Slavery still exists...

[anu verma]

NRI COUPLE CONVICTED FOR TORTURING MAIDS.
source:IBNlive.com
New York: A US court has convicted Indian-born millionaire Mahender Murlidhar Sabhnani and his wife Varsha of torturing their Indonesian maids. The couple could face upto 40 years in prison.

The millionaire couple is guilty of enslaving the two women who were working at their New York mansion.

They allegedly subjected the women to repeated psychological and physical abuse and forced them to work 18 hours a day.

Allegations of abuse included beatings with brooms and umbrellas, slashings with knives and being made to take freezing showers for sleeping late or stealing food from trash bins. Varsha Sabhnani was identified as the primary culprit in inflicting punishment. The Sabhnanis, who operate a worldwide perfume business, could face up to 40 years in prison. But the defence maintains the Sabhnanis are being set up. The couple is currently out on a 4.5 million dollar bail.

Prosecutors called the allegations against the Sabhnanis a case of ''modern-day slavery.'' Assistant US Attorney Mark Lesko said in closing arguments that the poorly educated women came to the United States to work as housekeepers for $100 or $150 a month — all of which was sent to relatives back home.

However, the Sabhnanis' defense attorneys contended the two women made up the story of abuse as a way of escaping the house for more lucrative opportunities. They argued the housekeepers practiced witchcraft and may have abused themselves as part of an Indonesian self-mutilation ritual. They also said the couple went on frequent vacations that would have given the two women ample opportunity to flee.

Varsha and Mahender Shabnani are a millionaire couple from long island. Their fortune has come from an international perfume business. On Monday, a NY jury found them guilty on 12 counts. Varsha collapsed on hearing of the conviction. Their lawyer has promised to appeal the verdict. If the verdict stands the couple could face upto 40 years in jail each.

[anu verma]

QUOTES ON SLAVERY

I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time been ashamed.
-RALPH ELLISON, Invisible Man

The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don't turn against him, they crush those beneath them.
-EMILY BRONTË, Wuthering Heights

Whoever visits some estates there, and witnesses the good-humored indulgence of some masters and mistresses, and the affectionate loyalty of some slaves, might be tempted to dream the oft-fabled poetic legend of a patriarchal institution, and all that; but over and above the scene there broods a portentous shadow — the shadow of law. So long as the law considers all these human beings, with beating hearts and living affections, only as so many things belonging to a master — so long as the failure, or misfortune, or imprudence, or death of the kindest owner, may cause them any day to exchange a life of kind protection and indulgence for one of hopeless misery and toil — so long it is impossible to make anything beautiful or desirable in the best regulated administration of slavery.
-HARRIET BEECHER STOWE, Uncle Tom's Cabin

For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love. The best thing ... was to love just a little bit; everything, just a little bit, so when they broke its back, or shoved it in a croaker sack, well, maybe you'd have a little love left over for the next one.
-TONI MORRISON, Beloved

Willingly no one chooses the yoke of slavery.
-AESCHYLUS, Agamemnon

When I have been travelling up and down on our boats, or about on my collecting tours, and reflected that every brutal, disgusting, mean, low-lived fellow I met, was allowed by our laws to become absolute despot of as many men, women and children, as he could cheat, steal, or gamble money enough to buy,--when I have seen such men in actual ownership of helpless children, of young girls and women,--I have been ready to curse my country, to curse the human race!
-HARRIET BEECHER STOWE, Uncle Tom's Cabin.

[anu verma]

SLAVERY IN INDIA.

India is a source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation. India's trafficking in persons problem is estimated to be in the millions. The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) estimates that 90 percent of India's sex trafficking is internal. Women and girls are trafficked internally for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced marriage. Children are subject to involuntary servitude as factory workers, domestic servants, beggars, and agriculture workers. Men, women, and children are held in debt bondage and face involuntary servitude working in brick kilns, rice mills, agriculture, and embroidery factories. India is also a destination for women and girls from Nepal and Bangladesh trafficked for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation. Bangladeshi women reportedly are trafficked through India for sexual exploitation in Pakistan. Although Indians migrate willingly to the Gulf for work as domestic servants and low-skilled laborers, some later find themselves in situations of involuntary servitude, including extended working hours, non-payment of wages, restrictions on movement by withholding of passports or confinement to the workplace, and physical or sexual abuse. Bangladeshi and Nepali men and women are trafficked through India for involuntary servitude in the Middle East.
Within the country, women from economically depressed areas often moved to cities seeking greater economic opportunities, and once there they were often forced by traffickers into prostitution. In many cases, family members sold young girls into prostitution. Extreme poverty, combined with the low social status of women, often resulted in parents handing over their children to strangers for what they believed was employment or marriage. In some instances, parents received payments or the promise that their children would send wages back home.

According to the Indian Center for Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, more than 40 thousand tribal women, mainly from Orissa and Bihar, were forced into economic and sexual exploitation; many came from tribes driven off their land by national park plans. A Haryana-based NGO revealed widespread trafficking of teenaged girls and young boys from poverty-stricken Assam to wealthier Haryana and Punjab for sexual slavery under the pretext of entering into arranged marriages or for forced labor. There was also significant trafficking for real marriages due to decades of large-scale and increasing female feticide.

The increase in human trafficking cases in the last couple of years is worrying NGOs and exposes the government’s apathy towards the social evil. Figures say that more than 60 girls from Karnataka, who fell prey to human trafficking, have been rescued from brothels and red light areas in Mumbai, Kolkata and Delhi. These rescued girls, in the age-group of 12 to 20 years, are mostly from the northern districts of Bijapur, Bagalkot, Shimoga, Mysore, Mandya and Chamrajnagar. They fall easy prey to the agents who assure them of jobs and attractive earnings, but they land up in brothels.

Slavery is not dead in India. Fuelled by trafficking, it is spreading far and wide. Thousands of Indians, especially women and children, are trafficked everyday to some destination or the other and are forced to lead lives of bondage. They survive in brothels, factories, guesthouses, dance bars, farms and even in the homes of well-off Indians, with no control over their bodies and lives. Women and children are also being trafficked for illegal adoptions, organ transplants, the circus and the entertainment industry.