INFAMOUS COMMERCE – SLAVERY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 196, 22 August 1935, Page 10

INFAMOUS COMMERCE - SLAVERY

TRAFFIC IN HUMAN BEINGS DEEPLY ROOTED IN ABYoMNIA WHERE MERCILESS RAIDS ARE MADE ON VILLAGES

It Mas not so long ago that J. stood in the glaring mud walled market place in Morocco and with my own eyes saw men, women and children—both black and white (Moors) — auctioned off like cattle, says Ignatius Phayrc in “Ciirrc,’it History. ’ That fateful scene, like a Greek drama, opened with prayer chanted by seven dilals or salesmen. Mounted on a stage above the throng and swaying joined hands, they called down blessings on the day’s deals—“in the name of God, the most Merciful and Compassionate.” Inside the wide market stood or squatted hundreds of gaily dressed men. A dilal prances by, clutching with one arm a hefty young Negro and with the other a Moorish girl—- “ Great is God ... O my lords, behold the strength and beauty of the desert!”—one of the watchers beckons. Our salesman darts over to him. My lord examines the girl gently. Three hundred dollars is the bid. Away speeds the auctioneer, dragging his helpless and yelling the price; “Any advance on that for my pearl?” At rough tables in the centre sit languid scribes to receive the money and write out deeds of life and death labour.

Slaves are sold to-day in 13 different countries—several of them members of tho League of Nations. Tn the Empire of Abyssinia, a League member, slavery and serfdom are deeply rooted. Its ruler, Haile Selassie, is a “modern” and enlightened .man, yet his domain has at least 2,000,000 slaves taken by merciless raids on the tribes of the interior. Rifle and spearmen a thousand strong swoop on a village in the dark, blowing shrill horns, yelling and shooting Io induce a panic. Then huts are set ablaze, and in the stamnede old folks arc slain. The sick and exhausted are loft to die where they fall, or to be de-

voured by wild beasts. Young men, women and children are rounded up to be chained and yolked in caravans for the long trail. As many as 8000 human beings have been taken at one time for the “domestic” markets. Much more serious political- '■ are the organised Ethiopian ihunts in British territory. Nearly 200 have occurred in the past few years. Cattle are driven off; ivory, as well as human beings, is stolen. Similar raids have been made in Kenya and Somaliland. The Emperor’s edicts tend to make these crimes more furtive in the hot, unhealthy lowlands of Abyssinia itself, where slave recruiting among the Negro villages is a regular event. The King of Kings does all he can to block it. He has set up an anti-slave department in Addis Ababa, and a committee has been formed to combat the traditional slave system. Slave labour, nevertheless, is still eagerly sought, whether in the form of absolute property as in Arabia, or in the guise of serfdom, peonage and forced

labour as in South America and the Portuguese colonies. In China, where human life is cheap, the buying and selling of slaves has never ceased. To-day, there are millions of them even in the more “advanced’ provinces; one may guess regions beyond the control of Nanking. Yet Africa, remains the great emporium of “The Trade.” The Paris “Matin” has found that among the lowly tribes of Abyssinia, whir-h human enttlo for .Addis Ababa and other local markets. sHt-ac <» nT | pn '-’nt bv “negotiation” as well as by violent means. “When a v'bago is too r»nnr ” ono of the Arabs told a “Matin” r n norter. “nv ?-P nTdnf ic willing to nav his + n xes. we settle the taxes in slave levies. These wo deposit for saf'tv in nr»n rf tho hi<*h rock villages, whoso warriors will anmvl nn.» otoni- v-n nn-r- them. The white mon were taken to see a slave haul. Through narrow alleys tho investigators passd blind walls, then into mud courts, whore armed guards stood watch over mysterious collars. One of fl.*™ “mluaJ th a iJn»v n ah/I wn nccred down.

J lore wo saw four sleeping women. Three more lay in another dungeon, four men in a third. Not one of them stirred an eyelid* they must have been half elead.’ “We start to-night.” the Arab told his French visitors. “We only travel by night : it is safer that way.” The J Teiichirien followed him to an island oil. Italy >s Somali coast where his captives were to be sold. For safety the dealer bought Ethiopian passports for the cattle packed on his fastsailing sambouk. They now figure as -Moslem pilgrims to the Holy City! This is the infamous commerce which European warships try to break up. The British Navy’s watch involves endless strain in the hottest waters on earth. Sloops patrol the 1. ersian Gulf to stop slave and gnu running. British vessels, aided by Italian gunbm'ts and Fro”■ lie in wait in the Ked Sea, which is still the main route for black ivory cargoes, ret they are far from cfTcefhe. “We do catch the slave dhows now and then,” a naval officer at Aden remarked to me. “But they are very fast. They have Iheir own spy system, too, and lots of hiding-places in shallow reefs where we can’t follow them. Each skipper is a daring seaman, lie sails in the dark without any lights. He scuds close inshore, to thread his way through rocky shallows where no other craft could live. For one boat we. capture, perhaps a dozen make the Ar.’h»”n shor<» and deliver, their lining goods to the two main markets of Mecca and Taif. The captain of an English cargo ship sighted one of these slavers at dawn, “packed from end to end of her open waist with stalwart Negroes seated on benches and evidently fastened bv their ankles to the bottom. About 12 or 14 were stowed ibreast in 20 rows. That meant some 200 to 300 poor wretches

in one vessel.” In this case the English captain could do little but give out by wireless the position of the slaver in the hope that one of the three nations’ warships would arrest, her. Forty nations signed the 'League’s Slavery Convention, but its machinery was feeble and slack. Sir Austen Chamberlain sought to make slave running an act of piracy, in which case its perpetrators could be hanged or drowned, and the property confiscated. But indifference persisted, and as a result the trade is even increasing as economic conditions m Arabia improve. A former officer of the British Preventive service reckoned that as many as 5000 men, women and children were carried across the Red Sea each year, many of them from Britain’s own territories. Slaves who survive to reach the auctions in the realm of the warrior King, Abdul IbnSaud, are treated kindly, often as members of the family. Theological students in the Holy City marry women who are owned by Arabs. But all offspring

of such unions belong to Sharia, or religious law, to the ■women’s owner. Meanwhile new supplies are being constantly landed in a vast domain nearly one-third the size of Europe. Ibn-Saud by the treaty of Jidda (1927) has undertaken to cooperate with Great Britain to suppress the slave trade, but like Haile Selassie of Abyssinia, he is not a free agent in the matter. There is Islam’s warrant to 300,000,000 of the faithful that they may own slaves if they so desire. And so to-day, in a narrow street in Mecca, you will find the shops of traders in human beings. Outside the tall houses are stone benches, the display counters on which sit men and women and children tor sale. Nothing can end this iniquity but the remedy prescribed by Lady Simon, wife of the British Foreign and a leader in a movement to suppress the traffic. “There is but one weapon to hand,” she declares. “That is public opinion—at once the weakest and strongest weapon in the cause of human pro- ■ gross; weak, when dormant, but invincible when once roused to the ril-l, ..