On my first day working for the American Anti-Slavery Group this summer, I found myself celebrating Ukrainian Independence Day with an office of staff, interns, and a tall, gentle-eyed, escaped former slave from Sudan named Francis Bok.
That I was commemorating the independence of Ukraine and not a country dear to my heart was strange but appropriate because I had pursued the question of modern day slavery with an objective intellectual curiosity, not a deeply emotional or personal connection to the cause. I had learned in a lecture that there are, by conservative estimates, still 27 million slaves in the world today and that, shockingly, this is more than any other time in history. Initially, mine was an impersonal philosophical interest in the value of freedom. That is to say, I did not yet really care.
When did I start to care?
That first day in the office, besides eating cake, I sat down with Francis and heard the story of his life as a slave. At the age of 7, his mother sent him to the village market to sell eggs. The village was raided by Arab militias from the North and he was taken captive and given as a slave to one of the raiders, never to see his family or home again. For 10 years he lay awake at night dreaming of freedom until finally, at the age of 17, he escaped from his masters.
For me, Francis gave a powerful voice to the millions of powerless, voiceless slaves who are suffering around the world today. When I looked into his eyes, I saw deep inside a man who knows viscerally what it means to be enslaved and, because of this, a man who knows what it truly means to be free. I realized Francis does not merely believe in freedom - Francis knows freedom. He loves freedom. He lives freedom. Looking into his eyes shed light on the vicarious reality of slavery and in turn made me profoundly more aware and appreciative of my own freedom.
This was the moment that I started to care.
Sadly, Francis' story is the exception. By the academic definition of slavery as forced work without pay under the threat of violence, there are still 27 million people enslaved in the world today. Furthermore, at least 200,000 people are trafficked internationally every year. These are men, women and children subjugated for the purposes of domestic and agricultural labor, and increasingly forced prostitution.
In Sudan, slaves have been sold for as little as $35, a fraction of the price you would have paid in real dollars for a slave in colonial America. In Mauritania, where traditional chattel slavery has defined the cultural mentality for more than 800 years, slavery was not legally abolished in the constitution until 1981. But this is not just someone else's problem. About 15,000 victims are trafficked into the U.S. every year. In our own neighborhood, there was a domestic slavery case brought against a family in Brookline, Mass. this past year.
In Sudan specifically, the same Arab militias who enslaved the southern black Africans for the past 20 years of civil war between north and south have now targeted the black Africans of the western region called Darfur. Already 50,000 civilians have been killed, at least 200,000 displaced from their homes, and thousands more raped and tortured. Whereas the chronic civil war was a religious conflict (between Muslims and non-Islamic Christians and animists), in Darfur the victims of the Arab raiders are fellow Muslims. This is an intentional, systematic, racial cleansing. This is the first genocide of the twenty-first century.
Short of our long-term aspirations for the secretary generalship of the United Nations or of regime change targeting the Bashir-led Sudanese government, for now what else can we do about this? We can demand that international leaders take action. For months now, the United Nations has sat idly by and been unwilling to challenge the Bashir regime with anything beyond rhetoric. Change, though, must begin with our own education, awareness, and caring.
Admittedly, it is difficult to grasp the magnitude of a crisis and the severity of suffering so far removed from what we expect, experience, or can even imagine. And unfortunately, it is all too easy to be so wrapped up in our own lives that we ignore even the most extreme of moral imperatives. But while life goes on normally here, we must not forget that life is also elsewhere. We must not forsake in our hearts and minds the people of Darfur. We must not live in darkness.
Tomorrow evening, Francis will be speaking at a Goddard Chapel candlelight vigil to shed light on the genocide in Sudan. To shed light on something means to look at it, pay attention to it, recognize it, and not ignore it. To shed light is an attempt to understand. Understanding is the first step not only to caring but also to appreciation. I encourage students and faculty to attend the vigil where by shedding light on the far-away genocide in Sudan we will also shed light on the personal meaning and value of our own freedom.<$>
@contpage:see SLAVERY, page ????<$>
@conthead:Appreciating Freedom <$>
@contjump:SLAVERY<$>
@contpage:continued from page ????<$>
@pullquote:When I looked into his eyes, I saw deep inside a man who knows viscerally what it means to be enslaved and, because of this, a man who knows what it truly means to be free.<$>
altpullquote: I had learned in a lecture that there are, by conservative estimates, still 27 million slaves in the world today and that, shockingly, this is more than any other time in history.<$>
eds: leah, ME
