Slavery Today - Drissa's Story

Drissa



When Drissa was a teenager, he decided to leave his village in Mali to look for work...

There were many boys Drissa’s age looking for jobs in and the around the village, and precious few jobs available. Although it was difficult to leave his family and friends, he decided it was worth it to try his luck elsewhere.

Drissa crossed the border into neighboring Cote d’Ivoire, where he heard there were many jobs available for people who did not mind working hard. When he arrived in Korhogo, he was pleased to be offered what sounded like a good job on a cocoa plantation. Drissa agreed on the payment and work arrangements, and then went with the employment recruiter to begin his new job.

Drissa’s new job suddenly turned into a nightmare. He became a slave.

Drissa and 17 other boys and young men on the cocoa plantation were forced to spend long days tending the cocoa plants and collecting the pods. Besides the back-breaking work, the heat was oppressive, the biting flies constantly swarmed around them, and they had to watch for snakes in the undergrowth. The slaveholder gave them little to eat, and many times only braised banana for months on end. Weak from hunger, they staggered under large sacks of cocoa pods. If they slowed in their work, they were beaten. At night the slaveholder locked them all into a small room with only a tin can to use as a toilet.

Drissa was trapped. He was more than 300 miles from home in a new country, far from any settlement, and he did not even know exactly where he was. One evening before being locked in, Drissa attempted to escape, but the slaveholder caught him and savagely beat him. He still has the scars from those beatings. The next day, Drissa was forced to work, even though the wounds from the beating were still raw. Flies feasted on his exposed flesh.

Continued @ http://freetheslaves.net/slavery/stories/drissa/


Other Slaves' Stories

Nizam



Nizam was rescued from slavery in a carpet loom by Bal Vikas Ashram, Free the Slaves’ partner that operates a child slave rescue and rehabilitation center in northern India.

Abak



Abak was just a baby when her parents were killed during a raid by a militia group in Sudan’s decades-old civil war.

Naresh



Naresh was only 4 years old when he became a slave.

Salma



Like her mother and grandmother before her, Salma Mint Saloum was a slave in Mauritania.

http://freetheslaves.net/slavery/stories/


Take Action: http://freetheslaves.net/action/

VIDEO: Dr. Bales on Slavery in the US

There are slaves in the United States today! What do they do? Where do they live? Why don’t they leave their enslavement? These questions are answered in this short video of Dr. Kevin Bales’ - one of the world’s leading experts on modern day slavery and the president of Free the Slaves.

http://freetheslaves.net/2007/01/04/video-dr-bales-on-slavery-in-the-us/

Slavery exists.
Whether we call it trafficking, bonded labor, forced labor, or sex slavery, it exists: globally, nationally, and locally.

Some experts estimate there could be anywhere from 10-30 millions slaves around the world…TODAY. Human Trafficking is now ranked as the second largest criminal industry globally—second only to drug smuggling, and tying with illegal weapons transactions.

The U.S. Department of State estimates that between 15 and 20 THOUSAND individuals are trafficked into the United States to become slaves EACH YEAR! This does not include those U.S. citizens trafficked from city to city within our borders.

Because this is a hidden industry, we may never know exactly how many slaves there really are. Because these victims are hidden, they are often overlooked, dismissed, or forgotten.

We at the Freedom Center believe that we can make a difference in this fight for freedom of all peoples, and we're ready to act…are you?

The Contemporary Slavery Institute, housed at our facility in Cincinnati, has a very simple—but very powerful—mission: to eradicate slavery. How? By combining communication, scholarship, education and action.

There are many respected organizations around the world that address various aspects of contemporary slavery, including rescue and rehabilitation. Many you may have heard about through our exhibits: International Justice Mission, Free the Slaves, Break the Chain Campaign and Polaris Project to name a few. The Institute will contribute to the cause by providing a platform for increased public awareness and information sharing, and serving as a catalyst for action in the fight for freedom across the globe.

http://www.freedomcenter.org/learn/contemporary-slavery-institute/contemporary-slavery.html

Partner Organizations: http://www.freedomcenter.org/learn/contemporary-slavery-institute/partner-organizations.html

Slavery in the U.S.: http://www.anti-slavery.org/slavery_today/usa/index.html (a clickable map, but not available on the updated site - http://www.iabolish.com/index.html)


Slavery isn't history

The American Anti-Slavery Group is a U.S.-based non-profit dedicated to the abolition of modern day slavery. While many believe that the slave trade ended some time ago, there are still over 27 million people held in bondage today.

In addition to chattel and sex slaves throughout Africa and parts of Asia, there are cases of human trafficking documented in affluent neighborhoods in the United States.

Slavery isn't history. It's a modern human rights crisis that has only begun to be addressed. Learn more about this grave injustice and find out what you can do.

http://www.iabolish.com/index.html


Modern Slavery 101

Contrary to popular belief, slavery didn’t end with Abraham Lincoln in 1865. Experts estimate that today there are 27 million people enslaved around the world. It’s happening in countries on all six inhabited continents. And yes, that includes the United States. The CIA estimates 14,500 to 17,000 victims are trafficked into the “Land of the Free” every year.

Why hasn’t more been done to end a dehumanizing, universally condemned practice? One challenge is that slavery today takes on myriad, subtler forms than it did during the Atlantic Slave Trade — including sex trafficking, debt bondage, forced domestic or agricultural labor, and chattel slavery — making it tougher to identify and eradicate.

Types of Slavery

CHATTEL SLAVERY is closest to the slavery that prevailed in early American history. Chattel slaves are considered their masters’ property — exchanged for things like trucks or money and expected to perform labor and sexual favors. Once of age, their children are expected to do the same. Chattel slavery is typically racially-based; in the North African country of Mauritania, for example, black Africans serve the lighter-skinned Arab-Berber communities. Though slavery was legally abolished there in 1980, today 90,000 slaves continue to serve the Muslim Berber ruling class. Similarly, in the African country of Sudan, Arab northerners are known to raid the villages in the South — killing all the men and taking the women and children to be auctioned off and sold into slavery.

DEBT BONDAGE, or bonded labor, is the most widely practiced form of slavery around the world. In Southeast Asia, where it is most prevalent, debt bondage claims an estimated 15 to 20 million victims. The staggering poverty there forces many parents to offer themselves or their own children as collateral against a loan. Though they are promised they will work only until their debt is paid off, the reality is much grimmer. Thanks to inflated interest rates and fresh debts incurred while being fed and housed, the debt becomes impossible to pay off. As a result, it is often inherited by the bonded laborer’s children, perpetuating a vicious cycle that can claim several generations.

SEX SLAVERY finds women and children forced into prostitution. Many are lured by false offers of a good job and then beaten and forced to work in brothels. In Southeast Asia, however, it is not uncommon to find women coerced by their own husbands, fathers, and brothers to earn money for the men in the family to pay back local money lenders. In other cases, victims pay tens of thousands of dollars to get to another country and are then forced into prostitution in pay off their own debts. In still others, women or girls are plainly kidnapped from their home countries. The sex slavery trade thrives in Central and Eastern Europe and in North America. An estimated two million women and children are sold into sex slavery around the world every year.

FORCED LABOR often results when individuals are lured by the promise of a good job but instead find themselves subjected to slaving conditions — working without payment and enduring physical abuse, often in harsh and hazardous conditions. Victims include domestic workers, construction workers, and even human mine detectors. Migrant workers are particularly vulnerable, as their constant changes of location make the organized crime rings that traffic them difficult to bust.

http://www.iabolish.com/modern_slavery101/