Great Throughts Treasury

"Average life expectancy for a male Mauritanian is only forty-one years, and somewhat less for slaves. One finds that withered, ancient-looking slave women are in their thirties; and slave children are bony and stunted, often showing cuts and wounds that are slow to heal on their malnourished bodies. Children are everywhere: nearly half of the population is under the age of fourteen. This doesn?t lessen productivity, however, since slave children receive no schooling and go to work at the age of five or six. In the town of Boutilimit, behind the large White Moor houses with courtyards, I found lean-tos and shacks that I first took to be crude shelters for goats. From these emerged very dirty slave children dressed in rags. At the same moment White Moor children in bright boubous passed up the street carrying books and satchels, on their way to school."

"Because she looks like a child she can be sold as a ?new? girl at a higher price, about $15, which is more than twice that charged for the other girls. Siri is very frightened that she will get AIDS. Long before she understood prostitution she knew about HIV, as many girls from her village returned home to die from AIDS after being sold into the brothels. Every day she prays to Buddha, trying to earn the merit that will preserve her from the disease. She also tries to insist that her clients use condoms, and in most cases she is successful as the pimp backs her up. But when policemen use her, or the pimp himself, they will do as they please; if she tries to insist, she will be beaten and raped. She also fears pregnancy, and like the other girls she receives injections of the contraceptive drug Depo-Provera. Once a month she has an HIV test, and so far it has been negative. She knows that if she tests positive she will be thrown out of the brothel to starve."

"Bondage can be compared to living in a prison or a mental institution; those who get out have to learn about living in the ?real world.? Like some ex-convicts, some ex-slaves may never manage it, but their chances are increased with every bit of help they receive in the crucial first days of freedom."

"A recent investigation in Great Britain found young girls held in slavery and forced to be prostitutes in Birmingham and Manchester. Enslaved domestic workers have been found and freed in London and Paris. In the United States farmworkers have been found locked inside barracks and working under armed guards as field slaves. Enslaved Thai and Philippine women have been freed from brothels in New York, Seattle, and Los Angeles. This list could go on and on. Almost all of the countries where slavery ?cannot? exist have slaves inside their borders ? but, it must be said, in very small numbers compared to the Indian subcontinent and the Far East. The important is that slaves constitute a vast workforce supporting the global economy we all depend upon."

"All across India tens of thousands of ?ghost? bonded laborers have appeared, concocted by district officials in league with landlords who have collected millions of rupees for their ?rehabilitation.?"

"[Frederick Douglass] poured into the ears of his audience biting ridicule and sarcasm, beneath which lay a single, simple question: If there are still slaves, how can you be proud of your freedom?"

"Bringing down criminals by investigating their finances and enforcing economic sanctions has been shown to be effective, yet these techniques are rarely applied to the crime of slavery. The power of a great range of organizations ? the World Bank, national regulatory agencies, trade organizations, regional customs and excise units, individual companies, consumer groups ? could be harnessed to break the profits of slavers."

"Brazilian coffee farms in the 1800s shows that the productivity of slaves was linked to their age. Children did not bring in more than they cost until the age of ten or twelve, though they were put to work as early as possible. Productivity and profits to be made from a slave peaked at about age thirty and fell off sharply when a slave was fifty or more. Slavery was profitable, but the profitability was diminished by the cost of keeping infants, small"

"Bribes are not exorbitant or unpredictable; in most brothels a policeman stops by once a day to pick up 200 to 400 baht ($8 to $16), a monthly expenditure of about 6,000 baht ($240) that is topped off by giving the policeman a girl for an hour if he seems interested."

"Buying a slave is no longer a major investment, like buying a car or a house (as it was in the old slavery); it is more like buying an inexpensive bicycle or a cheap computer. Slaveholders get all the work they can out of their slaves, and then throw them away."

"By moving the children around other households, lending or selling them to friends or relatives, slaveholders tie down slave women, effectively holding their children hostage."

"Chattel slavery is the form closest to the old slavery. A person is captured, born, or sold into permanent servitude, and ownership is often asserted. The slave?s children are normally treated as property as well and can be sold by the slaveholder. Occasionally, these slaves are kept as items of conspicuous consumption. This form is most often found in northern and western Africa and some Arab countries, but it represents a very small proportion of slaves in the modern world."

"By telling the kiln owners that we were economists interested in overheard rates, fuel costs, transportation charges, and taxation we learned a great deal about the nature of the brick business. Sooner or later the subject of the workers and the system?of advance payment and debt bondage would come up, since labor costs made up part of the kiln?s budget."

"Children also form a large part of the bonded workforce in India. A particularly well-known group are the children that produce fireworks and matches?Some 45,000 children work in these factories, making this perhaps the largest concentration of child laborers in the world. Between 3 A.M. and 5 A.M. every morning, buses from the factories visit the villages in the surrounding countryside. Local agents have enlisted the children, whose ages range from three and a half to fifteen, paying an advance to their parents and creating the debt bond."

"By my own conservative estimate there are perhaps 35,000 girls like Siri enslaved in Thailand."

"Commercial sex is a social event, part of a good night out with friends."

"Contract slavery shows how modern labor relations are used to hide the new slavery. Contracts are offered that guarantee employment, perhaps in a workshop or factory, but when the workers are taken to their place of work they find themselves enslaved. The contract is used as an enticement to trick an individual into slavery, as well as a way of making the slavery look legitimate. 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. The most rapidly growing form of slavery, this is the second-largest form today. Contract slavery is most often found in Southeast Asia, Brazil, some Arab states, and some parts of the Indian subcontinent."

"Corruption often touches the programs that aim to free bonded workers. The schemes originating in the capital commonly are enforced at the local level by officials who work hand in glove with the local landlords. As we?ll see later, several studies have shown that rehabilitation programs can be a curse as well as a blessing. But sometimes they do succeed."

"Deeply believing that God wants and expects them to be loyal to their masters, they reject freedom as wrong, even traitorous. To struggle for liberty, in their view, is to upset God?s natural order and put one?s very soul at risk."

"Criminal gangs, usually Chinese or Vietnamese, also controls brothels in the United States that enslave Thai women. Police raids in New York, Seattle, San Diego, and Los Angeles have freed over a hundred girls and women. In New York City thirty Thai women were locked into the upper floors of a building used as a brothel. Iron bars sealed the windows and a series of buzzer-operated armored gates blocked exit to the street. During police raids the women were herded into a secret basement room. At her trail the brothel owner testified that she bought the women outright, paying between $6,000 and $15,000 each. The women were charged $300 per week for room and board; they worked from 11 A.M. till 4 A.M. and were sold by the hour to clients."

"Enslaved girls service the lowest end of the market: the laborers, students, and workers who can afford only the 100 baht per half hour rate. It is low-cost sex in volume, and the demand is always there. For Thai men, buying a woman is much like buying a round of drinks."

"For all the hypocrisy evident in the swift end to child labor in the charcoal camps and the setting up of the demonstration project, there are important lessons to be noted in what happened. The sudden reversals and changes in government policy after years of inaction suggest tactics and strategies that can be brought to bear on slavery. The first key point is the very real power of the media. The combination of a BBC documentary and a New York Times front-page article alerted those who had the power to influence Brazilian officials. The second key point is more important: it was economic pressure that brought about the rapid and demonstrable improvements in the charcoal camps. If we are looking for ways to bring people out of bondage, we have to recognize that money shouts where pleas for human rights go unheard."

"Debt bondage is the most common form of slavery in the world. A person pledges him- or herself against a loan of money, but the length and nature of the service are not defined and the labor does not reduce the original debt. The debt can be passed won to subsequent generations, thus enslaving offspring; moreover, ?defaulting? can be punished by seizing or selling children into further debt bonds. Ownership is not normally asserted, but there is complete physical control of the bonded laborer. Debt bondage is most common on the Indian subcontinent."

"For the [third of the population] who had been legally freed in 1980, life did not change at all. True, the government abolished slavery, but no one bothered to tell the slaves about it. Some have never learned of their legal freedom, some did so years later, and for most legal freedom was never translated into actual freedom. In Mauritania today there is no slavery, and yet everywhere you look, on every street corner and shop, in every field and pasture, you see slaves. Slaves are sweeping and cleaning, they are cooking and caring for children, they are building houses and tending sheep, and they are hauling water and bricks ? they are doing every job that is hard, onerous, and dirty. Mauritania?s economy rests squarely on their backs, and the pleasant lives of their masters, and even the lives of those who keep no slaves, are supported by their never-ending toil."

"For hundreds of years many people in the north, struggling for life, have been forced to view their own children as commodities. A failed harvest, the death of a key breadwinner, or any serious debt incurred by a family might lead to the sale of a daughter (never a son) as a slave or servant."

"For the workers who have to climb inside the still-burning ovens to empty charcoal the heat is unimaginable. When I got inside an oven with a man shoveling the charcoal, the pressure of the heat had my head swimming in minutes, sweat drenched my clothes, and the floor of hot coals burned my feet through my heavy boots. The pointed roof concentrated the heat and in a few moments I was addled, panicky, and limp. The workers hover on the edge of heatstroke and dehydration. Sometimes in their conversation they were confused as if their brains had been baked. The workers who empty the ovens stay almost naked, but this exposes their skin to burns. Sometimes standing on the piles of charcoal they will stumble or the charcoal will give way and they will fall into red-hot coals. All of the charcoal workers I met had hands, arms, and legs crisscrossed with ugly burn scars, some still swollen and festering."

"For some slaves, the first step out of bondage is to learn to see their lives with new eyes. Theirÿrealityÿis a social world where they have their place and some assurance of a subsistence diet. Born into slavery, they cannot easily redefine their lives outside the frame of enslavement."

"I was perplexed that this most fundamental human right was still not assured ? and that no one seemed to know or care about it. Millions of people were actively working against the nuclear threat, against apartheid in South Africa, against famine in Ethiopia, yet slavery wasn?t even on the map. The more this realization dug into me, the more I knew I had to do something. Slavery is an obscenity. It is not just stealing someone?s labor; it is the theft of an entire life. It is more closely related to the concentration camp than to question of bad working conditions. There seems nothing to debate about slavery: it must stop. My question became: What can I do to bring an end to slavery? I decided to use my skills as a social researcher, and I embarked on the project that led to this book."

"Forced prostitution is a great business. The overheads are low, the turnover high, and the profits immense."

"Freed laborers should have a say in the type of rehabilitation they receive."

"From the beginning of colonization until late in the nineteenth century slaves were transported from Africa to Brazil in huge numbers. As many as ten times more Africans were shipped to Brazil than to the United States: something on the order of 10 million people."

"In 1980 the vice premier [of Thailand] encouraged the provincial governors to create more sex establishments to bring tourism to the provinces: ?Within the next two years we need money. Therefore, I ask all governors to consider the natural scenery in your provinces, together with some forms of entertainment that some of you might think of as disgusting and shameful, because we have to consider the jobs that will be created.? Thailand?s economic boom included a sharp increase in sex tourism tacitly backed by government."

"If there is one fundamental violation of our humanity we cannot allow, it is slavery. If there is one basic truth that virtually every human being can agree on, it is that slavery must end."

"If not thwarted by rain, the family might earn 700 to 800 rupees ($14 to $16) in a good week. But the costs of the minimum essentials needed to keep a family alive are exactly this amount. On weekly earnings of 700 rupees, a family of four of vie can have a bare diet of wheat roti (flat, unleavened bread), vegetable oil, lentils, onions, and sometimes a few other vegetables."

"In 1980, probably as a condition of financial aid from Saudi Arabia, Mauritania implemented the Sharia, the extreme religious law of Islamic countries."

"If central government inspectors or human rights activists find and publicize the use of slaves, the companies can express horror, dump (temporarily) the guilty [recruiters], tighten up security to prevent further inspections, and go on as before."

"In addition, large international corporations, acting through subsidiaries in the developing world, take advantage of slave labor to improve their bottom line and increase the dividends to their shareholders."

"In Burma today, there is widespread capture and enslavement of civilians by the government and the army. Tens of thousands of men, women, and children are used as laborers or bearers in military campaigns against indigenous peoples or on government construction projects. The Burmese military dictatorship doesn?t suggest that it owns the people it has enslaved ? in fact, it denies enslaving anyone ? but the U.S. State Department and human rights organizations confirm that violence is used to hold a large number of people in bondage. Once again, the motive is economic gain: not to generate profits but to save transportation or production costs in the war effort, or labor costs in construction projects. One major project is the natural gas pipeline that Burma is building in partnership with the U.S. oil company Unocal, the French oil company Total, and the Thai company PTT Exploration and Production. These three companies are often featured in international and global mutual investment funds."

"In comparison, consider the agricultural slaves in debt bondage in India now. There land rather than labor is at a premium today. India?s population has boomed, currently totaling three times that of the United States is a country with one-third the space. The glut of potential workers means that free labor must regularly compete with slave, and the resulting pressure on agricultural wages pushes free laborers toward bondage. When free farmers run out of money, when a crop fails or a member of the family becomes ill and needs medicine, they have few choices. Faced with a crisis, they borrow enough money from a local landowner to meet the crisis, but having no other possessions, they must use their own lives as collateral."

"It is a huge fight. On one side are people making a great deal of money from slavery. On the other is a handful of activists who have to spend more time fighting ignorance than fighting the slaveholders themselves."

"In the nineteenth century the booming British cloth industry was forced to acknowledge that slave labor supplied most of its raw material ? cotton. Some British textile workers tried to resist working with slave cotton, yet many felt they had no choice but to work with whatever materials the boss provided. Other workers felt the whole question was none of their business. There was no moral leadership from the owners; they said they had to buy the cheapest cotton the market to compete. And the government of the time, while benefiting from the tax on the industry, followed a strict hands-off policy, arguing that ?the market? made the best decisions."

"In Europe and North America the police fight organized crime; in Thailand the police are organized crime. The same holds true for many parts of Africa and Asia."

"Mauritania is a police state hiding the dirty secret of slavery. What I found was a kind of slavery practiced hundreds of years ago, and now existing nowhere else in the world."

"Looking to the developed countries they see investors putting their money into stock-market mutual funds on the basis of returns above all else ? and that the portfolio might include firms making land mines or instruments of torture need not concern anyone."

"It is illegal to take pictures on the street ? carrying a video camera means instant detention, and the police are everywhere. A policeman stands on practically every corner in the capital, and to drive anywhere means constant stops at police roadblocks where your papers and passport are checked again and again."

"It is important to understand that the direct link between sex tourism and slavery is small. With the exception of children sold to pedophiles, most commercial sex workers serving the tourist boom are not slaves. There is no question that the women and girls working with sex tourists suffer extreme exploitation and degradation, but most are not enslaved through the debt bondage that captures girls into brothels used almost exclusively through the debt bondage that captures girls into brothels used almost exclusively by poor and working-class Thai men. However, the indirect connection is crucial: sex tourism has created a new business climate conducive to sexual slavery."

"Mauritania is another one of the African nations created artificially by European colonists. The country is vast and empty. It is about the same size as Columbia, or the American states of California and Texas combined, yet it holds only a little more than 2 million people, giving it the lowest population density on earth. Mauritania is practically all desert: it is really just the western end of the great Sahara. Over one-third of the country, the eastern region that borders Mali, is known as the ?empty zone.? Here, in an area the size of Great Britain, there are no towns, no roads, and virtually no people."

"More control the rehabilitation process should pass to the central government."

"Mauritania is an economic basket case. The country carries a staggering foreign debt of over $2.5 billion ? more than five times its total annual export earnings. Per capita income has been falling steadily and is now about $480 per year, making its population one of the poorest on earth."

"More education should be available to the children of freed laborers."