SLAVE TRAFFIC

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22142, 22 June 1935, Page 2 (Supplement)

SLAVE TRAFFIC

PRESENT-DAY OPERATIONS * A LOATHSOME TRADE " )> STARTLING REVELATIONS FIFTEEN COUNTRIES INVOLVED Who would believe—unless the First Lord of her Admiralty had told us—that even now Britain sends into the " hot " seas fourteen sloops of war " with slave-trade instructions?" writes Mostyn Pc>Je in the Canadian National Home Monthly. Or that one of tho officers engaged in these pirate-hunts— Commander Hugh Woodward, R.N.— considered that five thousand men, women and children were swooped across the Bed Sea each year in fast sailing-craft to be sold by auction or private treaty, exactly as our farmers sell their cows or sheep or pigs? Buyers of . these human "cattle" have life-or-death power o r er this flesh-and-blood /'property." Prices range from £5 or so for an old man to £BO or more for a pretty young girl. And as all such "stock" can be got for nothing in armed raids, it is clear that the "black ivory" trade can eclipse gold mining as a short cut to riches. " But " —I hear you object—" surely all that is past—like legal torture or the burning alive of heretics?" You are mistaken. Slavery still exists in fifteen countries. And some of these are even members of the League of Nations! Consider our old friend, Ibn Saud, the warrior Lord of Arabia. That romantic king signed a treaty with us, / promising to do his best to block the 6ale or purchase of human beings. But what can he do? The Moslem religion—of 300,000,000 people!—allows any man to own chattel slaves. ; Markets in Mecca Moreover, in Ibn Saud's Holy City of Mecca (which we helped him to win) you will at this hour see a street of shops with stone counters outside for the display of living "goods" of all sorts; the middle-aged and children; young men and women too, of all shades of colour from the nearly white to the ebony black. Past these "unthinkable" /department stores stroll crowds of welldressed pilgrims and merchants, idle sightseers ar d serious customers too, intent on a shrewd " buy." These last stop to inspect the latest arrivals—who squat or lounge on the high benches of that narrow lane. An eager salesman points to a hefty lad who eyes a possible owner with a carefree smile. "A bargain at £4O! With muscles of steel. Healthy and gay, warranted for years of labour in the house or farm or sstable .." It is to dry up the "wholesale" sources of these slave-shops, both in Mecca and all other marts, that Sir Bolton Eyre!?. Monsell, our First Sea Lord, devotes some of his energy. "A loathsome trade," I heard him call it at a Parliamentary luncheon, with the Speaker of the House of Commons in the chair, the Primate and Sir John Simon listening intently as the Navy's Minister told of sloops of war which lie in wait for the man-stealers of Africa. His revelations made me regret that the Admiralty so rarely unbares its secrets in public. Horrors Undreamed Of " Only a short time ago," Sir Bolton Eyres Monsell told us, "the rumour ran that some of our ships were too slow to catch up with the Arab slavedhows. As a result the nokhadas, or native captains, had time to tie stones on the legs of their living cargo and pitch them overboard! Hearing that, we sent some of our fastest destroyers into the Red Sea."

, Through those torrid waters pass luxury-liners full of dancers and diners.

Such happy Folk never dream of the horrors which those fly-by-night sails can hide. Those swift slavers scud through the stifling dark with no lights showing—and their masters are ready to race for shelter (at our warships' challenge) into reefy shallows where H.M.S. Penzance or Hastings cannot follow them at all.

The sloops that chase these manstcalers are of 1025 tons and 16 knots, mounting two 4in. guns. French and Italian gunboats take part in the hunt. For the Arab dhows and sambouks are pirates under international law. As

Buch, their crews may be hanged or drowned and their living cargoes confiscated. But what then? Who is to care for a shipload of chained or yolked men, •women and children—perhaps seized afar off in Abyssinia, or even in our own Nile Provinces of the Sudan, or in Kenya, Uganda .and Somaliland ? This economic/; poser crops up always with liberated slaves, whether in China,

Liberia, Arabia or Africa itself. Boat Pstcked With Negroes , But if P. and O. passengers and happy people on a cruise have never had contact with a slaver, slow tramp steamers of England's merchant marine know them well. That "Narrow Sea" between the world's two hugest continents is only 185 miles wide between Suakin and Jeddah—the port of Mecca, whose incredible "slave-shops" I have described. And thanks to the Foreign Minister's Lady Simon, that devoted worker in a cause which is still acute, I have had a sight of the letter of an officer in a cargo boat. At dawn his man on watch sighted a graceful craft darting over from the African shore with a "force five" (or moderate) wind on her beam. Suddenly her huge mainsail crumpled down with a crash which made that tramp's captain hurry up on deck from his earlymorning tea. " Go in close," he ordered. "We must see what that rascal's up to!" As we closed her, we could hear heartrending cries coming down wind. Soon we could peer into her open waist, and saw it packed from end to end with stalwart negroes; they were seated on thwarts, and evidently made fast by the ankles at the bottom. Twelve or fourteen were stowed abreast, and there were about twenty rows of them. That meant some 200 to 300 of these poor wretches in a single vessel! Smart Navigation " We sidled near enough to mark the sweat that glistened on their black skins to outline a fine physique. And the whites of their eyes were startlingly clear as they yelled in terror at the noise of the tumbling sail on top of them. While the dhow's crew were busy with the main halliards, their nokhadu or chief glared at us in a manner to blister the paint on our sides! Perhaps he knew what the crackling of our wireless meant, as we gave out his position to the Naval patrols that lay in lurk. "As a 'stick-and-string* ship, that craven craft was a beauty as she curtsied to us on the short sea. Not a man or boy of our company but longed for the old order, cutlass in hand—- ' Prepare to board!' But her great lateen sail was soon up again and filled. Off sped that nimble slaver like a hunted deer, to make her way to market through a maze of sheltering reefs." Where do these flesh-and-blood cargoes come from P All over Africa. Even our own possessions are raided, as Lord Hailsham told the House of Lords. But Abyssinia is a notable hunting-ground. Apt its Christian Emperor is a "modern" man, ono who flies a tri-motored aeroplane, with a Swiss pilot. But as "King of Kings," he has Petty rulers galore to deal with in a

loose realm whose peoples shade away into downright savagery. In his capital, Addis Ababa, he set up an Anti-Slavery Bureau and put his late Minister to Rome in charge of it. But the buying and selling of human cattle is ingrained in that empire, as it is also in King Ibn Saud's.

Can you wonder, then, that Sir John Simon appeals for new "crusading zeal," since "there still remain black and ugly places in the world?" Our First Lord, too, tells of the Navy's pride in "stopping the recruitment" of an almost unbelievable trade. Time was when Britain had fifty-six warships in many seas on this preventive service. By 1875 this little-known duty had already cost the Admiralty £50,000,000.

"Ours is a difficult patrol," a Naval officer assured me. "Those Arab dhows can do up to fifteen knots, and often they show us a clean pair of heels among islets and reefs where we dare not venture. We do pounce on "black ivory" consignments now and then. But how many of them slip through our net in waters which they know as they do their own houses?

"And just when we're losing them how are we to pump live shell from our four-inchers into frail craft loaded with helpless humanity that are yolkecl nt-ck to neck, or else chained to the floor. What we really need is a fleet of fast sea-going motor-boats based, say, on Perim, with a keen eye kept on the Strait of Bab el-Mandeb and the notorious slave-ports of Obok and Tajourah." But as we all know, our Navy is now at low ebb; we can't spare vessels of any l;ype to scotch this infamous "black ivory" trade forever. Anyway, wo British have done our best ever since Burl;e long ago pressed the House of Commons "to pay the price of virtue" in this matter. But what about those | other thirty-nine nations who've joined the Hague's Slavery Convention ? If they would only pay their bit—in public sentiment as well as in hard cash—all those human cattle-ships and "shops" would soon be out of business for 'vant of the two-legged "goods" which our First Lord and Foreign Minister have so lately deplored. And how amazed were our own folk's, at homo and overseas, who thought "slaves" only lived in their history books to-day!