Through My Lens
In the past centuries slavery was like the hottest business for the rich and influential personalities in Europe and United States. But this type of trade was abolished in the early 19th century due to the way the trade was being conducted. Stringent measures were put into place so that the act could see the sight of daylight ever again. Universal governing bodies were put into place so that there be no any loophole in the campaign against slavery. Apart from the earlier view of slave as a source of labour and workforce,the word was on the bridge of a new dawn of change. Many countries in Europe and United States start registering these foreign individuals as valid citizens and were allowed to start enjoying some small privileges like the rest. As the centuries went by most of the people were enlighten more and trade slowly died with time. The act was similar to stant to many eyes which were not keen to what was going on.Few decades later focus changed to the Middle East as their economy started to grow rapidly and the region was in need of workforce. They focused on both the skilled and unskilled laborers to work in the available vacancies that they offered.
In the modern imagination, slavery is often thought of as
an evil of the past, a period we read about in history books, an epoch
whose horrors we relive while watching movies like Lincoln and 12 Years a
Slave.
If only that were true. Not in the Middle East at least.
The
reality is that the scourge of slavery is alive and omnipresent in the
modern world. According to a report released by the Walk Free Foundation
last week, as many as 29.8 million people are victims of slavery
globally. These are people who are held in bonded labor, are victims of
human trafficking or are forced into child marriage.
With
over 150,000 slaves, Mauritania ranks first globally as the country
with the largest slave population. In other hot spots of the MENA
region, Sudan, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the UAE were scarlet
lettered out as the countries that had the ignominious honor of hosting
the most number of slaves.
The MENA region
recorded the highest number of cases of discrimination against women.
In addition, the report said that a large number of migrants are forced
into bonded labor every year in the region.
However,
statistics don’t convey the seriousness of the problem anymore than
watching a boxing match on TV conveys the force of a Mike Tyson punch.
The
truth is slaves are everywhere: there are in our neighborhoods cleaning
homes, building stadiums in our cities and making goods that we use on a
daily basis.
Writers like Umaima al-Khamis have exposed the
plight of Asian and African maids in Saudi Arabia, illuminating the
every day stories of the "hired help" being "held" captive for decades (like
the case of the Sri Lankan maid who was rescued after 17 years of being
held without pay or ability to speak with her family). "Slave" maids
have also gone so far as contemplating and following through with
suicide-such as the case of the Ethiopian maid who electrocuted herself
in a bathtub. The dreadful conditions in KSA has pushed scholars like Madawi Al-Rasheed of King’s College, London to call publicly for the uniform application of the Kingdom's laws to both citizens and non-citizens.
As Qatar prepares to host the 2022 World Cup, reports have surfaced that at least one worker dies every day during construction of the stadiums. According
to a report in the Guardian, "more than half of the deaths occurred due
to heart attacks, heart failure and on-site accidents." Workers have
not been compensated for their work, and many of them have had their
passports confiscated. Some of the workers have even been denied access
to free drinking water.
In Jordan, child labor is rife with some 30,000 children working, mainly in shops, cafes, and restaurants.
Recently, newspaper reports surfaced of a Syrian thirteen year-old
Mohammed, who, instead of going to school, stands at the traffic lights
of Amman, hawking items for a living.
In
the build-up to the US civil war, Lincoln said that the evil of slavery
“endangered civil liberties, and that it made the nation a hypocrite in
its foreign relations.” Indeed, how can one take countries preaching
about human rights in the United Nations seriously when they violate
those very rights back at home?
Though often
hailed as being the sole “developed” country in the Middle East,
Israel's human rights record from both the past and present casts a dark
shadow on the holy land. As Laila Farsakh's 2005 book depicts,
Palestinians, particularly women, were hired, in a cruel twist of fate,
to farm and construct a land that was once their own followng the 1967
war and ensuing occupation of the West Bank. These workers were employed
on third world-wages and harassed daily at checkpoints en route to
their work since Israel would not allow them to stay on the Jewish
territory for "security reasons." Such practices for the most part ended
with the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, but we can "never forget"
that the Jewish state was built at the hands of many Palestinians.
After
the Intifida that rendered Palestinians potential suicide bombers,
Israel’s labor market was left with a shortage of workers in its
construction, agriculture and health sector, which in turn led to the
creation of a massive human trafficking sector. Low-level skilled
workers from China, Romania, Africa, Turkey, Thailand, and Philippines,
Nepal, Sri Lanka and India face forced labor conditions. Many have had
their passports confiscated by their "handlers," never receive wages due
to debt bondages, and face threats and physical intimidation. Today,
women from Russia and former Soviet states are commonly trafficked for
the purpose of sexual exploitation.
The most flagrant
form of modern-day slavery lies with the African ayslum seekers, mainly
Eriterian and Sudanese, who besides being at risk of commercial and
sexual exploitation, face brutal forms of racism in the Jewish state. In
2013, Israel admitted forcibly issuing Ethiopian women with long-acting contraceptive shots.This
systematic sterilization in itself constitutes a modern-day form of
slavery, where the state claims ownership of women’s bodies to deny them
child-bearing human rights.
In the Muslim world, given
Islam’s theological emphasis on the equality of mankind, you might hope
to witness less incidents of human subjugation than in other parts of
the world. We should remember that even as Prophet Muhammad (Blessed Be
His Name and PBUH) sought to convince the Quraysh, some of the earliest
adherents of Islam were the poorest people of the society, many of whom
were slaves. Indeed, who can forget the story of Abu Bakr, who being
unable to watch the sufferings of Bilal, the Abyssinian slave, purchased
him from his owner and set him free? Omar Al-Khattab’s honorable legacy
left a lot to strive to and live by but on slavery, he famously said,
“How can you enslave people when their mothers bore them as free men?".
We’ve
always been excellent at applying teachings from our past to our
present situation. Let’s do it again now. Let’s abolish slavery.
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