Panel Discusses Slavery in the Sudan

Imagine a young Sudanese girl, bound like an animal and carted away on the back of a horse to the distant north. There she will be branded with Arabic numbers and sold on the slave market. Her future will depend on her master who may breed her or subject her to genital mutilation.

A Nov. 9 panel at the Kennedy School of Government, focused on the existence of modern-day slavery in the Sudan. Speakers included Bishop Macram Gassis of the Archdioceses of Khartoum; Charles Jacobs, founder of the Boston-based American Anti-Slavery Group; Adnon Agaw Nihal of the Dinka tribe; Alan Golty, former British Ambassador to the Sudan; Dr. Hamouda Fathelrahman of the Sudanese Human Rights Group and John Einer of Christian Solidarity International. The Carr Center for Human Rights sponsored the event.

Since 1983, the Sudan has been ravaged by a civil war pitting the Islamic fundamentalist government in the north against Christian and Animist rebels in the south. According to Dinka tribe member Agaw, the current regime is actively encouraging Arab tribes on the southern border to stage raids in which men over 15 are killed and others taken north and sold into slavery. An estimated two million people have died as a result, many from famine, and four and a half million people--one fifth of the population--have been displaced.

The Energy Connection
American Anti-Slavery Group founder Jacobs is campaigning in the Boston area against Canadian petroleum companies operating in the Sudan that he asserts contribute to human rights abuses. He noted the growing evidence that these Canadian companies have actively supported the Sudanese military; Canadian petroleum company Arakis recently admitted to the Toronto Star that it serviced Sudanese military trucks and provided water and electricity to army barracks. Calgary-based Talisman Energy, the world’s third largest oil company, has also actively supported the regime, according to Jacobs. The activist asked that mutual fund giants Fidelity, Vanguard and TIAA-CREF (the national teachers’ pension fund) divest themselves of investments in Talisman.

Slave Redemption
CSI, a Swiss-based NGO that participates in slave buy-backs, or redemption, lost its NGO status at the United Nations last month, despite U.S. support for this controversial practice. Christian Solidarity International's Einer lamented the poor relations between CSI and the U.N. and accused the international organization of racism. "If it was [UNICEF Director] Carol Bellamy’s children, she’d be buying them back. If it was a question of white children, they’d be bought back." he said.

Many opposed to slave redemption question the validity of the practice and worry it will encourage even more slavery. Bishop Gassis disagrees. "Give me an alternative way. What are you doing to end the slaughter and slavery of my people?" Gassis asked of the opposition.

Ambassador Golty was among those who questioned the policy of slave redemption, although he admitted to having participated in facilitating the return of slaves without payment. He also stressed the need to find a political solution to the current problem through unmanipulated dialogue. Golty was forced to leave the Sudan in August 1998, following British support of a cruise missile attack on a Northern Khartoum factory that the U.S. claimed was producing material for chemical weapons.

The Present Regime
Although slavery is not a new phenomenon in the Sudan, a connection exists between slavery and the current regime's political objectives, Agaw asserted. "In the first five to six years of the war [the regime was] confidant [it] could win by military means. When [it] realized [it] couldn’t, [it] looked to undermine the manpower of the main tribe supporting the rebels, the Dinka," he said. Local Arab tribes were mobilized to destroy Dinkan resources and villages and displace the people, as well as plunder and take slaves, Agaw explained.

Einer insisted that civil society has the responsibility to bring to light human rights abuses when governments fail to react. The American public was first made aware of the Sudanese situation when Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who had been supportive of the Sudanese regime, challenged reporters to produce evidence of slavery. In 1996, NBC’s Dateline traveled to the Sudan and filmed the slave markets.

There are an estimated 27 million slaves in Brazil, Sudan, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Mauritania. Slavery range from debt bondage and forced labor to the chattel slavery in Africa, where an individual is born, captured, or sold into permanent servitude.

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