Friday, September 28, 2012

Slavery is alive and flourishing...

It was 130 degrees when I was first introduced to the brick kilns of Nepal. In these severe temperatures, men, women, and children -- whole families, in fact -- were surrounded by a dense cloud of dust while mechanically stacking bricks on their heads, carrying them, 18 at a time, from the scorching kilns to trucks hundreds of yards away.

These are slaves. Deadened by monotony and exhaustion, they worked without speaking, repeating the same task 16 hours a day. They took no rest for food or water, no bathroom breaks -- although their dehydration suppressed their need to urinate.

Around the world human traffickers trick many people into slavery by false promises of good jobs or good education, only to find themselves forced to work without pay, under the threat of violence. Trapped by phony debt, these slaves are hunted by local police and private security guards if they try to escape. Sometimes slaves don't even understand that they're enslaved, despite people working 16 or 17 hours a day with no pay. They're simply used to it as something they've been doing their whole lives. Their bodies grow weak and vulnerable to disease, but they have nothing to compare their experience to.

 For the last 28 years I have documented people in more than 100 countries on six continents. In 2009, at the Vancouver Peace Summit, I met a supporter of Free the Slaves, an NGO dedicated to eradicating modern-day slavery; weeks later, I flew down to Los Angeles and met with the director of Free the Slaves; thus began my journey into exploring modern-day slavery. More + photos...

Related posts:
  1. Mauritania: Slavery's last stronghold...
  2. Every six minutes, a child goes missing in India...
  3. Child slavery in the Arabian Peninsula...
  4. Vietnam workers kept like slaves at Vinastar factory in Russia...
  5. The Delhi child servant scandal that has outraged India...
  6. A 21st century evil: India's bridal slaves...
  7. Lebanon: stop abuse of domestic workers...
  8. Migrant workers from India face a hard reality in Singapore...

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