Ricky Martin speaks out against human trafficking

From the Associated Press:

Ricky Martin visited Capitol Hill on Tuesday to talk to lawmakers about human trafficking, which he called "horrendous."

The 34-year-old Puerto Rican pop star's nonprofit Ricky Martin Foundation aims to prevent the exploitation of children. One of the foundation's programs, People for Children, works toward the elimination of human trafficking, especially trafficking of children.

Read the story at the San Francisco Chronicle and read the full text of his statement.

Child Slavery in Haiti

Only a 90 minute plane ride from Miami, Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. Three-fourths of its people are living in extreme poverty with an unemployment rate of between 60 and 70%. In this suffering economy, it has become a longstanding custom to enslave children who have been orphaned or given up by desperate families.

These children are known as restaveks, a Creole word meaning "stay with," and they are forced to perform all household chores without receiving any compensation. In 1998, a United Nations study estimated that 300,000 such children existed. The restavek system has thrived for more than 200 years, going unnoticed by the international community until 1998, when Jean-Robert Cadet, a former restavek, published his biography: Restavec: From Haitian Slave Child to Middle-Class American.

The restavek system, although outlawed by the Haitian government, remains rampant today. The perseverance of this form of slavery leaves one wondering if social and cultural attitudes will ever change, or if it is only by finding a solution to Haiti's severe economic problems that the restavek system will ever be dissolved.

On September 14, The Council on Hemispheric Affairs issued a press release titled Haiti's Dirty Little Secret: the Problem of Child Slavery.

You can read the press release here.

51 Slaves Liberated in Sudan

iAbolish partner organization Christian Solidarity International, with ths support of the state government of North Bahr El Ghazal and the Arab-Dinka Peace Committee of Manger Ater, freed 51 Black Sudanese slaves from Arab masters last week.

Interviews with the freed slaves over the age of 8 revealed that 89% of them had been forcibly converted to Islam; the methods of coercion included beatings, death threats, and racial and religious insults. Many had witnessed exections of those who failed to submit. 8 of the 12 young women over the age of 14 admitted to having been raped while living in bondage. One suspected her master of prostituting her to visitors in his home.

Tens of thousands of Black slaves from Southern Sudan are still believed to be the property of masters in Northern Sudan, notwithstanding the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed between the government in Khartoum and the Southern-based Sudan People’s Liberation Army in January 2005. The CPA failed to establish a mechanism for the emancipation of slaves. Meanwhile, Black women and children continue to be abducted and enslaved in the war-torn northern region of Darfur.

Learn more about the conflict in Sudan at iAbolish, and help our efforts on the ground in Sudan.

Child Slavery in Dubai

The ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, his brother Hamdam, and 500 are parties to a class-action lawsuit for abducting and trafficking children to use as camel jockeys, the BBC reported yesterday. In addition to being forced to take part in a dangerous sport, the suit claims the children--some as young as 2--were starved, abused, and kept in poor conditions. The use of child camel jockeys was outlawed in Dubai 13 years ago. The case was filed in Miami, where al-Maktoum and his brother have property.

Human Trafficking Seminars in Idaho

For our readers in Idaho:

Catholic Charities of Idaho are hosting a series of seminars focused on building awareness about human trafficking across the state. They began last Friday, but four remain. Check out their website for more information!

Call-in for Darfur

Next week, President Bush will address the General Assembly of the U.N. Help make Darfur a top priority! The Save Darfur Coalition is organizing a nationwide call-in TODAY.

How to participate:

Call 202-456-1111. You will speak to a communications coordinator, who will take down your comments and pass them on to the president's advisers. Tell them you want the president to 1) make Darfur a top priority in his meetings with world leaders and his speech to the General Assembly; 2) immediately appoint a special envoy; and 3) do whatever is necessary to deploy a U.N. peacekeeping force.

The more people call, the more successful this will be!

Help the Safe Darfur Coalition keep track reporting how it went.

Slavery in Austria

Natascha Kampusch, a young Austrian woman who was enslaved for 8 1/2 years, and escaped last week, gave a round of interviews about her ordeal to Austrian press. Some limited video of one of the interviews has been released on the internet.

iAbolish learned about this in a blurb from the Metro this morning. Though the Metro's website runs the full text of the article (from the AP), the print version buries it inside the paper under the headline, "Austrian teen tells all in interviews." None of the other reporting that we could find makes any mention of slavery ("captivity" seems to be the buzz word), and one AP article, fronts her "find[ing] positives" in her kidnapping--when did Stockholm syndrome become a "positive"?

Why isn't this front page news?

Rising tensions in Sudan

The body of a Sudanese journalist was found beheaded on a dirt road in Khartoum yesterday, Reuters reports. No one has claimed responsibility for the killing, but the editor, Mohamed Taha, was a supporter of the Khartoum government who had views that had angered Islamists in the past; attempts were made on his life in the 1990s.

Protesters at the morgue agitated for the government officials viewing the body to resign. The Sudanese government has, unsurprisingly, cracked down hard on such all demonstrations and accusing the protesters of "inciting sedition and supporting an 'external plot'"--the U.N. mission approved last week by the Security Council--against Sudan.

A wake-up call for Darfur activists

The San Francisco Chronicle ran an op-ed by John Morlino this Sunday calling for increased public pressure from activist groups on Western governments and the international community to end the genocide in Darfur.

While activist groups have successfully brought much-needed media attention to the crisis in Darfur, Morlino writes, "the majority of Darfur activist groups continue to acquiesce to the litany of ineffectual measures put forth by our elected officials." It is this combined failure of activists to apply the necessary pressure and of governments to respond adequately that has allowed what Morlino calls "the world's worst humanitarian crisis" to go on for so long.

Morlino also mentions--and we here at iAbolish would like to flag--the willingness of Western governments to respond to genocide perpetrated in Europe (he cites Kosovo) that rests so uneasily alongside the failures to respond to cases outside the west. It's what AASG founder and president Charles Jacobs calls the "human rights complex." If you want to know whether a human rights issue will receive notice, Jacobs proposes you look to the oppressor, rather than to the oppressed. It is not that the (predominantly white) human rights community cares less about Darfurians, but rather that, as Jacobs wrote in an op-ed published in the Boston Globe in 2002, "We feel the charge of hypocrisy...Who are we to judge 'others'?"

Lastly, we'd like to point our readers to Jewels in the Jungle, which has more information and analysis of the conflict in Sudan in light of recent developments, and who also calls for more concrete action from activists.

UNICEF Criticism on Child Trafficking in the UK

UNICEF, along with a national network of children rights advocates, released a report this week on child slavery in the UK. According to BBC News, UNICEF is concerned about the number of children that are being trafficked into the UK from South-Eastern Europe, and are urging the government to step up its efforts to end it. The report noted a need for more thorough border checks and specialized training to help border patrols identify trafficked children.

Additional changes that UNICEF officials are lobbying for are counseling and rehabilitation services for trafficked children once they are identified. Under the current system the children are either sent to detention centers or placed in the foster care system, often exposing them to further neglect or abuse.