SLAVE TRADING IS STILL FLOURISHING.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19270, 6 January 1931, Page 8

SLAVE TRADING IS STILL FLOURISHING.

barbaric custom is carried ON IN ABYSSINIA Thousands of slaves were to be freed as a coronation gesture by Ras Tafari, when he was crowned Emperor of Abyssinia recently. Tafari Makonnen had been striving for 13 years for the emancipation of the slaves in Abyssinia, where a fourth of the people were still in bondage. lie gave it as a pledge when he entered the League of Nations, but while the Empress Zauditu was on the throne, with the Abyssinian chieftains behind her, he could do very little. A writer in a London newspaper stated before the coronation:— 44 Slavetrading still flourishes in the country despite the capital penalties and dire threats of the king, and slave-raiding is still carried out extensively on the Sudan and Kenya borders. British subjects. are carried off. and neither the British slavery patrols nor the fulminations of Ras Tafari can stop it.

“On the north-west frontier where the escarpments of the Ethiopian plateau drops suddenly into the Sudan, the raiders sweep down from the mountains. They round up the Sudanese as cattle-thieves round up herds, and drive them in chains into the highlands. The slavery patrols arrive to find that the mountains have swallowed them up. The raid is invariably connived at by the local chief, who levies tribute on all passing through his country. Canyon King Levies Ransom. “ Ras Hailu, king of Gojjern, a vast tract seven weeks journey from the capital and from the mailed fist of Tafari Makonnen, takes a regular levy from the slave-traders. The Emperor will have first to force his will on Hailu, who can mass an army of hundreds of thousands and is secure behind a canyon of the Hlue Nile 6000 feet deep, sheer precipice with only two tracks across. That canyon nearly surrounds Gojjem and could be held against an army of a million. But Hailu has now to reckon with the Imperial air force Ras Tafari is building up. After Hailu, there are the shiftas and after that the traders have to be caught. The trail of the slave-traders leads through difficult and deserted country, skirting the North of Abyssinia and reaching the coast at French Somaliland. “The British authorities at Djibuti, the port of the French colony, are kept posted of the movements of the slavers with their consignments of ‘ black ivory.’ They know that there is a concentration camp where the slaves are held until a favourable moment for shipping them to Arabia. But the French authorities maintain they know nothing about it. French gunboats formerly stationed at Djibuti for slave patrol have been sent home. “ Old British gunboats relegated to the slave patrol are not as fast as a dhow with the wind behind, which simply tacks off the course of its pursuer in the darkness. “ Between Obok and Mocha there is ‘ Slave Island,’ where the traders break the voyage. There in pits are kept the slaves waiting transfer. From there the traders run the gauntlet again with the patrol. If the chase becomes hot the dhow will drop a slave overboard so that the gunboat has to stop to pick it up. “ Once an Abysinnian trader, hotly chased, threw his whole cargo of 120 slaves overboard. The King of Kings, the Conquering Lion of Judah, is going to find that his plans for emancipation meet with violent and militant opposition.”