Slavery Today
Did you know that gypsy children are sold in Yugoslavia, sent to the large Italian towns, and are trained there as thieves and pick-pockets? And are then sold to Fagin-like gangs of criminals, who beat them if they do not bring in enough “booty” each week?
Or that your cheap Summer skirt was probably made by a Thai girl, still not in her teens, who works long hours for barely enough to buy her food — and who gets no medical help when ill. In other sweat-shops of Thailand, three- and four-year olds are chained and manacled, and their tiny fingers are used to push heroin into ampoules. Still more Thai children are sold into slavery in brothels — both boys and girls.
Thus our heedless consumer and tourist activities and demands create opportunities for the unscrupulous everywhere.
Child labour is on the increase everywhere, for precisely the same reasons that it flourished in 19th Century Britain; there is no work for the parents, or the family is engaged as a unit, or are blackmailed into letting their children work in highly exploitative conditions. Many children are quite simply sold — perhaps to pay a family debt of ten pounds.
These children do have a representative out in the world though — and that is the Anti-Slavery Society, the world’s oldest Human Rights organisation, which labours to bring all these wrongs to our attention, and which constantly speaks up on behalf of these children at the United Nations. They were also very much involved in the drafting and passing of the UN convention on the RIghts of the Child, which was ratified last November, and which Sir Richard Attenbrough has described as “our greatest legacy to the future”.
The Society also provides advocates for Aboriginal people (they even bought one tribe in Brazil, who were threatened with extinction); and highlights the plight and speaks for those millinos who are born into debt bondage; an evil most of us would be oblivious to were it not for the Anti-Slavery Society.
Much of their work is discreet. They need to preserve their right of entry to all countries, and seek a dialogue rather than a confrontation whenever possible. One example is the way in which they obtained permission from the Iraqi government to take books, games and teachers to Iranian boy soldiers who were held in prisoner-of-war camps in Iraq; secrecy was an absolute condition.
The Anti-Slavery Society does not accept money from business interests, in order to retain freedom of action. The Society is the voice of the most vulnerable and oppressed in our world, and seeks to alert the conscience of us all.
It deserves your support.
The Anti-Slavery Society can be contacted at 180 Brixton Road, London SW9 6AT