SLAVERY CONTINUES

Hokitika Guardian, 28 February 1931, Page 6

SLAVERY CONTINUES

NEFARIOUS TRADE REVIEWED. 4,000,000 IN SERVITUDE. The business of slavery continues and prospers. Anyone who assumed that Anglo-Saxon idealism and endeavour had ended this nefarious trade would be disillusioned by the recent cable surveying the appalling coalitions in Liberia. But unhappily the West African negro republic is not the only rebel against the public conscience. In other countries the evil thrives to an infinitely worse degree, and it even exists beneath the British flag (states a writer in an Australian paper). A conservative estimate places the number of slaves in the world to-day at 4,000,000, but it is more likely that there are twice that number. Moreover at the present rate of progress, it will take about a thousand years before all these slaves are free men.

In the light of thees facts, the work of Wilberforee and Clarkson is far from completed. The League of Nations through whose agency the Liberian horrors have been revealed, is pledged to oust slavery from the group of bad old institutions which .survive vfrom primitive times. The League’s task calls for the support of humane people in every country, since the enemies of abolition—prejudice, greed, and the peculiar conditions of production in tropical lands—are extremely powerful and obstinate, while evasion is often a simple matter. Weak Administration. Liberia, for instance, will require a firm hand and thorough purgation from her small army of corrupt officials before there is any hope of cleansing her hinterland from the operations of slave-traders. The negro republic has for years possessed a lamentably weak and inefficient administration. Charged with conniving in recent years at slavery in the interior, the Government explained that because “the fundamental law of the republic prescribes in the most emphatic terms that slavery shall not exist in any form,” there could not possibly be any slaves within its territory. This naive assertion on the part of the negro State, wholly ignored the unchecked dealing in slaves on. the frontier and the customary sale of children by needy parents. It has been estimated by competent observers that there are now about 400,000 domestic slaves n Liberia.

All this is very disturbing in a State founded expressly as the Canaan of exslaves from the southern States of America. We come nearer home, however, in considering the case of Abyssinia. For Abyssinio is a member ot the League, and is therefore party to an undertaking “to secure the complete suppression of slavery in all its forms, and the slave trade by land and sea.” The newly-crowned ruler, R.as Tafari, has expressed his willingness to attack the subject wherever he can ; but his good intentions are not likely to come to much unless his memory receives an occasional jog. For one thing, slavery is supported by the religion of the nation, and, for another, it is the chief source of the country’s revenue Hence it is no wondf>r that Abyssinia rperesents the -worst excesses of slavery. A responsible British estimate shows that it posseses 2,000,000

“Hell” in Abyssinia. Much has been written of the horrors of Abyssinia slave trading.. A British Foreign Office publication recently quoted a British officer, who spoke of the “hell” from which Abyssinian slaves had escaped—in this case by an “underground railway” to the Sudan. Another British officer, Major Darley, has described the results of slave raids, stating that he once counted the bodies of more than 50 captives, fallen by the wayside on the march to the coast. He adds: On such journeys there is no' commissariat department, and those who carry no supplies can hope only for a merciftli spear, since the alternative is death by thirst or by the teeth and talons of,i\yiid beasts. These things we have seen .... The depopulation of the border and the absence of adequate polcie forces tempt the Abyssinians to advance farther and farther, and on one occasion no I less than 120 miles into British territory.

In these caravans the slaves, tied neck to neck, are driven along with whips and guns to the coast, helpless against the brutality of the traders, and doomed to unknown miseries after they reach their destination. Multitudes of them arc shipped to Arabia. Lady Simon, in her excellent hook on the subjoct, has quoted an authority who states that about 5000 men, women and children are sold in Arabian markets each year, and “many of these slaves are of British origin.” It is an arresting point, as illustrating the place which the trade maintains for itself in the world, that Abyssinia is entirely surrounded by territory owned by the British, the French and the Italians, and that no slave trader can conduct his human freight beyond the Abyssinian boundaries without passing under British, French or Italian jurisdiction. Here is a medium through which the League is surely capable of acting decisively. Under Union Jack. But it is no use giving way to righteous indignation over tales of slave horrors in these countries, or in Portuguese Africa and China, where the position is notoriously bad, until we have found a way to put our own house in order, It is all too true that successive British Colonial Secretaries have completely failed to abolish the system by which children are sold into domestic servitude in Hong Kong. Air Winston Churchill once grandly ordained that the system should he wiped out within 12 months. His gesture was utterly worthless as it happened, for this type of slavery is part of the social organ-

ism of China. Lord Pnssfield has wis«- 1 lv taken a more cautious step in or- j dewing the immediate registration *’[ these unhappy children—the Alui Tum a s they are called--with the idea of following it up with abolition mensures at a later stage. ; This system offers the most distress-, jug opportunities for cruelty. Some ot tlie tales of torture recall the worst excesses of the Hark Ages. There is no doubt that much of the savagery that seems to lurk within the placid-; seeming Chinese is habitually vented „pon the Alui Tsai, the methods in-j eluding floggings, suspension by the j limbs . the pouring of boiling water J over the hands, amputation of fingers,, torture with hot irons, and the like. Britain's failure to cope with slavery in so small an area is therefore, a measure of the difficul-ties to he con- , fronted before the international problem can he solved. It appears that all nations are responsible for the ex-j istence of slavery and its dire conse-! quences. The machinery of the Lea- j gue is at hand to tackle the problem, but it will be of small avail unless public opinion is aroused in the cause of helpless humanity ami elementary liberty.