FOUR MILLION SLAVES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20426, 5 June 1928, Page 17

FOUR MILLION SLAVES.

WHAT REMAINS TO BE DONE? Three years ago the League of Nations appointed a Slavery Commission which undertook to obtain information as to present conditions of slavery from the States members of the League. Their report was published in 1025. No one can state precisely the number of slaves still existing in the world, but apparently there cannot be fewer than 4,000,000 or 6,000,000. The slave trade appears to be forbidden by law in all States which are members of the League 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, Hcdja, Kufra, Liberia, Morocco, South Morocco, Rio de Oro, East and West Sahara, and South Tripoli (writes Charles Roberts in the Daily News). In Abyssinia slave owning is general, and although slave raiding and trading have been nominally forbidden by law, the Foreign Office White Paper of 1923 shows that the law has been of little effect. Abyssinian slaves not infrequently have escaped into Kenya, raising difficulties for the British authorities. Travellers in recent years have witnessed the cruelties of Abyssinian slaveraids—as one traveller has described it: “ Slavery, open, cruel, and fiendish. . . Gangs of slaves, marching in misery, the men chained together in row's, and the women and children dragging themselves along beside the main body.” Quite recently papers issued by the Sudan Government show that slaves frequently escape over the frontier into British Sudan, where refugee settlements are provided by the Sudan authorities and fugitives arc never, ex cept 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 being sold in South Morocco, South Tripoli, and the Kufra Oasis. It is alleged also that slave-dealing still continues in Liberia. The trade is practised openly, according to the Slavery Commission of the League, in several Mohammedan States .in Arabia, especially the Hedjaz. A clandestine traffic goes on in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. The British Government has proposed that the transport of slaves by sea should be considered as an act of piracy, but this has not yet been agreed to by other Powers. It is encouraging to know that the Slavery Convention of the League of Nations, drawn up in 1926, ,was at once signed by 26 Powers, and all the colonial Powers ha-'e agreed to ratify at an early date.

The British Government has liberated, apart from Sierra Leone, over 250..000 slaves since thet close of the war. In the mandated area of Tanganyika, before the war, there were 185,000 slaves. The system has now been completely abolished, without any compensation to the owners. The Maharajah of Nepal recently carried through, on his own initiative, a great work of emancipation, freeing some 53,000 slaves in his country. Still more recently, the work of Sir Harcourt Butler, in the Triangle, a remote unadministered district of Northern Burmah, has resulted in setting free some 6000 slaves.

Last ytar the decision of the Full Court jn 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 shock to this country, an Ordinance for its abolition having been passed only a year before. The British Government promptly took steps to introduce legislation to abolish the legal status, and an Ordinance was unanimously passed by the Legislative Council giving liberty to the slaves in the Protectorate, who numbered about 215,000 from January 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.