BDSM RTV MEDIA NEWS!!!!


12 december 2009


Author at Brookdale says global slavery flourishing


Source: www.app.com - Asbury Park Press - USA


MIDDLETOWN - E. Benjamin Skinner has witnessED the sale of human beings on four continents. He ventured to the underworld, where modern-day slaves are kept hidden by violent traffickers and cruel masters, in order to tell their heart wrenching stories.


Skinner, an independent journalist who wrote "A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery," talked about his first book to a large gathering at Brookdale Community College Wednesday night as part of the college's Visiting Writers Series.

Skinner said he infiltrated trafficking networks and slave quarries, urban child markets and illegal brothels to find his subjects. He even went undercover in Haiti to negotiate the sale of a 12-year-old girl who would serve as a domestic and sexual slave. The price was settled within two minutes, he said, for $50.

"I know it's not an easy subject to talk about, but it is greatest human rights challenge of our generation," he said.

Skinner noted the International Labor Organization - a function of the United Nations - estimates there are 12.3 million forced laborers in the world today. He believes the number is closer to 27 million, the estimate provided by Free the Slaves, a Washington-based nonprofit group that works to liberate slaves around the world.

Undisputed, it seems, is that there are more slaves today than at any other point in history, although they represent a smaller percentage of the world's population than in the past.

"Although it's miserable to talk about and the scale seems overwhelming it's a problem we can overcome in our lifetime," he said.

Skinner tells one story of a man named Gonoo who was born into slavery. He was forced to work in a quarry in India because his grandfather couldn't repay a 62-cent loan. If he tried to leave, Gonoo said he would be beaten or killed if recovered by the master.

When asked why he didn't try to leave, Gonoo answered: "Where would I go? Where would I eat?"

Skinner said understanding the co-dependent relationship between master and slave is critical to eradicating bondage.

Slavery, he said, continues in places where corruption thrives and poverty and isolation are left to grow.

"The end of slavery can't wait until the end of poverty," he said, noting that 1.1 billion on the planet live on less than $1 per day.

In South Africa, Skinner met a group of girls who were forced to work as prostitutes near the World Cup stadium. They were given only enough food to stand and enough clothes to cover their bodies. When one of the girls got sick, she was cast aside.

Skinner met the 17-year-old sick girl in a hospice, where she was three months pregnant and suffering from tuberculosis and full-blown AIDS. She asked Skinner to take care of her body when she died because her family didn't know where she was. A week later she was gone.

A woman from a neighboring village had sold this girl and her best friend to Nigerian traffickers for $35 and a bag of crack.

Skinner said he was able to intervene and save the 15-year-old friend from a similar fate. She was the only one of that group of eight girls who wasn't HIV positive. She is now back with her family and attending school, he said.

"It's not just a question of liberation. It's a question of enabling slaves to become survivors," he explained, adding that they can then become good citizens who can develop into abolitionists who lead the charge to end slavery.

'We must listen to them. We must break the cycle of slavery for those still held in bondage," he said, adding that Free the Slaves spends an average of $400 to free and rehabilitate each slave. "It's a profound moment in human history when we have a chance to end slavery."

Skinner, 35, was raised in Wisconsin and northern Nigeria, where his father had served as a British colonial administrator. He came from a long line of abolitionists and first learned about slavery as a child in Quaker meetings, according to his Web site.

A graduate of Wesleyan University, Skinner is a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He now lives in Brooklyn.