-Caveat Lector- ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 17 Jan 1999 16:20:40 -0800 (PST) From: OBRL-News <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:- American Anti-Slavery Group Orgone Biophysical Research Lab <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://id.mind.net/community/orgonelab/index.htm Forwarded News Item Please copy and distribute to other interested individuals and groups ********** AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY GROUP January 1999 Update There have been many exciting developments in the anti-slavery movement over the past few months. NEW WEBSITE: Log on to American Anti-Slavery Group's newly-redesigned website at http://www.anti-slavery.org. The site features extensive documentation of modern day slavery, recent articles in the press, and suggestions for ways you can take action. ANTI-SLAVERY SCHOOL KIDS WIN THE NATION'S HEART: The S.T.O.P. Slavery Campaign launched by Barbara Vogel's fifth grade class in Denver was all over the national media in December. Our website's Updates section has links to articles from the New York Times and Time Magazine, as well as audio feeds from NPR's All Things Considered. Classes across the country are joining on to the campaign. If you are a parent or teacher who would like more information, please call us at 800-884-0719. MUSEUM OF TOLERANCE ABOLITIONIST SYMPOSIUM: The Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance will host an international townhall meeting on contemporary black slavery on February 25. Speakers will include abolitionists, emancipators, eyewitnesses, and former slaves. Celebrities and political leaders will also be in attendance. Schools, libraries, and other institutions with video conferencing capabilities can hook into the event. Audio feed will also be broadcast live on the web. More info to come soon. L.A. TIMES COMMENTARY: The following op-ed, written by AASG President Charles Jacobs, ran in the L.A. Times on December 28, 1998. It has since been syndicated in newspapers around the country. Los Angeles Times - Monday, December 28, 1998 In Sudan, a 12-Year-Old Girl Can Be Bought for $50 Slavery: Rights groups are redeeming war captives for cash. But political change is needed. By CHARLES JACOBS It is a year before the millennium and Theresa Nybol Deng is a slave. In May, she was taken captive when the government-armed militia stormed her village in southern Sudan. Soldiers shot the men, looted the village and carted off as many women and children as they could. Theresa is 12 years old. She can be purchased for $50. If her fate is anything like that of tens of thousands of black Africans who have become chattel in Sudan's civil war, Theresa has been sold and bought. She is likely serving a master somewhere in northern Sudan, Libya or the Persian Gulf. If she was selected as a concubine, she will have been genitally mutilated--to be acceptable in her master's culture--and then she will have been bred. Theresa is a victim of a religious war, which also is this century's longest lasting armed conflict. For more than a decade, the Islamic fundamentalist government in Sudan has been using slave raids as the terror weapon of choice in its self-declared "holy war" on the African population in the south. While the goal is to Islamize and Arabize Sudan's Christians and tribalists, the Islamist extremists in Khartoum also have devastated the moderate Muslim Nuba peoples. Slaves like Theresa are given Arab names and forcibly converted to Islam. Slavery in Sudan has been well researched. Among the first to report slave raids was a courageous Arab professor from the University of Khartoum. He was jailed for his effort. Since then, journalists, human rights organizations and the U.N. have documented these raids. U.N. special investigator Gaspar Biro visited Sudan several times and confirmed that human bondage was a tactic of this war. Reporting on "modern day slave markets," Biro found that "the racial dimension of the violations and abuses against children constitutes a particularly grave and alarming circumstance, which should be of particular concern from a human rights perspective." Yet the fate of Theresa and her people has not been of particular concern in the West. Because of scant media coverage or because many people don't know or because this slavery doesn't fit the familiar black and white pattern or because we fear offending the Muslim world, a shameful silence pervades. Thankfully, that is beginning to change. America, after all, is a nation that tore itself apart over the issue of one person owning another, and Americans who learn of today's black slavery do not remain silent. Barbara Vogel, a fifth grade teacher from Denver, has sparked a national movement. After she read a news article on slavery to her class, the kids saved their lunch money to purchase the freedom of Sudanese slaves. They joined an international rescue effort that so far has emancipated and returned more than 4,000 people to their villages. Dozens of classes from across the country have joined the campaign. Who says our public schools are failing? Redeeming individual slaves for cash saves lives and garners attention. But it is not the solution to slavery. Political action is required. And help is coming. In October, U.S. Rep. Donald M. Payne (D-N.J.), who helped abolitionists testify to Congress in 1996, convened a special panel on Sudan at the Congressional Black Caucus' annual policy meeting. African American leaders seemed stunned to hear about slavery from Africans. Days later, Payne launched a national petition campaign demanding action to emancipate 103 women and children known to have been taken into captivity. The emancipation petition, addressed to President Clinton and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, is gathering thousands of signatures across America. For six years, American abolitionists have been documenting and combating modern-day human bondage in Sudan. Americans are beginning to respond. Six years ago, Theresa's fate would have been sealed. But now we know her name. And we are trying to set her free. - - - Charles Jacobs is President of the American Anti-Slavery Group in Boston ********** OBRL News is a product of the non-profit Orgone Biophysical Research Lab Greensprings Research and Educational Center PO Box 1148, Ashland, Oregon 97520 USA http://id.mind.net/community/orgonelab/index.htm [EMAIL PROTECTED] Building upon the discoveries of the late, great natural scientist, Dr. Wilhelm Reich To subscribe to OBRL-News, send the message: subscribe obrl-news to the following address: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe, or change to a new email address, firstly: unsubscribe obrl-news <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> to the same address above. 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