Originally posted by: IGBT
..slavery is a worldwide phenomenon that continues to this day..and was well established long before slaves were brought to the US by the Dixie Democrats.
Sudanese slaves await redemption in Madhol, Sudan, in December 1997. An Arab trader sold 132 former slaves, women and children, for $13,200 (in Sudanese money) to a member of Christian Solidarity International..
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Modern-day slaves can be found laboring as servants or concubines in Sudan, as child "carpet slaves" in India, or as cane-cutters in Haiti and southern Pakistan, to name but a few instances. According to Anti-Slavery International, the world's oldest human rights organization, there are currently over 200 million people in bondage.
The enslavement of the Dinkas in southern Sudan may be the most horrific and well-known example of contemporary slavery. According to 1993 U.S. State Department estimates, up to 90,000 blacks are owned by North African Arabs, and often sold as property in a thriving slave trade for as little as $15 per human being.
"There he found several Dinka men hobbling, their Achilles tendons cut because they refused to become Muslims."
?from an ASI report on Sudanese slavery
Shackled laborers in Pakistan
Many of the bonded laborers are shackled in leg-irons in Pakistan. Though much of the debt these cane-harvesters have incurred is real, the practice of exchanging human labor for landowners' loans is illegal.
In a 1992 law passed by the Pakistani government, landlords are barred from offering loans in exchange for work or to hold workers hostage to their debts. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has freed approximately 7,500 bonded laborers since 1995.
By the commission's estimates, there are still roughly 50,000 bonded laborers in southern Singh. Many of those freed now reside in the city of Hyderabad in makeshift camps. Most are afraid to return to their homeland, however, for fear they will be recaptured and enslaved again.
Beyond the Emancipation Proclamation
Accounts of human beings as modern slaves extend beyond those described here, and include young girls sold into prostitution in Thailand and slave chattels in Mauritania. Though most Americans believe slavery was abolished with the Emancipation Proclamation more than a century ago, the horrors of human beings held in bondage flourishes today.