Willingly
no one chooses the yoke of slavery.
-- Aeschylus
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*
“If you love your children, if you love your country,
if you love the God of love, clear your hands
from slaves, burden not your children or country
with them.”
-- Richard Allen
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*
"Slavery
was, in a very real sense, the first international
human rights issue to come to the fore. It
led to the adoption of the first human rights
laws and to the creation of the first human
rights non-governmental organization. And
yet despite the efforts of the international
community to combat this abhorrent practice,
it is still widely prevalent in all its insidious
forms, old and new. The list is painfully
long and includes traditional chattel slavery;
bonded labour; serfdom; and forced labour,
including of children, women and migrants,
and often for the purpose of sexual exploitation,
domestic servitude and ritualistic and religious
reasons....
-- Kofi Annan
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|
Human
beings are not property. On the International Day
for the Abolition of Slavery, let us reaffirm the
inherent dignity of all men, women and children. And
let us redouble our efforts so that the words of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights — 'no one shall
be held in slavery or servitude' — ring true."
--
Kofi Annan
|
*
The
more freedom we enjoy, the greater the responsibility
we bear, toward others as well as ourselves.
--
Oscar Arias Sanchez
|
 |
 |
*
We
could eradicate slavery. The laws are in place.
The multi-nationals, the world trade organizations,
the United Nations, they could end slavery,
but they're not going to do it until and unless
we demand it.
-- Kevin Bales
the
4th right in the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights is that there can be no slavery. Virtually
every human being agrees that it is a moral
wrong. Those key battles are won by people who
went before us, who had the really tough job.
Our job is simply to make sure that countries
enforce their own laws and that slaves, when
freed, have an opportunity for rehabilitation,
reintegration, education, and so forth
-- Kevin Bales
|
It
surprises people that there’s actually a very large
number of slaves in the world today—our best estimate
is 27 million. And that is defining a slave in a very
narrow way; we’re not talking about sweatshop workers
or people who are just poor, we’re talking about people
who are controlled by violence, who cannot walk away,
who are being held against their will, who are being
paid nothing.
-- Kevin Bales
Slavery
is what slavery's always been: About one person controlling
another person using violence and then exploiting
them economically, paying them nothing. That's what
slavery's about
-- Kevin Bales
“It’s
as if all identity has been stolen from them, except
their identity as slaves.”
-- Kevin Bales
We
have to make it clear to the multi-nationals that
slavery is too high a price to pay for cheap goods
-- Kevin Bales
For
some slaves, the first step out of bondage is to learn
to see their lives with new eyes. Their reality is
a social world where they have their place and some
assurance of a subsistence diet. Born into slavery,
they cannot easily redefine their lives outside the
frame of enslavement.
-- Kevin Bales
Slavery
is theft -- theft of a life, theft of work, theft
of any property or produce, theft even of the children
a slave might have borne.
-- Kevin Bales
 |
millions
of our fellow human beings continue to live
as contemporary slaves, victims of abominable
practices like human trafficking, forced labour
and sexual exploitation. Countless children
are forced to become soldiers, work in sweat
shops or are sold by desperate families. Women
are brutalized and traded like commodities.
Entire households and villages labour under
debt bondage.
-- Ban Ki-moon
*
On
this International Day for the Abolition of
Slavery let us reaffirm the inherent dignity
of all men, women and children. And let us redouble
our efforts to build societies in which slavery
truly is a term for the history books.
-- Ban Ki-moon
|
It
is up to each and every one of us to raise our voice
against crimes that deprive countless victims of their
liberty, dignity and human rights. We have to work
together to realize the equal rights promised to all
by the United Nations Charter. And we must collectively
give meaning to the words of the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights that “no one shall be held in slavery
or servitude”.
-- Ban Ki-moon
"The
slave labors, but with no cheer—it is not the
road to respectability, it will honor him with
no citizens’ trust, it brings no bread to his
family, no grain to his garner, no leisure in
after-days, no books or papers to his children.
It opens no school-house door, builds no church,
rears for him no factory, lays no keel, fills
no bank, earns no acres. With sweat and toil and
ignorance he consumes his life, to pour the earnings
into channels from which he does no drink, into
hands that never honor him. But perpetually rob
and often torment.”
-- Henry Ward
Beecher |
|
As legal slavery passed, we entered into a
permanent period of unemployment and underemployment
from which we have yet to emerge.
-- Julian Bond
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|
See,
it's no in between: you're either free or you're a
slave.
-- H. Rap Brown
*
None
who have always been free can understand the
terrible fascinating power of the hope of
freedom to those who are not free.
-- Pearl S. Buck
Men
would rather be starving and free than fed
in bonds.
--
Pearl S. Buck
|
|
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*
“We
are asking people to understand that slavery
still exists today; in fact, according to a
recent New York Times article, if you count
the number of women and children in bonded labor,
domestic slavery or sexual slavery today, there
are more slaves in the world than at any other
time in history.”
-- Charlotte
Bunch
|
 |
*
The
well-being and the hopes of the peoples of the
world can never be served until peace - as well
as freedom, honor and self-respect - is secure.
-- Ralph J. Bunche
|
We
must show new energy in fighting back an old evil.
Nearly two centuries after the abolition of the transatlantic
slave trade, and more than a century after slavery
was officially ended in its last strongholds, the
trade in human beings for any purpose must not be
allowed to thrive in our time."
-- George W. Bush
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*
"Everyone
has a right to peaceful coexistence, the basic
personal freedoms, the alleviation of suffering,
and the opportunity to lead a productive life..."
-- Jimmy Carter
|
Slavery
can only be abolished by raising the character of
the people who compose the nation; and that can be
done only by showing them a higher one.
-- Maria Weston Chapman
Why
should workers agree to be slaves in a basically
authoritarian structure? They should have
control over it themselves. Why shouldn't
communities have a dominant voice in running
the institutions that affect their lives?
-- Noam
Chomsky
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|
Freedom
Day
- February 1
End
Slavery Day
- December 2
