Slavery in Sudan - Modern Day Slavery

Modern Day Slavery

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In 1995, Human Rights Watch first reported on slavery in Sudan in the context of the Second Sudanese Civil War. In 1996, two more reports emerged, one by a United Nations representative and another by reporters from the Baltimore Sun.

The president of Christian Solidarity International, John Eibner, argues that the Arab-Muslim state of Sudan started reviving modern-day slavery starting in the mid-1980s. He claims that this slavery is a result of a jihad led by the state against the non-Muslim population.

According to CBS news, slaves have been sold for $50 apiece.

Writing for The Wall Street Journal on December 12, 2001, Michael Rubin said:

What's Sudanese slavery like? One 11-year-old Christian boy told me about his first days in captivity: "I was told to be a Muslim several times, and I refused, which is why they cut off my finger." Twelve-year-old Alokor Ngor Deng was taken as a slave in 1993. She has not seen her mother since the slave raiders sold the two to different masters. Thirteen-year-old Akon was seized by Sudanese military while in her village five years ago. She was gang-raped by six government soldiers, and witnessed seven executions before being sold to a Sudanese Arab.

Many freed slaves bore signs of beatings, burnings and other tortures. More than three-quarters of formerly enslaved women and girls reported rapes.

While nongovernmental organizations argue over how to end slavery, few deny the existence of the practice. ...stimates of the number of blacks now enslaved in Sudan vary from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands (not counting those sold as forced labour in Libya)...

The issue was the subject of a Channel 4 dramatised documentary, I Am Slave in August 2010, in which none of these religious conflicts were highlighted.

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