Slavery is as old a curse as humanity

The issue of slavery doesn’t seem like an important topic to be discussing the 21^st century but it is still a real issue in many parts of the world, including Australia.  Attorney-General Nicola Roxon recognised the fact this week when she announced new laws to criminalise forced marriage, forced labour and organ trafficking.  Roxon said Australia wasn’t immune from slavery and people trafficking. The new bill tackles worker exploitation, ensures those who help to enslave or traffic can be charged as well as those who keep slaves and allows for reparations with up to 12 years in prison for forced labour charges.

The news comes a week after an Irish publication revealed the news slavery exists today in Ireland and is exported to Australia. The Cork Independent quoted from a new book called ‘Open Secrets: An Irish Perspective on Trafficking & Witchcraft' based on data from the Trafficking in Persons Report issued annually by the US Department of State. Book co-author David Lohan said the data was available for several years but the issue was under-reported. 

The report found that Irish and Filipino people on 457 visas were “fraudulently recruited to work temporarily in Australia, but subsequently are subjected to conditions of forced labour, including confiscation of travel documents, confinement and threats of serious harm." It quoted a $174,000 fine issued to a Perth construction company in 2008 for violations of the Workplace Relations Act for “the deliberate exploitation of Filipino and Irish migrant workers.” The workers were not entitled to move between employers and presented with undated work agreements while being denied the required documents outlining their rights.

At the time of the case, Australian Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Senator Chris Evans welcomed the fine and warned that the exploitation of workers would not be tolerated by his Government. The Cork Independent said slavery exists in Ireland today because of a demand. “Irish people are willing to use, abuse and exploit their fellow human beings for economic benefit or their own gratification,” it said.

But this is not just true of Ireland or Australia. Slavery is as old as organised human society. It was codified in the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi 3800 years ago and accepted in the Old and New Testaments. Exodus 22:2-3 allows for a thief to be sold if they cannot redress their theft.  Ephesians 6:5 cautions servants “who are owned by someone must obey your owners”. The classical Greek definition of democracy glossed over slavery and it was a key component of the Roman Empire economy until it was gradually replaced by serfdom.

Slavery continued in many societies and gained a new lease of life in Western Europe with the opening up of the Americas in the 16^th and 17^th centuries. The Atlantic triangular slave trade brought textiles, rum and manufactured goods from Europe to Africa, slaves from Africa to the Americas and sugar, tobacco and cotton from the Americas to Europe.  Merchants of Liverpool and Bristol combined with the big American cotton producers and the slave-trading kingdoms of western and central Africa to move 12 million Africans across the Atlantic in three hundred years. 

American-based British historian Simon Schama addressed the subject in his blood Rough Crossings:  Britain, Slaves and the American Revolution. The book tells the story of black Americans who sided with the British in the War of Independence because King George III embodied the idea of freedom for them better than George Washington.  The framers of the new American constitution had a bold plan for taxation and representation but behind the rhetoric of freedom, the reality of slavery was their Achilles heels. Tens of thousands of Black Africans looked to Britain to deliver them from the slavery.  When Boston lawyer James Otis called out the contradiction and said slavery diminished the idea of American freedom,  Founding Father John Adams could only “shudder at the consequences of such premises.”

The fact was the trade in humans kept the American cotton industry in profit and this was something the southern colonies were not to give away lightly. Slave rebellions in the sugar islands of the Caribbean created a terror the cotton economy was next and thousands of white Americans signed up for the revolt to protect their livelihood. 

But Britain was a dubious saviour for the blacks. Slavery was still legal in the British Empire and repeated attempts in parliament to ban it were always rejected on the economic grounds it would give bitter enemy France too much of an advantage in the Caribbean sugar trade. The notorious case of the slave ship the Zong where the captain threw 122 sick slaves overboard to get £30 a head compensation for their loss at sea spurred campaigners such as Granville Sharp (a founding father of Sierra Leone) and Thomas Clarkson to lobby for change. But even when revolutionary France rejected slavery (Napoleon re-established it in 1802), a suspicious British parliament would not immediately follow suit.

It wasn’t until 1807 the slave trade was made illegal in Britain and also in the US.  But the economic benefits of the institution of slavery continued in both countries until Britain made it illegal in the Empire in 1834. The internal contradictions of the US system were brilliantly exposed by 28-year-old runaway slave Frederick Douglass who wowed Britain when he toured in 1846. The articulate, witty, handsome and charismatic Douglass gave a dramatic account of cruelty in the plantations and lived constantly under the fear of re-capture. The book on his life was an immediate best seller.

Back home, many called Douglass anti-American but he defended his criticisms. “I have no love for America, What Country have I? The institutions of this country do not know me.” The contradictions tore the US apart leading to a reluctant Lincoln declaring war on the south in 1861.  The war claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and led to Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Declaration. When Lincoln was murdered, Douglass said Lincoln “shared the prejudices of his white fellow-countrymen against the Negro, [but] it is hardly necessary to say that in his heart of hearts he loathed and hated slavery.”

And while the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery after the South was defeated in 1865, the attitudes Douglass saw in Lincoln, lingered on in others. Slavery continued but went under a different name abetted by Jim Crow Laws.  Australia too enslaved its blacks by making them wards of the state.  While most of these schemes were wound back by the 1960s, slavery continues to be a worldwide issue.  In an article about South African slavery during the 2010 World Cup, Time said there were more slaves around today than ever. “Slaves are those forced to perform services for no pay beyond subsistence and for the profit of others who hold them through fraud and violence,” said Time. Slavery is likely to continue as long as humans have economic value.

Uganda child slave trade on the rise

Ugandan police have announced a probe into child trafficking from orphanages. Police Inspector General Kale Kayihura made the announcement during a conference on human trafficking in East Africa. Meanwhile fellow Ugandan Moses Okello, of the Refugee Law Project at Makerere University, told the BBC that a spate of recent cases showed the scale child trafficking in Uganda "could get out of hand". The conference is hoping to develop an action plan to address the lack of information on the problem and find ways to curb it

The discussions are occurring at the “First Regional Anti-Human Trafficking Conference in Eastern Africa” at Speke Resort Munyonyo in Kampala. Held for three days between 20 and 22 June, the conference was organised by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). UNODC was established in 1997 and has approximately 500 staff members worldwide. Headquartered in Vienna, it has 20 field offices as well as liaison offices in New York and Brussels. UNODC relies on voluntary contributions, mainly from governments, for 90 per cent of its budget. UNDOC mandate is to assist Member States in their struggle against illicit drugs, crime and terrorism.

However human trafficking is a $32b global industry that is on a similar scale to the drug and arms trafficking industry. UNODC launched the trafficking conference on 20 June with a press conference. UNODC stated that post-conflict societies, such as Uganda appear to be particularly vulnerable to human trafficking. The problems caused by war means that often the infrastructure is not in place to protect the most vulnerable members of society. It also creates an environment ripe for organised criminal organisations, which seek to exploit illegal markets.

The conference brought together authorities from the eleven countries of the Eastern African Police Chiefs Cooperation Organization (EAPCCO) region. A subsidiary of Interpol, the 11 member EAPCCO (Burundi, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Rwanda, Seychelles, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda) was founded in Kampala in 1998 and is now based in Nairobi. The major seven types of crimes investigated by EAPCCO are firearms, narcotic drugs, motor vehicle theft, economic crime and corruption, terrorism, environmental crime and cattle rustling.

However EAPCCO also recognises human trafficking as a major problem. Interpol has been involved in the investigation of offences against children since 1989. It has a specialist group on crimes against children which focuses on four different arenas; commercial exploitation and trafficking; sex offenders; serious violent crimes against children and child pornography. Operationally, it supports member states in carrying out large operations investigating the commercial exploitation of children.

The Kampala conference was told that Asian children mainly from India, Pakistan and China are being trafficked into Uganda. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has released a rapid assessment report on trafficking of children in Uganda. The ILO said the Asian children are trafficked into Uganda disguised as cultural dancers on short- term visits while some Somalis are brought in as refugees. ILO said the trade was organised by “well coordinated networks of individuals and groups” across all stratas of society including pimps, employment bureaus, churches, transport agents, NGOs, peers, and fishermen.

The ILO findings were corroborated by Ugandan Inspector General of Police, Maj. Gen. Kale Kayihura. Kayihura said the country was a transit route in the multi-billion dollar human trafficking trade. He said Police are investigating two local orphanages involved in child trafficking. He also said that although the trade looks un-coordinated because of the small numbers moved at a given time, there is a huge worldwide network behind it.

Jeffrey Avina, director for operations at UNODC, told the conference that child trafficking was on the rise in East Africa. Avina cited the conflict in northern Uganda, where Lord's Resistance Army rebels have been widely accused of abducting thousands of children for over two decades which made the country stand out as the state worst affected by trafficking in eastern Africa. 30,000 rebel-recruited children have ended up in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Boys end up working in commercial farms, mines and quarries and girls are forced into prostitution and other forms of sexual exploitation. “This is not about individuals; we are talking about organised crime," said Avina.

Trafficking in humans is outlawed under the UN Protocol Against Trafficking in Persons, which has been in effect since December 2003. Covered under the protocols are "the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation". Like the law itself, human trafficking is a global issue that remains little understood.