http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34557…

Serum testosterone levels in healthy young black and white men.

Blacks in the United States have the highest prostate cancer rate in the world and nearly twice that of whites in the United States. The 2:1 black-to-white ratio in prostate cancer rates is already apparent at age 45 years, the age at which the earliest prostate cancer cases occur. This finding suggests that the factor(s) responsible for the difference in rates occurs, or first occurs, early in life. Testosterone has been hypothesized to play a role in the etiology of prostate cancer, because testosterone and its metabolite, dihydrotestosterone, are the principal trophic hormones that regulate growth and function of epithelial prostate tissue. This report gives the results of assays of circulating steroid hormone levels in white and black college students in Los Angeles, CA. Mean testosterone levels in blacks were 19% higher than in whites, and free testosterone levels were 21% higher. Both these differences were statistically significant. Adjustment by analysis of covariance for time of sampling, age, weight, alcohol use, cigarette smoking, and use of prescription drugs somewhat reduced the differences. After these adjustments were made, blacks had a 15% higher testosterone level and a 13% higher free testosterone level. A 15% difference in circulating testosterone levels could readily explain a twofold difference in prostate cancer risk.

======================================

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob…

Genetic and environmental contributions to cranial capacity in black and white adolescents

Abstract

Data from 236 pairs of twins (472 individuals) aged 13 to 17 years were used to examine genetic and environmental factors influencing cranial size, an indirect estimate of brain volume. Measures were taken of zygosity, head lenght, head breadth, age, sex, race, height, and weight for 187 males and 285 females, 222 Whites and 250 Blacks. Cranial size was estimated from head length and head breadth using standard equations. Group differences were found. Cranial capacity increased over age 13 to 17 from 1,233 cm3 to 1,279 cm3. After adjusting for the effects of age and body size, boys averaged 1,290 cm3 and girls 1,229 cm3, Whites averaged 1,269 cm3 and Blacks 1,251 cm3. Intraclass correlations were calculated and models fitted of proportionate genetic and environmental contributions to variance. Depending on particular corrections for body size, heritabilities for the sample as a whole ranged from 38% to 51% with 6% to 20% due to common environment and from 42% to 52% due to unique (nonshared) environmental factors, including error variance. The proportionate contributions did not vary systematically by sex and the seemingly higher range of heritabilities estimated for Whites than for Blacks (47% to 56% against 12% to 31%) and the lower range of common environment effects for Whites than for Blacks (28% to 32% against 42% to 46%) did not differ significantly. In conclusion, it is indicated that genetic factors are required to account for the phenotypic variance in cranial capacity and that further research is required on whether environmental factors exert more influence in Black populations than in White populations.

How dare that racist evil toad organization, Anti-Slavery.org, point out unpleasant facts that white-guilt Seattle liberals like Kuntmushy don't like!

http://www.antislavery.org/archive/other…

Trafficking of children in West Africa - focus on Mali and
Côte d'Ivoire

Trafficking of children in West Africa is widespread and increasing. The countries involved include Mali, Côte d'Ivoire, Benin, Gabon, Ghana, Togo, Nigeria, Niger, and Burkina Faso.

Boys and girls, as young as seven, are trafficked, primarily for their labour. The journeys involved can be dangerous and there have been reports of children dying along the route, particularly when travelling by sea in unseaworthy vessels. The children are smuggled both within national boundaries and across international frontiers, sometimes with the collaboration of border guards.

Poverty is central to why parents send their children to work. The prospect of good wages in a wealthier country, such as Gabon or Côte d'Ivoire, seems an acceptable option. But the realities of what most of these children have to face along the route and once they reach their destination are not widely known. Although many of those who are trafficked ultimately do not earn the money promised and the conditions in which they are forced to live and work range from basic to brutal, the reality of one less mouth to feed for a poor household makes a significant difference.

The lure of well-paid work not only attracts parents, but in some cases children go to 'recruiters' themselves, often believing that they will have a good job in the city. However, a recent UNICEF report found that only 13 per cent of these children went willingly.

Apart from the dangerous journey which most of these children face, they are forced to work long hours in harsh conditions. Their working hours, regardless of age and sex, range from ten to 20 hours per day, up to seven days a week, without any time for rest, recreation or education. Basic food, health, sanitation and clothing requirements are not met, and sometimes they are not paid. In addition, they face beatings and other forms of physical abuse from their employer and, particularly in the case of child domestics, are at risk of sexual exploitation by the family employing them. A significant number run away, but unable to return home or find alternative employment, they resort to prostitution to earn a living.

Trafficking from Mali to Côte d'Ivoire
The majority of those trafficked from Mali are boys from the areas of Ségou, Sikasso and Mopti. Networks for trafficking children to Côte d'Ivoire were established in the early 1990s following a demand for cheap labour on its cotton plantations. Most children are recruited by intermediaries and sold on to plantation owners. But some are promised work by relatives or friends and are sent through family networks to work on plantations, in mines, in construction and other types of manual labour where they end up working as slaves.

Because traffickers frequently come from the same region as the children whom they recruit, it is easier for this practice to be hidden as they may know the families and the area. If arrested by police at the border it is not unusual for parents to defend the trafficker saying that he had their permission to take the child across the border for work. Most believe the trafficker's promise that he will find the child well-paid work.

According to a Malian national study, children work for between 5000 and 10,000 FCFA (£5 to £10) per month. But, in reality, most get no money at all. Instead, this salary is paid to the intermediary, or their labour is used to repay the cost of their transport and maintenance and they can end up working for years without being paid.

A national study in Côte d'Ivoire found that employers paid intermediaries between 50,000 and 75,000 FCFA. Intermediaries also earn money by selling the children to employers.

Isolated from their family, community and culture these children are under the trafficker's and employer's complete control, vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. Conditions are basic and with no consideration for safety standards. On plantations they are poisoned by the chemicals used in farming, they suffer skin diseases, heat stroke, increased heart rate, malnutrition as well as physical abuse.

The story of 'ID' is typical of the hardship these children experience. Now 15 years old, he has returned to Mali after two years, having been trafficked to work on a coffee and yam plantation in Bouafle, Côte d'Ivoire.

'Our day began at 5am. Carrying heavy tools on our head, we had to walk six kilometres through mud and stones in bare feet to reach the fields. By the time we reached them we were soaked through and exhausted. Once we arrived the overseer showed us the area we each had to plant before the day's end. We were afraid of what he would do to us if we could not finish the work. This threat and the threat of being denied food if we could not finish in time forced us to work quickly. The work was hard and bending all day gave us back pains. If we were ill and couldn't work we were afraid that we would be tortured to death. One day I witnessed two of my colleagues being tortured for trying to escape. They became seriously ill and died.'

Estimates of the numbers of children involved in this human trade vary. Based on the numbers of children who were repatriated and arrested at the border, the Malian Consular Office in Abidjan estimates that between 1995 and 1998 more than 600 children, mainly boys, were trafficked from Mali. In 1998 UNICEF reported between 10,000 and 15,000 Malian boys were working on plantations in Côte d'Ivoire. However, this figure does not identify how many were trafficked and how many are employed legally.

Because of the nature of this illegal trade, corruption and the lack of a centralised system for collecting data, accurate statistics have not been compiled.

The conditions and the cost
The effect of trafficking on children is devastating. Apart from the deprivations referred to above, they are in danger of being cut off from their roots, losing contact with their families and their culture. They are denied the fundamental rights of education and recreation crucial to their social and psychological development. Many never return home and can be trafficked more than once. Even when they do manage to return to their villages, they face difficulties in adjustment.

There are several international conventions prohibiting child trafficking. These include the 1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade and of Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery; the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child; the Organisation of African Unity's African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child; and International Labour Organisation Convention 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labour. Despite these laws, many of which have been ratified by the countries where trafficking takes place, the number of children being trafficked in West Africa appears to be on the increase.

What is being done
The urgency of this problem is being acknowledged by the governments concerned. A significant step was taken on 6 September 2000 when Mali and Côte d'Ivoire signed an agreement on prohibiting the illegal trafficking of children for labour between the two countries. The accord states that both countries must develop legislation regarding the movement of children abroad.

At a meeting hosted by UNICEF and the International Labour Organisation in Libreville, Gabon from 22-24 February 2000, officials from West and Central African states agreed to A Common Platform of Action which proposes the creation of laws designed to protect child workers, improvements in the system of taking child victims of trafficking into custody, and the strengthening of co-operation among governments. Members also proposed the establishment of transit and reception centres for returned children.

Currently, Mali, as well as Benin and Togo, are the only countries in the region that have formulated specific programmes to fight trafficking.

In 1998, Mali established a Consultative National Commission on Child Trafficking. It also created the Ministry for Children and Family -- one of its tasks is the repatriation of children who return from plantations in Côte d'Ivoire. To facilitate this, in February 2000, the Ministry invited Anti-Slavery to help with the formulation of a programme for rehabilitating children who had been trafficked to Côte d'Ivoire. The government is also working with local NGOs on programmes of rehabilitation.

Oh no! Those awful racists at the BBC are at it again!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/409157…

Slavery: Mauritania's best kept secret
By Pascale Harter
BBC News, Nouakchott

Skyra is a runaway Mauritanian slave. Her earliest childhood memories are of fetching water, tending animals and cooking and cleaning.


Skyra was born into slavery - but her children are now free
"I was tied up all night and all day. They only untied me so I could do my chores. In the end I could barely move my limbs."

She never earnt a single penny.

"All those years," she told me, "and I don't even own a goat".

Mohamed could not tell me his surname or his age.

As a slave he didn't own the right to either.

But in a candlelit shack in the sandy outskirts of the capital, Nouakchott, he told me the story of his life.

"I don't know how I became a slave," he told me.

"I was just born one. My family were slaves. We did all the hard work for our master and all we received in return was beatings."

Proof

After three attempts at making slavery illegal, the latest as recently as 1981, Mauritania has finally enacted a law which goes further than ever before, making slave ownership punishable with a fine or prison sentence.

I would rather they shot me dead and buried me right there than return with my master

Mohamed
But a year on, and no-one has yet been prosecuted under the new law. "We enacted it just to meet international standards," says Bamariam Koita, director of the government's Human Rights Commission.

Mr Koita maintains that no-one has been prosecuted because slavery was abolished long ago in Mauritania.

"Have you seen a slave? Have you seen a slave market? Of course you haven't," he puffed, confidently answering his own question.

He has a point. Human beings in chains are not bought and sold in the full glare of Nouakchott's market. It's even worse than that, according to Boubakar Messaoud, founder of the local association SOS Slaves.

"A captured slave knows freedom, so to keep him you have to chain him," says Mr Messaoud.

"But a Mauritanian slave, whose parents and grandparents before him were slaves, doesn't need chains. He has been brought up as a domesticated animal."

Rape

Skyra was born to a slave mother so there was never any question she would be anything else. She remembers the years she spent treated like an animal.

"They raped me often," she says shaking with anger.

Officials say slavery does not exist
"At night, when everyone was asleep, they came for me and I couldn't stop them. If I had been free I would never have let this happen to me".

A living reminder of her slavery nestles in Skyra's lap, another sleeps at her feet, on the floor of her corrugated iron shack.

"My master is the father of my first child, my master's son is the father of my second child and my baby girl's father was my master's nephew".

In this way says Boubakar Messaoud, "We have achieved what the American plantation owners dreamed of - the breeding of perfectly submissive slaves".

Count the slaves

Skyra was not perfectly submissive. Her small insurrections earned her beatings until she found the strength - and the opportunity - to run away. She was determined that her children would not be born into slavery as she had been.

Mohamed escaped his master when soldiers passed by his isolated village in the desert. "When my master demanded the soldiers hand me over, I told them I would rather they shot me dead and buried me right there than return with my master."

In answer to the Mauritanian government's assertion that slavery no longer exists in Mauritania, Mohamed recites the names of the family members he left behind in slavery. "If I tell you their names, can you count them?" he asked shyly. "I was never taught". There are eight members of his immediate family still living as slaves, and Mohamed tells me there are many more in Mauritania.

It is difficult to know how many though. International human rights organisations such as Amnesty International are prevented from entering the country to conduct research.

"Not only has the government denied the existence of slavery and failed to respond to cases brought to its attention," says Amnesty, "it has hampered the activities of organisations which are working on the issue, including by refusing to grant such organisations official recognition."

Boubakar Messaoud and other members of SOS Slaves have been imprisoned and harassed by the authorities for their anti-slavery campaigning.

It seems the government has little interest in really wiping out slavery. Meanwhile slavery remains Mauritania's best kept open secret.

"Everyone knew we were slaves," said Mohamed. "It's a normal thing, to have slaves in Mauritania."

Oh gawd won't someone stop those awful racist toads at the BBC from destroying my naive outlook on life???

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/fr…

Born to be a slave in Niger

By Hilary Andersson
BBC Africa Correspondent, Niger

Slavery continues to blight the lives of many millions around the world. Although officially abolished in some countries two centuries ago, people trafficking, bonded labour and child labour still exist.


Slaves come from the poorest communities in Niger

There are some places on earth that few outsiders visit or know about, vast empty sections of the earth where time has stood still for centuries.

Niger is one of those places. It is a country that you can drive through for hours without seeing a soul.

A nation of vast, barren and windswept landscapes, a country of people who live almost entirely off cattle, and off the labour of human slaves.

Slavery in Niger is not an obscure thing, nor a curious relic of the past, it is an intrinsic part of society today.

A Nigerian study has found that almost 8% of the population are slaves.

You wonder how this can be in the 21st Century and why people do not know about it?

We began a journey to find out more.

Humiliation

We drove for hundreds of miles north across the desert. There were no roads for much of the journey and our cars rattled and jarred across plains set with, what seemed like, solidified waves of sand every few feet.



We choked on the dust, hour after hour, wondering if we would ever see another human being at all in this desolate place, let alone a slave.

We were heading for a well, owned by a local nomadic leader and we had been told he, like many here, owned slaves.

We eventually found his tents and reversed our cars immediately, hoping to locate his slaves without his knowledge first, so that we could speak freely to them, without them being afraid of intimidation.

We found the slaves' tents some way off, and there we met Fatima, a mother of seven children.

She lived in a scrawny brown tent that rose no higher than my elbow off the ground. Her children were all around and one of them had a face bloated with a terrible infection for which she had no medicine.

She seemed humiliated by her status, but seemed to have no greater expectations of her life


Fatima told us she had been working for her master for as long as she could remember.

She said her master did not pay her, but fed and clothed her.

"What can I do?" she said. "I have no money, I need food, I have children and so if I can work for a man who at least feeds me then that is good."

When I asked her if she was a slave she looked at the ground, and said yes.

She seemed humiliated by her status, but seemed to have no greater expectations of her life.

Appalling abuse

When we spoke to her masters they denied owning slaves. The practice of slavery was outlawed in Niger last year.

Trading in slaves has been banned in Niger since the days of the French colonists in the last century, but ownership of slaves was never specifically banned.

Most slaves in Niger today are the descendents of slaves who were kidnapped in wars and raids centuries ago, and were simply born into their status.

Many slaves in Niger are appallingly abused by their masters.

Slave children are taken away from their parents before they are two-years-old, to break the bonds between parent and child and to eliminate any sense of identity.

The children grow up working in the house of the master.


Assibit was born into slavery, as was her mother and her husband

The slave owners encourage the slaves to reproduce to increase their numbers, sometimes even determining when they have sexual intercourse.

They treat the slaves like their cattle.

Slaves are often beaten for small misdemeanours.

They work long hours and are sometimes deprived of food as punishment.

There are documented cases of slaves being stripped naked in front of their families to humiliate them, of female slaves being raped by their owners, and even of male slaves being castrated by their owners as punishment.

Hopes and fears

Assibit, another slave we met, could not bear the punishment any longer and ran away from her master last July, leaving her husband, also a slave, behind.

She undertook a traumatic journey back to her former owner with us and a human rights worker to see if, under Niger's new laws, her husband could be freed.

When we got to his tents, she lowered herself in the seat so that she would not be seen.

The human rights activist confronted the owner, a lanky thin older man, surrounded by his tall sons.

They became aggressive and began to shout at us to turn off our cameras and leave.

They screamed that the human rights activist was a slave too, and that he deserved a beating.

An entire section of the population would have to be taught that they are not intrinsically inferior to others


We tried to retreat into the car, but our vehicle was stuck in the deep soft sand and would not move.

Eventually, with the sons banging on the windows the car began to plough forward slowly, and we fled.

When Assibit first ran away from her owners she was asked what it was like to be free, but she did not understand the question.

She did not understand the concept of freedom, or even the word.

When I arrived in Niger, I could barely believe that slavery exists in this century on such a scale, but when I left I could not see how it could end in our generation.

Ending slavery in Niger would require a social revolution.

An entire section of the population would have to be taught that they are not intrinsically inferior to others, but that is what they have believed for generations.

The slave owners, and the establishment, are reluctant to teach them.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?repo…

NIGER: Survey finds over 870,000 are still slaves

Photo: IRIN
Niger, where slavery is still prevalent
NIAMEY, 13 May 2003 (IRIN) - Although Niger recently passed new tougher laws against slavery, more than 870,000 people - about seven percent of the country's population - still live in conditions of forced labour, according to Timidria, a local human rights group.

The organisation, whose name means "Brotherhood" in the Tuareg language, recently announced the results of a survey conducted in August last year in six of Niger's eights administrative regions. This showed that 870,364 people still worked in servitude. The vast majority - 602,000 - were in the southwestern Tillaberry region, where the capital Niamey is situated.

Slavery is a long ingrained tradition in this poor landlocked country of 11 million people on the southern edge of the Sahara, which achieved independence from France in 1960.

Timidria said the custom was especially prevalant amongst nomadic pastoralists of the Tuareg tribe.

Its survey found that, apart from Tillaberry, the main concentrations of slaves were in Agadez region in the desert north, where 87,000 people were living conditions of forced labour, and in Tahoua region, adjacent to Tillaberry in the southwest, where it found 59,000 slaves.

Over the years, numerous workshops and symposiums have been held to expose the continuation of slavery in Niger. Parliament recently passed a law which recognises "slavery and slave-like practices" as crimes punishable with a prison sentence of up to 30 years.

The International Labour Organization defines as "forced labour" any activity which an individual is forced to perform services under threat of punishment without his or her own consent. This international definition excludes national military service, communal service or work imposed to an individual sentenced to communal service.

In Africa, Niger, Mauritania and Sudan are considered the main countries were slavery persists.

Many slave-owners interviewed by Timidria said the forced labourers were an inheritance and a responsibility.

"We inherited these slaves from our parents, but I did not know it was slavery", the organisation quoted one Tuareg chief as saying. "They are victims who don't want to leave us".

According to university professor, El Back Adam, Niger's slaves refuse to leave their masters despite the terrible conditions in which they live, because at least "they have a roof under their head and something to eat."

http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?repo…

NIGER: Slavery - an unbroken chain

Photo: IRIN/ G. Cranston
Both of 25-year-old Azara's children were conceived when her master raped her. Even though they are his children, he classes them as his slaves
NIAMEY, 21 March 2005 (IRIN) - Despite the fierce desert wind and 40 degree Celsius temperature, the exhausted young woman sat with her two children outside a lean-to hut made of rattan mats, on the southern fringes of the Sahara.

Azara, 25, haltingly began to tell the story of her life as a modern-day slave born into bondage, like her parents and grandparents before her. She was owned by a nomadic Tuareg tribesman who roamed the vast expanses of northern Niger.

“I can’t remember any specific times that were bad; my whole past is marked with hard memories,” she told IRIN.

“I had to pound millet and fetch water all the time. I worked day and night. I had to do whatever my master told me to do. It was out of the question to say no.

“If I ever I refused I was beaten so hard. I tried once to resist but he beat me.” In 2003, she finally escaped.

Azara is one of at least 43,000 people born into slavery in Niger, a landlocked West African country with a population of 12 million, comprising eight main ethnic groups.

In 2004, the UN classed the country as the second poorest in the world.

Although it has the world’s highest birth rate, average life-expectancy is just 45 years. Seventy-eight percent of the population is illiterate, according to UNICEF.

Slavery dates back for centuries in Niger. When the country claimed independence from France in 1960, the practice was outlawed, in theory. It was finally criminalised - with a 30-year jail-term on conviction - in 2003, after five years of lobbying by Anti-Slavery International and Nigerien human-rights group Timidria.

Fearing imprisonment under the new law, a Tuareg chief who headed 19 clans in western Niger promised in late 2004 that he would release every one of the 7,000 slaves owned by his people for generations.

Timidria and its partners were overjoyed. After a decade of tireless work, the first slaves ever released in Niger would be set free at a desert ceremony set for 5 March 2005, in the village of Inates, 277 km northwest of the capital, Niamey.

International observers and journalists were invited to witness the historic event.

Anti-Slavery International called it “exceptional” - a worldwide one-off, unlike anything seen since the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade more than a century earlier.

Instead, on the day, no slaves were released.

U-turns and manouevres

Arissal Ag Amdague, the Tuareg chief, stood up before the assembled dignitaries, including a delegation from the Nigerien Human Rights Commission, and denied that neither he nor any of his 19 clans owned any slaves.


Chief Arissal Ag Amdague backtracked at a meeting held on 5 March, in Ates in far west Niger, on written promises he made to free all 7,000 slaves his people own in western Niger
“Slavery doesn’t exist in Inates,” he declared. "Nobody has told me they have seen slaves. If someone has slaves they must tell me.”

Dozens of Nigeriens (and one Malian) in Arissal’s territory - and the region around Tahoua, 565km northeast of Niamey - had told IRIN in the days before the ceremony that they had experienced slavery.

The chief himself had signed a pledge with Timidria, dated September 21 2004, entitled ‘Freeing of slaves’, which agreed to the release.

There is still no clear understanding about why he changed his position so dramatically.

Anti-Slavery International says it has spoken to Nigerien and international observers who witnessed Arissal and his subordinates being visited by a government delegation, led by the Nigerien Human Rights Commission, soon before the ceremony was to take place. They say the delegation intimidated the chief and his juniors into denying slavery existed.

David Ould, deputy director of Anti-Slavery International, told IRIN: “We are pretty depressed the events took the turn they did.

“Despite [the Niger’s Human Rights] Commission and the government making strong statements about the new law and their intention to see it enforced, they have followed this with statements that slavery does not exist in Niger, sending out a confusing message about their intentions.”

Ould added “It is also very worrying to hear of the Niger government’s intimidation of the population. We are concerned it appears to be moving away from a position that slavery does exist in Niger to one of denial.”

Niger’s government, which is a signatory to International Labour Organisation conventions against forced labour, adopted the new anti-slavery provisions in the country's penal code in May 2003. They came into force 12 months later.

These provide for prison terms of 10 to 30 years, and fines of one million CFA francs (US $2,123), to five million CFA francs ($10,617) for people found guilty of enslavement.


Lonpo Garba (right), head of Niger's Human Rights Commission. Garba stated that slavery does not exist in Niger - contradicting estimates of more than 43,000 people in bondage
Similar penalties are applicable to “a master or his accomplice [who] has sexual relations with a woman considered a slave, or the wife of a man considered a slave”, and “to anyone found guilty of placing a woman considered a slave at the disposal of another person, with a view to having sexual relations”.

Niger’s Human Rights Commissioner Lonpo Garba, who attended the 5 March ceremony, claimed there was no slavery in Niger any more.

He said Arissal only agreed to a staged release in return for cash from Timidria and others; money intended to ease the former slaves’ integration into free society.

“We made a survey which did not prove the existence of these 7,000 slaves there [in Inates],” Garba told IRIN. “The commission does not deny the existence of slavery in Niger in the past, but [there are] not 7,000 slaves in today’s Niger.

“We deem that organising a slave release ceremony is unacceptable as it appears groundless and in contradiction with Niger’s laws” , he announced.

However, the testimonies collected by IRIN, which echo earlier reports gathered by Anti-Slavery International, indicate that the practice is still widespread across the southern Sahara - in Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Sudan.

Azara, who escaped into the care of Timidria in late 2003, told how she was never paid for her day-long labours for her master.

“We had to sleep outside unless it rained,” she said.

“Our master was nomadic Tuareg so we lived in tents, moving every two months.”

There have been reports of slaves having to move their master’s tents four times a day, to make sure they are always in the shade.

“It was us slaves who had to fold the tents and move them,” Azara confirmed.

“If it was far away we used donkeys, but if it was close we had to carry it on our head.”

Another young woman, 20-year-old Tamada, fled over the border into Niger from her life of slavery in neighbouring Mali. She has two children – the first born when she was 12.


Tamada, 20, from Niger, escaped from her life of slavery in Mali. “The situation of a slave is more than I can describe. There was so much violence, verbal insults, spitting.”
“My master used to beat me so often,” she said.

“When I looked after the animals, sometimes one would run off; if this happened I would be beaten.

“The situation of a slave is more than I can describe. There was so much violence, verbal insults, spitting.

“If we didn’t do what we were told we would be hit so hard. I was made to clear up my masters faeces. I was so afraid of him.”

History of enslavement

Descent-based slavery, where generations of the same family are born into bondage, is traditionally practised by at least four of Niger’s eight ethnic groups. It is especially rife among the warlike Tuareg, in the wild deserts of north and west Niger, who roam near the borders with Mali and Algeria.

Historically, the Tuareg swelled the ranks of their slaves during war raids into other peoples’ lands.

Their demand for bonded labourers increased in the 19th century, when they began to settle in northern Niger and farm, according to a March 2004 report edited by Galy Kadir Abdelkader for Anti-Slavery International and Timidria.

“Slaves constituted the principal labour force in warlike societies,” Abdelkader wrote.

“Their numbers kept increasing and, in the region of Say on the right bank of the river Niger, it is estimated that three-quarters of the population around 1904-1905 was composed of slaves.”

War was then the main source of supply of slaves, although many were bought at slave markets, run mostly by indigenous peoples.

The trade was not driven by international demand as was seen further south in Africa, according to Abdelkader’s report, entitled 'Slavery in Niger, Historical, Legal and Contemporary Perspectives'.

Otherwise slaves were bartered, kidnapped, pawned or passed on as dowry.

Although French colonisers stamped out trafficking and slave markets, they refused to class bonded-workers as slaves, terming them ‘voluntary labourers’ in a 1905 survey.

This fudged classification carried over into independence half a century later (Niger was proclaimed an autonomous republic in 1958, and gained full independence in 1960), when slavery was outlawed under Niger’s first constitution.

However, it carried no penalty.

In a bid to quell dissent amongst the powerful Tuareg – and other slave-owning tribes – the first post-colonial administrations welcomed slave masters into the government.

Niger’s minister of nomadic affairs between independence and 1974 was a provincial chief, who had a powerful interest amongst his clansmen not to discuss slavery.

A 1974 coup ushered in 13 years of military dictatorship under Seyni Kountché, who also brought in slave masters to chair local authorities.

“Chiefs were considered not only as agents of the state, but also as judges, and especially custodians of the traditions,” said Abdelkader.

“In such conditions, it is easy to understand that the ‘justiciable’ slave could not find any attentive ears, since both tradition and religion recognised and legitimised slavery, which was not sanctioned by the law.”

Despite the change in the country’s penal code to criminalise the practice, human-rights groups working in Niger describe ongoing abuses.

“In Niger, slavery is a real and current phenomenon that is alive today,” said Ilguiilas Weila, president of Timidria.


A slave girl in north west Niger. “I was born into slavery, my parents are also slaves..” She wears a bracelet on her ankle, a symbol of slavery.
“Masters control their slaves not only through abuse, humiliation and violence, but also through psychological control. The master indoctrinates his slaves and keeps them in complete ignorance and far away from town centres.

“This indoctrination consists of separating the child from his parents from a very young age, in order to traumatise the child, so that he sees himself as an inferior person, born only to serve others and to accept the humiliation that will be inflicted on him throughout his life.”

Weila, whose organisation has 300,000 members and 636 regional offices throughout Niger, explained how religion was sometimes involved: “A slave does not have a family. Left in obscurity, he is often told that God has willed this to happen, in order to cultivate a fatalistic acceptance of his being a slave.

“Wherever they go, slaves are only an addition to the workforce, an accessory whose views or opinions do not count in affairs of social or political management.”

There were high hopes that Arissal’s grand gesture to free all his slaves would serve as a powerful message to other slave masters that the force of the new law was being brought to bear on them.

Preparations for the release took nearly a year. The vast majority of the slaves to be freed had never handled money before, they had no possessions, no concept of trade or of how to handle economic independence.


A young Nigerien slave collects water from a traditional well in far west Niger.
Overnight, they would have been handed the choice where to live, who to marry, where to work, and they would for the first time have had the right to demand payment for their labour.

Supported by international donors, Timidria collected enough food, clothing and shelter to care for the first 7,000 freed for six months - enough time to sensitise them to a life making decisions for themselves.

Community schools, cereal stores, seed banks, wells and health clinics were to be established.

Most of the freed slaves were expected to stay where they were, but to be wage-earning employees for their former masters who had until then paid them nothing.

“The biggest immediate change would have been psychological - they would no longer have had to follow orders,” Romana Cacchioli, Anti-Slavery International’s Africa programme director, told IRIN.

“The slaves see themselves, as their masters have always told them they are, as no more than dogs.

“The ceremony was to be symbolic, a first step towards their emancipation and restoring their human dignity.

“It was the beginning of a long road.”

Anti-slavery campaigners will now begin again to pressure the Niger government to search out and prosecute slave masters, as it promised to do in May 2003 when the new law was enacted.

Until then, the only former slaves able to live a free life are those, like Azara and Tamada, who managed to escape.


Sabila, 15 has been repeatedly mistreated by her slave master, often being raped. She was born into slavery
Sabila's story

Sabila – not her real name – is 15 years old, and was born into slavery. She lives with her master in a village 100 km outside the central Niger town of Tahoua.

Timid and unsure of herself, she spoke to IRIN out of sight of other slaves, in a tattered mud-and-thatch hut outside her village.

“My family are all slaves to my master’s family. I have to work so hard, fetching water and firewood, and other domestic work,” she said.

“He forces me to sleep with him so many times. The times I have tried to refuse he beats me. This all started when I was about seven years old.

“He takes me into his room, unclothes me and rapes me. It makes me so sad. I reported it to my father but he, like me, can’t do anything, because he too is a slave.”

Unusually for a slave in Niger, Sabila was allowed by her master to go to school, after a teacher threatened to take him to court if he refused.

“He was afraid and agreed that if I worked for him in the mornings and evenings I could go.


A metal anklet worn only by the slave-classes of Nigerien society. There are more than 43,000 slaves in Niger, and while none where the shackles commonly associated with the slave trade, these anklets serve as a powerful symbolic reminder they are classed apart.
“I have studied up to Class Five, but now he has refused to let me go any longer.

"At school when the teachers taught us about slavery, they teach that it goes back to the transatlantic slave trade and that it doesn’t exist anymore.

“I am too afraid to say anything.”

Sabila’s master has a daughter who moved to Nigeria to marry, and he wants to take Sabila there and give her to his daughter as a gift.

“When my parents found out they were not happy, and asked our master to let me stay with them. He said no, she is my slave, she must come with me.

“I have refused. He is preparing to go now; I am so afraid that he will kidnap me and take me with him.”

The 15-year-old’s future is unclear.

“I am still living and working for him. I have been having problems with my periods, they have not been normal and I have had bad pains.

“The last time I had a period was about three or four months ago. My master raped me three months ago.”

Dammit BBC! You are making Kuntmushy look stupid! Racists!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/fr…

Ghana's trapped slaves

Togbe Adzimashi Adukpo is a priest - he is also a slave master

By Humphrey Hawksley in eastern Ghana
The woman let her bright green cloth slip down to reveal her breasts. But she did not care.

The African heat seeped through a hazy sky, drying up everything around and sapping strength.

The girls are my slaves - they are the property of my shrine"

Togbe Adzimashi Adukpo
She hauled up a bucket from a well, spilling water on the dirt ground, then rested by burying her head in her hands. Her rounded, scarred shoulders showed years of hard labour.

When she looked up, her eyes were completely blank as if no longer able to reflect pain, happiness, or any of those basic human emotions.

Hutealor Wede does not know how old she is, nor can she remember how long she has been in the village of Fiato Avendrpedo in eastern Ghana. All she knows is that she is a slave and likely to die there.

"My grandfather had illegal sex with a woman," she says, expressionless. "The gods punished our family.

"I was the virgin daughter, so I was brought to this village and given to the priest to stop the disasters happening.

"I have to do everything for the priest. Anything he wants."

Law ignored

Hutealor Wede is a victim of Trokosi, which from the local dialect literally means slavery to the gods.

It is part of a traditional religion where the priest mediates between the people and the gods - and of course interprets what they want. Three years ago a law was passed specifically to ban it, with a minimum punishment of three years in jail.

Agbogbe Hodui: Faces daily humiliation

But no woman has been freed because of it and no-one has been arrested.

Human rights groups are now meeting in Accra to try to put pressure on the government to stamp it out. The new president, John Kufuor, has pledged to implement the law in full.

"Young girls should be in educational establishments not in the harem of some fetish priest," he told the BBC.

Re: your question @ #21: "Do you think that if it weren't Republican PC to deny class differences in this nation, that you'd find similar crime rates if you did states by income rather than race?"

- I'm not a Republican (I voted for Obama, believe it or not, in the hopes that his example would improve black men's behavior - probably totally naive on my part) so I don't know what they think, but if crime is related to income, then why are children of black middle-class parents more likely to become poor? Maybe there is some correlation?

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http://www.pewtrusts.org/our_work_report…

"the intergenerational analysis reveals a significant difference in the extent to which parents are able to pass their economic advantages onto their children. Whereas children of white middle-income parents tend to exceed their parents in income, a majority of black children of middle-income parents fall below their parents in income and economic status."

Columbia sociologist Ronald B. Mincy, who was an advisor to the Pew study, says they went over the results again and again to make sure they were right. "There is a lot of downward mobility among African Americans," he told the Washington Post. “We don't have an explanation."
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http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-298.html

For decades critics of the public schools have been saying, "You can't solve educational problems by throwing money at them." The education establishment and its supporters have replied, "No one's ever tried." In Kansas City they did try. To improve the education of black students and encourage desegregation, a federal judge invited the Kansas City, Missouri, School District to come up with a cost-is-no-object educational plan and ordered local and state taxpayers to find the money to pay for it.

Kansas City spent as much as $11,700 per pupil--more money per pupil, on a cost of living adjusted basis, than any other of the 280 largest districts in the country. The money bought higher teachers' salaries, 15 new schools, and such amenities as an Olympic-sized swimming pool with an underwater viewing room, television and animation studios, a robotics lab, a 25-acre wildlife sanctuary, a zoo, a model United Nations with simultaneous translation capability, and field trips to Mexico and Senegal. The student-teacher ratio was 12 or 13 to 1, the lowest of any major school district in the country.

The results were dismal. Test scores did not rise; the black-white gap did not diminish; and there was less, not greater, integration.

The Kansas City experiment suggests that, indeed, educational problems can't be solved by throwing money at them, that the structural problems of our current educational system are far more important than a lack of material resources, and that the focus on desegregation diverted attention from the real problem, low achievement.

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Regarding your question @ #30, you are basically again agreeing that many blacks are stupid and violent, but you are saying that white oppression made them that way, not nature and genetics. Fine. The bottom line is that there is still a huge population of irreparibly stupid and violent people for the next few generations at least.

I really don't care WHY someone is stupid and violent. The fact that they are stupid and violent and very likely will remain that way is really all I need to know.