by Jo Campbell
The Baltimore Sun's intrepid pepper-and-salt reporter team in Africa -- Gregory Kane and Gilbert A. Lewthwaite -- did a good job in their series about slavery in modern times. This was a story long overdue. That's not criticism. Many powerful people have never wanted this story told.
For years it was because American companies abroad were employing slaves. Now, I guess, American companies are not as welcome in certain parts of the world so 1. slaves are not such a big market item and 2. slavery as an institution is not so well protected by world and US policy. It still flourishes, as the writers surely discovered, in many countries besides Sudan.
Recognition of slavery in Arab nations was picked up decades ago by AramCo -- the Arab-American Oil Company. A bright AramCo American noticed that certain local employees took their pay and gave it to other men waiting at the plant gate.
No, these were not their bookies. "Those workers are slaves; their pay goes to their owners," retorted the nearby Arab whom the American questioned. The tone of voice implied, "What's the big deal?"
Well, there was not much of a big deal then -- in the 1940s -- because the oil industry did not want a big deal. It became one of those things that "everybody knew," and nobody did anything about.
Years went by and in the '70s at International Press Service, USIA, I commented to an Arab colleague on the still-active, widely-known and ignored Arab slave trade.
"Slaves are all happy," he said. "Life in freedom for the poor in Arab countries is very hard. Slaves are well taken care of."
I was ready to hear him tell me that they went singing and dancing all the way out to the oil fields, but he didn't.
The Sun's writers just touched on the fact that not only girls are taken as "concubines." Certain cultures do not admit to "homosexuality." This is largely because at some levels, whatever a man wants to do to someone weaker than himself is okay. There is no error in his actions.
Don't misunderstand. This behavior is not condoned by the Holy Quran, not in any of the three translations at my house, anyway.
I'm wondering if it will be possible to find out what changes, if any, the reporters have brought about. Will their revelations bring a greater international effort against enslavement of women and the weak? I would like to think the lads the reporters bought and returned to their parents were not instantly resold or abducted before the guys got back to the news room.
Good luck to them. All of them.
June 27, 1996 Jo Campbell Ecotopics International News Service