Lebanon
Beatrice Fernando lived in Sri Lanka with her three-year-old son. She hated to leave him, but she was poor and in desperate need of work. When an employment agency promised her a well-paying job in distant Lebanon, plus free room and board and airfare home, she agreed to leave her son with her parents and work there for two years as a housemaid.
On the plane ride she got her first hint that the job might not be what she expected. The man in the next seat warned her not to go. “Don’t you know what happens to girls who go to Lebanon to work as maids? They’re abused and raped, and some are even killed,” he said. She did not listen.
At the employment agency in Lebanon, a man took her passport and made her stand in line with other women. “Lebanese men and women pace in front of us, examining our bodies as if we were vacuum cleaners,” she later said. She would discover that that was all she was to her employer – a machine for cleaning.
She was sent to work for a wealthy couple with three children who lived on the fourth floor of a luxury condominium. “My chores seem unending,” she said. “I wash the windows, walls, and bathrooms. I shampoo carpets, polish floors and clean furniture. After twenty hours I am still not done.” One morning, in despair, she woke up crying. Her mistress entered her room, took her brush from her hand, and began to strike her with it. “I give you shelter. I give you food. There is no reason for you to cry!” the woman yelled. After her employer left the apartment, Fernando tried to call the police for help, but the telephone was locked. She ran to the balcony to yell to someone on the street, but saw no one.
As the days passed, the beatings got worse. Fearful that her mistress would kill her, Fernando went to the balcony, looked down four floors, and jumped. She was not trying to kill herself. She only wanted to escape.
She survived the fall and awoke in the hospital. The doctors thought she would never walk again, but she did. With help from people at the hospital, she forced the employment agency to send her back home to Sri Lanka. Since gaining her freedom, she has worked with antislavery organizations and written a book, In Contempt of Fate, about her experience.
Human Trafficking
Beatrice Fernando was a victim of human trafficking. She took a huge chance in jumping off that balcony – but though her method of escape was unusual, her situation was not. People frequently leave poor, developing, or conflict-ridden countries for wealthier places in search of a better life. Many end up as victims of traffickers.
In 2008, the U.S. government estimated that as many as 800,000 people were being trafficked across international borders every year, and millions more within their own countries. Most of the victims of international trafficking are women and girls, and as many as half of them are children. Some end up as household slaves, and many others are forced to work as prostitutes.
In 2000, U.S. president Bill Clinton signed a law called the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Act, saying, “This is slavery, plain and simple.” The law made human trafficking illegal, and set severe penalties, including life imprisonment, for people who buy and sell human beings.
Human trafficking is not illegal everywhere. In Lebanon, Beatrice Fernando’s employer had committed no crime. But in the United States, some people are paying the penalty.
United States
For centuries the United States has been a beacon for immigrants looking for a better life and a way out of poverty. Julia Gabriel was one of them. In 1992, when she was nineteen, she left Guatemala to find work in the United States. Her mother was earning only fifty-five dollars a month, and Julia wanted to help. But she could not enter the U.S. legally, so she arranged to be smuggled into the country.
She was in Arizona when she heard about a job in South Carolina. Two men, a Mexican and a Guatemalan, drove her and other workers in a crowded, dirty van across the country. For two days, they did not let them leave the van for food or even to use the toilet. As soon as they arrived in South Carolina, the men told the passengers that they had to pay the smuggling fee – the cost of transportation. As the days went by, the crew leader and his associates also charged them for rent, meager amounts of food, and showers – a debt they would have to repay by working. The workers were watched by armed guards, and were told that anyone who tried to escape would be killed.
They lived in a large compound. “If someone even just tried to attempt to walk out of the place, they’d beat them,” Gabriel said. “They would constantly taunt us and shoot guns up in the air as a way to intimidate us and would say things like ‘we own you,’ and ‘you should be grateful to even be in this country.’ ”
Gabriel’s workday started at four a.m., when she was roused by the sound of gunshots. She harvested cucumbers seven days a week for twelve hours a day. After the bosses subtracted the money they claimed she owed from her wages, she was paid just twenty dollars a week – about twenty-four cents an hour.
One day the bosses overheard one of the workers say, “In the U.S., you don’t have to work by force.” They turned on him, ruthlessly beating him and a co-worker who tried to help him. They even shot a worker who wanted to leave.
After three months, Gabriel escaped in the middle of the night and found work on a tomato farm three hours away. There, she said, she was “making only enough to get by, but we were free, no one beat us, and we could go to the store or the Laundromat whenever we wanted to.”
While she was on that farm, speakers from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a group that promotes fair treatment of farm laborers, came to tell the laborers about their rights. (Immokalee, which rhymes with “broccoli,” is the name of a town in Florida where many immigrant farm workers are employed.) Gabriel told them her story, and together they began to pressure the U.S. government to look into the conditions she reported.
The U.S. Department of Justice and the Coalition learned that Gabriel’s old bosses had enslaved more than four hundred people in Florida, South Carolina, and Georgia. The government charged the bosses with enslavement and other crimes, and the case went to court in 1997. Gabriel told the judge, “Do not show compassion to these men, for they showed no compassion to those who were under their care.” The two men were given a stiff sentence – fifteen years in prison – for holding migrant laborers as slaves and forcing them to work against their will.
Julia Gabriel now works in the United States legally, and continues to help the Coalition, which informs workers of their rights and helps bring human traffickers to trial. Since 1997, the Coalition has helped free more than a thousand farm workers, and has seen more than a dozen employers convicted of criminal acts.
The Coalition has organized boycotts of fast-food restaurants that cannot guarantee that their tomatoes were picked by free workers, and many young people have helped with their campaigns. Now, some grocery stores and restaurants will only buy produce grown on farms where workers are well treated.
Many farm workers still face intimidation, mistreatment, and terror, but the FBI now actively enforces the law against human trafficking. When slave owners are behind bars, they cannot hurt honest workers.
TO BE FREE
Little has changed for slaves since long ago. Like the ancient Sumerians who sold their children to get out of debt, James Kofi Annan’s parents in Ghana sold him. Just as slave women in Ancient Rome had never-ending household tasks, Beatrice Fernando worked almost around the clock in Lebanon. Like the ninth-century Zanj, transported from East Africa to work the salt marshes of Iraq, Julia Gabriel was trafficked from Arizona to the cucumber fields of South Carolina. Cotton pickers like Solomon Northup suffered beatings in the American South just as Amadou did when he picked cocoa beans in the Ivory Coast. And Patricius – later Saint Patrick – herded sheep in ancient Ireland just as Giemma’s young slave Francis herded goats, sheep, cows, and camels.
Do You Remember Francis?
The Francis you read about at the start of this book was Francis Bok, who lived with his family in Sudan until Giemma carried him off into slavery.
He was determined to get back to his parents, and one day when he was fourteen he left the cows to graze in the forest and fled to the main road. His freedom lasted only twenty minutes, until a man on horseback spotted him and returned him to Giemma, who beat him with a cattle whip and made him promise not to run away again. But nothing would stop Francis. Two days later he tried again. He took the cows to graze and waited for sunset to escape through the woods. Again he didn’t get far. When he stopped for water at a river, he saw Giemma. At home, his master bound his hands and feet so tightly with rawhide that they swelled and bled. Giemma’s wife wanted him dead and kept repeating, “Why don’t you kill him?” But Giemma did not want to lose a good cowherd. Again Francis promised not to escape, and again Giemma believed him. It did not take many days before Francis realized that he would break that promise, but he decided to give himself time.
When Francis was seventeen, tall and strong and with a better idea of how to flee undetected, he left with the cows early one morning. As soon as they started to graze, he ran deep into the woods. He ran for hours, until he reached a market town. He went to the police, but instead of helping him they made him their kitchen boy without pay. He escaped again, and this time met a kind truck driver who sheltered him for months and gave him bus fare to the capital, Khartoum. From there Francis reached a refugee camp, where he met people from his hometown. With their help, he got a forged passport and passage to Egypt.
Two years after his escape from Giemma, the United States opened its doors to Francis, and in August 1999, he began his new life in North Dakota, a place he’d never heard of.
Francis relished his freedom. For the first time in his life, he got paid for his work. He began to save money for school, he had friends, and he said “yes” when he wanted and “no” when he wanted. What a difference from being a slave!
Less than a year after arriving in America, Francis got a call from Jesse Sage of the American Anti-Slavery Group (AASG), a modern-day abolitionist organization. Would Francis work for them, telling his story? He wasn’t sure. He’d been through a lot, and he didn’t want to leave his new home. But when he saw pictures of former slaves from Sudan, some scarred and mutilated by their masters and others smiling after their rescue by the AASG, he remembered his father’s words, “You are like twelve men” – muycharko – and he knew what his father would have wanted.
Though reliving the past is painful, Francis agreed to do it. He has spoken to the U.S. Congress and the United Nations about slavery in Sudan, and has written a book, Escape from Slavery, about his experiences. “I used to lie awake at night and wonder who will come to free me,” he says, “and so I am actually dedicating my life experience on behalf of millions around the world who cannot speak for themselves.” Francis’s parents did not survive the raid in which he was captured, but he has returned to visit his village, where he is working with a charity to build a school.
How Can I Help?
To wipe out slavery, governments, businesses, and ordinary people have to work together. What can you do?
Ask questions. When you ask, “Who picked the tomatoes we’re buying for our sandwiches? Were they free laborers or slaves?” you are putting pressure on businesses.
Look for labels like “Fair Trade” or “GoodWeave.” These show that antislavery organizations have inspected the farms and factories and found free laborers at work. Consumers can let merchants know that slave-free products are good business.
Ask the government to do its part. Every government can pass tough antislavery laws to make sure that slave-made products don’t enter its country. Governments can teach police to spot signs that someone may be a slave, and require them to enforce antislavery laws.
Learn and teach. Since many people think slavery ended long ago, a good way to start abolishing it is by educating people about slavery in today’s world. Students and community groups can invite guest speakers from antislavery organizations, and help to raise funds for these groups. That money supports antislavery workers in poor countries, helping them free slaves and bonded laborers.
Many other ideas are listed on the websites of antislavery organizations. Here are some to get you started:
American Anti-Slavery Group, www.iabolish.org
Anti-Slavery International, www.antislavery.org
Free the Children, www.freethechildren.com
Free the Slaves, www.freetheslaves.net
TIME LINE
Dates in coloured bars indicate time periods.
Dates below bars indicate world events.
BCE 2700–2200 Old Kingdom
3000: Rise of Sumerian cities
1790: Law Code of Babylonian King Hammurabi
1200: Exodus of Hebrews from Egypt
880–860: Assyrian King Ashurnasirpal II rebuilds Nimrud
776: Greece holds first Olympics
6th–5th century: Buddhist Religion Begins
146: Romans conquer Greece
73: Spartacus leads slave revolt
CE
117: Height of Roman Empire
406: Patricus (St. Patrick) enslaved
622–712: Birth and early expansion of Islam to east and west
650–1900: About 12 million Africans sent out of Sahara and East Africa into slavery
793: Vikings attack Lindisfarne
869: Revolt of Zanj slaves in Iraq
1212: Children’s Crusades
1260: Mamluks stop Mongol invasion of Egypt
1348: Black Death strikes Europe
1400: Islam established in Malaya and Sumatra
1450: Portuguese–West African slave trade under way
1492: Christopher Columbus lands in Bahamas
1500–1870: At least 12 million Africans shipped to the Americas
1520–66: Ottoman Empire reaches greatest extent
Late 16th century: Laws restrict Russian serfs (1580s–1590s)
Early 1640s: French introduce slavery to Martinique
1602: Dutch East India Company established
1619: First African slaves arrive in America
1693: Gold discovered in Brazil
18th century: European Enlightenment
Mid-18th century: Caribbean sugar production surges [1730s to 1780s]
1770–1870: Iranun and Balangingi slave trade
1787–1838: British abolition movement
1776: American Declaration of Independence
1789: French Revolution begins
19th century: Caliphate of Sokoto (Africa) [1812–1890s]
1803: Louisiana Purchase
1804: Haiti declares independence
1807: British Parliament passes bill abolishing slave trade
1830s–80s: Reform Period, Ottoman Empire
1833–1861: Height of American abolitionism
Mid-1880s: Height of blackbirding in southern Pacific [mid-1840s to 1880s]
1831: Slave revolts in Virginia and Jamaica
1838: Britain frees 800,000 slaves in West Indies
1850: U.S. Congress passes Fugitive Slave Act
1863: Lincoln issues Emancipation Proclamation
1865: U.S. Government abolishes slavery
1930s: Stalin establishes Soviet gulag
1939–45: World War II – Nazi slave labor camps
Early 1950s: Laogai camps set up in China
1995: Child anti-slavery campaigner Iqbal Masih murdered
2001: Cocoa Protocol signed by chocolate companies and U.S. Congressmen
SOURCES
Several reference works deserve special mention for providing background and guiding us to research by specialists: A Historical Guide to World Slavery, edited by Seymour Drescher and Stanley L. Engerman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Macmillan Encyclopedia of World Slavery, vols. 1 and 2, edited by Paul Finkelman and Joseph C. Miller (New York: Simon & Schuster Macmillan, 1998); and Chronology of World Slavery, by Junius P. Rodriguez (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1999). Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the
New World, by the great slavery scholar David Brion Davis, gave us perspective on slavery throughout history and on the birth of abolitionism. We consulted works by many of the major scholars of American and world slavery (Ira Berlin, Moses I. Finley, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Eugene D. Genovese, James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton, Herbert S. Klein, Bernard Lewis, Orlando Patterson, James Walvin, and James Francis Warren, to name only a few). We also referred to the websites Documenting the American South, sponsored by the University Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and accessible at http://docsouth.unc.edu, and Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936 –1938, available at the Library of Congress website, http://memory.loc.gov.
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, sponsored by Emory University and several partners, at http://www.slavevoyages.org/tast/index.faces, was our source for statistics on slave shipments from Africa to Europe, North America, and South America. We used figures from the Estimates database, which are higher than the documented figures and come closer to the probable totals.
For images of slaves in Africa and the Americas, we referred frequently to The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record, a website compiled by Jerome S. Handler and Michael L. Tuite Jr. A project of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and the University of Virginia Library, it is accessible at http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/Slavery/index.php.
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