FOUR MILLION SLAVES

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 16 June 1928, Page 11

FOUR MILLION SLAVES

'JHIREE years ago the League of Nations appointed a Slavery Commission which undertook to obtain information as to present conditions of slavery from the States membei's of the League Their report was published in i 926. No one can state precisely the number of slaves still existing in the world, but apparently there cannot be iewer than 4,0d.J,(W0 or 5,000',(XX). The .siave trade appears to be forbidden by law in all States which are members or the Leageu of Nations, but the report referred to some 18 or 19 political areas in which slave trading, slave, raiding, or similar acts still occur. These include Abyssinia, China, Eritrea, the Far East, liedja, Ku.ra, Liberia, Morocco, South Morocco, Rio de Oro, East and West Sahara, and South Tripoli Charles Roberts in the London 'Daily* News’ ). In Abyssinia slave owning is general, and although slave raiding and trading have been nominally forbidden by Jaw, the Foreign Office White Taper of 1923 shows that the. law lias been of little extent. A.byssinian slaves .have not imrequently escaped into Kenya, raising diniculties for.the British authorities. Travelleis of recent years have witnessed the cruelties of Abyssinian slave-raids —as one traveller has described it: “Slavery, open, cruel, and fiendish. . . Gangs of slaves marching in misery, the men chained together in rows, and the women and children dragging themselves along beside the main body.”

Quite recently papers issued by the Sudan Government show that slaves , reqientlv escape over the frontier into British Sudan, where refugee settlements are piovided by the Sudan authorities, and fugitives are never, except in cases of proved crime, returned to Abyssinia, in spite of the appeals of the native rulers There can be little doubt that- slave dealing and slavery are still common in China on a large scale. Slave raiding in remote districts of Africa—for example, on the borders of the Sahara—still goes on. the slaves :eing sold in South Morocco, South Tripoli, and the KulTa Oasis. It is alleged also that slave-dealing still continues in Liberia. The trade s practised openly, according to the

WHAT REMAINS TO BE DONE ?

slavery Commission of the League, in. .several Mohammedan States in Arabia, especially the Hedjaz. A clandestine tnuiic goes on in-the Red Sea and the rersiun Gulf. The British Government has proposed that the transport of slaves by sen should be considered as an a: t o- piracy, but this has not yet ijeen agreed to by other Powers. It is encouraging to Know that the Slavery convention or. the League of Nations, drawn up hr 19z6, was at once signed oy 2d Powers, and all the colonial rowers have agreed to ratify at an eariv date.

The British Government has liberated, apart, from .Sierra Leone, over ibo,U..v> .slaves since the close of - the war. In the mandated territory of tangan., ilia, before the war, there were tSjjdOo slaves. The system has been lompletely- abolished, without any- oomyensation to the owners. The Maharajah or .Sepal recently- carried through, on his own initiative, a great work of emancipation, neeiiig some 53,000 slaves in his country. Still more reeently the worn of Sir Harcourt jßntler in the Triangle, a remote unadminisrered district of Northern Burmah, has resulted in .setting free some 6000 slaves.

Last year the decision of the Full Court in Sierra Leone declaring slavery to be legal in the Protectorate, and recognising the right of a master to claim his fugitive slave, came as a Mock to this country, an Ordinance for its abolition having been passed only* a. year bef. re. The British Government promptly took steps to introduce legislation to abolish the legal status, and an Ordinance was unanimously passed jy the Legisaltive Council giving liberty to the slaves in the Protectorate, who numbered about 215,009, from •J anuary 1. . But the most pressing and insidious danger of the present day is probably slavery in disguised forms, such as certain forms of contract labour, compulsory labour for private profit (which has been authoritatively declared to be of the nature of slavery); peonage, or debt slavery (which prevails widely in certain South American States), and the enslaving of children under the fiction of adoption, which exists throughout the greater part- of China.