The Stream | Charles Jacobs | Sept. 8, 2019
Today, an estimated 529,000 to 869,000 black men, women, and children are still slaves. They are bought, owned, sold, and traded by Arab and Muslim masters in five African countries. This statistic estimates those enslaved in Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, and Sudan. It excludes Nigeria, for which there are no tangible estimates.
Western human rights organizations and the mainstream media are practically and painfully silent on this matter. It does not fit with their focus on Western white sin. Here is a brief survey of this quasi-taboo topic.
Sudan
In Sudan, slavery remains a painful vestige of the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983–2005). That’s when the Arab Muslim government in the north of the country declared a jihad upon the black, largely Christian south. They killed perhaps 2.5 million people and enslaved as many as 200,000.
Slaves rescued by grassroots abolitionists tell horrific stories. Abduction. Beatings. Forced conversion to Islam. Grueling labor. Female genital mutilation. Malnutrition. Rape.
Slaves rescued by grassroots abolitionists tell horrific stories.
The war ended in 2005. Black South Sudan became the world’s newest nation on July 9, 2011. Still, many black slaves remain the property of Arab masters across the new border in the north. The exact number is not known. As of 2006, James Aguer Alic, a former Sudanese government minister, estimated that it could be as high as 35,000.