“I spoke of these people as captives. I talked about the harsh conditions they found in New York. They were malnourished, diseased. Infant mortality was high.”
Dr. Michael Blakey heads up the African Burial Ground Project1 in New York City. More than four hundred slaves are buried in Lower Manhattan, and Blakey, a physical anthropologist, is drawing out the stories their bones tell. Blakey described how the remains of one young man show that he was probably trafficked from Africa to the United States:
He has evidence of treponemal disease, probably yaws. So be’s been exposed to a tropical disease. He has evidence of hard work and some healed fractures in his spine. He also has the most subtle and elegantly filed teeth.
This man’s bones bear witness to the destructive nature of slavery: he was no more than thirty-five when he died. There are also a very large number of small children buried in the cemetery. The impact of slavery on these families was enormous: “When children die in large numbers,” Blakey notes “people feel a significant sense of loss.”
Blakey’s work ties us to slavery in the past. It shows us the reality of slavery’s pernicious and ugly damage to human life. The slaves buried in Manhattan also help us to understand something very important: slavery has been, is, and will be part of our lives until we make it stop.
The slaves of Lower Manhattan and the slaves of today share many forms of suffering, among them the abuse and death of their children, the damage to their bodies through trauma and untreated disease, the theft of their lives and work, the destruction of their dignity, and the fat profits others make from their sweat. Slavery still exists in New York and around the world. Today it is often hard to see, but it is there. And like the slaves of the African Burial Ground in New York, the slaves all around us today have waited a long time for us and our governments to come awake to their existence.
When Disposable People was first published in 1999, many found its story shocking and unbelievable. Like the African Burial Ground Project, the research needed for the book was difficult to finance. But as the book’s message about slavery began to sink in, it opened up new areas of study and action. As the first work in decades to show the extent of slavery around the world, Disposable People became a lightning rod, drawing both the energy of activists and the anger of governments trying to conceal slavery within their borders. I was amazed and humbled by the hundreds of people who after reading the book declared themselves new abolitionists and dedicated themselves to work against modern slavery. As the book was translated into more and more languages (nine, so far, in addition to English), the expanding knowledge of new slavery triggered off more and more reactions in individuals, groups, churches, schools, and governments. When I was writing Disposable People I had dreams of how it might stir people to action, but my dreams were too small. The reality has been great and rapid change in the last five years, change that seems to be growing in its momentum and reach.
Underlying this momentous growth is the decision made in thousands of minds that slavery must end. The outcomes of this decision have been as various as imagination can make them. A film based in part on Disposable People opened up new areas of slavery to the public view and won two Emmys and a Peabody award. As awareness of modern slavery expanded, other films, books, scripts, poems, articles, law reviews, photo essays, theses and dissertations, songs, even a dance program, expressed people’s deeply felt desire to end slavery. For me, the growth in interest led to hundreds of interviews on television and radio, and in magazines and newspapers. The explosion of concern is being felt at the local, national, and international levels.
In the United States an important new law affecting slavery was passed at the end of 2000. Known as the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, it increased the penalties for human traffickers, brought new protections to victims, and ordered government departments to take action. This law has led to many initiatives and increased support for groups helping people who have been trafficked into the United States. Also in late 2000, the United Nations set out an agreement to fight trafficking in persons as part of a new Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. This protocol became international law on Christmas Day 2003, but has not yet been ratified by the United States. It will help bring national laws into agreement, which, since human trafficking is a crime that crosses borders, is crucial for successful prosecutions. Other countries too have written new laws. Now, as is the case for almost all laws against slavery around the world, the problem is getting those laws enforced.
One of the most exciting outcomes of this period followed the film that exposed slavery on cocoa farms in West Africa. The idea that the chocolate we feed our children, the chocolate we enjoy so much, could be tainted by slavery was disturbing. To their credit, chocolate companies in the United States and Europe moved quickly to address slavery in their product chain. Joining together, they made an agreement with antislavery groups, child labor organizations, and labor unions to take slavery and child labor out of cocoa for good. Now a well-funded new foundation has workers building programs in West Africa, and a system for inspecting and certifying cocoa is under construction. While some of the work has been held back by civil unrest in West Africa, the commitment and resources are there. For the first time since antislavery groups called for it 150 years ago, an industry is taking full responsibility for its product chain. It is a historic breakthrough, one that is serving as a model for other industries.
But what of the countries that made up the key stories of Disposable People? Here there is news, but much of it is not good. In Thailand, girls are still sold into brothels. Today these teenagers are more likely to come from neighboring countries like Burma, Laos or Cambodia, but their enslavement and destruction are the same. Since I first traveled to Thailand, the government there has made remarkable progress with a campaign against HIV infection, but since the program relies on condom use, and since enslaved teenage prostitutes have no choice in that matter, they still are very likely to die of AIDS. The UN and other organizations have given the Thai government help in designing programs to fight slavery, but there is little will and fewer resources. Police and government officials are still involved and profiting directly from slavery. In the understated words of the U.S. State Department,2 “Official complicity in trafficking remains an area of concern.”
Mauritania remains enigmatic. The government there has never allowed free access to any researcher or monitor. Local antislavery groups are still hounded and persecuted, their leaders arrested and locked up to prevent them from talking to journalists. False-fronted government agencies assure any listeners that slavery is all but gone. Meanwhile, slaves continue to escape. One of these ex-slaves, who escaped in the late 1990s, told me some of her story:
I was born a slave. I was born in Mauritania in 1956. My mother and father were slaves for one family, and their parents were slaves of the same family. Ever since I was old enough to walk, I was forced to work for this family all day, every day. We never had days off. We hardly knew that it was Saturday or Sunday, because we had to work every day. Even if we were sick, we had to work.… In Mauritania, I didn’t dare go to the government, because they wouldn’t listen. Because for them, slavery is normal. It doesn yt matter what the laws say there, because there they don’t apply the laws. Maybe it’s written that there is no slavery, but it’s not true. Even in front of the president of Mauritania I can say in full voice that there is slavery in Mauritania, because now I’m as free as he is.
This woman had to escape and then bring her children out of bondage. Her courage is staggering. Today she lives in the United States and is building a new life, but behind her in Mauritania are thousands upon thousands of slaves.
Without a doubt the best news comes from Brazil. A new government under President da Silva (popularly known as “Lula”) has dramatically increased the number of police officers assigned to slavery cases and given them more money and equipment. After his inauguration, Lula came out strongly against the slavery that destroys the lives of many Brazilians and is also a key element in the destruction of the country’s natural environment. There is a long way to go in Brazil—thugs and slaveholders still control much of Amazonia and the west—but with a government that is facing up to the problem there is room for optimism.
Pakistan has been rocked by revolution and the American invasion of Afghanistan. Hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees have poured across the border, creating the confusion and disorder that generate enslavement and trafficking. Recent observers report hundreds of enslaved children in camps near the Afghan border, working in quarries and crushing stone by hand. The current leader of Pakistan has called for stronger enforcement of antislavery laws, but he is hampered by a myriad of other problems. In the flurry of anti-terrorist campaigns, the hunt for Osama bin Laden, assassination attempts, threats of war with India, and a teetering economy, the bonded laborers of Pakistan are easy to forget.
India continues to be a mixed bag. With one of the best antislavery laws in the world, it still has more slaves than any other country. Millions of people throughout the country live in debt bondage. Some are trapped in the traditional forms of slavery that enslave generation after generation, others in new types of bondage emerging as India’s economy modernizes and globalizes. But though they may only be drops in the ocean, I have seen amazing moments of liberation in India. In Northern India, groups like Sankalp and the Bal Vikas Ashram3 have brought hundreds out of slavery and helped them to build new lives. They have done this on the slimmest of shoestrings, helping families achieve freedom and a safe and productive life for around thirty-five dollars. They do this not by buying them out of slavery, but by helping them learn their rights and standing by them when they fight for those rights. These groups show us how slavery will come to an end.
Around the world we still face the terrible frozen face of ignorance. The awareness that there are twenty-seven million slaves in the world has not yet fully penetrated the public mind, but the sparks and fires of committed people are beginning to melt that icy apathy. Traveling the world and speaking about slavery, I see how awareness leads quickly to action. This action can have enormous results. No one wants to live in a world with slavery, and today we are, in many ways, closer to its final eradication than ever. This could be the generation that brings slavery, after five thousand years, to an end. To do so we have to join together. Slavery is too big a problem to solve as individuals.
I’ve saved the best news for last. Of all the outcomes of the publication of Disposable People, the most exciting is the establishment of Free the Slaves, the first broad-based antislavery organization in modern America. Set up in late 2000, Free the Slaves is based in Washington, D.C. and has been joined by thousands of Americans who want to end slavery. In its very short life Free the Slaves has achieved breakthrough after breakthrough, from the agreement with the chocolate companies, to supporting the liberation of child slaves in India and West Africa, to educating the public, and bringing together clubs, churches, schools, universities, and individuals to fight slavery. Free the Slaves works against human trafficking and slavery in the United States and across the globe. Sometimes it does so by advising governments, but its most important work is backing up those grassroots groups that are literally kicking in doors and bringing slaves to freedom. Imagine my joy when I get an email like this one from India:
We had a rescue operation and rescued seven children from a carpet loom in Allahabad. All seven children are aged between ten and twelve years. Two of them are very sick, suffering from jaundice, and the others look malnourished.… after medical check ups they will be sent to Bal Vikas Ashram for rehabilitation. Their parents have been contacted.
Slave children in the carpet looms are often kidnapped at the age of seven or eight; these desperate parents won’t have seen their children for years. Americans helped bring these children out of slavery by joining and supporting Free the Slaves, which in turn helps fund rescue and rehabilitation for slaves in India and other countries. As a father and a son, when I think about how these lost children are found and returned to their families, I have to admit I can’t help but cry.
I hope that this new revised edition of Disposable People speaks to you. I’ve tried to update it where needed without changing the story it has to tell. I’ve been helped by the thousands of people who have read this book and talked to me about it. There are still likely to be errors, and these are all mine.
April 2004
Oxford, Mississippi
Contact Free the Slaves at:
info@freetheslaves.net
www.freetheslaves.net
Free the Slaves
1326 14th Street NW
Washington, D.C. 20005
202-588-1865
1. ”Return to the African Burial Ground: An interview with physical anthropologist Michael L. Blakey,” Archeology Magazine, online edition, January 2004, www.archeology.org.
2. U.S. State Dept. Trafficking in Persons Report 2003, pg. 149.
3. To learn more about these groups visit www.freetheslaves.net.