Contrary to popular belief, slavery has existed and still exists outside of the American South.
The Dark World of the Arab Child Slave Trade
While tens of thousands of adults are also victims of Arab slavers, many people only first took notice of the Arab slave trade in children when reports of enslaved child camel jockeys emerged from Persian Gulf countries. A 2004 HBO documentary on the subject was especially responsible for making Americans aware of this modern-day barbarism. These boys, who were sold by poor parents hoping their offspring would some day experience a better life, were primarily from South Asia. But instead of a life of dignity and meaningful work, they wound up in the Middle East where they were made to race camels for their Arab masters. Beaten and often sexually abused, they were all kept undernourished, so that the camels would have less weight to carry.
When investigating in the 1990s the enslavement of hundreds of thousands of black Africans in Mauritania by Arab-Berber masters, African-American author Samuel Cotton was stunned to discover that African children were still being kidnapped by Arabs traveling with camels carrying big baskets. The child, usually playing alone, would suddenly be snatched from its play and placed in one such basket, after which its new owners hurried away. The children, he was told, are sometimes found later “hundreds of miles away as slaves.”
Black African children are also not always stolen so surreptitiously. Until recently in the southern Sudan, the old-fashioned slave raid witnessed villages being burned down, the men killed and the women and children captured. This was the Arab slavers’ main harvesting tool of humans. Thousands of children were captured by this murderous method and forcibly taken as agricultural, domestic and sex slaves to Arab northern Sudan — where many still languish today. Darfur has also seen many children disappear from both refugee camps and towns subjected to central government attack. They are suspected victims of Arab slave hunters.
But it is not only non-Arab children who are Arab child slave trade victims. An Egyptian newspaper, referring to a 2008 UNICEF report, stated Egyptian children are being bought and sold for about $3,000 for “domestic work and farming, among other things.” This trade in children is so extensive in Egypt, organizations are “employing brokers, and even operating their own web sites.
“Many are also sent to the Gulf States, with orphanages being a major supplier,” the story further reports.
READ THE WHOLE THING: The Dark World of the Arab Child Slave Trade
It is sickening that the world ignores what is happening right now as we speak. They are too busy blaming America and Israel for every wrong to open their eyes and see this travesty in real time.
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Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery
Two Views of The History of Islamic Slavery in Africa
Darfur slaughter rooted in Arab-African slavery
Nepal: Nepali women victims of prostitution and slavery in Arab countries
Saudi sheik: ‘Slavery is a part of Islam’
Where Slavery is Not a Metaphor
Tags: Arab slavery, Slavery
