Mission in TODAY
Vol. XVII x No. 3
MARCH 2005
Slavery and Oppression
by Fr. Teresino Serra, MCCJ
ST DANIEL COMBONI TODAY
150 years ago St Daniel fought against slavery. Today the problem is far from being eradicated, women and children are ever more the victims of human trafficking.
Slavery, like prostitution, has been around in every part of the globe since before records began. Official measures to curb and then to ban slavery are relatively new. The buying and selling of slaves was made illegal in Britain in 1807 and, through the efforts of William Wilberforce, was abolished totally in 1833. The rest of Europe finally agreed to abolish slavery at the Treaty of Paris in 1856.
That was the official line. In fact, this obscene trade in human beings has continued, in one “underground” way or another, right up to the present day. Recent facts published by the UN on the trafficking particularly (but not solely) of women and children are striking:
° Only trafficking in arms and drugs is more lucrative.
° This is the fastest growing sector of international crime.
° The main, but not only, motivation behind this phenomenon is sexual exploitation.
° UN declarations and national Government legislation has had little effect on this trade.
° 700,000 to 4 million people (statistics are very hard to collect), mainly women and children, are trafficked across international borders every year.
° More than 2 million girls aged 5-15 are coerced, sold or trafficked into the illegal sex market per year.
° Over $7 billion US per year is generated by the sex trade and trafficking.
° In Western Europe it is estimated that 500,000 women and girls are trapped in the slave trade each year.
° Over the last 30 years one million people per year (mainly women and children) have been trafficked in Asia for sexual exploitation.
Today, just as it was 150 years ago, national state functionaries and military leaders are involved. Today, just as it was 150 years ago, governments and even the UN itself seem able to do little about it. But also today, just as it was 150 years ago, there are people who care and are willing to do something about it.
Among those who have been ready to stand up and be counted we have already mentioned William Wilberforce. Another name that emerges in this context is a certain Daniel Comboni. From the outset Comboni regarded as grotesque any suggestion that African people were not quite people, that they didn’t have souls. His commitment to Africa and Africans was plain in his early stand against slavery. In Khartoum and Kordofan, even in Cairo, he declared openly that he would do his best to free any slave that he came across. How many he personally freed we do not know but there is one written record that talks of 500 people.
In the Sudan in the 1870’s Comboni wrote that “…half a million slaves, mostly women…” passed annually through Khartoum on their way either to Egypt or to the Red Sea to be sold. He speaks of boats where these unfortunates were packed together like sardines, of desert caravans taking women and small children through the burning sands on foot, of chains, of hunger and of the vilest mistreatment.
As Pro-Vicar Apostolic for Central Africa, Comboni in 1873 gave what amounted to an order proclaiming hat all Christians under his ecclesiastical jurisdiction were to be united in the fight against slavery. He even engaged the help of General Charles “Chinese” Gordon, then Governor in Khartoum. But for Comboni the picture was bigger. He saw that the ending of slavery would not be enough. Real freedom for those that had been enslaved should mean that they should become masters of their own destiny, i.e., teachers, doctors, nurses, catechists, leaders, even bishops.
Judging by what may be seen in the African Churches today, Comboni, once described in the Sudan as “the chief enemy of slavery”, would be delighted. Freedom has indeed triumphed over slavery but this is a victory that has cost much and that has come gradually. It is a victory that must continue to be earned every day.<WM
Feedback on this article?
write to