SLAVE TRADE.

Gisborne Times, Volume LXX, Issue 11126, 8 February 1930, Page 9

SLAVE TRADE.

LADY SIMON’S EXPOSURE. BO AYER L-TL IN Hi C'J’M ENT. Four million human beings are still kept in slavery under conditions that the British Foreign Office calls “plain hell.” Their cry “comes ringing across the sandy deserts and ever the ocean waves to civilisation.” Other untold millions are living in in a state of semi-slavery under the peonage system, still in vogue in many parts of Asia. Ladv Simon, wife of the distinguished Liberal statesman, Sir John S moil, has written a powerful indictment against the Lraflie in human lives and calls upon civi'isation to remove “iiiis blot from the twentieth century.” Lady Simon's accusations. says the San Francisco “Chronicle.” arcdirected against Abyssinia as the worst oflender. but she does not spare Portugal and the United States, the latter country for upholding the peonage system in the Philippine Islands. In the Portuguese colonies the slave trader and the slave owner still flourish, though the slave is modestly called a “eontract laborer.”

CHILDREN SOLD INTO SLAVERY

To I long Kong, the British possession in China, the same, criticism applies. At present it is the custom there for parents to sell their children either for factory work or the more usual sale for work as 'domestic servants. These children. Lady Simon quote's an authority as .saying, “may he systematically cursed, beaten, tortured or even killed without redress or penalty inflicted."

In the eyes of the law such practices have always been ilegal, but the law in Hong Kong has apparently been in the habit of shut tin 1 . 1 its eyes. The lnui tsai, as the child slave is called, is still unpaid for her labour, is still ill-treated. Se\yr,il times in the last fil’ly years attempts have been made to change the custom, hut somehow no change' has taken place.

So recently as l!)2d a Female Domestic- Service Ordinance was enacted with a declaratory clause express'y stating that children could net be bought and sold; but. as Lady Simon says, more effect? v than a declaratory clause is needed to stop the scandal." It is not enough to issue proclamations about their rights to people who cannot read, let alone enforce them. The substance of the matter,” says Lady Simon, “is that Britain is pledge. ! to abolish this system and lias hitherto failed to do so.” The hook has created a stir in League of -Nations circles at Genova, as the .League has hitherto vainly tried to- bring the matter of abolition to a head. SECRET DOCUMENTS. Abyssinia, a land that was Christianised before many European nuntries, is the worst offender. Independent Princes, flouting the authority of the Has Tafari. care : ••tiling for the edicts issued by the Emperor. Lady Simon, charges that ilm greatest drawback m the anti-slavery fight is the fact that the most authoritative documents on the subject are withheld from the public for pol-

itieal reasons. “Whatever slavery is in other parts of the earth,’’ says Lady Simon, “in Abyssinia it exists in every one of its varied forms. Id this remote and 'little-known country in North-Fast Africa slavery covers wide variety of servitude, from that of the litt'o household slaves of the Christian priests to 'he wretched mutilated hoys and girls who are carried across the sea and sold m the slave markets of Arabia: Iron) the ‘long line’ of slaves carrying gifts from hospitable rulers of Abyssinia to passing visitors to the suffering gang yoked and chained together and driven by the crack of the whip, through the country or to the coast pints for sale as human merchandise: from the slave community of a village, whose tasks are limited to the social requirements of the community, to the conditions that exist along the borders ol the provinces of neighbouring territo.*-

Tbe population of Abyssinia. is IP.nOO.OGO. Of these a quarter are slaves.' In 1922 the League of Nations'embarked upon an inquiry into the whole question of slavery, Lord Lugard being assigned the task of preparing a memorandum upon slavery in Abvssinia.

It was an extremely ab'e document, hut. says Lady Simon, “for sen.. 1 ' reason best known to the Commission itself, it- was decided that a memorandum of this character con'd not lie issued in full to tlie public.’’