₦airaland Forum

1. The working definition of a slave is someone who is forced to work and is held under threat of violence for no pay beyond subsistence. They are people who cannot walk away from their work.

2. The term “human trafficking” which is a term most people have heard is actually just a modern term for slavery. Human trafficking does not refer to illegal immigrants being smuggled across borders who are then free to go their own way. [Source]

3. The U.S. State Department and social scientists estimate that there are as many as 47 million slaves in the world today. [Source]

4. By contrast, there were a little under 4 million slaves in the U.S. in 1860. [Source]

5. The number of slaves currently in bondage today is greater than in all of recorded human history combined.

6. Slaves are cheaper today than they have ever been. In 1860 Texas a slave cost up to $19,000 in 2015 money. Today a slave can be gotten in some places for as little as $90 in 2015 money. This makes modern slaves more disposable to slaveholders than even under the horrific conception of slavery in the U.S. most Americans have. [Source 1, 2]

7. 65.8% of the slaves in the entire world live the Asia Pacific region. Y’know, where we get all our clothes (textile slavery is actually less common than most think). [Source]

8. Up to 4% of the population of Mauritania in West Africa consists of slaves. They have the highest percentage of slaves in the entire world with a total of 155,600 slaves. [Source]

9. Here’s what a map of global slavery looks like. [Source]

10. Iceland and Ireland have the lowest incidents of slavery in the world. [Source]

11. In the United States, slavery often takes the form of sexual slavery, specifically sexual slavery of children and minors.

In 2009, Shelby Lewis pled guilty to four counts of sex trafficking for prostituting four female juveniles when he drove them from Temple Hills, Maryland to Washington, D.C. for the express purpose of “having them engage in sex for money.” He had prostituted these same four girls during different intervals between 2006 and 2009. The girls were 12, 13, 14, and 16 years old.

The 12-year-old girl testified that she came to live with Lewis after running away from her custodial aunt and finding herself homeless. She lived alongside Lewis’s children and with a stripper and prostitute who also lived there. Lewis raped her the second day he knew her and began pimping her less than a year later which continued for a total of 914 days. Any money she earned in this way went to Lewis.

Shelby essentially repeated this process with the 13, 14, and 16-year-old girls. Each were required to have sex with more than five men a night. Operating in this manner meant that Lewis could make over $2500 a week from child prostitution. [Source, additionally court documents were provided by attorney Martina Vandenberg]


12. The United States ranks 145 out of 167 on the Global Slavery Index with 167 being the least amount of slavery. [Source]

13. However, the United States does import goods made from materials derived from slave labor. For example, over 1 million Uzbeks are forced by the government to harvest cotton two months out of every year. This cotton is then sold into the global market where it ends up in products Westerners, including Americans, buy. [Source]

14. The African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies describes the difference between old slavery (think the antebellum South) with new slavery in the 21st century as follows. [Source]

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15. The vast majority of slaves are held in collateralized hereditary debt bondage which means that a son or daughter can be born into slavery because their parents owed a debt and slavery is the payment. There is no end to this debt. It spans generations with no end in site. Benjamin Skinner wrote about this phenomenon which he personally observed in northern India.

16. One billion people worldwide live on on less than a dollar a day. Subsistence living makes people very vulnerable to making compromises that could result in enslavement. Some poor families have been known to give their children away to individuals posing as “placement agents” who claim the children they take will be given a better life. Instead, these children often become slaves without the parents ever knowing what became of them.

17. In another case from 2013, an organization known as the Botsvynyuk Organization recruited poor Ukrainians claiming that it would provide them passage to the United States whereafter they provide the organization with three years of work and then be free to go their own way. This is an arrangement known as indentured servitude and was common in people coming to the United States during the 18th century.

However, the organization reneged on their arrangement and the Ukrainian victims found themselves in Mexico where a contact would confiscate their passports and immigration papers and command them to illegally cross the border into the U.S. Once they’d crossed over they were put to work by another contact and their wages were confiscated under threat of violence.

If one of the victims lost their job for some reason, members of the organization would beat them. When some of the victims worked side jobs to try to make their own money they were beaten unconscious, awakened, then beaten unconscious again. Women were beaten and raped.

The members of the organization were only found out because the FBI began to notice a number of suspicious Western Union money transfers which led to a wholesale investigation. [Source]

18. Many of the minerals used in modern electronics like gold, tin, and tungsten are mined in war torn areas like the inappropriately named Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Congo is home to 762,900 slaves and is seventh in the world in slave prevalence, two steps behind India and Pakistan. [Source]

19. In 2013, the Mauritanian government (remember, number 1 nation in the world in terms of slavery) formed a tribunal to to try and prosecute those who engaged in, as they called it, the “vestiges” of slavery. Since then it has prosecuted no one. Well, no one that is except anti-slavery activists in Mauritania trying to pressure the nation into cracking down on slavery.

The “vestiges” are pretty powerful it turns out. Even worse, enslaved women who are raped by their slave masters are then charged with “unlawful sexual conduct.” [Source 1, 2, 3]

20. Slavery as an industry is extremely profitable. The International Labor Organization estimates that slavery is responsible for $150 billion (with a B) in profits for slaveholders annually. [Source]

21. Slavery is present in nearly every industry on the planet from agriculture to textiles, cocoa workers (used to make chocolate) to mining. It’s everywhere, and while this doesn’t mean every product from these industries is produced by slaves, they certainly aren’t, goods produced by slave labor are a part of the mainstream global economy, not an outlier or an exception you never come across. [Source]

22. Global slavery is growing, not shrinking.


http://thoughtcatalog.com/daniel-hayes/2015/06/facts-about-modern-slavery

armadeo:
No I am not. He is. How can you be kept in slavery for 26yrs. No matter how young you were when you were captured.

Kinte ran they cut his leg and he ran again. He didn't need anyone to tell him it was wrong. Maybe as a child yes but he raised kids even kids talk. If he listened he should have known.

Maybe you too would have been kept for that long and I wouldn't.

Maybe you are also a muggu or a kidnapper who's upset.

daretodiffer:
This is not about race. It is about man to man.

How is Africa the slave master of all? What is your basis for making that statement? What research did you undertake? Did you even have any knowledge of what has happened and what it involves?

joseph1832:
Emmanuel Edet, Anan Edet. Those names aren't British, we all know they're Nigerian emigrants.
just because they're British citizens doesn't make them any more British than Nigerian.

I still fail to wonder why people will choose to be exceedingly cruel to their fellow man. And to even think some people even treat their dogs better than a human being.

obayaya:
Seek First to Understand then to be Understood.. Steven Covey

You should have asked these questions in your second paragraph before resorting to insults..

Modern Slavery is global phenomenon that's more prevalent amongst Africans. But the problem is that Modern slavery amongst Africans are hugely underreported.

Situations similar to the one reported here is common in Nigeria and African at large. And Most of us consider it normal. In fact, it's believed you are even helping the enslaved. Everyone is talking about this particular One because it happened in the UK.

Most of the things developed countries regard as modern slavery are tagged "help" in Nigeria and most of Africa. And you are expected to be grateful.

So when I say Africans are the biggest slave masters of them all, I mean that having "slaves" isn't alien to Africans. It was completely normal and it's still completely normal to have "slaves" in 21st century Africa. Though it comes in different names now. names like maid, servant, employee etc

Edited: Even the article you posted supports my position

ideyhere:
Rape is bad...but when someone continues raping you from when you're 14 till you get to 40 and you do nothing about it, then something is definitely wrong with you upstairs. In the same vein, slavery is bad, whether modern or ancient, but when it is similar to this crap this man did here, then I'm sorry but the witches in his village must have had quite an amazing tea party with his brain...

Free Your Mind Instead

A second commonality among different forms of slavery is the psychological manipulation they all involve. The widely held conception of a slave is someone in chains who would escape if given half a chance or who simply does not know better. But Meera's and Baldev's stories, among numerous others, suggest that this view is naive. In my experience, slaves often know that their enslavement is illegal. Force, violence and psychological coercion have convinced them to accept it. When slaves begin to accept their role and identify with their master, constant physical bondage becomes unnecessary. They come to perceive their situation not as a deliberate action taken to harm them in particular but as part of the normal, if regrettable, scheme of things.

One young woman I met in northeastern Thailand, Siri, has a typical story. A woman approached her parents, offered to find their 14-year-old daughter a job, and advanced them 50,000 baht (at the time, about $2,000) against her future income. The broker transferred Siri to a low-end brothel for twice that sum. When she tried to escape, her debt was doubled again. She was told to repay it, as well as a monthly rent of 30,000 baht, from her earnings of 100 baht per customer.

Siri had little idea what it meant to be a prostitute. Her initiation took the form of assault and rape. Shattered, the teenager had to find a way to carry on with life. In the world in which she lived, there were only those with total power and those with no power. Reward and punishment came from a single source, the love-vendor. Young women in Siri's position often find building a relationship with the love-vendor to be a good survival strategy. Although pimps are thugs, they do not rely solely on violence. They are adept at fostering insecurity and dependence.

To live in slavery, the young women often redefine their bondage as a duty or a job or a form of penance. To accept their role and the love-vendor's, they must try to diminish their view of themselves as victims who have been wronged. They must begin to see their enslavement from the point of view of the slaveholder. At the time of my visit, the women in Siri's brothel were at various stages in this process of submission. Some were even allowed to visit their families during holidays, for they always came back.

A similar psychology operates in a different form of slavery, one that involves domestic servants that African and Asian diplomats and business executives have brought with them to Europe and North America. As an employee of the Committee against Modern Slavery, Cristina Talens worked for several years to free and rehabilitate domestic slaves who had been brought to Paris. She told me that liberating the body was much easier than freeing the mind:

"In spite of the violence, and the living and working conditions, people in slavery have their own mental integrity and their own mechanisms for surviving. Some may actually like different aspects of their life, perhaps the security or their understanding of the order of things. When you disrupt this order, suddenly everything is confused. Some of the women who were freed have attempted suicide. It is easy to assume that this happened because of the abuse they had lived through. But for some of these women, slavery had been the major psychological building block in their lives. When that was destroyed, the meaning of their life was like a bit of paper crushed up and thrown away. They were told: "No, this is not the way it is supposed to be. Start all over again." It was as though their life had no meaning."

Plausible Deniability

The psychology of the slave is mirrored by that of the slaveholder. Slavery is not a simple matter of one person holding another by force; it is an insidious mutual dependence that is remarkably difficult for slaveholder as well as slave to break out of. Branding the slaveholder as pure evil may in some way comfort us, but maintaining that definition becomes difficult when one meets actual slave masters.



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midolian:
No doubt, these people are wicked...but the guy is 40! a big fool @ 40, I must say how did this happen successfully for 24yrs? How? Na donkey?

You had the option of being deported back to Nigeria to struggle for yourself Or work as a slave in the UK..which would you choose?

Truckpusher:
What did I say again?

daretodiffer:
How many slaves were there in those days? How many were like Kunta? Why was kunta different?

armadeo:
Lol. I can't be broken. I rather die on my feet than live on my knees.


Many were like kunta only we didn't get to hear of them. While I understand slavery in modern days that dosnt mean I would condone it or allow it happen to me.

That's beside the point hear the threat made to this 40yr oldslave...

If you leave the house you would be deported back to Nigeria. This is what kept a grown man in shackles. He was mentally a slave. Isn't it better to be free in Nigeria than to be in chainsin UK.

I have the same opinion as regards illegal immigrants everywhere. At last nobody was chasing you where you are coming from. You were free. ( apart from nations at war).

daretodiffer:
What is you take on this?

Truckpusher:
I have already made a comment and I said he is dumb to remain that way at 40.



I aknowledged the argument that he could have been psychologically abused to an extent that he can't think for himself but c'mon! an average human being will always resist oppression in a society awashed with knowledge and at least make a run for it at some point he didn't until he was 40 - You must be kidding me

Truckpusher:
I have already made a comment and I said he is dumb to remain that way at 40.



I aknowledged the argument that he could have been psychologically abused to an extent that he can't think for himself but c'mon! an average human being will always resist oppression in a society awashed with knowledge and at least make a run for it at some point he didn't until he was 40 - You must be kidding me

It can be difficult for outsiders to understand what keeps trafficked people from escaping, she says.

“Someone doesn’t have
to be chained up or physically locked up in a room,” Hopper explains.

“Traffickers use very subtle psychological coercion techniques.”

These include forced isolation, verbal and physical abuse, nonstop work, threats and failure to provide basic necessities. Even after traffickers are taken into custody, survivors may still worry about threats from criminal affiliates to their family and friends back home.

“There’s a lot of learned helplessness,” says Hopper.
Plus, trafficking survivors may have complex post-traumatic stress disorder.

daretodiffer:
An average man who was taken at 14 wouldn't. I am not new to this subject matter. It is an issue I have taken time to research. It sounds easy to you because you are a free man and your orientation is very different from his. If it were that easy, we shouldn't have as much cases of modern day slavery as we have.


I wish I could go into details but I can't

Truckpusher:
I got your point quite alright but I believe that he knew for sure that what he was passing through wasn't an ideal thing.

daretodiffer:
Some of them do but they cannot leave

midolian:
lool..bro, forget that one abeg! The guy is just a dunce, if not this wouldn't have happened successfully for good 26yrs. Cos from my calculation, its not 24yrs.

You had the option of being deported to Nigeria to struggle for yourself OR remain a slave in the UK for years..which would you choose? At 14, I would have gone for option 1..

daretodiffer:
Some of them do but they cannot leave

baby4u2:
Lalisticlala when I posted this news you said it already hit front page a while back. What is it doing here again. Plus did u check the date of the news. I hope u just forgot.

That is the post proof

https://www.nairaland.com/2312410/uk-based-nigerian-doctor-nurse#33709789

midolian:
No doubt, these people are wicked...but the guy is 40! a big fool @ 40, I must say how did this happen successfully for 24yrs? How? Na donkey?

You had the option of being deported back to Nigeria to struggle for yourself Or work as a slave in the UK..which would you choose?

politricks:
O my God!! I did not expect the kind of names i saw there. Later we would start blaming the whites for slavery.

midolian:
No doubt, these people are wicked...but the guy is 40! a big fool @ 40, I must say how did this happen successfully for 24yrs? How? Na donkey?

You had the option of being deported back to Nigeria to struggle for yourself Or work as a slave in the UK..which would you choose?

midolian:
http://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/2015/11/18/british-couple-keep-nigerian-immigrant-as-slave-for-24-years/
Lalasticlala!

*Emmanuel and Antan Edet

*Docked: Emmanuel and Antan Edet