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Dorothy Copus Brush Slavery is alive and well in the world Some shocking headlines have caught my attention
in the last month. "Black slavery is alive" introduced
a commentary by Walter Williams, black columnist. "Slavery
shames the modern world, too" introduced a report by Georgie
Anne Geyer, a white woman who travels the world in search of
stories. In a related happening stories have appeared in papers
across the country about the Sudanese "lost boys."
How insignificant are hanging chads and political scandals when
you ponder the horrors forced on humans across the globe. In London the Anti-Slavery International society
has existed since the 18th century. Headquartered in Boston is
the American Anti-Slavery Group. Both these groups and the United
Nations have put the numbers of humans being held in some form
of modern slavery at no fewer than 200 million! Today slavery has become diversified and includes
bonded labor, child labor, forced marriages and the lucrative
business of ensnaring girls and women into prostitution rings.
Geyer mentions south Asia, Brazil and Ukraine as places where
slavery is a way of life. Both writers focus on Africa as one
of the worst violators. Many of these shocking conditions have been
exposed through the work of Christian Solidarity International
and the American Anti-Slavery Group because of their travels
to Africa to purchase many of the Christian African women and
children captured and enslaved by the Muslims. Both columnists decry the silence of the mainstream
black organizations to recognize these injustices. Recently the
congressional Black Caucus and the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People have spoken out and taken a stand
against chattel slavery in Mauritania and Sudan. Williams was
especially critical and he wrote, "It's fairly safe to say
that most of today's most flagrant human rights abuses occur
in Africa. But unfortunately they get little attention -- maybe
it's because Africans instead of Europeans are the perpetrators;
Europeans are held accountable to civilized standards of behavior,
while Africans aren't." This is the unbelievable plight of the "lost
boys," so called because they reminded their rescuers of
the Peter Pan tale, but different because there was no Peter
Pan to care for them. In 1987 the long civil war in Sudan became
ever more violent and as many as 15,000 to 30,000 children were
left orphans and homeless. They became wanderers across Africa,
always in danger from bullets, wild animals and starvation. One
of those children is now 17 and newly arrived in this country.
He was only 4 years old when he became part of that pitiful migration.
After more than a month of walking they reached Ethiopia and
were given permission to build a camp. Four years later the Ethiopian
government was overthrown and they were ordered back to Sudan. By this time international aid workers were
aware of the tragedy and the children were taken to a camp in
Kenya in 1992. Now about 4,500 of those youngsters are being
brought here to be settled in 11 cities. Some will live with
foster parents and older youth will have independent living arrangements.
Over the next few months 110 of these Sudanese refugees will
be settled in Middle Tennessee. One boy who came to a Nashville family just before Christmas explained how he lived through those years. He said, "You cry, and you lift your eyelids, and you walk." |