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Slavery

My Lords, I too congratulate very warmly my noble friend on initiating this debate and on his tireless endeavours on humanitarian and human rights issues. I focus on Sudan and Burma. I believe that pictures sometimes speak louder than words. I therefore begin with two word pictures to illustrate the reality of contemporary slavery. First, I invite you to sit with me under a tree in southern Sudan as I talk to little Deng, aged about 10. He has just been brought home from the north of Sudan by Arab traders who bring their cattle south in the dry season. They are friends of the African Dinka people and risk a great deal to try to find, buy back and bring back men, women and children who have been abducted and taken into slavery. Today they have brought back several hundred slaves, including little Deng. He is traumatised, for he has just discovered that in the raid in which he was captured, two years previously, both his parents were killed. So he has just learned that he is an orphan. However, towards the end of our talk, I get a wistful little smile from Deng, who says, ““At least I am home again now. I am called by my own name, Deng””—the Dinka word for rain, which is precious. So it means someone to be cherished. He continues, ““At least I am no longer called Abid””, the Arabic for ““slave””. Now to a different scene. Sitting on the floor of a wooden house in a refugee camp in the borderlands of Thailand and Burma, I am talking to a young orphan Karen girl in our home for children who have had to flee for their lives from the atrocities perpetrated by Burma’s brutal military regime—the so-called State Peace and Development Council. We sometimes invite our children to draw memories of what happened to their families in Burma. This child shows me a vivid painting of her pregnant aunt and her two elderly grandparents being forced to carry heavy loads for SPDC soldiers who are beating her grandparents as they struggle under the 60- pound loads of rice or ammunition that they are forced to carry from dawn to dusk. I could multiply so many stories of the terrible reality of contemporary slavery. In more general terms, in Sudan, abduction and enslavement on a huge scale has been one of the weapons used by the National Islamic Front (NIF) regime since it took power in 1989. During the 1990s, NIF troops, accompanied by Mujahedeen Jihad fighters and the Murahaleen tribesmen, undertook massive offensives against civilians. On many occasions I was in Bahr-el-Ghazal when the attacks were taking place around me. I saw the evidence of the massacre of countless civilians and the grief of families whose loved ones had been abducted into slavery. I was also able to interview many, such as little Deng, who had been rescued from slavery and obtained compelling evidence of their ordeals, which proved beyond doubt the appropriateness of the use of the term ““slavery today””. Therefore, with great respect, I must disagree with the point of view put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, in his academic analysis. Anti-Slavery International has compiled a formidable array of evidence of continuing slavery in Sudan, the ineffectiveness of procedures to rescue and return those who have been abducted and the failure to prosecute those responsible. Moreover, the Rift Valley Institute individually has identified and interviewed more than 12,000 people violently abducted from southern Sudan between 1983 and 2002. Its research also estimates that over 11,000 of those abducted have still not even been accounted for. Moreover, the Commission for the Eradication of the Abduction of Women and Children (CEAWC) has helped to rescue and reunite with their families 2,628 abductees between 1999 and 2004; but leaving at least 10,000 still waiting to be returned to their homes. Anti-Slavery International is not aware that any prosecutions have been brought to date. Will Her Majesty’s Government urge the National Islamic Front regime to enable CEAWC to recommence and complete all necessary work to trace and rescue all who have been abducted and enable all who wish to return home to do so; to grant the special rapporteur and other personnel unrestricted access to all relevant areas; and to identify abductions and slavery as serious human rights violations to be addressed in the new constitution for Sudan? I turn very briefly to Burma where another brutal military junta took power by military force, and which oppresses all who oppose it. Its policies towards ethnic national groups such as the Karen, Karenni, Shan and Chin peoples can well be termed genocidal. Among the   systematic violations of human rights are well-documented policies of forced labour and forcible recruitment of children into the army. Civilians are rounded up and forced to work as porters for SPCD soldiers and/or to walk ahead of them as human minesweepers. More than 1 million people have had to flee their villages, living and dying as internee displaced peoples in the jungle. Burma also has the highest number of child soldiers in the world—70,000, according to a Human Rights Watch report which has the poignant title, ““My Gun was as Tall as Me””. I have also taught young boys who have escaped from the SPDC army, where they were forced to serve as conscripts. One told me that one reason why he had escaped was that he could not bear to have to obey orders to beat old people who were struggling as forced porters to carry 30 kg loads of rice or ammunition from dawn until dusk with no food or water. What representations are Her Majesty’s Government making to the SPDC to end those policies of forced labour and the forced conscription of children into the Burmese army? Will the Government consider initiating proceedings against Burma for crimes against humanity. As has been said by the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, and by the right reverend Prelate, in 2007 there will be commemorations—and I suspect celebrations—of the anniversary of William Wilberforce’s endeavours to end slavery and the slave trade. As the debate indicates, however, that is mission not accomplished. I urge Her Majesty’s Government to adopt a much more robust policy with Sudan, Burma and other nations where slavery persists to do whatever is necessary to bring an end to slavery. It is a cause for shame that slavery in diverse forms continues in our world today. International protest brought down apartheid. Why are we so silent about slavery? It is at least as great an evil. I hope passionately that we will hear robust proposals from the Minister that extend the commitment to ““Make Poverty History””, to ““Make Slavery History””. I hope and pray that our generation will see an end to slavery. It is a blot on the page of the history of our time, for which we continue to carry responsibility until it is eradicated.