Modern-day Slavery
There are more slaves in the world today than at any time in history. After spending four years visiting a dozen countries where slavery flourishes, E. Benjamin Skinner tells the story of individuals who live in slavery, those who have escaped from bondage, those who own or traffic in slaves and the mixed political motives of those who seek to combat the crime. In this extract from the book (published by Free Press in 2008), Skinner reflects on years of reporting in Haiti, Sudan, India, Eastern Europe, The Netherlands and, yes, even suburban America to produce a vivid testament and moving reportage on one of the great evils of our time.
E. Benjamin Skinner will present “A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery” as the first lecture in this year’s E. N. Thompson Forum on World Issues on Sept. 30, 2010, at 7 p.m. at the Lied Center for Performing Arts.
Imagine that Robert E. Lee’s staff officer had not lost his three cigars in 1862. Imagine that the general’s Antietam battle plans, which were wrapped around those cigars, hadn’t wound up in Union hands. Alternatively, imagine that George McClellan hadn’t finally used the providential intelligence to stop the rebels in the bloodiest battle in American history. Imagine that a thus disempowered Lincoln was unable to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. Imagine that the South had won and spread slavery to the Western Territories.
Imagine that, 80 years later, Japan limited its racist empire to Asia, rather than attacking Pearl Harbor. Imagine that Hitler, unchecked by the Confederate States of America, rolled back the steady advance of freedom since England abolished the slave trade in 1807.
Imagine, in other words, a world where the ideologies that endorsed slavery still stood.
None of these scenarios happened. And yet: There are more slaves today than at any point in human history.
In his book “Disposable People” (1999), an unassuming scholar named Kevin Bales claimed that there were then 27 million slaves—whom he defined as human beings forced to work, under threat of violence, for no pay—worldwide. His figure was staggering, even when measured against other terrible epochs. At its height under Joseph Stalin, the Soviet Gulag held five million slaves. The Nazis enslaved 12 million in total, but culled them so rapidly that far fewer were alive at any given time.
The year 1861 was the only one when the total slave population rivaled today. That year, there were 3.8 million slaves in the United States—a greater number than in the rest of the world combined. In Russia at the time, though most of Europe had abolished slavery, there may have been 23 million serfs. That estimate, from a Bolshevik writer justifying the excesses of the Communist revolution, is deceptive. A serf was a subject, albeit diminished, under law, and often owned property; a slave was himself mere property under law.
Human bondage is today illegal everywhere. But if we accept that one slave exists in a world that has abolished legal slavery, then, if we look closely, we soon must accept that millions of slaves exist.
Bales acknowledges that his figure is far from exact. John Miller, America’s antislavery czar, told me, “These victims don’t stand in line, Ben, and wait for a census to count them.” Bales pleaded for criticism, hoping to be proved wrong. Subsequent regional studies have only buttressed his claim. A detailed, 2005 International Labour Organization report found 10 million forced laborers in Asia alone. Whatever the total number, it was big. And, to me, meaningless.
“The death of one man is a tragedy,” Stalin, who knew something about the subject, supposedly maintained. “The death of a million men is a statistic.” Hence the first reason for this book. I could not prove the definite number of slaves, and I would not try. But I might show what their slavery meant.
The second reason for paying attention was because my government did. A week before the 2000 election, President Bill Clinton signed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. For the first time, an American president assumed global abolition as a national burden. The new law called for programs to eradicate slavery, and mandated that the State Department annually rank countries based on their efforts. Tier One was for those showing progress toward abolition. A Tier Three ranking, reserved for reprobate nations that countenanced bondage, could trigger sanctions. John Miller, whose office wrote the report, intended to “name and shame” foreign governments.
“Name and shame.” It’s a far cry from the 19-century interdictions of the Royal Navy. Over a period of 70 years, 2,000 British sailors died freeing 160,000 slaves.
But the modern American war on slavery was nonetheless historic. Whereas President Lincoln used emancipation to win foreign government support for the Union, President George W. Bush used the nation’s strength to win foreign government support for emancipation. John Miller, his knight in the effort, began working on the issue at the same moment I did. Thus, in this book I have woven his years of discovery in with my own.
The first thing that John Miller ever said to me was that slavery is the greatest human rights challenge of my generation. He was right. But in the first couple of weeks in any new country that I visited, my greatest challenge was finding a single slave. After talking to the right people, often shady characters, I went through the looking glass. Then the slaves were everywhere. I often wondered whether I might have saved those that I found in bondage. With one exception, I did not. I withheld action to save one person, in the hope that this book would later save many more. Writing that now, it still feels like an excuse for cowardice.
Skinner’s lecture will take place on Sept. 30, 2010, at 7 p.m. at the Lied Center for Performing Arts, 12th and R streets, Lincoln, Neb. All lectures in the E.N. Thompson Forum on World Issues are ticketed events. Tickets are free and guarantee a reserved seat. Ticket reservations may be made by contacting the Lied Center at (402) 472-4747 or (800) 432-3231. Tickets may also be picked up in person or downloaded from the website, enthompson.unl.edu, or ordered by mail or fax. The opinions in this essay are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Thompson Forum or other sponsoring organizations.
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