BS: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea

Subject: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: wysiwyg
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 01:03 PM

Just heard a slice of this news story. Red Cross awaiting a ship coming into port with 250 children sold as slaves.. saying the captain may dump them at sea rather than docking with them and being arrested. Several ports have refused entry.

WHASSUP????

~Susan

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: Naemanson
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 01:35 PM

Here is one story about it. Slavery is not dead but it hasn't caught the public's attention yet either. Maybe Bush can focus on it as a way to take our attention off what he is doing to our economy and environment.

Click here

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: wysiwyg
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 02:09 PM

No!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"roaming the West African coast for more than two weeks...."

This supports the cocoa trade?

This is what we support when we eat CHOCOLATE????????

And we've been sitting around here debating FLAMERS????

Where are the songs? Where are the letter campaigns?

We been talking about P-fuckingC???

Songs! We need SONGS!!

~S~

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: GUEST,Gern, no longer worthy of cookie
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 02:11 PM

I couldn't agree more. Dan Rather found 15 minutes of news more important than this story on Friday. Where is the outrage?

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: wysiwyg
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 02:16 PM

I am making an unoffical song challenge thread right now. Someone please help make a clicky to it once it's up.

This thread here for info and opinions, that one for songs.

~Susan

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: Amergin
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 03:41 PM

There is no outrage because it is not economically important to be an outrage. There is no outrage because they are not American children.

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: wysiwyg
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 03:53 PM

Last night I dreamed that for some strange reason, I was having to eat human flesh. A lot of it. Bite after bite. Each one necessary but each one a new impossible decision. It was a very big bowl. I can still taste it. When I woke up I thought it was about Easter Communion, for which I overslept, and it may have been.

But now as I recall the taste it seems a lot like chocolate bunnies, and waking to think "He is Risen" and finding this story instead. I don't think I will ever remember Easter the same way again.

I think the lack of outrage has to do with the fact that this story is almost unbearable to feel. To look at this head on is almost more than I can do, myself, and I decided long ago to feel whatever had to be felt. Most people do not have the tools or resources to feel this. I have them and I can hardly stand to even think about it. I go on with my Easter brunch for my sweet hard-working Hardi, knowing this is happening too.

What possible positive future is there for these children, and how many more? If this is the tip we just happened to hear about, how big is the iceberg?

God help us if we cannot even make songs for 250 kids who may be in the drink, when we can make so many and have so much attention for our Elian's.

~Susan

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: Sorcha
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 04:39 PM

I'm right there with you, Susan. I just saw this in the paper this AM. Horrible, horrible. Where are these children from? My paper didn't say, just that they are off the coast of Africa.

Also, think about how awful it must be as a parent to have to make the decision to sell one of your children to keep the others alive........wonder how many of them are females destined for the Sex Trade? oh, shuddddddder the whole thing.

Where is the UN? the Vatican? the World Council of Churches? Sally Struthers and her Save the Children? If the Captains are going to dump them, boats could surround the ship to pluck them out of the water.

Send UN ships to arrest them on the High Seas......something, anything. SOON!!

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: Naemanson
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 04:51 PM

According to the radio last night there is a tradition in the West African countries of sending the oldest child to work in the home of a wealthier person, usually a relative. In recent decades this tradition has been corrupted and the people receiving the children have been selling the children into slavery and prostitution.

Slavery has never been outlawed in Africa. It has been ongoing since the very earliest days. Children have always been among the victims. I cannot even imagine how you will manage to get it outlawed. If you cut off the economic support to those countries you will certainly hurt them but the only way to make money after that will be to sell more civilians off into slavery. The governments are corrupt and the people are desperately poor.

It is yet another example of man's inhumanity to man.

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: toadfrog
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 05:04 PM

The children are from Benin.

They are being sold in other, neigboring countries. There is no outrage because
(1) There is nothing obvious we can do about it. It is engrained not only in local poverty, but in local custom. The U.N. official I heard discussing this remarked that it makes no obvious sense to arrest the people who buy the children, or the children themselves. Also that there are people engaged in trying to find the children and get them back home. Of course, they are trying to arrest the slavers. Think about it. Governments aren't that powerful, and neither is the U.N.

2. Think about it. They have slaves in Mali. Not only is it against the law in Mali, it has been made against the law four separate times. They have slaves in Sudan. Songs don't help situations like that. It requires actual physical power, and it requires also a change in the customs and beliefs of people in those countries.

3. We in the U.S. cannot even stop smuggling of immigrants here,some of whom are brought and kept under conditions tantamount to slavery. That has been in the news too. That happens right here in California. How are we going to police the coast of Africa?

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: Sorcha
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 05:19 PM

Oh. ok. For an educated person, I sure am ignorant about some things. I remember, in the back of my mind about slavery in Africa, but I had forgotten, I guess. Looks like short of being the Iperialistic Agressor and going to war, we can't stop it, huh?

And, even if we went to war to save the Africans from the Africans, what are we gonna do after(if) we win??? Set up Colonial Governments? Import all of Africa to the US? Somehow, throwing money at it doesn't seem to likely to work either, given what has happened to Relief money and food in Africa.

Thinking about it, seems you are correct, but it can still make me sick, can't it? Poor babies, and Africa has a rampant (perhaps pandemic) AIDS problem, too. Sad, sad things in this old world.

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From:
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 05:58 PM

Here is what I would hope would be done: surround the ship with an international armada. Give the captain and crew a chance to surrender. Get the children off. Videotape everything and search the ship thoroughly. Then blow it to kingdom come.

mg

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: CarolC
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 05:58 PM

Slavery is alive and well and living in a number of parts of the world. It takes many forms, not all of them as obvious or easy to spot as the form being discussed in this thread.

I don't know what the answers are. Maybe there isn't much we can do, those of us who live in the parts of the world where it is less of a problem.

Maybe those of us who are fortunate enough to live in such places can make a difference of some sort if we live simply and consume consciously. Maybe.

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: Troll
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 06:40 PM

This has been going on for years. Back in the mid-'90's, tow reporters from the Baltimore Sun went to Sudan and purchased a young boy from a dealer. This was all captured on film.
They then returned the boy to his family or what was left of it. When they returned with the story they could not get it published, even by their own newspaper. No one wanted to touch it. It was too hot. It eventually was published(I don't recall where) but there was no followup, no outrage from any of the nations leaders from Clinton to Jackson to Farakan to Gingrich.
Nothing.
And nothing will come of this. The world doesn't want to know.
Besides, it's almost time for Opra.

troll

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: katlaughing
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 06:43 PM

April's Reader's Digest had a reprint of an article about the thousands of young women who are smuggled into this country and moved around from trailer to trailer, as sex slaves, mostly from Asia. They and their parents are fooled into thinking the girls are going to better paying jobs doing maid's work, like they did at home. One 12 year old told about how the men who bought her decided she should be raped, repeatedly, as she was a virgin and they wanted her to learn how to have sex "right."

Most of these girls cannot get away and even if they do, they cannot speak enough English to tell anyone of their plight. One did manage to get away, but they caught up with her as she was trying to find help; her lack of English was what kept her from safety.

This is here, in America. The article said there were connections to Russian, Asian, and American mafias.

As my Native American friends say, "My heart is on the ground."

marygravey, I like your idea!

kat

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: sophocleese
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 08:04 PM

Another interesting site to check is here.

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: Ferrara
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 08:23 PM

The worst aspect of this, for me, is the government officials who are more interested in sounding as if they care, than they are in saving those children's lives. Just one example: to quote from sophocleese' article:

"Benin's Minister of Information, Mr. Garston Zardzo, has pledged his government's preparedness to receive the children at a reception centre in Cotonou. Zardzo also disclosed government's decision to drastically deal with all parents, relatives and traders involved in this notorious human trafficking."

Well, that's great, but unless that captain is offered amnesty, the kids remain in grave danger. So appearances, and politics, not the children's welfare, are what seems to be important to the officials involved.

This is human nature. But we don't have to like it. Some e-mails, telegrams and letters to the Red Cross might help.(?) Sometimes, an organization can point out that a situation is hurting a country in world opinion, and use that to get action out of a government.

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: Naemanson
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 08:46 PM

Marygarvey, from what I understand it wouldn't take much to blow up that ship. It has been described as a rust bucket looking for a place to sink.

We are all outraged by this. Unfortunately none of us can do anything. My nephew can and will and that is our best hope. He is studying medicin in hopes to join Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) or some similar organization.

So I have donated a nephew to the cause. What else can I do?

(Sorry to inject levity into this serious thread but that's what I do sometimes...)

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: Sorcha
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 09:02 PM

Naemeson, if I had a nephew or niece or child availble to Donate, I surely would if I could. It's not like the "Old Days" where the firstborn went to the land, the second to the Church,the daughters to Alliances, etc, and I think I am glad about that, but I wish there was something constructive I could do about this one.......but I don't think there is. All of Mudcat together can't take in all of the Needy in the world, even if we wish we could....first, but not Least, we would have to get Permission from the Powers That Be........

and it is not in The Powers That Be's interests to better things for anyone, is it? Their only interest is in maintaining Their Power, no matter what Country They belong to......so very sad.

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: wysiwyg
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 09:50 PM

Regarding Red Cross-- I used to work for Red Cross and I can tell you that their required neutrality will not allow them to take a position-- they will provide relief only, and CAN do so because of that neutrality.

Letters will have to go somewhere else. Our UN ambassardor is.... who now???

~S~

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: wysiwyg
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 10:03 PM

Oughtta see the song in the song challenge thread. Damn.

~S~

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: GUEST,JHop
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 01:46 AM

I beg to differ with Troll about the Baltimore Sun reporters and their account of the slave rescue. If you go to the library I believe you will find that the Sun did indeed publish it, and that it was widely reprinted.

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: sledge
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 04:10 AM

The Royal Navy had a proud tradition of anti slaving operations in all quarters of the world, why not see tax money spent in this way today. Some might make a bit of noise saying they have no right to do so but then shiploads of children will hopefully not have to suffer in the way this current group have as a result.

As Ex RN I know that I and my ship mates would have been only too happy to run these vermin down.

Stuart

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: Kim C
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 10:32 AM

Slavery? In Africa? Surely not. If that were true, wouldn't the NAACP be doing something about it? (smirk)

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: katlaughing
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 10:48 AM

That was really low, Kim!

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: Kim C
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 10:52 AM

Yes it was low. Am I the only one who wonders why this organization doesn't seem to be doing anything constructive to help the people they say they want to help? They would rather talk about reparations for slavery in the past than talk about doing away with slavery today.

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: wysiwyg
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 11:03 AM

Kat, you know the computer challenges I have in looking around online-- please, can you help? You are a master at finding who is doing what and what can be supported. Where do we write? Who is working to end this, and how do people support it?

~Susan

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: mousethief
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 11:16 AM

Is it just me who realizes the "N" in "NAACP" stands for "National" and not "International"?

Alex

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: Kim C
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 11:26 AM

Why should it matter? I would think that this would be an important enough issue that they would be willing to take a stand on it. Just because the organization is "national" doesn't mean their influence has to be confined to the US borders. I am willing to bet that they do have members who reside outside the US as well.

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 11:30 AM

Try here for a relevant site about fighting slavery, the American Anti-Slavery Group

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: mousethief
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 11:30 AM

One can only do so much. You might complain about some group formed to feel hungry children that they should feed grown-ups as well. Or that some group formed to improve schools could also work on parks, and there's somethign wrong with them if they don't.

The NAACP was chartered to improve conditions for black people in the USA. That they aren't working to improve conditions for black people elsewhere is irrelevant. One can only do so much.

Now if they're not doing a good job in THIS country, then I say let 'em have it.

Alex

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: wysiwyg
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 11:35 AM

I think the NAACP has its hands pretty full everywhere it is active, and should be expected to set set its own agenda based on its perceived mission and resources and local needs. Like any national organization made up of local chapters, there are some general national priorities but the individual units are designed to work within local conditions.

Kim, are you in contact with your nearest unit? If not, I'd like to suggest you check with your nearest chapter, and see if they are doing anything in this effort, or if not, if they are interested in linking with you to do something on this.

~Susan

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: Kim C
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 11:41 AM

Alex, that's very true... but I still have to wonder why they don't even so much as acknowledge that these sort of things are going on. It confounds me just a little. But since I'm just an unfrozen caveman, I am often easily confounded. ;-)

One of the news shows did a story about a year ago on European girls who were kidnapped into sex slavery in Europe AND the United States. Maybe it's like marijuana or prostitution - you can arrest people and smack their hands but they'll keep on doing it because they get away with it most of the time.

Wish I had a magic wand. Or a rocket launcher.

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: Kim C
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 11:49 AM

According to the link McGrath provided above, the NAACP did pass a resolution supporting the abolition of slavery in Africa - in 1995.

Susan, I do plan to contact them and ask what support they are lending to this resolution six years later.

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: mousethief
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 11:50 AM

Horrible things happen in this world. The horrific slavery in Sudan hardly gets any national press at all in the USA. I have no idea if the NAACP has spoken up on this; I wouldn't expect them to as they're not an international human rights organization. I would expect Oxfam and Amnesty International to speak up. I know A.I. has; I'm not at all sure about Oxfam.

Cynics among us may think this lack of coverage is because in Sudan it's Moslems enslaving Christians and Pagans, and the press treats Islam with kid gloves. I think rather it just doesn't think Americans will care, and the purpose of the press, after all, is to sell advertising, not save the world.

Meanwhile informed good people try to do what they can.

Alex

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: Naemanson
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 12:16 PM

Anyone want to bring up the distasteful idea of boycotting chocolate?

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: mousethief
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 12:20 PM

Obviously you did, Naem. Say more.

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: GUEST,Animaterraatwork
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 12:26 PM

We take so much for granted in our culture. It's so easy to grab a candy bar or throw a spoonful of sugar into the coffeecup; it's so hard to think how so much of what we enjoy is tainted with the sweat of others.
I think this time, for once, I can give up chocolate. Just thinking of those children and I lose my appetite for it.
And that's saying a LOT!

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 12:42 PM

And here's another anti-slavery link.

As for a chocolate boycott - there are people making chocolate that make sure that it's produced by people who are treated decently, and there are people who don't give a toss, so you have to be careful what you buy, and what you don't buy, including from some respectable big names - like anything, the information is there if you look around on the net.

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: Kim C
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 01:08 PM

This is a departure but the chocolate thing reminded me... I used to get a catalog of really nice South American-made knitted goods. The sweaters sold for upwards of $400. The catalog said, it takes an experienced knitter several months to make one of these sweaters. So I wondered... they're selling it for $400, maybe they bought it for $200... so the knitter was paid only $200 for three months' work. Not much, at least not by our standards. I never bought anything from them.

By the same token I wonder about these little trinkety things we buy, like inexpensive jewelry, figurines, etc... they are so cheap at retail, how much did the worker get paid? (It takes time to string beads and I kno because I do it.) And if I don't buy some of these things, is someone going to go hungry?

Confounded again ---- KFC

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 01:49 PM

For anything you buy from a poor country, there is probably going to be some way you can buy the same stuff from the same kind of community, but without helping exploit people.

Boycotting can be as selective as you like, and to be effective, it needs to be.

Here is a relevant site.Traidcraft is based in England, but it's got lots of advice about this, and links to people doing the same kind of stuff in other countries.

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: wysiwyg
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 02:45 PM

McGrath, thanks. I long for the day when I can zip in and out of links like that, with a computer that will work and phone lines that will keep me connected. It's odd to think how much I depend on it now, while we are here talking about economies so poor the parents don't even know anyone in the world is concerned about their kids... I bet they don't even know the kids have not make safe landfall and gone off to their "new jobs." So weird, all of it. We can know so much, comparatively... and not actually know a damn thing, it seems.

What I found interesting today was how much other bullshit was more "important" on the news than this story. I know ALL about some upcoming TV shows, and the stories about how their stars got to be stars... or I would if I had not been sitting there exclaiming WHAT'S THIS CRAP!" instead of paying attention to the "news".

I'd like to hope it's just that the news folks are waiting for their field reporters to get back with those long bits of film and those deep research notes to put together some in-depth thing that can help me understand... but I don't think so.

~S~

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: Mrrzy
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 04:09 PM

In answer to Sorcha, this one particular shipload is apparently all boys. Whether any were destined for the sex trade wasn't mentioned...

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 04:45 PM

One thing is that the TV is obsessed with the idea that news has to be pictures - which means it only counts of it happens where there's the technology on hand to get hold of the pictures, and if it's the kind of story that makes for pictures.

Those links I got through google, just typing in "anti-slavery". But for an indication of what a sick world it is at times, when I tried Ask Jeeves, and typed in "anti-slavery", all it came up with was the kind of pathetic junk sites they call "adult". Priorities.

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 04:52 PM

Here is an update from the BBC . I checked this since my local paper had absolutely nothing about this atrocity in today's edition.
Thanks for all the links, McGrath. SERRV is one organization that gets many things (including chocolate!) directly from local community workers who are paid directly.

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 04:54 PM

That's SERRV

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: katlaughing
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 04:58 PM

I am getting ready for a short road trip tomorrow, so don't have tiem to look up a bunchof links, but I do know of one place where you can buy beautiful clothing and the proceeds go right back to the woman who craft them, invested in them, their cottage industries, and their communities. Please take a look at Marketplace: Handwork of India.

Sorry, Kim, thanks for coming back and posting more fully about your feelings and the NAACP. I do think if they tried to get too involved in something overseas they would then have detractors yelling at them about the need to take care of their own, first.

kat

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: wysiwyg
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 06:30 PM

Have a good trip, Kat. Looks like links are being found.

Thanks to everyone providing links.

~Susan

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 06:42 PM

The other thing with NAACP is, the duty to care about this kind of thing falls on everyone, not just on people whose ancestors were stolen from Africa. The response should be "we need to be doing something about this", rather than "they ought to be doing something about this."

Subject: RE: Children Sold into Slavery at Sea
From: Penny S.
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 06:45 PM

We have a set-up here called Fairtrade, that has its logo on goods bought through systems that pay the workers good wages. It includes tea, coffee, bananas (from the Caribbean, the ones that the USA reckons are harming free trade). Some are also organic.

There's another interesting sidelight on this. We had a student at school, her origins from the Caribbean. She told us that the West Africans in Britain looked down on the Afro-Caribbeans, because they had been slaves. I thought at the time that that was rich, coming from people who could have been dealers (but said nothing, because there's a branch of my past that probably had shares in sugar), but if its still going on....

Penny