Child Slaves Under the British Flag

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 874, 18 January 1930, Page 18

Child Slaves Under the British Flag

Lady Simon Protests Against Selling Human Beings Into Bondage . . . Conditions in Hong Kong Arouse Keen Criticism . . .

■ T is the proud boast of Britons the world over that a slave becomes a free man once he sets foot on soil over which flies the Union Jack. Yet in the British colony of HongKong small boys and girls, bought or stolen from their parents in Chinese territory, are daily being sold into slavery. In 1923 the British Government passed an ordinance forbidding the transfer of children for payment and the employment of girls under 10 years of age as servants. This has remained a dead letter. During the last few months there has been Increased activity among the traffickers in children in Hong-Kong. One one specific date recently there were in the custody of the police no fewer than 20 alleged child-dealers. , Lady Simon, who together with her husband. Sir John Simon, K.C., played an important part in securing the abolition of slavery in Sierra Leone, has taken the matter up, and intends to have questions asked in Parliament. Lady Simon says:—"The affair of little children being bought and sold in an English colony deserves to be shouted from the housetops. All slavery is a terrible thing, but the oppression of helpless little children is cruelty in its most abominable form. “In former times the excuse was always made that the keeping of mu! tsai, or girl slaves, was an old Chinese custom, and to interfere with these inherited practices in the Orient was very dangerous, and might lead to difficulties of administration. “That excuse no longer holds good,

for one of the first things the Chinese did when they established a republic was to abolish the buying and selling of human beings, and slavery of all kinds. Hong-Kong is a British colony, and yet this form of enslavement persists there. My complaint is that the British Government has as yet done nothing effective to put a stop to it. In October, 1919, there was an outcry among British residents. A wave of indignation was aroused which ■ lasted for several years. Ultimately, in 1923, Mr. Winston Churchill, then Secretary of State for the Colonies, issued an Ordinance' proclaiming that slavery is not allowed in the British Empire, and that therefore it must be understood that Mui Tsai are not the property of their owners, and that any of them who wish to leave their employers must be allowed to state their case to the Secretary for Chinese Affairs. Obviously, proclamations of this kind are useless, because the children are illiterate, and even if they were not they are never allowed out of the precincts of their employer’s house or factory. Even in a country like England, where education is compulsory, how many cases are there of ill-treated children finding out what their rights are, and giving information on their own account to the proper authorities? If the people of Britain could realise the hopeless tragedies of these children, they would not be content with the position in which child slavery is officially not recognised, but is also ! not suppressed. British residents in llong-Kong are 1 often startled to hear the most terrible j screams coming from some closely- ; shuttered house. “It is probably a j slave child,’’ is the only explanation I one hears.

Below the hotel in which Commander and Mrs. Haslewood stayed was a Chinese house, the owners of which had many Mui Tsai, one being a tiny girl only eight years old. One evening, on the balcony, they heard this little child giving vent to the most frightful shrieks of pain and terror. The owner of the hotel and his wife informed them that they often heard such screams, as of someone in agony, coming from this house. They brought the matter to the notice of the Chief of Police, the Secretary for Chinese Affairs and others, but nothing could be done. Mrs. Haslewood then wrote to the local Press, protesting against the system, with the result that Commander Haslewood was informed officially that he must stop his wife’s protests or relinquish his appointment He chose to relinquish it rather than retain it on such conditions. There are thousands of these miserable child slaves in Hong-Kong. Some of them are doing domestic work, others are employed in factories. I know of one little girl of twelve who was forced to work ten and a-half hours all through the night In a knitting factory and then to clean down her employer’s house on her return in the morning. Defenders of the system suggest that the slaves of the well-to-do are better off than they would be with the poor and ignorant parents who sold them, or from whom they were kidnapped. The answer to this is to ask: Can anybody be worse off than a helpless and ignorant little girl who may be in a bouse where she is well-fed, though overworked, or in another where she is beaten insensible or tortured by burning? Technically, the Mui Tsai system » adoption, although money is paid for the transfer of the child. The brokers go Into remote parts of China, and dazzle poor parents of large families with glowing descriptions of the happy future before children “adopted” into wealthy households. Boys, as well as girls, are bought or kidnapped. It is stated that a small boy will fetch about 250 dollars, and a girl from 80 dollars, or more If she is pretty. One little girl of eight years of age was sold for 96 dollars, and another was disposed of by heT mother to raise the cash to pay for her father's funeral. To talk of such cases as adoption is to misuse words. Mui Tsai often pass through the hands of several owners, having in the first case been bought cheaply when very youngThey may be Included in the dowry of a rich Chinese bride, they may be sold to factory owners, or into houses of ill-fame. British mothers may need some imagination to picture what may happen to these wretched little girls who are so unlucky as to annoy their owners. One of these, Mrs. Haslewood told me, had been brutally ill-treated by her owner and then turned out of doors. She was found wandering i* the streets of Hong-Kong in such • bruised and wounded condition that | she had to be taken to hospital. Obviously, the Mui Tsai systea* j must be abolished. Otherwise It M j nonsense to say that slavery doe* 5S* [exist trader the British fh*k