Magic Carpet

Here is a common scenario: Your friend invites you over her new apartment. You arrive, leave your shoes at the door, walk in, and embrace the soft fresh carpet between your toes.

"Why is this rug so impeccably wonderful?" You ask.

"It's handmade, imported directly from South Asia." She replies enthusiastically.

Like most people, the idea of how and by whom a certain product is made does not even past the mind, and thus is left undiscovered. It turns out that the handmade carpet industry located in South Asia exploits nearly 300,000 children, as calculated by The South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude. This means that evidence of the atrocities of slavery and child labor is literally right beneath your nose, in fact-your standing on it. Children around the ages of 4 to 15 years are by many means captured and trafficked into working for these handmade carpet companies. They receive extremely low pay, if any at all. If the child laborers are forced to live in the loom, they are then required to pay for food and shelter, thus resulting in a form of debt bondage. Other child slaves are traded in by their own parents for money, while others are simply kidnapped from their families.

Carpet makers adore the advantages to having children workers, any which include a child's typically better eyesight perfect for making elaborate designs in bad lighting and the simple fact that children do not know their rights making them accepting of the horrible treatment and deadly working environment. Children working as carpet makers are forced to handle harmful tools without any proper training and are exposed to many types of health problems. They are malnourished, their bodies deformed from sitting in cramped loom sheds, and even bare respiratory problems due to inhaling dust and wool fibers.

What's most upsetting about this is that once the child is trafficked into the carpet industry, the chances of he or she getting sold to another type of slavery becomes very high, especially for girls who make up about a quarter of the child laborers. These young girls, who are probably already getting sexually abused by other workers, can easily end up being trafficked into the sex trade. Another dire effect of child labor is its negative effect on the economy and household. Since employers choose to employ children, opportunities for adults diminish, and children are unable to attend school and get educated, causing poverty to be passed down. It seems impossible to break this cycle, but as always there is hope. Organizations such as Goodweave have already helped by building awareness about child labor in the carpet industry and inventing a certification system to ensure rugs have not been made by the hands of child slaves.

Works cited:

http://www.anti-slaverysociety.addr.com/carpets.htm

http://goodweave.org/index.php?cid=29

If words can’t express one’s thoughts, how can they express one’s pain?

A person’s pain cannot be fully comprehended or explained simply through words. The words have to posses the ability to invoke feeling in the listener. However, even though the listener may hear the words being expressed, they are not able to fully comprehend the meaning behind them. Granted there are doctors trained in fields of science to help people cope with their pain; but the amount of physical, emotional, and psychological pain endured is far too great. These doctors sift through the victim’s mind and pick out the things he or she thinks is important in helping the victim cope. Elaine Scarry, explains that “physicians do not trust the human voice…they in effect perceive the voice of the patient as an ‘unreliable narrator’ of bodily events, a voice which must be bypassed as quickly as possible so that they can get around and behind it to the physical events themselves”(The Body in Pain The Making and Unmaking of the World). In other words, physicians often request a verbal explanation from the patient, but only does so to allow the patient to feel they have given an accurate explanation of there pain. However, the physician accepts the explanation and now purges further to uncover the root of the victim’s pain.

The initial reaction to bondage and torture is fear. In the case of modern day slavery, fear of torture and the tormentor is what fuels the pain. There is fear of the unknown, which is a natural human response to discomfort. By being enslaved, slaves are victims of torture as well as psychologically disturbed. Once the tormentor or slaveholder invokes that fear, psychologically, the victim is not able to escape. They may physically become free, but will always be held captive in their minds. Doctors such as Dr. Vaknin, the author of Malignant Self Love Narcissism Revisited, states: “Torture robs the victim of the most basic modes of relating to reality…Torture has no cut-off date. The sounds, the voices, the smells, the sensations reverberate long after the episode has ended”(The Psychology of Torture). Torture prolongs fear and causes it to be ever-present. With victims of slavery, the torture is so extreme it constantly haunts the slave.

Repression is a tactic that many victims of slavery use to try and remain sane. The act of repression is burying a memory deep into one’s brain in an effort to forget. Although this is true, there are things that will trigger the memory and send the person back in to that former state of fear. The memory that person has will never be erased and has had far to great of an impact to be forgotten. For instance, in the case of the brothel mother Katarina ("DMS"), she was once involved in sex work but later took part in running the brothel. This exemplifies the toll that being a sex worker took on her. She believed that " the brothel is simply a second home where young women come to make money" (DMS).

Even though victims struggle daily with fear, there are outlets to express this pain other than language. Because pain and fear can’t justly be vocalized, victims have the option of expressing their pain through artwork, theatre, music and drama. By channeling these negative feelings into something positive, they can even create pieces of work that inspire others. This is a form of positive reinforcement that allows for an action to be repeated thus giving the victim a way to overcome what happened to them. As with James Kofi Annan in “DMS”, he fueled his “anger” of being enslaved into education. He was determined to become the best pupil and rose to the top of his class. However, even after such an accomplishment, he was still psychologically tormented by the events of being enslaved. This is a small step, but he stated that by helping others, he is slowly helping himself along the road of rehabilitation. Other slaves who find themselves free and the verge of recovery can take on this challenge of bettering themselves through helping others or through expressive forms of art.

-Raney Antoine & Jessiona Bryant

REHABILITATION IS CRUCIAL

Rehabilitation is a crucial step in a slaves road to freedom and true happiness. When I talk about rehabilitation I am talking about the dictionary definition of the word, to restore to a former state or capacity. I am not just talking about an actual rehabilitation center although sometimes that is necessary, especially when drug addictions are involved. A slave can also be rehabilitated through education, entrepreneurship, and by finding meaning in life. The horrors of slavery are not things that can easily be forgotten. "To be free is not merely to cast off one's chains," -Nelson Mandela The Impossible Will Take a Little While. Someone who has physically escaped enslavement might still be burdened psychologically. Slaves who suffer from drug addictions desperately need rehabilitation. Their drug addictions can cause them to return to brothel that they have escaped from. "The challenge for every prisoner, particularly political prisoners, is how to survive prison intact, how to emerge from prison undiminished, how to conserve and even replenish one's beliefs." -Nelson Mandela. In Victor E. Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning Frankl observed three mental reactions a prisoner has. He observed this while imprisoned in German concentration camps. Frankl talks in terms of a prisoner but his work can just as easily be applied to slavery. These prisoners were forced to do work against their will for no pay so they were slaves. The first mental reaction a prisoner experiences is shock to the horrors of slavery or imprisonment. The prisoner witnesses atrocities that occur without any recourse. The second is a state of apathy that the prisoner adopts as a necessary protective mechanism. The prisoner regresses to a more primitive mental state. He must learn to value only what helps him survive. The third reaction occurs after the prisoners release and liberation. The prisoner suffers from severe disillusionment with life outside of prison or slavery. This new found freedom is different from what they expected. They are physically free but mentally and emotionally scarred. That is why some type of rehabiltation or therapy is necessary. Education is a great way to start a new life outside of slavery. It gives you increased job oppurtunities which allow you to provide for yourself. Entrepreneurship is also great because it gives a former slave a sense of accomplishment. They are able to provide for themselves which makes them feel empowered. Frankl states that the way to find true happiness is by finding meaning in life. the main way to find meaning in life is by creating something or doing a deed.

Debt bondage

Imagine this, you are doing your best to raise and provide a good life for your children but each day is a struggle. One day you hear that you can provide a better life for them in a different country. Great right? The only problem is; how are you going to get into that other country? From a source you hear that there is a man who is from this different country and he can get you and your family over there! So you seek out this man and he tells you that he will do the job, so you put your trust in him and once your family is in this new country the man tells you that it took a lot of money to get you into the country and that he wants it back. The only option he gives you is to work for him and repay your debt or he will call the immigration services.

Slavery is wrong in all aspects, but still some forms of slavery may be avoided. Although for some people it is hard to avoid being exploited, many have the option of choosing a different lifestyle. However the people who fall into the category of being in bonded labor may never escape. Debt bondage is considered by many to be a modern day form of slavery, and it affects many people as well as their families all over the world. A person becomes in bonded labor when they are being forced to pay off a loan through physical labor. The person in debt may be tricked or trapped into working for little to no money, and the value of their work is significantly greater than the original sum of money borrowed. Poverty, lack of education, and violence from their captors is what keeps most people in bonded labor. Governments in the area where this is prevalent make no effort to enforce laws even though this is illegal worldwide. It has gotten so bad that many children are born into the debt that their family owes, and these children end up living their lives trying to pay off a debt which in many cases have accumulated interest. Also due to a need for cheap labor, cases of debt bondage are increasing! According to the online antislavery organization “Today the international Labor organization estimates a minimum 9.3 million are in forced labor in the Asia pacific region, the majority of whom are in debt bondage.”

The question is why is slavery still going on in this modern day society? My argument is that this form of slavery is not fair to the many people who just wanted to provide a better life for their children. Also we need more organizations to help do something about this unnecessary form of exploitation. The fact that debt bondage is increasing is horrible and many people need to become aware of this. That is why it is important to educated people from all over the world. Maybe then will modern forms of slavery decrease or be gone forever.

Child Soldiers

Many nations around the world are using children in warfare. Some of these children become child soldiers voluntarily and some are abducted. Most child soldiers, who join of their own free will; join because they are trying to escape poverty, starvation, and physical or sexual abuse. They also join because they are separated from their families, lack of education, and they don’t have any where to go. Others join voluntarily because they relate to the groups ideology. Once these children become child soldiers, some are coerced into killing members of their own families, other child soldiers, and civilians. Others serve as porters, cooks, guards, messengers, spies, and sex slaves. In order to make the child soldiers follow orders and not resist, they are given drugs. They are given "amphetamines, crack cocaine, palm wine, brown-brown (cocaine mixed with gun powder), marijuana and tranquilizers." These drugs affect the child soldier's sense of reality.
The problem of child soldiers is most critical in Africa, where children as young as nine have been involved in armed conflicts. These armies use child soldiers because they are cheap, and easy to manipulate. "Their underdeveloped ability to assess danger means they are often willing to take risks and difficult assignments that adults or older teenagers will refuse." These children are forced to commit unthinkable crimes, and once they are rescued or escape, "face an enormous challenge in trying to return to normal civilian life."
Whether these children are abducted or become soldiers of their on free will, should we view them as victims even though they have committed so many horrible crimes? Should they receive mercy? Should the reasons behind them joining grant them mercy or make them a victim? These children should be viewed as victims and given mercy. "Child-soldier expert Michael Wessells told Vision that no choice is a “free choice” because it is typically grounded in dire circumstances, including poverty, starvation, separation from their families, physical or sexual abuse, or lack of livelihood or education." These children join because they have no other choice. In A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier an autobiography by Ishmael Beah, he tells us how he was "separated from his family when their village was attacked by rebel forces, for a while he avoided abduction into the armed conflict that enveloped his country. Eventually, however, hunger and insecurity led him to join the government forces, who compelled him not only to fight against the rebel opposition but to perpetrate acts of extreme violence against innocent civilians along the way."
These children should not be at fault for what they have done because it was out of their control. Organizations such as, Amnesty International, The Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and UNICEF, draw attention to this problem and help children who become child soldiers. No child should have to become a child soldier, or be kidnapped from their families and forced to become one. These children should have a normal childhood but instead it is tainted with blood, and the horrible crimes that they must live with for the rest of their lives.

Unholy Matrimony

Imagine being kidnapped from your home or even sold from your parents, and forced to either die or marry someone three times your age. What if escape is not an option, because you have nowhere else to turn, and you may mostly likely be beaten or killed? There is a huge problem with forced marriage in the world today, and most of them are children. A forced marriage is a marriage performed without the consent of both parties. More than one hundred young girls in the developing world will be married in the next ten years. Why does this happen? Some parents will force their children to marry, because they feel that these men can give them financial security. Child marriage is also viewed as preserving a family’s honor. What are the effects of child marriage? Child marriage brings about many problems such as abuse, health problems, maternal /infant mortality, AIDS, illiteracy, and even abandonment.
Programs like the Institute of Health Management Pachod, work in countries like India, and provide skills and education for these young girls. Programs like this are helpful, because most of these girls have only up to a fourth grade education. Anju Malhorta, vice president of the International Center for Research on Women, finds that many girls and parents that live in communities where child marriage is common want to delay the age to eighteen, but lack the resources. Anju Malhorta also believes international donors could improve effectiveness of aid money integrating child marriage prevention into current development initiatives, ensure the health and survival of infants, and most importantly, invest in girls’ education.
This topic raises a question that we all should ask, is this really slavery? The dictionary definition of slavery is the state or condition of being a slave; a civil relationship whereby one person has absolute power over another and controls his life, liberty, and fortune. Slavery? You decide.

Slavery: A Tragic Recipe for World Domination

The following story is a fictional representation of what slaves have provided for the United States, the world’s most powerful nation:

There are twenty students in Mr. Sam’s math class. Out of the twenty students, only two of them are smart enough to pass the class, which is a requirement for graduation. The rest of the class is full of slackers who are willing to do anything other than the work itself to avoid failing. The lazy students understand that graduation is in jeopardy, so they devise a scheme that will ensure their success. Unfortunately for the two ambitious students, the plan revolves around them doing everyone else’s work. They are oblivious to the scheme until one day after class, when the slackers take them by surprise and beat them senseless in an abandoned parking lot. The slackers impose their will on their defenseless classmates beyond the point of surrender. Scared for their lives, the ambitious students agree to do homework and projects for the rest of the class.

As time progresses, the good students continue to do work for the everyone else. Their peers’ work is now their main priority due to the brutality they may otherwise encounter, and they have no time to do their own assignments. While their grades are plummeting, the slackers’ grades are skyrocketing. In the end, the abusers graduate the class and move on to bigger and better things, and the students responsible for the others‘ success, become failures themselves.

This is a portrayal of how historical slavery built the United States' economy. However, due to the brutal mistreatment of slaves, people don't often refer to free labor as the most profitable practice in history. It's important that americans, african americans especially, understand the impact that their ancestors had (and still have) on the world's greatest superpower. It is blatantly unfair for slave owners to reap the benefits of slave labor without properly crediting the workers themselves. Awareness needs to be spread regarding the impact of slaves on the united states economy, so perhaps they can finally be 'paid back'.