intimidation to deny the people of Myanmar democracy and the rule of law.'

Forced labour is one sort of slavery; bonded labour is another. In return for a loan - perhaps to buy medicines or to provide a dowry - a family member, often a child, is 'bonded' to an employer, frequently in India a manufacturer of carpets. The bonded worker cannot escape until the loan is paid off. This may take years. Indeed the bond may even pass between generations of the same family. The worker is sold like a slave and treated like a slave.

According to ant-slavery campaigners there are currently some 20 million such bonded workers in the world - a number comparable to the number of slaves transported to America.

Migrant workers are always vulnerable to exploitation, especially if they are illegal; immigrants. Then it is relatively easy for an 'employer' to mistreat, exploit and intimidate the employee into slavery - dependent on the employer for food and shelter, receiving no or little remuneration and risking a brutal beating for trying to escape.

Women and children recruited for domestic service abroad have for long been particularly vulnerable. Others include migrant agricultural workers such as those manning the cocoa plantations of the Ivory Coast from where derives most of the chocolate we eat in the West. With cocoa prices at a ten year low and producers in the industrialised countries unwilling to pay more, migrant workers from neighbouring states, and depending for food on their employer, have simply not been paid.

Some people are driven into slavery by poverty and naivety. Poor young women, teenage girls and children from Africa and eastern Europe fall easy prey to the trafficker who promises, money, a job, training, presents. The reality of course is that the end of a long, sometimes intercontinental, journey is a seedy brothel. Those who do not co-operate and become prostitutes are beaten and starved or given drugs until they do. Then they are caught in a web from which they may never escape. Many die.

The traffickers are pitiless, without regard for age, family or human emotion. The laws against trafficking in many countries are still feeble, the profits large. So the traffickers provide human flesh at whatever age and for whatever purpose it is required - babies for childless couples, children for pornography, young girls for prostitution, other women for domestic service or work in illegal sweat shops.

Fortunately, the world is slowly waking up to the reviving beast of slavery. There is hope that it may once again be dealt at death blow. December 2nd this week was anti-slavery day. By being informed, by asking questions about how goods are produced, we can all do something about it.

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