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"Amazing Grace" chronicles end of slavery in Britain |
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Written by Pikachu
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Friday, 23 February 2007 |
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The new film “Amazing Grace” chronicles the decades-long campaign by British lawmaker and abolitionist William Wilberforce to end Britain’s trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Wilberforce finally achieved his goal in 1807. And yet, 200 years later, his work remains undone, with an estimated 27 million human beings still living in slave-like conditions worldwide.
Modern slavery manifests itself in a variety of ways, from women and girls trafficked for sex to debt bondage in southeast Asia to chattel slavery in Sudan.
“Slaves are spread out in almost every country in the whole world,” said Kevin Bales, president of Washington, D.C.-based Free the Slaves (http://www.freetheslaves.net/). “They are concentrated in the poorest parts of the world, but there are tens of thousands of slaves in the richest countries in the world.”
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THE PRICE OF A PERSON
In the past 50 years there has been an unprecedented, catastrophic fall in the price of slaves, according to Bales, who also wrote the 2005 book “Understanding Global Slavery.”
A 19-year-old male agricultural worker in Mississippi in 1850 could be bought as a slave for about $1,000 to $2,000, which is roughly $40,000 in today’s currency, Bales said. A few years ago in West Africa, Bales said he was with a film crew that used a hidden camera to record two agricultural workers being bought for $40 each at a market.
The average price for a slave worldwide is about $100, Bales said.
The worldwide population explosion in recent decades has created a pool of about 1 billion poor people who live on about $1 a day, often in countries with little infrastructure and rife with corruption — conditions that can pave the way for slavery, he said.
“Most people who come into slavery today are not because they are kidnapped. They are usually tricked into it because that poverty comes with so much desperation,” Bales said.
John Eibner, CEO of Christian Solidarity International, has been going to Sudan on humanitarian missions since 1992 and first came face-to-face with modern slavery there in 1995. He said the chattel slavery he encountered was the result of village raids by Arab militias who enslaved victims under a radical jihad ideology.
CSI last year helped liberate 2,942 slaves, who can be freed for roughly $35 — or sometimes for two goats — in southern Sudan, Eibner said.
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AMAZING GRACE
The strongest moments of the Michael Apted-directed film, which comes out Friday, occur when Wilberforce (Ioan Gruffudd) turns to his mentor John Newton (Albert Finney), a former slave trader-turned-evangelist who wrote the lyrics to the powerful redemption hymn “Amazing Grace.”
Memories of the 20,000 slaves he transported from Africa torture Newton, who inspires Wilberforce to push for an end to British involvement in the trading of slaves. Wilberforce gathered 390,000 signatures on a petition calling for the end of the slave trade.
This is where the parallel to today becomes vivid. An online campaign called The Amazing Change (http://www.theamazingchange.com/) is gathering signatures on a petition demanding the end to modern slavery, which will be presented to U.S. lawmakers in the House and Senate.
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ENDING SLAVERY
Simon Deng, 47, was enslaved at age 9 after being kidnapped in southern Sudan and being given away as a gift. He was freed after three years when he spotted tribal members from his village, who arranged for his liberation.
Deng walked from New York to Washington, D.C., last year to highlight the persistence of slavery in Sudan and to protest what he perceives as inaction by the United Nations.
“It’s not easy to talk about,” Deng said. “But I have to be the voice for those who have no voice back home.”
Bales noted that today’s effort to eradicate slavery worldwide doesn’t have the roadblocks of past abolition movements. No new laws need to be passed to end slavery, there are no national economies that rely on the slave trade and there’s no moral argument in favor of slavery.
“We just basically have to get the laws on the books enforced and do the basic development work needed to wipe out the fundamental causes of poverty and corruption,” he said. “I appreciate that it’s a very tall order, but you don’t have to do that for the whole planet, you just have to do that for those places that are particular hotspots.”
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Paul Chavez is an asap reporter based in Los Angeles. | Only registered users can write comments.
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