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Not really a big surprise is it?  I mean, slavery as a topic to most Westerners seems sort of a hazy far away topic.  The indolent luxury of our society washes away much of our collective memory of slavery, ah yes feel the consumerist tide set you free.

Mostly, when one mentions the Slavery our memories draw back to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade of the the 16th century onwards.  It was a horrible time, to say the least.  The wild notion that all people are people still has not taken hold in our world even now in the 21st century.

Some of the not so nice facts from DW-World.de.

“Siddarth Kara, in his book “Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery,” says that there were just over 28 million slaves worldwide in 2006 divided into three categories: bonded labor/debt bondage, forced labor and trafficking slaves.

According to Kara, the profits generated worldwide by all forms of slavery in 2007 were just over $91 billion. That is second only to drug trafficking in terms of global criminal activities.

Information on slavery is very inexact. But we believe that the majority of slave victims – in the neighbourhood of 80 percent – are the female gender, and that around 50 percent are children. We believe that the largest category of slavery is sex slavery. This is not to minimize other large categories – domestic servitude slavery, forced labour in farms and factory slavery, child soldier slavery,” said John Miller, director of the US State Department‘s Office for Monitoring and Combating Trafficking in Persons. 

Human trafficking is synonymous with slavery. Human trafficking relies on coercion and exploitation. It thrives on converting hope to fear. It’s maintained through violence. The trade in people is a major source of revenue – in the billions [of dollars per year] – for organized crime, along with the drug trade and the arms trade. Let there be no misunderstanding, modern slavery plagues every country in the world – including the United States,” Miller said.”

So ya, happy slavery day.  Maybe within my lifetime it can be a memorial day instead of a current events concern.