It is hard to believe that in a world that has seen unprecedented progress across many fronts, the affront of slavery still persists. According to a damning report released last week by an Australian research institute, some 30 million men, women and children are still slaves today — human chattels to be bought, sold and abused at the whim of unscrupulous, immoral and criminal individuals or enterprises.
In India, a nation long yearning to gain its place with economic powerhouses, nearly 14 million souls are considered the property of others; in China, for all of its progress and adaptation of free-market capital communism, 2.9 million are deprived of the right to be paid and freely leave their place of work at the end of the day; or in Pakistan, where decades of both military and civilian governments have failed to address 2.1 million indentured in perpetuity to land and holdings over long-standing loans.
Across Africa, slavery remains a curse where women and children are sold and ensnared in a sex trade of horrific proportions and where boys and men are sold as material goods that represent a twisted value of wealth.
While the world has readily accepted an individual’s right to live with basic freedoms and to be paid for labour, there are ten of thousands of bereft profiteers who willingly flout laws or bribe lawmakers to turn a blind eye to their disgusting trade.
For those who engage in such trade, the darkest dungeon is not deep enough to hold their wretched souls. For those who foster or allow slavery to exist, their reward should not be in greasy bank notes or ill-gotten gains, but in a punishment that truly befits their crime of acquiescence.
All that is required for evil to exist is for good men to do nothing. And all that is required for slavery to exist is for good men to fail to question or accept the status quo on face value. And as each of the 30 million souls who are shackled to the darkest future of forced labour and slavery fully know, it is pure evil.
