East Anglia call for fight against Modern Slavery

Mark Little with Indian victim Ashraf

Source: Diocese of East Anglia

The disgracefully overlooked crime of Modern Slavery, including in the UK, must be fought with both action and awareness, says Mark Little MBE, founder and Chairman of the Rotary Action Group Against Slavery.

I have been living on this planet for over 80 years and for three-quarters of that time, I am ashamed to admit that I had no idea that I lived in a world chockful of slaves. Then in 2001, I happened to watch a Channel 4 documentary on the subject, which shook me to the core. Slavery in the USA ?… surely not. Slavery in the UK?… never. Millions of slaves in India? Within four months I was out in India specifically to visit two of the child slave rehabilitation centres, featured in that documentary film.

The nature and extent of this global crime has dominated my thoughts and actions ever since I first listened to the heart-breaking testimonies of some of the survivors, I met on that first visit, 23 years ago, who were in the process of rebuilding their lives at those centres.

Ashraf was one of those survivors, it was his story which propelled me to leap from outrage to action; to help alleviate the effects of a crime which is still expanding like knotweed around our planet. For drinking some milk without his master's permission, Ashraf's right hand was blackened over the flames of a gas stove. Then, his body and face were branded, by his master, with a red hot screwdriver. When I met Ashraf at the Rehabilitation Centre, I counted 21 marks on his face.

I know that many people, here, still labour under the comforting myth that slavery is a thing of the past and that the practice ceased with the abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the American Civil War. Others see the problem from a different perspective. They believe that "Modern Slavery" is a new phenomenon but that it is restricted to countries such as China, India, Nigeria and North Korea rather than the UK.

The reality is that whilst the laws permitting slavery have been repealed everywhere, people around the world continue to be brutalised, broken, exploited and enslaved through violence or the threat of violence. Making something illegal doesn't make it cease to exist. Making something illegal only causes it to vanish from view.

According to the Global Slavery Index, there were approximately 50 million people enslaved worldwide in 2021 and a quarter of these were children. The Index also estimates that 122,000 people were living in Modern Slavery in the UK on any given day in 2021. So behind closed doors, in remote places and right under our noses - in plain sight - slavery has continued in the UK because of the public's lack of awareness or apathy, because of our porous borders and because of the failure of past UK governments to tackle the problem, especially the exploitation of young girls into sex slavery.

Someone has aptly described "slavery" as "the most disgracefully overlooked crime against humanity". The charge is justified because many Governments appear to be doing very little to enforce laws against slavery. As a result of this governmental inaction, the traffickers and slave masters are getting away with it. So, how can we help in this struggle against Modern Slavery? Well as a first step:

- We can educate ourselves about Modern Slavery and help others to become aware of the problem.
- We can give or organise presentations.
- We can insist that businesses check their supply chains for slave-produced goods.
- We can provide anti-slavery organisations with funds to support their work.
- As consumers, we can restrict our purchases to fairly traded goods.
- We can urge our political representatives to promote and/or strengthen anti-slavery laws.

In the past 23 years, I have travelled all over the UK and abroad trying to open the eyes of as many people as possible to the unseen world where millions languish in slavery because of poverty, because of corruption and because of man's greed for profit on the backs of vulnerable people. I have looked into the eyes and hearts of hundreds of survivors, like Ashraf and felt their pain, which is why I created a global Rotary Action Group Against Slavery.

Now, I want to use the knowledge and contacts I have gained on Modern Slavery to help in the work and initiative which has been launched in the Diocese of East Anglia by the former Secretary of the Action Group, Simon John.

In the last several months, Simon has been inexhaustible in his appeal for volunteers to join the team which will help in the struggle against Modern Slavery. Read his article in last month's Diocesan newspaper. Are you up for answering his search for help? Edmund Burke said, "all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing". We must avoid such a situation. After all, if we are neutral in situations of injustice, we have already chosen the side of the oppressor.