I recently came across several articles on BBC which show that slavery is still an issue today, in more than one country. Slavery is not just something out of our history books but still present today. Unfortunately. Here are some of the results of their research. Read for yourself:
BBC NEWS | Africa | Uncovering Mali’s hidden slavery
Iddar Ag Ogazide is taking a break from digging and shovelling in 40C Malian Sahel heat. He is happy just to be working.
“Today I am a free man, I am longer a slave. I am among men who are the same colour as me who consider me as a man. I earn 1,000 CFA ($2, £1) a day, and that covers my needs,” he says.
The idea of a salary is something Iddar is just getting used to, having dramatically escaped from his life in the hamlet of Intakabarte, outside Gao, in February this year.
According to Iddar, his grandmother was bought as a slave by the Tuareg Ag Baye family, and from then on she was listed as taxable property on the Ag Baye’s religious tax form. (Read more …)
BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | ‘Chairman’ reveals seedy world of trafficking
He looks like a bank manager, on holiday. Grey hair, steel-rimmed glasses, polo shirt and paunch.
We have arranged to meet in a hotel lobby, and I am late. His two bodyguards are sitting by the door – pistols tucked none too subtly under their shirts.
The “chairman” has been trafficking girls for 30 years now
Later, I find out that the guards are actually off-duty policemen – doing a little freelance work for the local underworld boss. Welcome to the Philippines.
BBC NEWS | UK | England | Sex slavery widespread in England
Young women tricked into coming to England, often by boyfriends, are being sold off in auctions at airport coffee shops as soon as they arrive.
They are among the thousands of women brought into the UK to be sex slaves, usually with no idea of their fate.
The trade was one of the findings of a BBC News website investigation into slavery in 21st Century England. (Read more …)
The following article is not on slavery, but about a similarly repulsive crime against humanity – rape as means of warfare:
VOA News – Rape By Rebels, Bandits and Soldiers Has Sordid History in CAR
Robert Souleymane, a former soldier in the French army during colonial times, shows the house where he says he was gang raped by a group of female Congolese rebels during heavy fighting in the town of Bossangoa in 2002.
