Slavery Past and Present is rife.

I was looking to find an author who wrote a book many years ago.  I put my wording into Google which had me clicking on many websites that came up.  I checked a number of them to see if I could find what I was looking for.

One of the websites I clicked on was ‘The Justice System and Aboriginal People’ by The Aboriginal Justice Implementation Commission [1] and as I read the contents, the thought occurred to me this didn’t or doesn’t only happen to the Aboriginal people, what I was reading happens to many people all over the world.  [1]

Looking further, slavery was not the specific domain or happening of one culture, one race, one colour – it didn’t necessarily discriminate against any one religion, it didn’t discriminate as to your finances – whether you have money or not.  What it did was to showcase the inequalities amongst people no matter who you were, no matter where you lived, and as you will see later in this article, even when free, it will depend on your personality and attitude as how you cope then.

Examples popped up; Thousands of British children were shipped to Australia after World War II, only to be stripped of their identities, used as slave labour and abused. Years later, they still wear  the scars of their savage treatment.  Brothers and sisters were torn apart and sent to different camps, some never saw each other again.  The happening described as a catalogue of cruelty, where beatings and sexual assaults were daily events, by those that were meant to protect them.  It was slave labour. The boys would raid the bins for scraps and even take the food from the pigs that were better fed then they were.

In 200 years it is estimated that 150,000 British children were dumped around the globe. Between 1912 and 1970, about 7000 were shipped to Australia. They were promised that loving families were waiting to adopt them but they were delivered into institutionalised abuse. Very few were adopted or fostered.[2]

The Holocaust was the systematic annihilation of six million Jews by the Nazi regime during World War 2. In 1933 approximately nine million Jews lived in the 21 countries of Europe that would be occupied by Germany during the war. By 1945 two out of every three European Jews had been killed. The European Jews were the primary victims of the Holocaust.

But Jews were not the only group singled out for persecution by Hitler’s Nazi regime. As many as one-half million Gypsies, at least 250,000 mentally or physically disabled persons, and more than three million Soviet prisoners-of-war also fell victim to Nazi genocide. Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, Social Democrats, Communists, partisans, trade unionists, Polish intelligentsia and other undesirables were also victims of the hate and aggression carried out by the Nazis. 11 million people were killed during the Holocaust (1.1 million children)[3]

But what of the many children in slave labour even today?

Although the abolition of slavery in much of the world has greatly reduced child slavery, the problem lives on, especially in Third World countries. According to the Anti-Slavery Society.

“Although there is no longer any state which legally recognizes, or which will enforce, a claim by a person to a right of property over another, the abolition of slavery does not mean that it ceased to exist.

There are millions of people throughout the world — mainly children — in conditions of virtual to slavery.” It further notes that slavery, particularly child slavery, was on the rise in 2003. It points out that there are countless others in other forms of servitude –

Such as peonage – a system in which a debtor must work for his creditor until the debt is paid off, bonded labour [A person becomes a bonded labourer when their labour is demanded as a means of repayment for a loan. The person is then tricked or trapped into working for very little or no pay.

And servile concubinage – Involuntary, or servile, concubine involves sexual slavery of one member of the relationship, (typically the woman.) which it is claimed is not slavery in the narrow legal sense. In 1990 reports of slavery came out of Bahr al Ghazal, a Dinka region in southern Sudan.

In 1995, Dinka mothers spoke about their abducted children. Roughly 20,000 slaves were reported in Sudan in 1999. “The handmade woolen carpet industry is extremely labor intensive and one of the largest export earners for India, Pakistan, Nepal and Morocco.” During the past 20 years, about 200,000 and 300,000 children are involved, most of them in the carpet belt of Uttar Pradesh in central India.

Many children in Asia are kidnapped or trapped in servitude, where they work in factories and workshops for no pay and receive constant beatings.  Slaves have reappeared following the old slave trade routes in West Africa. “The children are kidnapped or purchased for $20 – $70 each in poorer states, such as Benin and Togo, and sold into slavery in sex dens or as unpaid domestic servants for $350.00 each in wealthier oil-rich states, such as Nigeria and Gabon”.

The United Nations Special Rapport on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography estimates that about one million children in Asia alone are victims of the sex trade.[4]

“Intelligence tests have always been closely linked with education and grades and therefore relied upon to predict who would do well,” Dr Poropat said.

“The impact of personality on study is genuinely surprising for educational researchers, and for anyone who thinks they did well at school because they are ‘smart’.”

Previous studies have shown that students who think they are smart often stop trying and their performance declines over time, while those who consider themselves hard workers get progressively better.

Dr Poropat said the best news for students is that it’s possible to develop the most important personality traits linked with academic success.

“Personality does change, and some educators have trained aspects of students’ Conscientiousness and Openness, leading to greater learning capacity.

“By contrast, there is little evidence that intelligence can be ‘taught’, despite the popularity of brain-training apps.”[5]

In this last study lies our hope for those that have endured such hardships.  We can give a meaning to the future to these people to strive for happiness.  We can remind them that Viktor Frankl, neurologist and psychiatrist as well as a holocaust survivor in his search for meaning, who brought out the therapy  Logotherapy,  ( to find meaning and purpose in our life) tells us that there are many people who struggle every day for one reason or another.  For some it is from birth, for others it is through some mishap during their life.  Frankl reminds us that it is our ‘attitude’ that will determine what we do with it.

As caring people we can all do our bit to help our fellow man, woman and child in various ways, remembering that love can conquer evil.

Cited at:

[1] http://www.ajic.mb.ca/volumel/chapter13.html

[2]http://www.smh.com.au/national/i-can-still-hear-the-kids-screams-20110611-1fyap.html#ixzz3yXQpdIue

[3]  http://www.deathcamps.info/Leyson/faq.htm

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_slavery

[5] www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/12/141217090812.htm