Freeing the Slaves of Today

Lord, help us to grow in your ways, to be upright and faith­ful in fol­low­ing your paths so that we will reach eter­nal hap­pi­ness with you. Amen.

Slav­ery: Well over 100 years after the Amer­i­can Civil War ended, this ter­ri­ble injus­tice is in the news again. Here are some very recent examples:

• On March 26 the United Nations, work­ing with a large group of gov­ern­ments and social relief orga­ni­za­tions, launched the Global Ini­tia­tive to Fight Human Trafficking.
• In the last two months the state Leg­is­la­tures of Vir­ginia and Mary­land voted to approve a pub­lic apol­ogy express­ing the states’ “pro­found regret” for their role in slavery.
• In Feb­ru­ary, Amaz­ing Grace, the movie biog­ra­phy of anti-​​slavery pio­neer William Wilber­force, opened in movie the­aters across the coun­try. For many view­ers, it was the first time they had ever heard the name of the man respon­si­ble for abol­ish­ing the slave trade in Great Britain and its colonies in 1807, well before Abra­ham Lincoln’s Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion in 1863.

So why all this dis­cus­sion now? Isn’t slav­ery a dead issue? Ask a young boy named Nizam. He lives with his elderly great-​​uncle in a small and poor vil­lage in north­ern India. One day, a woman slave-​​broker approached Nizam and offered him sweets and promises of a bet­ter life. Before he knew what was hap­pen­ing, Nizam found him­self being trans­ported with other chil­dren ages 8 through 14 to work at a rug-​​weaving job. Once he arrived at the work­place, Nizam was forced to work 12 to 15 hours a day, locked in, fed only what was nec­es­sary to keep him alive, and kept in con­stant fear of the con­se­quences if he tried to escape, and not being paid fairly. His great-​​uncle had no idea where he had gone. He con­tacted local police but Nizam was not heard from for two years. Finally his great-​​uncle heard from the Bal Vikas Ashram, a Catholic cen­ter that spe­cial­izes in res­cu­ing chil­dren who have been forced into slave labor. Dur­ing 2002, the Ashram car­ried out 10 raids in this area and freed 78 child cap­tives. Nizam was among those freed. After being freed, Nizam stayed for a while at the Catholic cen­ter, where he returned to school and began to learn the busi­ness of tai­lor­ing. He has also learned that chil­dren too have human rights and dig­nity. They can­not be forced into slav­ery and denied the edu­ca­tion every child needs today. Nizam is now back with his family.

More Slaves Today than Ever Before in History

Nizam’s sit­u­a­tion, unfor­tu­nately, is far from unique. Some offi­cial esti­mates say that 27 mil­lion peo­ple live in slav­ery world­wide today. Ten mil­lion are in India alone. In fact, there are more peo­ple in slav­ery today — in 2007 — than in any time in recorded his­tory! Slav­ery today, usu­ally called “human traf­fick­ing,” refers to the buy­ing and sell­ing of human beings (includ­ing chil­dren) for the profit of other peo­ple. Vic­tims of traf­fick­ing are usu­ally recruited with promises, trans­ported to another place, and then exploited. Often­times, vic­tims are threat­ened with harm either to them­selves or to their fam­i­lies if they try to run away. Typ­i­cally they have no money, no offi­cial papers, and do not speak the local lan­guage. Most of the vic­tims of traf­fick­ing are women or girls, many of whom are forced into slave labor, pros­ti­tu­tion, or forced marriages.

The Pro­file of the Slav­ery Today

• 

  Debt slav­ery (Also called bonded labor): occurs when some­one takes a loan of money (often in a fam­ily emer­gency) in exchange for a guar­an­tee to work for a period of time. The work is for long hours, every day, but the loan takes years to pay off or can never be paid off entirely. This is a com­mon form of slav­ery in India.

• Early/​forced mar­riage: women and girls mar­ried with­out their con­sent and forced into lives of slavery.
• Forced labor: Vic­tims are offered pay­ing jobs and then put into con­di­tions of slav­ery instead.
• Child labor: Chil­dren 8-​​17 are forced to work 12-​​ to 18-​​hour days with lit­tle or no compensation.
• Sex slav­ery: Unfor­tu­nately, this is the most com­mon form of slav­ery today. The vic­tims are sold into pros­ti­tu­tion. The vic­tims are often young girls aged 14-​​18. Today’s cul­ture of impu­rity and sex­ual obses­sion has cre­ated an atmos­phere where this type of abuse is growing.
• Com­bat­ant slav­ery: The vic­tims, often chil­dren, are forced into an army and made to kill.

Why would any­one put them­selves at risk of becom­ing a traf­fick­ing vic­tim? The main rea­sons are:

• false and decep­tive promises by traf­fick­ing “brokers”;
• poverty and lack of any other avail­able jobs;
• the hope for find­ing a bet­ter stan­dard of liv­ing elsewhere;
• civil wars or armed con­flict in the home country.

And who would want to keep human beings — includ­ing chil­dren — in such bad con­di­tions? Answer: per­sons who want to exploit other peo­ple in order to get money. Traf­fick­ers are usu­ally break­ing the laws of one or more coun­tries when they do busi­ness. But gov­ern­ments do not pros­e­cute these exploiters very vig­or­ously, some­times let­ting them off with a “slap on the wrist.”

Who’s Work­ing to Stop Slav­ery Today?

Thank­fully, there are orga­ni­za­tions work­ing to pub­li­cize this grow­ing tragedy and to give a voice to the voice­less. As men­tioned above, the United Nations has begun a highly vis­i­ble cam­paign to end human traf­fick­ing and slav­ery. First, the U.N. wants to raise pub­lic aware­ness of the prob­lem. It also would like to encour­age col­lab­o­ra­tion among dif­fer­ent groups already work­ing in dif­fer­ent coun­tries. The U.N. has also cre­ated a legal doc­u­ment called a pro­to­col, an agree­ment that 120 coun­tries have signed, pledg­ing to elim­i­nate this exploita­tive activ­ity. But these gov­ern­ments have not done much thus far to actu­ally imple­ment the agreement.

Another orga­ni­za­tion that is work­ing to over­come mod­ern slav­ery is the Catholic Church. Pope John Paul II denounced the crime of human exploita­tion many times. Pope Bene­dict XVI has also con­demned human traf­fick­ing repeat­edly. More­over, the Holy See (or the Vat­i­can) has spon­sored sev­eral inter­na­tional con­fer­ences in recent years on the prob­lem of human trafficking.

The Power of One

One remark­able indi­vid­ual work­ing within the Church on this issue is Poor Clare Sis­ter Euge­nia Bonetti. Since 1991 she has ded­i­cated her efforts toward res­cu­ing “street women” in Italy. Many of the women and girls she works with are from for­eign coun­tries. Sis­ter Euge­nia also coor­di­nates the work of many other nuns who help her in this project. The U.S. State Depart­ment rec­og­nized Sis­ter Euge­nia as one of six Heroes Act­ing to End Modern-​​Day Slav­ery in their annual report on the sub­ject. Sis­ter Euge­nia and the Poor Clare Mis­sion­ar­ies show great for­ti­tude in tak­ing risks to help these young women get away from their cap­tors. They go out into the streets at night to meet with the young girls and per­suade them that help is avail­able. They offer the girls escape and shel­ter at their con­vents. Sis­ter Bonetti’s orga­ni­za­tion has shown great resource­ful­ness in help­ing some 5,000 get cer­tifi­cates to stay and work at decent jobs in Italy. Even though Sis­ter Euge­nia runs the risk of retal­i­a­tion from the women’s exploiters, she says, “I have never wor­ried about my secu­rity. My life has been given totally.”

What can we do to stop human trafficking?

Some prod­ucts (such as rugs) are pro­duced with a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion that iden­ti­fies them as child labor-​​free goods, which means that buy­ing them does not sup­port the traf­fick­ing indus­try. We can choose to buy prod­ucts made with­out child labor, thus not cre­at­ing addi­tional demand for child slav­ery. We can also sup­port effec­tive non-​​governmental orga­ni­za­tions that are already focus­ing their efforts to end slav­ery. Exam­ples are found at freetheslaves.net, rugmark.org, and Catholic Relief Ser­vices (crs.org). An ini­tia­tive that has come out of the mak­ing of the movie Amaz­ing Grace is the “Amaz­ing Change” cam­paign (theamazingchange.com), a coali­tion of sev­eral dif­fer­ent groups work­ing toward abol­ish­ing modern-​​day slav­ery. We can also write to our con­gress­men express­ing our con­cern for human traf­fick­ing, and ask­ing these leg­is­la­tors to effec­tively address the issue. U.S. Sen. Paul Simon D-​​Ill., who died in 2003, spoke to the impor­tance of reach­ing out to our elected offi­cials. In speak­ing about the Rwanda geno­cide, Simon said “If every mem­ber of the House and Sen­ate received 100 let­ters from peo­ple back home say­ing that we have to do some­thing about Rwanda, when the cri­sis was first devel­op­ing, then I think the response to the cri­sis would have been different.”

A very indi­vid­ual way we can help stop the slave trade today is by liv­ing the virtue of purity our­selves. As we have seen, sex slav­ery is the most com­mon form of con­tem­po­rary enslave­ment. It thrives in soci­eties that pro­mote a casual atti­tude to sex. The virtue of purity teaches us to respect oth­ers and never see them as objects for our self­ish enjoy­ment. Purity frees a per­son from enslave­ment to his or her pas­sions. By being pure our­selves and pro­mot­ing a cul­ture of purity we can help cre­ate a soci­ety where human beings will no longer be seen as things to be exploited but as per­sons deserv­ing our care and pro­tec­tion. There is much to be done to over­come mod­ern slav­ery. There are ini­tia­tives to help rid the world of this evil. We should do our part, know­ing that what­ever we do to help our broth­ers and sis­ters we are doing to Christ.

Bible Blurbs

But any­one who is the down­fall of one of these lit­tle ones … would be bet­ter thrown into the sea with a great mill­stone hung round his neck.

(Mark 9:42)

Which of these three, in your opin­ion, was neigh­bor to the rob­bers’ vic­tim?” He answered, “The one who treated him with mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

(Luke 10:36-37)

They bound Jesus, led him away, and handed him over to Pilate.

(Mark 15:10)

Cat­e­chism Clips

2414 The Sev­enth Com­mand­ment for­bids acts or enter­prises that for any rea­son — self­ish or ide­o­log­i­cal, com­mer­cial or total­i­tar­ian — lead to the enslave­ment of human beings, to their being bought, sold and exchanged like mer­chan­dise, in dis­re­gard for their per­sonal dig­nity. It is a sin against the dig­nity of per­sons and their fun­da­men­tal rights to reduce them by vio­lence to their pro­duc­tive value or to a source of profit.

2525 Chris­t­ian purity requires a purifi­ca­tion of the social cli­mate. It requires of the com­mu­ni­ca­tions media that their pre­sen­ta­tions show con­cern for respect and restraint. Purity of heart brings free­dom from wide­spread eroti­cism and avoids enter­tain­ment inclined to voyeurism and illusion.

Pope Quotes

“In this con­text it is nec­es­sary to men­tion traf­fick­ing in human beings. … It becomes easy for the traf­ficker to offer his own ‘ser­vices’ to the vic­tims, who often do not even vaguely sus­pect what awaits them. In some cases there are women and girls who are des­tined to be exploited almost like slaves in their work, and not infre­quently in the sex indus­try too.”
(Bene­dict XVI, “Migra­tion: A Sign of the Times” Oct. 28, 2005)

“Who can deny that the vic­tims of this crime are often the poor­est and most defense­less mem­bers of the human fam­ily, the ‘least’ of our broth­ers and sis­ters?”
(John Paul II, Let­ter to Arch­bishop Jean-​​Louis Taran, May 15, 2002)

Saints and Heroes

A Ser­vant of Slaves and Captives

St. Peter Nolasco (1189-​​1256) Peter lived in the 1200s, a time when the Mus­lims con­trolled a good part of Spain and had made slaves or cap­tives of many Chris­tians. Peter was a very fevent Chris­t­ian liv­ing in a free part of Spain. One day he had a vision of Mary, who asked him to start a group of men who would be ded­i­cated to help­ing free cap­tive Chris­tians. With the help of some other men, Peter began this group. The mem­bers were totally ded­i­cated to God and used their work and resources to pay the ran­som of slaves and cap­tives. Some­times, these men would them­selves become slaves to take the place of oth­ers. Peter per­son­ally freed more than 400 slaves and cap­tives in his life. His com­mu­nity, called the Mer­cedar­i­ans, still exists in the Church today. They carry out spir­i­tual work in parishes, schools, pris­ons, hos­pi­tals, and mis­sions. They are also active in work­ing to over­come human trafficking.

Chris­t­ian Slave Who Helped Con­vert a Country

St. Nina (Died around 320)
Nina (Also called Nino and Chris­tiana) was a Chris­t­ian slave girl who was brought to the coun­try of Geor­gia (north of Turkey). At that time, the peo­ple of Geor­gia were not yet Chris­tians. Nina prac­ticed her faith hero­ically in dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances. Once she was asked to pray over a child who was dying and the child recov­ered mirac­u­lously. Later, the queen of the coun­try became gravely ill and asked Nina to pray for her also. Nina prayed and the queen recov­ered. The king was also saved from death by the girl’s prayers. This prompted the king and queen to learn more about Chris­tian­ity and to send for Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies. Even­tu­ally the whole coun­try embraced the Chris­t­ian faith.

Dis­cus­sion Questions:

1. What are some of the rea­sons peo­ple become caught in human slav­ery today?
2. What types of slav­ery exist today?
3. Traf­fick­ing is linked to many other social prob­lems. Can you name some of them?
4. Hav­ing an inter­na­tional pro­to­col against human traf­fick­ing is a pos­i­tive step. Why is it not enough? What other steps need to be taken by governments?
5. What are some ways to help stop human traf­fick­ing? Should we start by focus­ing on the vic­tims? Or on the crim­i­nals? Or on both?
6. Some­one said the great­est weapon against human traf­fick­ing is to have inquis­i­tive neigh­bors. What do you think this means? Why would it help?
7. What does our faith tell us about human traf­fick­ing? What Chris­t­ian and human virtues are needed to help stop this evil?

Activ­i­ties

1. Human traf­fick­ing almost cer­tainly occurs in the major city near­est to wher­ever you live. Are there social ser­vices groups in your area which deal with traf­fick­ing? Con­tact one of them and find out what kinds of prob­lems they are aware of today in your community.
2. Invite some­one from Catholic Relief Ser­vices or from a local social ser­vices orga­ni­za­tion to come speak to your class on the prob­lem of human trafficking.

Jour­nal Writing

• Imag­ine that you knew some­one trapped in human traf­fick­ing. Write a let­ter a let­ter to this per­son, try­ing to give him or her com­fort and rea­sons for hope.
• Imag­ine that you your­self were caught in some type of human slav­ery. Write a prayer to God in the name of human slaves.

Resources:

• U.N. site on human trafficking
• The Amaz­ing Change
• Catholic Relief Services
• Free the Slaves
• Rug­mark
• Book: Not for Sale, David Bat­stone (Harper Collins, 2007) True sto­ries of the mod­ern slave trade and strate­gies to fight it.
• Book: Be the Change, Zach Hunter (Zon­der­van, 2007). A teenage hero who orga­nized other young peo­ple to work for the abo­li­tion of human trafficking.
• Renew Amer­ica web­site (series on human trafficking):