The Fight Against Modern Slavery


by Michael J. McManus

There are actually more slaves in the world today than were extracted from Africa during 300 years of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

When William Wilberforce persuaded the British Parliament to shut down the slave trade exactly 200 years ago, February 23, 1807, 40,000 to 50,000 slaves were carried on British ships to America each year. Perhaps 12 million slaves were forcibly captured and sold.

Currently, 700,000 to 1 million slaves are trafficked annually, and there are an estimated 27 million slaves in the world today according to Kevin Bales, author of "Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy."

Modern slaves are not in chains. Slavery was officially abolished worldwide at the 1927 Slavery Convention. Yet it continues to thrive thanks to the complicity of some governments and the ignorance of much of the world.

About 80 percent of these slaves are women or young girls sold for sex or labor. Most are tricked into slavery. Girls in poor countries are asked if they'd like to be waitresses in the West. They sign a contract to repay the cost of their transportation, in what is called "bonded labor." Then they are sold to pimps who rape them, steal their passports, and put them in brothels where they earn so little they can never pay off their loan. If they try to escape, they are beaten or their families are threatened with violence.

Bales reports that one of the most shocking things about modern slavery is the ease with which slave holders get new slaves and dispose of old ones. The average working life of a female sex slave is only three to five years. After that, they become sick with sexually transmitted diseases or AIDS , or simply become exhausted.

Brothel owners kick them out and the woman or girl returns to her hometown, where she is shunned by her society because they know what she was doing all those years, even if it was against her will. She ends up dying alone outside her hometown, without anybody to help her. In some cases, as in Brazil, the brothel keepers kill the girls that become ill and dump their bodies in a river.

Other slaves are forced to work on plantations or as household servants. Many are taken from one country to another where a different language is spoken. Their passports are stolen, making it very difficult to escape and go home.

One man who has done something about this horror is Gary Haugen, who was recently given the "Wilberforce Award" for creating the International Justice Mission by Chuck Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship.

"It is difficult to imagine a recipient more suited to an award given in the name of William Wilberforce than Gary Haugen," said Colson. "On temporary assignment from the U.S. Department of Justice in 1994, attorney Haugen directed the United Nations genocide investigation in Rwanda. His job was to accumulate preliminary evidence against the perpetrators. There standing in the middle of several thousand corpses in a mass grave, Haugen stared into the swollen, machete-marred face of injustice."

When he returned to America, injustice had taken on a human face, one that God would not allow him to purge from his consciousness. As Haugen read through his Bible, the theme of justice leapt off page after page. For example, Isaiah wrote:"Seek justice, encourage the oppressed." (Is 1:17).

But what could a suburban American Christian do about injustice halfway around the world? A lot. He created the International Justice Mission in 1997 that now has 300 lawyers and criminal investigators who have fought for a rule of law against trafficking in many countries.

IJM joined others, such as the National Association of Evangelicals, persuading Congress to pass a law in 2000, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. It requires the State Department to publish an annual report on what each nation is doing to combat modern day slavery.

Its 2007 report puts 39 countries on a "Special Watch List" because they showed little progress or had an increase in the number of victims. For example, it reports Egypt has had no criminal prosecutions.

By contrast, State reports that Malawi passed relevant labor and kidnaping laws and has convicted traffickers of children. The Ministry of Labor now inspects labor practices on tobacco and tea estates, to be sure children are not employed. And a new center now helps 50 victims of sexual trafficking.

Haugen is a modern Wilberforce - whose powerful story will be told in a film, "Amazing Grace," opening this weekend across the country. See it and become inspired on how you can fight injustice.

END TXT Copyright © 2007 Michael J. McManus

Michael J. McManus
syndicated columnist
"Ethics & Religion"
President & Co-Chair
Marriage Savers
9311 Harrington Dr.
Potomac, MD 20854
www.marriagesavers.org
301 469-5873

.. OR FREEDOM FIGHTER? YOU DECIDE.

FIDEL CASTRO~

Human rights record

Main article: Human rights in Cuba

"In 2001, Hallgeir Langeland , a left-wing member of the Norwegian parliament, nominated Fidel Castro for the Nobel Peace Prize for sending medical and engineering aid to developing countries.[6] <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/americas/1225789.stm>
Thousands of political opponents to the Cuban government have been executed, primarily during the first decade of his leadership;[111] however, exact numbers are not known. Some Cubans labeled "counterrevolutionaries", "fascists," or "CIA operatives" have been imprisoned in extremely poor conditions without trial.[112] Military Units to Aid Production , or UMAPs, were labor camps established in 1965 which confined "social deviants" including homosexuals and Jehovah's Witnesses in order to purge "counter-revolutionary" influences from certain segments of the population.[113] These camps were closed in 1968 in response to international outcries.[114] Professor Marifeli Pérez Stable, a former Castro supporter now living in the United States, reflected on the cost of the Cuban revolution: "[There were] thousands of executions, forty, fifty thousand political prisoners. The treatment of political prisoners, with what we today know about human rights and the international norms governing human rights ... it is legitimate to raise questions about possible crimes against humanity in Cuba."[115] Supporters of Fidel Castro respond that, as is the case with Professor Perez Stable, critics' views are often tainted by a clear allegiance to bourgeois democracy and capitalism, and thus clearly biased in their evaluation of the socialist leader and system.[116] Castro acknowledges that Cuba holds political prisoners, but argues that Cuba is justified because these prisoners are not jailed because of their political beliefs, but have been convicted of "counter-revolutionary" crimes, including bombings.[117] Moreover, he claims opposition to the Cuban government to be illegitimate, and the result of an ongoing conspiracy fostered by Cuban exiles with ties to the United States or the CIA, and with abundant representation and access to the American media. Defenders also point out that one man's "terrorist" may be another "freedom fighter", as Winston Churchill himself noted, and that the use of negative political labels is always questionable, especially when those using them have clearly traceable political agendas that stand to benefit from such characterizations. Many Castro supporters also say that Castro's measures are justified to prevent the fall of his government, demonstrably under constant economic and military pressure from the US and allies for more than half a century, whereas his opposition says he uses the United States as an excuse to justify his continuing political control".

To examine the power of the media, we must gauge its control over Australian society by assessing the social damage and programming of the "mind-dulled" (Windschuttle, 1989, p:154) consumer. We begin with a brief overview of various media corporations, ownership and dominance over social change in Australia. Secondly, we will discuss how the media shapes government and politics, uncovering the one-sided political bias of Australia's press owners, observing the use of television to effect the swinging voter and to shape political debate. To conclude we focus on how the media shapes Australian society, concentrating particularly on the destructive effect of men's magazines distributed to the mainstream.

"In Australia, apart from the Australian Broadcasting Commission nearly all television channels, radio stations, newspapers and magazines are owned by three enormous business corporations" (Sargent, 1983, p:8). Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, The Fairfax Corporation and Kerry Packer's Consolidated Press are colossal business and what makes these wealthy companies more powerful are their strong political links to the Australian government, especially the Liberal party. Media ownership is concentrated within these organisations; Murdoch's News Corporation "easily dominating the total press circulation of the nation" (Windschuttle, 1989, p:86), Packer's Australian Consolidated Press leading the magazine market and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation "remaining the statutory authority" (Windschuttle, 1989, p:91) of television and radio. "It is these financially powerful groups who benefit most from the way society is run" (Sargent, 1983, p:8), they formulate popular culture and maintain a stronghold over Australian society by creating and perpetuating a demand that only they can sustain.

Dominance over Australia's socialisation and political system resides in the hands of Murdoch, Fairfax and the late Packer, a group of Right-wing businessmen who have more control over society than our own government. The ability of the media to manipulate public opinion in terms of fashion, trends and image extends to their power to bring a government down or keep a party in office, it is this "present power structure that media owners seek to maintain" (Sargent, 1983, p:8) by suppressing and controlling information that may "disturb the status quo" (Sargent, 1983, p:8). Ultimately the media controls the ideology of the general public through advertising and programming, television particularly "shaping what we believe to be the truth about the world, maintaining and conditioning us to accept things as they are" (Windschuttle, 1989, p:154). Unfortunately most of the doctrine that the media preaches is socially harmful and far from consumer betterment is the reality that the average Australian is brain-washed to aspire to stereotypes that the media has created in order to have a successful sales target.

The authority the media maintains extends to the shaping of government and politics for its' own gain. For some time media owners have shared a symbiotic relationship with the Liberals, the government supporting media in return for positive press and primary coverage over the opposition. As Donald Horne - a former senior journalist disclosed "since 1975, both Rupert Murdoch and the Herald and Weekly Times have maintained vendetta journalism against the ALP" (Windschuttle, 1989, p:309). The one-sided political bias of Australia's press, utilised by the Liberals is hardly democratic, in fact in 1975 "Malcolm Frasers' conservative Liberal-Country Party defeated the Labor Party when newspapers waged a virulent campaign to hound Labor from office and were completely successful" (Windschuttle, 1989, p:307). While newspapers are a useful tool for "defining issues between elections, the medium that is now most influential in determining who will win government is television" (Windschuttle, 1989, p:307).

The government uses television to sway the swinging voter, a "prime target for emotional political appeals, impressionable imagery and political advertising" (Windschuttle, 1989, p:311) because of their ignorance and political disinterest. The media is extremely powerful and can "determine elections" (Windschuttle, 1989, p:311) by exploiting the oblivion of 15_f the population. "Television personalises politics" (Windschuttle, 1989, p:312), it gilds politicians and portrays them as pious leaders who want to give Australians a better life or it slings mud at the opposition and slanders them as tyrants. Television effectively shapes political debate by using anxiety as pressure and by exploiting the naivete of the swinging voter, "conveying persuasively" (Sargent, 1983, p:8) and at times misleadingly which party is preferable.

The supreme power of the media doesn't come to light until we consider how the media shapes Australian society. Kerry Packers' magazine trade in particular, a vulgar source of destruction against socialisation, the men's' magazines distributed to the mainstream promoting the "symbolic assurance" (Windschuttle, 1989, p:158) that pornography is socially acceptable. Men's magazines such as Playboy and Penthouse stress their "elite status" (Dines & Humez, 1995, p:261) yet objectify women and consequent a society where females feel inferior, they "reduce women to commodities" (Windschuttle, 1989, p:257). "Surrogate sex" (Windschuttle, 1989, p:256) magazines being an "expression of attitudes that view women" (Mitchell, 1995, p:12) as nothing more than "sexually sub-servient" (Summers, 1977, p:242) 'pets'. It is a "sure sign of a culture in disarray when those in authority "want to make money and no longer care about the social consequences of how they do it" (Windschuttle, 1989, p:258).

Ultimately "in an era when image rules" (McDonald, 1997, p:37), the media shapes Australian society perversely for it's own gain. The power of the media is immense and dominates not only our culture but also our alleged democratic government, the Liberals and media-owners symbiotically maintaining each other's existence. The media is a disease against society and the Australian government can hardly call themselves representative of the betterment of the public, when they support, allow and maintain the downward spiral that is Australia's social disintegration.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dines, Gail & Humez, Jean M., (1995) Gender, Race and Class in Media-A text-reader, Sage Publications, California.

McDonald, Kevin (1997) Pressing Questions-Explorations in Sociology, Addison Wesley Longman Australia, Australia.

Mitchell, K. A., (1995) 'Pornography... Censorship is not the Answer', Philosophia, QUT Student Guild, Queensland.

Sargent, Margaret (1983) Sociology for Australians, Longman Cheshire, Melbourne.

Summers, Anne (1977) Damned Whores and God's Police, Penguin Books, Australia.

Windschuttle, Keith (1989) The Media-A new analysis of the Press, Television, Radio and Advertising in Australia, 3rd edn., Penguin Books Australia, Victoria.

"The Silent Tear"

As the silent tear forms, it glistens in the pale light of the moon, hiding in the corner, afraid to come out. For the silent tear, is a feeling of pain, a tiny trickle of sorrow, a showing of weakness, an emotion penetrated...perhaps even a barrier broken. Silently falling from duty, gliding with ever gentleness upon its terminal journey, leaving behind, a stream of complete despair. Encased within the intricate sparkle, a mass of emotion...thoughts of the most deepest anguish. Gradually, escaping the depths of its soul, the tiny pearl descends in a glimmer of its own reflection, never looking back upon the face of desolation, it has left behind. ...crashing to a final resting place, splintering into a million droplets of shattered sorrow, the silent tear has gone unheard. For with no one around to hear its pain, the silent tear dissipates....unnoticed, so easily becoming one of the forgotten. ...its path to fate had all been in hopeless vain. Now remaining but a remnant ....of the many Silent Tears.

WILLOWWOOD by Dante Gabriel Rossetti


1

I sat with Love upon a woodside well,
Leaning across the water, I and he;
Nor ever did he speak nor looked at me,
But touched his lute wherein was audible
The certain secret thing he had to tell:
Only our mirrored eyes met silently
In the low wave; and that sound came to be
The passionate voice I knew; and my tears fell.

And at their fall, his eyes beneath grew hers;
And with his foot and with his wing-feathers
He swept the spring that watered my heart's drouth.
Then the dark ripples spread to waving hair,
And as I stooped, her own lips rising there
Bubbled with brimming kisses at my mouth.

2

And now Love sang: but his was such a song
So meshed with half-remembrance hard to free,
As souls disused in death's sterility
May sing when the new birthday tarries long.
And I was made aware of a dumb throng
That stood aloof, one form by every tree,
All mournful forms, for each was I or she,
The shades of those our days that had no tongue.

They looked on us, and knew us and were known;
While fast together, alive from the abyss,
Clung the soul-wrung implacable close kiss;
And pity of self through all made broken moan
Which said, "For once, for once, for once alone!"
And still Love sang, and what he sang was this: -

3

"O ye, all ye that walk in Willowwood,
That walk with hollow faces burning white;
What fathom-depth of soul-struck widowhood,
What long, what longer hours, one lifelong night,
Ere ye again, who so in vain have wooed
Your last hope lost, who so in vain invite
Your lips to that their unforgotten food,
Ere ye, ere ye again shall see the light!

Alas! the bitter banks in Willowwood,
With tear-spurge wan, with blood-wort burning red:
Alas! if ever such a pillow could
Steep deep the soul in sleep till she were dead, --
Better all life forget her than this thing,
That Willowwod should hold her wandering!"

4

So sang he: and as meeting rose and rose
Together cling through the wind's wellaway
Nor change at once, yet near the end of day
The leaves drop loosened where the heart-stain glows, --
So when the song died did the kiss unclose;
And her face fell back drowned, and was as grey
As its grey eyes; and if it ever may
Meet mine again I know not if Love knows.

Only I know that I leaned low and drank
A long draught from the water where she sank,
Her breath and all her tears and all her soul:
And as I leaned, I know I felt Love's face
Pressed on my neck with moan of pity and grace,
Till both our heads were in his aureole.

WILLOWWOOD By Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Translated into Arabic by: JUSTICE FOR ALL
1

I sat with Love upon a woodside well,
Leaning across the water, I and he;
Nor ever did he speak nor looked at me,
But touched his lute wherein was audible
The certain secret thing he had to tell:
Only our mirrored eyes met silently
In the low wave; and that sound came to be
The passionate voice I knew; and my tears fell.

And at their fall, his eyes beneath grew hers;
And with his foot and with his wing-feathers
He swept the spring that watered my heart's drouth.
Then the dark ripples spread to waving hair,
And as I stooped, her own lips rising there
Bubbled with brimming kisses at my mouth.

2

And now Love sang: but his was such a song
So meshed with half-remembrance hard to free,
As souls disused in death's sterility
May sing when the new birthday tarries long.
And I was made aware of a dumb throng
That stood aloof, one form by every tree,
All mournful forms, for each was I or she,
The shades of those our days that had no tongue.

They looked on us, and knew us and were known;
While fast together, alive from the abyss,
Clung the soul-wrung implacable close kiss;
And pity of self through all made broken moan
Which said, "For once, for once, for once alone!"
And still Love sang, and what he sang was this: -

3

"O ye, all ye that walk in Willowwood,
That walk with hollow faces burning white;
What fathom-depth of soul-struck widowhood,
What long, what longer hours, one lifelong night,
Ere ye again, who so in vain have wooed
Your last hope lost, who so in vain invite
Your lips to that their unforgotten food,
Ere ye, ere ye again shall see the light!

Alas! the bitter banks in Willowwood,
With tear-spurge wan, with blood-wort burning red:
Alas! if ever such a pillow could
Steep deep the soul in sleep till she were dead, --
Better all life forget her than this thing,
That Willowwod should hold her wandering!"

4

So sang he: and as meeting rose and rose
Together cling through the wind's wellaway
Nor change at once, yet near the end of day
The leaves drop loosened where the heart-stain glows, --
So when the song died did the kiss unclose;
And her face fell back drowned, and was as grey
As its grey eyes; and if it ever may
Meet mine again I know not if Love knows.

Only I know that I leaned low and drank
A long draught from the water where she sank,
Her breath and all her tears and all her soul:
And as I leaned, I know I felt Love's face
Pressed on my neck with moan of pity and grace,
Till both our heads were in his aureole.