In 1790 the Irish statesmen and philosopher Edmund Burke wrote that “to make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.” History has proven Burke right. After more than two centuries of enhancing and nurturing capitalism, freedom of thought, equality of opportunity and freedom of enterprise there are very few people who want to escape the United States. The same can be said for other advanced countries, that have prospered under capitalism and democracy.

The Unbeatable Spirit of America

Throughout the centuries, Americans have been imbued with a deep sense of patriotism and capitalism, entrepreneurship and risk-taking, pride for their history and gratefulness for their founding fathers. It is this love for their country that pushes them to succeed, that encourages them to freely enlist in wars waged in far away lands. It cannot be explained otherwise, the rally in defense of their country of thousands and thousands of young men and women after 9/11, for example. It is hard to find other explanations for the election of Donald Trump as President.

It is impossible to find further reasons for the American citizens’ disdain for totalitarian communism and the election of Ronald Reagan as the defender of the shining city atop the hill in the 1980s. Whenever the ideals of freedom have been threatened, Americans have made bold choices. The United States has survived this long and has indeed prospered precisely due to these elements.

The 1619 Project: an Activist Screed Against the United States

Enter the 1619 Project, an endeavor that attempts to dismantle the United States conceptually as an inherently immoral enterprise. The New York Times initiated the 1619 project last year to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of 20 African slaves in America via editor Nikole Hannah-Jones. Its aim is to “reframe the country’s history” and replace the year 1776, the founding date of the United States, with 1619. Hannah-Jones’ open essay starts with the premise that the real reason for the American Revolution was to preserve slavery. The Project consists of a range of essays, podcasts and soon even a book that rewrite several aspects of American history, by presenting the US as a nation that has racism at its core and slavery as its main foundational pillar. The author recently received the Pulitzer Prize for her work and the project’s materials have been included in thousands of school curricula across the nation.

The Many Inaccuracies and Distortions of the 1619 Project

The Project is full of historical inaccuracies, according to the major part of the historians and experts. Pulitzer-Prize winning historian and expert of the American Revolution Gordon Wood has described it as “wrong in so many ways”. The dean of Civil War historians and a Pulitzer prize winner have both described the project as an “unbalanced, one-sided account that left most of the history out,” according to the Wall Street Journal. Even in those parts that facts are true, the authors spin them in a way to suit their agenda, by removing the context and important elements. Leslie M. Harris, a history professor at Northwesters University and an expert in the history of slavery, has declared that she was consulted on the project and says she warned the authors not to publish an inaccurate representation of events.

Historian Reveals How Her Knowledge Was Overlooked Because it Didn’t Fit Project Narrative

As Politico reports, Harris stated that “Because I am an historian of African-American life and slavery, in New York, specifically, and the pre-Civil War era more generally, [Nikole Hannah-Jones] wanted me to verify some statements for the project. At one point, she sent me this assertion:

“One critical reason that the colonists declared their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery in the colonies, which had produced tremendous wealth. At the time there were growing calls to abolish slavery throughout the British Empire, which would have badly damaged the economies of colonies in both North and South.”

I vigorously disputed the claim. Although slavery was certainly an issue in the American Revolution, the protection of slavery was not one of the main reasons the 13 Colonies went to war. Despite my advice, the Times published the incorrect statement about the American Revolution anyway, in Hannah-Jones’ introductory essay. Both sets of inaccuracies worried me, but the Revolutionary War statement made me especially anxious.”

The historian Harris can hardly be called a right wing or conservative sympathizers. She acknowledges the need for revisions in history, after all. Yet, even she admits that Hannah-Jones had gone too far in trying to smear the American Revolution, which a plethora of historians agree was chiefly driven by the desire for freedom and independence. It is one of the few, if not the only revolution to have succeeded precisely due to the purity of its cause and the righteousness of its leaders. The readers of this article may know that George Washington was given the opportunity to become King after the war, and he refused it, returning instead to his private life.

The Times Rejects Requests for Corrections to the Project

Secondly, five professors from Princeton university, Brown University, City University of New York and Texas State University wrote a letter to the New York Times to issue corrections to the various essays related to the Project. The Times did not accept their request. They and other historians agree that the Revolution not only was not caused by a desire to keep slavery, but actually became a disruptive factor to slavery by arming black people to fight against the British. In fact, it were the actions of the British military that turned southern on the side of the Americans.

Furthermore, in the North, the freedom of the slaves happened after the war was over, although gradually. It was white Americans that fought and pushed for the end of slavery. Yet, the project and most of the left completely ignores such a fact. Hannah-Jones dismissed her critics and respected historians as “old, white male historians”. For someone who claims to be anti-racist, she sure seems to speak with racist and divisive words.

The Anti-Capitalist Underpinnings of the 1619 Project

Thirdly, the Project aims to discredit capitalism as a phenomenon of slavery and racism. Clearly, the authors of the project have never heard of George Fitzhugh, an American social theorist of the 1800s, who described slavery as a beautiful example of communism. Nevertheless, this aspect of the 1619 project has been debunked as well. Allen C. Guelzo, a senior research scholar at Princeton University, in an article for the Wall Street Journal shows the lies of the project regarding capitalism. The project writes that “slaves were whipped and tortured into clearing fields, planting and harvesting crops whose yields increased. Desmond, one of the authors, writes that yields increased by 400% over the 60 years before the Civil War. Every aspect of the plantation was ruthlessly rationalized to enhance profits, via vertical reporting systems, double-entry record-keeping and precise quantification. These “management techniques” became a model for a union-busting capitalism of poverty wages, gig jobs and normalized insecurity. Slavery’s violence was neither arbitrary nor gratuitous, but instead rational, capitalistic.”

Yet, according to Guelzo the numbers do not add up. New York in the north was far more capitalistic and had far more banks than the entire Confederacy region. Cotton, he explains, was the biggest commodity exported, but as a percentage of total exports and not total production. Moreover, he cites historian Erin Mauldin, regarding the chaotic and sloppy Southern agriculture before Civil War. Even railroads were built with public funds and not as a result of private investments. The increases in production of cotton, according to several historians were a result of the introduction of superior cotton varieties, which increased profitability. The point Guelzo makes is that historical facts show that what the South had was far from capitalism. Capitalism has freedom in its fundamentals. It cannot work if there is no freedom. If anything, capitalism hastened the abolishment of slavery.

Going After Abraham Lincoln

As if the attack on the founding of the US was not enough, the 1619 Project goes on to attack Abraham Lincoln, the Republican President who put an end to slavery and fought a civil war to do so. There is a conspicuous absence in the report of noting that the entire Democratic Party was against the abolition of slavery and tried to be kind to blacks only when they gained the right to vote.

Yet the target is instead the Republican President who ended slavery, a man Hannah-Jones describes as a “garden-variety racist”.  If Hannah-Jones and the Times had studied history and done their research, they would know that Lincoln’s anti-slavery inclinations were obvious. Later in its history, the US had the first widespread anti-slavery movement in the world. She takes one occurrence and makes her deductions based on that. In August 1862, Lincoln invited a committee of black men and the media to the White House and read to them a statement urging the black community to leave the United States and create a colony outside the US, which would be bought by the US Congress for them, once they were freed.

Many historians argue that it was a tactic on Lincoln’s part. The President did not have the full backing of Congress so he presented this idea to them as a bargaining chip to get support for abolishing slavery. After the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln discarded the plan and a year and a half later he was calling for black voting rights.

To fully counter the fallacy of the 1619 project it is enough to quote Lincoln himself: “I am naturally anti-slavery”. “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think and feel,” or to quote Frederick Douglass who considered Lincoln “the colored man’s president”. Too bad that the ones trying to rewrite history are those that were on the wrong side of it. Perhaps, this is a reflection of the inner shame the left must feel for backing slavery for hundreds of years, and for using the black people decades later.

The Harmful Claims of the Project Don’t Belong in American Schools

While the examples I brought are more than enough to debunk the entire projects, there are many more inaccuracies and distortions in the report according to reputable historians. However, it is important to note that this project has been implemented as part of the curriculum in the education system, even though it has been proven false. Nobody in the mainstream media mentions its lies, nor its harmful claims which further divide society.

Schools have been using it despite scholar warning against it. This is meant precisely for the young, for those who are still in their formative years. That is the real objective and danger. They are using a fallacious version of history to indoctrinate children. The aim is not to change anybody’s mind now and align it to their viewpoint but indoctrinate those who will become the citizens of tomorrow.

If children are taught that their country is evil, unfair and racist and if they are indoctrinated with the notion that capitalism is the source of that evil, through strongly biased versions of history such as this, then they will stop loving their country. They will be taught that the only solution is to change America. Hannah-Jones has herself stated that her choice for a model country, with the highest levels of equality is the communist country of Cuba.

Communism Has a High Cost

In an article on the Federalist, Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow in Heritage Foundation’s Allison Center for Foreign Policy, mentions Herbert Marcuse. He was a German American philosopher and sociologist who fled Hitler’s Germany and arrived in the US. Marcuse observed that America was filled with happy consumers. Capitalism was too good and that prevented revolts. He, as well as the authors of the 1619 Project understood that to make a revolution, you have to convince people and especially the children and the young adults that the country they are living in is terrible. All attachments with the past, with tradition and family must be destroyed, according to them, to give rise to a new country shaped in their vision.

There is no doubt that the vision of those behind the 1619 Project is communistic. The problem is that with communism there are many inevitable side effects we can observe throughout history, especially censorship, famine, despair and violence. We are already seeing this in the US, with big tech censoring conservatives, the cancel culture movement and the far-left fully conquering the Democratic party and choosing a figurehead as their Party’s nominee for President in order to push through a far-left agenda.

The 1776 Project

Luckily, there has been some pushback from conservatives, with the 1776 Project, and other similar initiatives that aim to defend the founding of America and its values and principles. It is a fatalistic way of presenting history by telling people of color they were born in a racist country, with racist history and racism as its core value and thus they have no hope of succeeding in this terrible capitalistic world. This is simply not true and re-victimizes people of color. Conservatives are standing against this with the 1776 Project.

American slavery ended around 150 years ago. Still, everyone talks about it. If the situation is so bad now, why is no one talking about that, instead of focusing on what happened a century ago? Why have two million African immigrants chosen to immigrate to the United States in the last 50 years if it is systemically racist? Nobody at the New York Times or in the left and mainstream media will answer that, because it exposes their rhetoric as hollow and part of an ulterior agenda.

Finding Common Ground and Unity

What America and the world need is finding common ground, uniting around the values that everybody shares, such as family, community, tradition, and finding the way to go forward through mutual empowerment. This can include improvement of capitalism and strong and objective education without indoctrination. We should disagree with each other. It is alright to do so and even fundamental for democratic society to move forward. But declaring a whole race as racist, a whole gender as exist and a whole country as inherently malicious stokes the flames of divisions and betrays a lack of desire to move forward and find unity.

If the United States falls to radicalism and neo-Marxism erasing its culture and history, then we are in for some very difficult years ahead of us. It is in Europe’s favor and honor to stand by the US as it deals with radicals. As we have seen, Europe is not immune to what ails America. With all his faults, Trump still appears to be the only barrier that can stop this madness. Let us hope he proves successful.

L'articolo The 1619 Project: a Dangerous and Misleading Rewriting of History proviene da InsideOver.

“In other words… Slavery has not been completely abolished” – Dr Angela Davis, “Slavery and the Prison Industrial Complex.”

Davis, who grew up in the segregated southern city of Birmingham, Alabama, home of the 1963 terrorist bombings against the black community in which four little girls died, has dedicated her life to the struggle for social justice and civil rights, specifically within the black community in the USA. Her work on the abolition of the prison industrial complex, which has gained greater prominence following the 2016 Netflix documentary “13^th”, has spanned over five decades and includes more than ten books. In her work, Davis, who was imprisoned following time spent on the FBI’s most-wanted list in 1970 and was realised in 1972 after a global campaign for her freedom, explores the institution of prisons as an enterprise, and the corporations whose profits are rooted at the centre of mass incarceration.

The title of Ana DuVernay’s award-winning Netflix documentary takes its name from the 13^th Amendment. The political doctrine which was ratified in 1865 by congress and amended the American Constitution, ‘banning’ slavery, except, as the documentary highlights, as a punishment for crime.

Following the introduction of the 13^th Amendment, the ‘liberation’ of slaves left huge gaps in the American labour market. Work that had once been carried out by force, for free, was no longer being completed. Meaning former slave owners and heads of industries that once utilised slave labour needed another way to fill the void of labour following the ‘end’ of slavery. The 13^th Amendment provided a legal means through which this chasm could be bridged.

The introduction of the laws of the Jim Crow era in 1870 (which ran until 1965) meant that black people were to be racially segregated and could be arrested, en masse, for offences such as looking at a white woman, shaking hands with a white person or showing public affection to another black person. These laws ensured the continuation of white supremacy following slavery. Enabling prisoners to be declared ‘slaves of the state’; convict leasing allowed convicts to be ‘leased’ to private parties, such as plantation owners, mine owners and other corporations.

Labour as Penitence

Of course, if someone is convicted of a crime, they should be punished. But to what extent should this involve forced labour?

Not all crimes are worthy of the sentences inferred on them, if any, and with growing awareness of police violence towards (specifically) young black men in America, the systemic and disproportionate imprisonment of people of colour, means we can ascertain that the state of America’s criminal justice system doesn’t always protect those most vulnerable to its predatory laws.

American holds 25% of the world’s prisoners but just under 5% of the world’s population. In 1970, the prison population was 357,292. By 2014, the prison population was 2,306,200. Whilst one in 17 white men will serve time in prison, one in three African-American men will spend time behind bars and one out of four prisoners in the world, is imprisoned in the USA. This means more than half of all adult black women in America have at least one family member locked up.

Prisoners are forced to carry out labour to buy necessities, often at premium rates, such as clothing or shoes that fit (most prisoners can expect ‘one-size-for-all clothing and shoes upon arrival), soap (the cheapest soap is a 4-pack of Ivory for $3.50), toothpaste, phone-calls, pain-killers (a small packet of Aspirin is $1.50) or food. This factory-style labour can range from production lines for private companies, such as stitching $90 underwear for Victoria’s Secret, dealing with customer returns for Walmart or packaging coffee for Starbucks, earning as little as 23 cents to $1.15 per hour.

Fighting Fire with Fire

Not only are inmates being recruited to fight fires for a basic wage of around $2 a day plus $1 an hour, (compared to the average wage of a civilian firefighter in California coming in at $73,860 per year) they are also more likely to be injured whilst at work. During an active fire, inmates can be expected to work 24-hour shifts and given that more than 1,500 inmates received injuries so bad they required hospital treatment between June 2013 and August 2018, including being 8 times more likely to suffer smoke inhalation than civilians, the impact of this intensive work can have lasting impacts, long after their sentence has been served.

Beyond the health implications of working as an inmate firefighter, taking part in the programme doesn’t equate to opportunities for employment on the outside. With 65 million US adults holding a criminal record and 90% of employers carrying out criminal background checks, unemployment rates for former inmates soars to 27.3%, compared to 3.8% for the general public. With 4000 inmates working on the front line to tackle California’s wildfires last year, it’s inconceivable to think that after training for the position, these men won’t qualify for the same job once released.

Modern Slavery and America

The forced labour of America’s inmates, a disproportionate number of whom are people of colour (67%) – 94% of which are sentenced without trial – is so akin to the financial and state-protected infrastructure of slavery, that evaluations such as Dr.Davis’ are difficult to deny. Whether forcing humans to make up the production lines for designer outlets, filling up call centres with free labour for private corporations or allowing men to lose their lives fighting fires for less than the price of a bar of soap, the prison industrial complex and its ties to slave-era labour must be as Dr.Davis suggests “radically abolished” to make way for restorative justice and reconciliation that allows for true rehabilitation of offenders. A justice that allows for those most vulnerable in society to move access fair, unbiased and appropriate penance.

L'articolo The Inmate Firefighters Risking Their Lives For $1 An Hour proviene da InsideOver.

The US military prides itself on a global reach and it is undeniable that an expansive network of bases across the world has given America the ability to rapidly deploy forces to nearly any location. This expansive coverage was part of the reason Osama bin Laden cited for his orchestration of the September 11 terrorist attacks; as at the time, Saudi Arabia hosted U.S. troops at Prince Sultan Air Base which housed up to 60,000 soldiers until a complete withdrawal in 2003. Despite the removal of forces from the base, America still maintains forces at five Air Force bases across the nation, a sign that the U.S. never truly leaves a country. 

One of its more secretive bases is not in the Middle East, however, but on a small island in the heart of the Indian Ocean. Diego Garcia has been leased from the United Kingdom since 1966 and it has served as one of the most strategic locations for launching attacks during the Gulf War and War on Terror in Afghanistan and Iraq. Secrecy at the base is such that troops stationed there are forbidden from bringing their spouses with them and journalists are not permitted to visit. 

Slave Beginnings

Diego Garcia is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory. After the French initially settled the island in the late 18th century, the British assumed control following the Napoleonic Wars. The population in 1966 totaled a meager 924 persons who were previously slaves harvesting coconuts for the Chagos-Agalega Company, established by the French. The native people, Chagossians, were considered part of the Chagos Archipelago consisting of seven atolls before the British separated the administration of Diego Garcia. When it did so, it forced the residents from the island with most of them relocated to Mauritius and Seychelles. 

The forced expulsion of 1968 to 1973, drew condemnation from human rights advocates, but former inhabitants found little recourse as most international governing bodies have refused to take up the case. In 1972, Britain set aside £650,000 as compensation for 426 families deported to Mauritius, which the Mauritius government delayed distributing until 1978. After some outrage, £4 million in additional funding was provided, but it was not given out until nearly 10 years after the expulsion.

In their new countries, a large percentage of former Chagossians were homeless and destitute. Some petitioned to return to Diego Garcia, but for a decade, the British courts passed the case around. After the British High Court initially granted them the right to return, the British government used the Royal Prerogative to forbid them from ever returning. Following a few more rounds of court cases which flip-flopped the decision several more times, the ban has stood from as recently as 2016. 

In May, the United Nations ruled that the transfer of the islands to the British was illegal as it was made as a condition of Mauritius’ independence in 1965. Although the UN served an eviction notice to London, it carries no legal weight and would almost certainly never force the British to relinquish Diego Garcia, especially considering its partnership with the US Navy.

In 2010, a diplomatic cable leaked to Wikileaks revealed that the British government planned a “marine park” or “reserve” to protect the wildlife and environment of Diego Garcia. The true intention, according to the leaked cable, was that the government wanted to establish it to prevent former inhabitants from returning to the island. The cable came amid the continued court cases regarding the resettlement of the island.

Military Designs

After the British formalized the transfer of ownership of the island by purchasing it from Mauritius, the UK, and the US quickly set about building a military base which was the sole reason behind the expulsion of Chagossians. Now, the island is almost completely populated by a few thousand US soldiers and their military equipment. Its geographic location puts it squarely in the middle between Africa, the Middle East, Australia, and South Asia providing the perfect spot for deploying forces or refueling military craft. 

A runway over 3 kilometres long caters to B-1, B-52, and ultra-stealth B-2 bombers. A deep-water port allows for docking all sorts of naval craft from nuclear submarines to aircraft carriers. While the island serves as a massive armoury, there are also reportedly massive ships located in the coastal waters which contain enough supplies to mount small invasions including helicopters and tanks. 

Shrouded 

The need for such secrecy at a remote island raises questions, many of which may never be fully answered. However, some information has trickled out from time-to-time about Diego Garcia. Lawrence Wilkerson who served in the administration of former US President George W. Bush revealed that the US Central Intelligence Agency has top-secret prisons on the island which it has used in some cases for the torture of suspected terrorists. The imprisonment of foreign adversaries and their alleged torture is unusual as the island is only leased by America while the UK retains ownership. Traditionally, to avoid international issues, the US prefers to detain prisoners in bases on US-owned soil. Still, as the claims cannot be verified due to the vast shroud of secrecy, the British government is unlikely to face any serious repercussions. 

The US Navy once promoted the island base to recruits as “one of the world’s best-kept secrets” and indeed it has lived up to that claim. As it is rarely discussed, activities at the base are largely speculative with the juiciest revelation being the possibility of a C.I.A. interrogation facility on Diego Garcia. In all likelihood, the base is most-likely kept under wraps because of its critical role in Middle East conflicts. As a staging area for airstrikes including stealth missions, the US military views discretion as paramount. Perhaps more interesting than the current activities at Diego Garcia is its history of human rights abuses against native Chagossians. 

L'articolo Hidden Controversy: a US Navy Base in the Heart of the Indian Ocean proviene da InsideOver.

The Yazidi girl – who wished to remain unnamed ­– became pregnant after being brutally raped by an ISIS fighter. Desperate, she tried to force a miscarriage by throwing herself down a flight of stairs. When she attempted to escape from her abductors, she was re-captured and raped by six men. Kept naked in a room, she was repeatedly sold and raped to groups of men. The more times she was sold, the more her monetary value declined. She was told that she had to be raped to become a Muslim and that it ISIS fighters were simply implementing the Prophet Muhammad’s law.

In the Trafficking Terror report, she revealed how girls were raped together in the same room. Islamic State members would touch the chests of captured girls to see whether they had grown breasts. If they had breasts, they could be raped; if not, they would wait three months to check again.

August marked the five-year anniversary of this reign of terror that would forever change the lives of the Yazidi clan from the Sinjar region in the far northwest of Iraq. A minority group whose gnostic religion stemmed from Zoroastrianism, ISIS theologians labelled them as infidels to justify their tyranny.

When ISIS invaded Sinjar in 2014, most of the men were executed and thousands of women and children were transported to ISIS slave markets. The women and girls were doomed to enter into several yearlong odysseys of violence, slavery, and sexual abuse – being sold again and again to different ISIS fighters – often to as many as ten different men. A report from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said that some 5,000 Yazidi women have been sold into slavery. To date, almost 3,000 of them still remain missing.

The case management team at YAZDA, a Yazidi global organization established in the aftermath of the Yazidi Genocide in 2014, explained, “The campaign of genocide ISIS began carrying out in 2014 pivots on several major atrocities. One of them was mass executions, which included many men and elderly women who were unable to escape the Sinjar region as ISIS swept through.

“The second is the indoctrination of boys and their training as child soldiers. They were stripped from their families, their traditions and forcibly indoctrinated with extremist ideology before being on the battlefields and elsewhere.

“The third is the sexual slavery of Yazidi women. Thousands of children, teenage girls, and young women were forced into sexual slavery under ISIS.”

In cities such as Mosul and Raqqa – the strongholds of ISIS – there were systemised slave markets where women would be sold off based on their age, virginity, and looks. They were also traded, sold, and rented amongst ISIS members, and sometimes given as gifts from one member to another. The stories of cruelty are unfathomable: stories of women who tried to fight the rape of their young daughters and were then raped themselves in front of their daughters as punishment; stories of forced abortions right after capture so they could be sold off easier; and stories of unyielding circles of violence, exploitation and abuse that left many who survived with severe trauma and high risks of suicide.

“Some girls are believed to have been smuggled out into neighboring countries for human trafficking purposes,” YAZDA added.

“There is also the issue of the al Hol camp in Syria, which houses a significant number of ISIS members. Girls are still there – either brainwashed into staying with ISIS families or potentially held against their will. Given the extremely difficult security situation of the camp, there is not at this stage a pragmatic way to go in and find Yazidi girls until there is some effort to clear out the camps – or the ISIS sections anyway.”

Sexual slavery was frequently used as an incentive for ISIS recruits, with the promise of a conveyor belt of women. In a deeply conformist Muslim culture where casual sex is a taboo, the reward of sex-on-demand became part of ISIS propaganda to entice would-be fighters. Any children born out of the “caliphate” had not only financial merits but were also seen as future ISIS conscripts. Moreover, it has been reported that the ISIS recruitment process became a playing field for rapists, paedophiles, and men with a history of sexual and domestic violence.

Lavan Jalal, a psychotherapist at Jiyan Foundation of Human Rights, has worked since 2015 in Jiyan’s Trauma Clinic – Iraq’s only inpatient psychological clinic. She has treated a large majority of Yazidi women and children who escaped ISIS captivity and remain deeply traumatised. Even more worrisome, are the ones who have not yet been rescued.

“Some girls were killed by ISIS because they tried to escape but no one has reported this,” Jalal said.

“Other women committed suicide. Many still reside in refugee camps in Syria and don’t know if or how they can return to Sinjar. Also, many women had children from their captors as a result of the constant sexual abuse. These children are considered Muslim by Yazidi culture and thus would not be accepted into the Yazidi community. Many women thus face the harrowing choice between returning to their families and leaving their children behind, or staying with their children without returning to their families. In this regard, any attempts to negotiate with the Yazidi community to make exceptions and allow these children into the communities have failed so far.”

The depraved story of the methodical sexual violence towards the Yazidi by ISIS has left a putrid stain. It is one that cannot be washed away until better justice is served for the thousands who are still missing.

“Investigation is needed into unreported deaths and suicides to achieve peace for the families who, until today, remain in the unknown about their relatives,” Jalal insisted.

“Outreach work is needed in the camps in Syria with the women who still live there to try and understand what keeps them from returning. There should be a creation of links between families who are still looking for a relative and women in those camps. And, of course, continue the negotiations with the leaders of the Yazidi community about accepting Yazidi women’s children born in captivity.”

L'articolo The Sex Slave Trade Of The Yazidi Women By Isis proviene da InsideOver.

As torrents of tears rolled down her face, Habi Mutraba told the Guardian, “I have been hit, tortured, humiliated – I’m always the first to wake up and the last to go to sleep.”

Mutraba, who has been a slave since birth, is one of some 600,000 trapped in a system of modern-day slavery in the West African state of Mauritania. Her mother was made pregnant by her “master” and when Mutraba was born, she was given away to one of his family members. As she grew, the cycle would repeat itself. Regularly raped by the head of the household and his son, Mutraba became pregnant and gave birth to a child who, as tradition dictates, would also be a slave. Most of those entrenched in slavery come from generations of slaves and as such, have no knowledge of what life is like outside of slavery.

Like other Mauritanian slaves, Mutraba was not allowed to go to school or to have identity documents such as a passport or birth paper. Slaves are also routinely punished and tortured in ways that render them permanently scarred, disfigured, or relegated to a life of chronic pain.

Instead, Mutraba’s life is one of servitude that revolves around tending to her “owner’s” livestock and household chores. She despaired that no one could help her out of her demise and that she is at the mercy of her masters.

In 1981, Mauritania became one of the last countries in the world to abolish slavery. Despite the government routinely refuting claims that the practice still persists, thousands remain in bonded labour with experts estimating that around 20% of the population is enslaved. Slaves are traded like animals amongst those who find themselves in the upper echelons of the society’s caste system, which includes government officials.

The persistence of a slavery system in Mauritania has remained largely unchanged over history. For hundreds of years, a discriminatory system has thrived where those enslaved are the dark-skinned Haratine and Afro-Mauritanian ethnic minorities, while their “owners” are light-skinned Arab-Berbers. This caste system dates back to as early as the 8^th century. The Haratines who are free, are resigned to doing jobs that Arab-Berbers consider to be demeaning. Some of those roles may involve garbage collection, butchery, and working in the local markets. Furthermore, Haratines are denied various rights such as education, equal land ownership, and political representation.

To further bolster the custom, there has been continued intimidation and harassment of anti-slavery activists in Mauritania, who have been accused by the government of inciting unrest and creating disharmony in society because of their anti-slavery activism. Over the years, many have been imprisoned by the government.

Freedom United is an organisation which has campaigned for prominent Mauritanian anti-slavery activists to be released from prison, including Biram Dah Abeid, a presidential candidate in 2018 and founder of an anti-slavery endeavour called the Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement (IRA),

Joanna Ewart-James, Executive Director of Freedom United explained, “On the one hand, the national government refuses to recognise the extent of slavery in Mauritania, claiming that it does not exist, or that only “vestiges of slavery” remain. On the other hand, policies and legislation the government has passed to outlaw slavery are neither effective nor implemented.

“Fundamentally, Mauritania needs to address structural racism in society which fuels slavery in the country.”

As with the slave trade in the West, the slavery that exists in Mauritania is heavily dominated by racial tensions and profiling. The light-skinned and affluent Arab-Berber population makeup around 30 per cent of society and regulate the country’s political and economic infrastructure. As such, since they rank at the top and may own slaves themselves, there is little incentive to alter a system that works in their favour.

According to the Global Slavery Index, Mauritania is estimated to be amongst the top ten countries in the world for a high prevalence of slavery within its population. This system often takes the form of generational chattel slavery, meaning people are seen as the property of their “masters”. It is especially complex in comparison to other countries because this system is deeply intertwined with racism and colourism. Children born to those enslaved are treated as the “property” of the “masters”, illustrating the hereditary nature of this descent-based slavery.

“We know that ethnic Haratine continue to be trapped in chattel slavery, and when they speak out against abuses they’re being silenced by the government suggesting that the country is not ready to make this shift. As there are cases of people being rescued from their abusive “masters” receiving no official recognition of their victim status by the government, with little in the way of rehabilitation support, let alone economic opportunities to get back on their feet, a sustainable end to the conditions in which it thrives remains far off,“ Ewart-James added.

L'articolo The Country Where Slavery Still Exists proviene da InsideOver.

“Like all North Korean women, I had no rights under their (Kim dynasty’s) rule – no right to freedom, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness. My family was ripped apart and our relationships severed. I was forced to endure starvation and was driven from my homeland by desperation and fear. Trafficked into China, I was deceived by a broker and sold into marriage for ¥5000 Chinese Yuan ($720 United States Dollars). I spent six years as a slave. I gave birth to a son. I was arrested by Chinese police. And I was repatriated to North Korea. For the ‘crime’ of being trafficked and sold, the Government of North Korea incarcerated me in a camp where I was forced to endure acts that will haunt me for the rest of my life. This all happened because I am a North Korean woman.”

These haunting words of Park Jihyun appear at the beginning of a report by Yoon Hee-soon from Korea Future Initiative – a London based NGO. It serves as a poignant reminder of the adversities citizens of the oppressed nation face. Yet, Jihyun is still lucky. She is one of a very few to have effectively fled the secretive state.

The investigation by Hee-soon detailed the perils and vulnerability of North Korean women – both in their country and in their attempts to flee its androcentric regime. The findings, put forward to the British parliament, revealed that thousands of women and girls are abducted and trafficked into the sex trade in China or sold to men in China for marriages.

Casey Lartigue Jr., co-Founder of the Teach North Korean Refugees Global Education in Seoul, alluded that the statistics about the number of North Korean refugee women who have been sold into sex slavery is, in fact, likely to be higher. He explained: “From what I have heard, refugees get warned about sharing too much about their pasts in China, because it can ruin their chances for marriage here in South Korea. They escaped from an abnormal country and were considered illegal migrants in China, so they were in impossible situations. And people here who haven’t gone through that are quick to judge them as being damaged goods.

“For example, refugee author, Yeonmi Park, a student in our program in 2014, initially hesitated to discuss what had happened to her when she was in China and sold off along with her mother when she was 13 years old. Even though we worked together closely, she hid the truth from me too. Years later, understandably, it was not something she wanted to discuss, but that became more difficult as she received more media requests and scrutiny.”

The report further described how victims are prostituted for as little as $4; sold as wives for just $146; or trafficked into cybersex dens for exploitation by a global online audience. The trade has become a multi-million-pound industry, netting around $105 million each year.

It also illustrated how those enslaved in brothels, which litter satellite-towns and townships close to large urban areas in northeast China, are habitually subjected to penetrative vaginal and anal rape, forced masturbation, and groping. And in the cybersex world, girls as young as 9 are forced to perform graphic sex acts and are sexually assaulted in front of webcams, which are live-streamed to a paying global audience. While those snared in forced marriages are bought, raped, exploited, and enslaved by Chinese husbands.

With China’s policy to repatriate North Koreans, the fate of these women and girls hangs in a precarious balance, as they will face definitive imprisonment and torture upon their return. So they become little more than sitting ducks – cheap and easy targets – caught in the exponentially growing sex trade in China. Until more scrutiny is cast on North Korea or on China’s regulations, the traffickers will continue to prey on them.

Yet, there are still voices of undeterred fortitude like that of Park Jihyun, who asserted:

“In such an uncaring world, what can be done for my countrywomen? Peace can never be brought to countries or people governed by men who despise women – that much is clear to all who open their eyes. Making a difference in the fight against human trafficking is, therefore, daunting, but not impossible. It is obvious that we must target China’s sex trade and trafficking rings for removal and actively rescue and protect victims. And we must also confront the main problem – the Government of North Korea – at its source.

“I will not give up, and it is my hope that the voices of my countrywomen that this report will speak for all the voiceless North Korean women and girls, and that the world will finally listen.”

L'articolo China Trafficking Thousands of North Korean Women as Sex Slaves proviene da InsideOver.

There is a new form of modern slavery, and in the Middle East it is legalized. It’s called kafala. A form of abuse against women workers, especially domestic workers, in which the state is complicit.

In Lebanon this issue concerns 250 thousand women. 65% of the country’s female workforce have experienced conditions of forced labor and slavery. They are often raped, impregnated, abused, beaten up, separated from their children, exploited, isolated, underpaid, and when they are not useful anymore, they are sent back to their country of origin by their employers. Between January 2016 and April 2017, 138 migrant workers have been repatriated after their death.

In addition to Lebanon, in Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the UAE the Kafala is a common practice. Lebanon is the destination of many women workers, coming especially from Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, Bangladesh and the Philippines. The system requires that these workers have a “national” sponsor. Usually the “sponsor” is their employer who is also responsible for their visa and their legal status. This gives their employer great power over them.

The practice has been criticized by numerous human rights organizations. The salaries of these workers are very low, in some cases less than 200 dollars per month. One Lebanese employer out of five bans the worker from leaving the home. The motivation for this is to safeguard their investment: hiring a worker costs between 2 to 3 thousand dollars, which would be wasted if the worker tries to escape. The reasoning behind this is that a domestic worker should not have relationships out of their employer’s home, since they could be a distraction or would “corrupt” the family.

The functioning of this system is straightforward: women workers willing to migrate for work contact agents located in their country. These agents have relationships with agencies located in the countries the women would be travelling to, which can organise to sponsor workers in exchange for money. A lot of money. The women often run up debt, in the hope of attaining a new life. That is how they end up as slaves.

Aisha, 20 years old, is originally from Ethiopia, arriving from Addis Abeba. She was able to save herself because she seeked help from the NGO “Immigration Community Center”. We meet her at the office on Mar Mitr street, in the center of Beirut. She was wearing a short black skirt and a t-shirt with the writing “I love Paris”. She has already experienced harm at the hands of men. Aisha worked for a family in Beirut, and had come to Lebanon with high hopes.

“I dreamed about a normal life. Instead, I was cheated – she says looking down. They treated me worse than an animal. I used to work from 14 up to 16 hours a day. They didn’t feed me. They beat me up, they humiliated me. They didn’t pay me. They forced me, and on the rare occasion when I was allowed to rest, I slept on the balcony. It was a nightmare.

Lynn is 40 years old and comes from Philippines. She has bleached hair and colored nails, a bit like Lebanese women. she came from Manila. She has been in Beirut for 20 years. She was a girl when she arrived. Joking, she says that during these years she “learned Arabic, as the “madame” of the house wanted to speak only Arabic”. «Before I came to Lebanon I lived for a few months in Saudi Arabia – she says – There I used to work in a hospital, then they moved me to Beirut, they told me I would stay here for just 6 months. I have been here for 20 years».

She says that in the house of the family she is still working for “everything is controlled through cameras and recorders. At home I do all the work, I take care of all the family members. During the weekends we move to the mountains. There I grow marijuana to be trafficked. But I cannot mention it. I”m forced to stay quiet and accept everything. Working for those people is worse than working for the Mafia.”

The situation is the same for hundreds of women workers, so institutions and NGOs are getting busier trying to stop exploitation and violence. At the front is the European Union, Caritas Lebanon, ILO (International Labour Organisation, the NGO Kafa (Enough) and the Migrant Community Center. Ghada Jabbour, the director of Kafa, explained that these women workers are often “trapped”, they undergo “physical and sexual violence, they are isolated, they don’t eat, they work in the houses of every member of the family and are not paid for their work.”

According to Zeina Mezher, national project coordinator of ILO, this is simply forced labour. “They are forced to work for a predetermined person, they are confined to the house, they don’t have a social life and cannot find another job. ILO is working so that the Lebanese government can sign a protocol condemning the forced labor in our country.”

But there is no time to waste, as related cases of suicide are becoming more and more frequent. This is confirmed by Farah Salka, director of the Migrant Community Center: “Many try to escape and die jumping into the void. One month ago an Ethiopian women worker jumped off the balcony of her employment agency and died.” At the beginning of June another Ethiopian women was found dead in the city of Belida, in the South of Lebanon, hanging from the branch of a tree near her employers house with a small chair next to her. For those who do manage to escape, most of the time they are arrested. There have been 337 arrests in April alone.

L'articolo Kafala, third millennium slavery proviene da InsideOver.