Today's slavery - after abolition
-- CARICOM must go beyond shouting `compensation’ calls
By Rickey Singh
Guyana Chronicle
April 1, 2007
TODAY, as the Caribbean region continues to lament the consequences of the horrors of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, let it be clearly understood that the persistence of modern day slavery in various forms, is certainly no "all fool's day" joke on this April 1 date in this seventh year of the 21st century.
It is very much the dark, shameful, degrading experience across continents -- including the victims of our own Caribbean-Latin American region -- as being manifested in child slavery and trafficking for a heinous sex trade and exploitation of cheap labour for industry and commerce.
The world-wide web is full of case studies of the legacy of slavery, long after the abolition of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade; of the thriving businesses in sex slavery and child slavery in countries, including Britain.
While confessions including those for the Church's role in slavery are being made, and genocidal tribal conflicts continue to affect millions of lives in African states, it is also healthy to recall the complicity of those of the continent of Africa in enslaving fellow Africans, as well as the involvement in later years of those of the continent of Asia who were driven by the profit-motive to sustain the awful system of indentureship.
When we witness the television images of the Haitian "boat people" risking their lives to find refuge in the United States of America, it may be less difficult to count those who die at sea than the many, including child slaves, suffering and dying in abject poverty and scandalous racism right across their border in the Dominican Republic.
Yet, CARICOM governments conduct their businesses with countries in this hemisphere, including Haiti and the Dominican Republic, as if unmindful of persistent forms of modern slavery.
Of course, this should come as no surprise if such governments have no compulsion to speak out against the human rights atrocities that continue as a norm in states of African once raided by Europe for centuries for the flourishing Trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Now, as the Caribbean joins in commemorating the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, there is a crescendo of calls for erection of appropriate monuments; for official apologies and compensation from those whose economic kingdoms and political/military power are historically rooted in the horrors of man's inhumanity to man -- slavery.
There is a rising anger being demonstrated with cries of "barbarism", "genocide" and "holocaust" across the Caribbean Community.
They are particularly pronounced in what were the main regional centres of epic revolts by the enslaved -- Haiti (led by Toussaint L'Ouverture); Jamaica (the Maroons); Suriname (the Bush Negroes) and in Guyana (the Berbice uprising of Cuffy and Accabre).
Inevitably, comparisons are now being made with the Jewish holocaust, and not without good reason, by those demanding reparations for slavery.
But it is also quite a just demand of history for the descendants of slaves -- in whose names compensation is officially being demanded -- to remember that the greatest victims of the longest and most massive holocaust were the aborigines of the Americas.
History remains littered with the destruction of the American Indians -- the mass murders, promoted suicides and spread of diseases that had occurred in the greedy quest for wealth and power that had preceded and converged with the Trans-Atlantic trade in human cargo from Africa.
The really sad, tragic story of our time as we celebrate -- if that is the correct word -- the abolition of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade by an act of the British parliament, is the haunting reminder of the persistence of different forms of slavery.
Sources/Destinations
The most sinister of such human degradation is today known simply by an official acronym TIP -- trafficking in persons.
Read that to mean a criminal operation involving, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC), approximately 27 million people who, at any given time, may be entrapped in a market in human commodity valued around US$32 billion.
This commodity is sourced from various member countries of the United Nations and including Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, with common destinations often being Japan, the United States of America, Thailand, Italy, Turkey Germany and Israel.
The modern day human cargo, of trafficked persons as fodder for the sex trade and/or cheap and viciously exploited labour, comes in different nationalities, ethnicities and colours. Some are children, less than 10 years of age.
Among them are 21st century descendants of victims of the holocausts of the American Indians and African slaves, and also those from Asia who were connected with the degrading indenture system of contractual servitude in British colonies in the Caribbean -- foremost being British Guiana and Trinidad and Tobago.
Saying 'sorry’ for slavery, as Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair has done, could be a first step towards a more practical response to compensate the descendants of former slaves -- in the thinking, as expressed last week by Barbados Prime Minister Owen Arthur and Guyana President, Bharrat Jagdeo.
More importantly, what is CARICOM's common approach in determining the most appropriate ways to secure and utilise the reparation being sought?
Monuments, whatever their forms and locations, do have their place in efforts to perpetuate remembrance. What may be more desirable -- and give better meaning to such monuments -- are sustainable human resource development programmes and projects that touch the lives of the descendants of slaves as well as those of their fellow citizens who comprise the population of any parish or district of our Caribbean Community.
Observance of this bicentenary of the abolition of slavery has been proposed by the current chairman of CARICOM, Vincentian Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves, as an occasion for both Europe and our region to forge a partnership for "righting historic wrongs"; and to "justly summon a cleansing of the spirit and of the historical decks..."
For me, this moment in time presents not only a challenge for Europe and the U.S. to consider practical forms of compensation to benefit the descendants of slaves.
Also, for us as a Caribbean people to engage in critical re-examination of our institutions, political parties, governments, social organisations and, yes, the media, to better come to terms with the racial and religious bigotry, the culture of class arrogance and social prejudices that remain barriers to foster national and regional unity.
Such an approach could well influence more caring attitudes for ensuring fundamental human rights and, in so doing, serve notice on governments to be ever vigilant against crimes of human trafficking and child labour that are notorious manifestations of today's modern form of slavery.
This bicentenary of the abolition of slavery may also be a good time to revisit some very significant and quite relevant published works of our history, culture and development. Among them could be:
Eric Williams' "Capitalism and Slavery"; Walter Rodney's "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa"; CLR James' "The Black Jacobins"; George Lamming’s "Natives of My Person"; Clive Thomas' "The Poor and the Powerless" and Rex Nettleford's "Mirror Mirror".
Let us all strive to be vigilant against any form of slavery and the sin of racism that was a core feature of the economics of the slave trade.