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International Day for the Abolition of Slavery by Alexandra Pereira 2008-12-02 08:17:26 |
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“No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.” Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 10th of December 1948
December 2nd marks the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery, to recall that exactly 59 years ago the General Assembly of the U.N. adopted the Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons.
Abolitionism as a broad and decisive movement was directly related with the Rights of Man, several thinkers of the so-called “Enlightenment” Movement and Quakers, who often came to consider themselves as “agnostics, atheists, universalists, post-Christians”, etc. Thomas Paine’s 1775 article “African Slavery in America” is generally recognized as the first article to advocate abolishing slavery in what would become the United States.
The 14th of April that same year, in Philadelphia, the abolitionist “Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage” was formed, which later had as its President Benjamin Franklin, the “Enlightened” Deist, printer, civic activist, scientist, politician, President of Pennsylvania and founder of the “American Philosophical Society”.
Almost one century later, Abraham Lincoln with his Emancipation Proclamation and the incentive to the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment by the Congress finally gave a decisive push towards the prohibition of slavery in the U.S.. Upper Canada, on its turn, passed the Act Against Slavery in 1793, while France carried out abolition between 1794-1802.
In Great Britain, the Quaker petition was presented to the parliament in 1783. Figures such as Wilberforce or Equiano emerged, and the public movement grew stronger until the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, since the Slave Trade Act of 1807 hadn’t been proved effective. The History is full of heroic acts by slaves and former slaves, from the Plantations of South Carolina to the Plantations and Quilombos of Brazil and Cuba.
But while we know that slavery was not criminalized in Nepal until this year, or in Niger until 2003-2004, frequent newspaper reports give notice of the “slavery of modern days” showing its claws even in Europe and the U.S., including cases of illegal traffic of workers and women, forced labour or sexual slavery of children.
On the 18th of November, the new “Human Rights and Alliance of Civilizations” room (home for the Human Rights Council) was inaugurated at the Palais des Nations in Geneva by King Juan Carlos, Queen Sofia and Ban Ki-moon, with a ceiling painting created by the Spanish abstract artist Miquel Barceló.
Everything fine as to the promotion of the Arts and a new home for the Human Rights Council (Ban Ki-moon was there for the champagne once again), but let us not forget all the slave work, slave prostitution, even slave soldiers around the world at this precise moment, all the human potential wasted and stolen to each and every one of them, just as to our global society. Let us not forget all the black slaves who worked… in the White House, for example.
Yes, there’s still much work to do. Illegal immigration and slavery are very often connected. So are slavery and sexual exploitation – what do some westerners promote in Thailand but sexual slavery? How common is slavery in China or India? How common are the cases of Brazilian and Eastern Europe networks devoted to women’s traffic and traffic of workers in Southern and Central Europe? Pretty common.
How many seasonal immigrant workers can we still find living in subhuman conditions, in Spain, the Netherlands, England or Ireland? We can say the same in the U.S. about many Mexican and South-American workers, for example, or the traffic of women and children. Slavery and child slave trade are still very common in Africa or the Middle East.
Many South-American realities are beyond our couch, pub and tv-screen realities, continuously defying us to ask: how much work is slave work, and in exchange of what? Is someone working hard many hours per day during his entire life with an under-dignity-level salary as exchange, no social benefits and no life perspectives a slave?
Is the old Brazilian man in Northeast Brazil telling tourists while humbly smiling with his eyes, ashamed “The most out of my house I ever ate was in the backyard” a modern slave, and a slave of whom? Are Peruvian youngsters living in slums and working many hours per day in any hard job(s) they can find just to eat one meal at least half the days during a whole month modern slaves, and slaves of whom? Markets are global but responsibilities are just local? I don’t think so.
What else do we need to do? Are laws enough? They are necessary, though final earnings seem to encourage the slaughter of the most basic human rights. Survival and profit at any cost are not compatible with human development (because not compatible with the happiness and fulfilment of human beings), thus not acceptable. International awareness campaigns are more than needed, with a global scope and a local reach. Active and compromised citizens guarantee and demand human rights to be respected both internationally and locally. Societies as wholes should maybe review their value systems, while emphasizing more and more a Global Education for Human Rights.
Pictures 1. Zumbi dos Palmares (1655-1695) Leader of the Black resistance against Slavery in Brazil, national icon 2. Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) Former slave, American abolitionist and first African-American nominated as Vice-Presidential candidate in the U.S. 3. Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797) Pioneer of the Abolitionist cause in Great Britain 4. Ignatius Sancho (1729-1780) Composer, writer, actor, first Afro-Briton to vote in British elections, symbol of the Abolitionism Links – bringing awareness about the problem of contemporary slavery: Anti-Slavery International - www.antislavery.org Free the Slaves - www.freetheslaves.net/Page.aspx?pid=183 American Anti-Slavery Group - www.iabolish.org
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