Every 19 June for more than 150 years African Americans across the US have celebrated freedom from slavery. Guardian US reporter Kenya Evelyn explores the significance of Juneteenth, how celebrations have evolved over the years and looks at whether it is time for the holiday to receive federal recognition
Continue reading...Category Archives: Slavery
Labour’s left uneasy with leader’s view on tearing down Colston statue
Keir Starmer condemns ‘criminal damage’ but says we can’t have ‘a slaver on a statue’
The Labour leader, Keir Starmer, sparked unease among some on the left of his party on Monday, as he condemned as “completely wrong” the tearing down of the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol at the weekend.
Starmer and the shadow home secretary, Nick Thomas-Symonds, said they shared the sense of injustice that had brought more than 100,000 people out on to the streets of the UK to join Black Lives Matter protests in recent days.
Continue reading...Britain’s urban fabric comes under spotlight shone by BLM protests
Force of history demands re-evaluation of colonial statues and street names
Cities have always been about apportioning and memorialising power; about writing force into space. Britain’s colonial and imperial past is inscribed into the bricks and mortar of every city and town in the country. Mostly this hidden text of power relations and wealth acquisition lies dormant in the half-forgotten significance of street names, in the knotty iconography of grand facades, in the barely read inscriptions on memorials and sculptures, in the nomenclature of grand public buildings. Forming the backdrop of lived lives, these omnipresent clues are rarely fully decoded. The most monumental of sculptures has a habit of fading away to near invisibility if it is sufficiently familiar.
At times, though, such associations are activated and become urgent. So it has been in the case of the long-running affair of Edward Colston, who made his fortune in the 17th century from the enslavement of thousands of Africans.
Continue reading...Cheers as Bristol protesters pull down statue of 17th century slave trader – video
Black Lives Matters protesters in Bristol have pulled down a statue of the slave trader Edward Colston, whose company transported more than 100,000 slaves from West Africa to the Caribbean and the Americas between 1672 and 1689. Demonstrators attached a rope to the Grade II-listed statue, pulled it down and rolled it into the city's harbour. It follows the toppling of several Confederate statues during Black Lives Matter protests in the US
- BLM protesters topple statue of Bristol slave trader Edward Colston
- George Floyd protests: latest coverage
NHS urged to avoid PPE gloves made in ‘slave-like’ conditions
In securing PPE for NHS staff working on coronavirus frontline, government must not ignore abuse of factory workers, warn activists
The government must not ignore the “slave-like” conditions of migrant workers making rubber medical gloves in Malaysia in its rush to source protective equipment to keep frontline NHS staff safe from coronavirus, human rights groups say.
Malaysia is the world’s largest producer of rubber gloves, but the industry has been accused of grossly exploiting its workforce, mostly impoverished migrants from Bangladesh and Nepal.
Continue reading...Beaten, raped and forced to work: why I’m exposing the scandal of Nigeria’s house girls
Mariam and Edna were just two of millions of children trapped in domestic slavery. Their tragic stories inspired me to write a novel targeting a practice that is rife in the country
One day, when my daughter was eight, I asked her to help me unload the dishwasher. She moaned, dragged her feet and pleaded for Haribo in exchange for this simple task. I asked her if she knew how lucky she was and told her that, in many homes in Nigeria, girls as young as her were forced to do chores all day, every day. They were not allowed to go to school, or eat at the table, or watch TV. She was amazed. Looking into her face, the horror of what was considered so normal during my childhood really hit me. It was child slavery – and it continues today. It was for these forgotten girls, trapped in domestic slavery, that I wrote my debut novel, The Girl With the Louding Voice.
According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), the number of working children under the age of 14 in Nigeria is estimated to be as high as 15 million, but due to the nature of the problem it is almost impossible to land on an accurate number. A large proportion of these children are young girls, who work as “house girls”: domestic servants who are often underage and forced against their will into this kind of work. Many of them never see their “wages”, as they are paid directly to agents or family members.
Continue reading...Samoan chief found guilty of enslaving villagers in New Zealand over 25 years
Joseph Auga Matamata, who brought people to Hastings where they were forced to work without pay and subjected to abuse, also convicted of slavery
A New Zealand-based Samoan chief has been found guilty of human trafficking and using 13 of his countrymen as slaves over a 25 year period.
Joseph Auga Matamata, 65, also known as Villiamu Samu, was found guilty on 10 counts of trafficking and 13 counts of slavery following a five-week trial at the High Court in Napier.
Continue reading...Anti-slavery tsar calls for councils to take on child trafficking cases
Expert calls for Home Office to lose powers but councils say they are struggling to cope
The UK’s independent anti-slavery commissioner has called for decision-making on child trafficking cases to be taken away from the Home Office.
Sara Thornton told the Independent that local authorities should take over the powers because they are better placed to provide subsequent support for the child.
Continue reading...Tacky’s Revolt review: Britain, Jamaica, slavery and an early fight for freedom
Vincent Brown’s military history sheds precious light on a brutally suppressed revolt which paved the road to abolition
By 1690, Jamaica was the jewel of Britain’s American possessions. An economy largely based on the production of sugar brought wealth and led to the beginnings of an imperial system.
Related: Another Mother review: Jamaica memoir skips island's darker history
Continue reading...Canada mining firm accused of slavery abroad can be sued at home, supreme court rules
Case brought by three Eritreans against Nevsun Resources can continue as companies operating overseas face new legal risk
A Vancouver-based mining company can be sued in Canada for alleged human rights abuses overseas including allegations of modern slavery, Canada’s supreme court has ruled.
The decision means three Eritreans who filed a civil suit against Nevsun Resources in British Columbia can continue their case in a lower court.
Continue reading...‘Coal workers are orphans’: the children and slaves mining Pakistan’s coal
Injuries and fatalities are common among thousands of debt-bonded men and children toiling in one of the world’s harshest work environments
All photographs by Mashal Baloch
The spectre of death hovers over the coal mines of Balochistan. Under scorching skies, this turbulent south-west region of Pakistan is home to one of the world’s harshest work environments, where tens of thousands of men and children descend below the surface each day to dig up thousands of tonnes of coal.
The threats of underground explosions, methane gas poisoning, suffocation, or mine walls collapsing are omnipresent and there is barely a single worker across the state’s five massive commercial coal mines who has not been touched by the fatalities that are common here.
Continue reading...How Nepal’s migration ban traps female ‘modern day slaves’ in the Gulf
Rules intended to protect domestic workers have only made them more vulnerable to exploitation and abuse, say activists
Amita* knew she had to escape. After five months of being assaulted, starved and being forced to work for 20 hours a day as a domestic maid in a suburban house in Kuwait, the 45-year old from Nepal seized her chance. While the household slept, she climbed out of a downstairs bathroom window and fled.
Amita managed to find the Nepali embassy, hoping that staff there would assure her safety and help send her home to Kathmandu.
Continue reading...Thailand hit by record number of human trafficking cases
About 60% of those rescued last year were women, often trafficked for seafood industry or sex trade
Thailand rescued a record 1,807 victims of human trafficking last year, according to data that campaigners on Monday said raised concerns about the nation’s ability to support survivors.
The number of victims soared from 622 in 2018, while the previous high was 982 in 2015, the government data showed.
Continue reading...Poverty-stricken Hungarians are easy pickings for traffickers on Facebook
Promises of a better life in many social media posts are often a trap for marginalised communities such as the Roma
In the village of Bag, north-east of Budapest, the houses along the main street are smart and well-kept. Tucked behind, up a slight hill, where the buildings become bare brick and the tarmac road turns into a dust track, people sit on the ground in the afternoon sun, talking and playing cards.
These are the Roma, or the Roma who remain in Hungary, where they live on society’s edge, clinging on in the outskirts of towns and villages, shunned and stigmatised as potential criminals.
Continue reading...Field of broken dreams: football’s slave trade – photo essay
All they want is to do is play professionally, but for many young hopefuls from Africa their expensive journey to Turkey ends in exploitation
• Photographs by Italo Rondinella
For months, Yves Kibendo woke up every morning at 6am. He would leave his house in an ancient area of Istanbul, returning late in the evening, after working for 12 hours in a textile factory.
He was paid under the table, or sometimes not at all.
Continue reading...Australian paedophiles pay as little as $15 for online abuse of children in Philippines
Australian federal police say livestreaming of children performing sexual acts marks ‘alarming shift’
Australian paedophiles are paying as little as A$15 for children to perform sexual acts online while being filmed in the Philippines, according to the head of the Australian federal police team in Manila.
Senior officer Andrew Perkins told Guardian Australia there was an “alarming shift” from previously more common types of “sex tourism” to “convenient and low-risk” online abuse of children which can be customised to the specific requirements of customers.
Continue reading...‘Freedom or death’: a slave rebellion returns to life – video
Performance artist Dread Scott recreates the largely untold story of the 1811 slave rebellion in southern Louisiana. Winding through old plantation country, petrochemical plants and the city of New Orleans, the Guardian followed re-enactors along the route
Continue reading...‘A story about freedom’: why an artist is re-enacting a forgotten slave revolt
Hundreds of people dressed in costume will reconstruct an 1811 Louisiana slave uprising, the largest in US history
In the middle of a grassy traffic island, adjacent to a nondescript strip mall in southern Louisiana, stands the only physical memorial to an event that rocked the racist foundations of the United States.
A brown plaque, erected to commemorate a plantation home, has one short, embossed aside: “Major 1811 slave uprising organized here.”
Continue reading...‘They see us as slaves’: Kenyan women head for the Gulf despite abuse fears | Jillian Keenan and Njeri Rugene
Kenyan government reforms promise to make domestic work safer in a region notorious for labour trafficking – but are they working?
In a busy recruitment agency in Nairobi’s central business district, dozens of women line the halls. All hope that today they will secure a job as a domestic worker in the Gulf states, cooking, cleaning and caring for another family thousands of miles from their own homes.
Pamela Mbogo* is one of them. The 29-year-old has found a job in Saudi Arabia starting next month. It’s not her first time as a domestic worker. On the previous occasion she lived and worked for a family in Bahrain, where she was abused and locked inside the house for days at a time. Yet, this time, Mbogo believes it will be different.
Continue reading...‘Tone deaf’ ads use slave ship images to promote UK sea-going sector
Campaign accused of ignoring colonial abuses when setting out maritime industries’ future
Historians and academics have labelled a new government campaign “tone deaf” and “historically illiterate” for using images of ships used for slavery and colonisation to promote Britain’s maritime sector.
The UK has a long history with commercial shipping, reaching as far back as 1700 ⚓️
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