Maybe there was a boat full of slave kids, maybe there wasn’t.
Either way, the story got our attention and that’s OK because slavery is real and a worldwide problem, especially in parts of the world that don’t get much media attention.
This story was different. It grabbed us.
Reports that a ship might be carrying a cargo of 200 child slaves along the western Africa coast touched off a frantic international search last week. All that seemed to be lacking from the drama was a TV news chopper to follow the ship the way news cameras followed O.J. Simpson’s white Ford Bronco.
Then the hot story seemed to fizzle. Benin police detained one suspect ship along with its captain and part of his crew. The Nigerian captain, according to news reports, had once before been suspected of slave trafficking. Only about 40, mostly preteen, children were found, some without parents or family members. Aid workers took the kids in for food and medical attention and Benin police reported finding no evidence of slave trafficking.
Yet no one could say for sure that the slave-boat story was just another urban legend. UNICEF estimates that 200,000 child slaves are trafficked every year in West and Central Africa, where the mystery ship was sighted. Maybe police caught the wrong boat. Maybe slave kids had been tossed overboard in a frantic effort to get rid of evidence. Anything was possible in the illegal-but-lucrative slave trade that has endured for centuries along Africa’s “Slave Coast” on the Gulf of Guinea.
Such suspicions deserve world attention. The U.S. State Department estimates more than 2 million women and children are sold worldwide, including more than 40,000 women into U.S. brothels.
About a million children currently are sold into bondage in Southeast Asia, according to UNICEF. They include Thai children enslaved to prostitution, Bangladeshi children slipped into the United Arab Emirates and Chinese children smuggled into Los Angeles.
Unlike most of those stories, the slave-ship story grabbed the world’s attention for at least a few days and spurred at least a few people to action.
Even pop singer Michael Jackson announced plans to pack up his glove and travel to Africa this summer to investigate. The very existence of child slavery “shakes me to my very core,” he said in a statement Thursday. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, co-founder of Jackson’s Heal the Kids organization, plans to accompany Jackson.
So does civil-rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton. By coincidence, one week earlier, Sharpton cut short a trip to investigate slavery in Sudan in order to fly to the Cincinnati riots. That’s classic Sharpton for you. Love him or hate him (and many do both) he’s often there when other more sedate and pragmatic leaders are nowhere to be seen.
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“Slavery is the stepchild of the human-rights movement,” says Charles Jacobs, co-founder of the Boston-based American Anti-Slavery Group.
Indeed, the usually talkative Rev. Jesse Jackson uttered barely a word on the subject of slavery while serving as President Bill Clinton’s special envoy to Africa. Minister Louis Farrakhan, a friend of the Sudanese regime, denounces slavery charges as racist propaganda, despite abundant contrary evidence.
Exceptions to the apathy include Washington radio talk-show host Joe “Black Eagle” Madison. Madison participated in the freeing of 4,435 slaves last fall in the Sudan. Their freedom had to be purchased by human-rights organizations. More recently, Madison was arrested April 13 with two other slavery protesters for handcuffing himself to a lamppost in front of the Sudanese Embassy in Washington.
“Amnesty International talks about prisoners of conscience,” says Jacobs. “Modern-day slaves are prisoners of commerce.”
Yes, it is easy for those of us who live in the industrialized world to dismiss today’s slaves as “not like us.” They come from the lowest ranks of society. They are held captive not because of their actions or their views but simply because their bodies and labor have commercial value.
Slave running, like drug trafficking, is not going to be easy to stop but it is worth the effort. The extent of it needs to be thoroughly investigated. Diplomatic pressures need to be applied where appropriate. Apathy only helps the evil to flourish. The slave traffickers run like rats from the spotlight of public attention. Let us give chase.
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Clarence Page is a member of the Tribune’s editorial board. E-mail: [email protected]