Dear Pueros,

Did I tell you that your last story is great and greater looks what will happen next to it? It has all I like: boy slavery, white submission (here the social background is a delight), heavy restrains and ultimately (I hope) rectification of the teenslave's body. All this makes me really horny and I imagine it is the greater homage a reader can give to an erotic stories writer. Only one thing: I would have preferred a little older slave (around 17): personal preference of course, but I also find that objectively their reactions to slavery more interesting than those of younger boys with less attitude and self-satisfaction.

Mikael the Asian Master

Pueros is far too accurate in his description of contemporary slavery in Niger. Despite being made illegal on March 5, 2005, slavery continues in that country. Just a couple of weeks ago, I received an email from Anti-Slavery International (the oldest abolitionist society in the world, founded in 1842) in regard to the NON-abolition of slavery in that country

In March I wrote to tell you some good news that the Niger Government was going to hold a ceremony that would mark an end to slavery throughout the country. 7,000 people were to be released in one region of Niger. However, that release did not go ahead as planned. A ceremony was held and slavery was announced to be a criminal offence, but the authorities warned slave masters not to release their slaves officially. If they did, they were told they would face up to 30 years in prison.

Now, in an alarming move, the Government of Niger has arrested the country’s leading anti-slavery activist, Ilguilas Weila. He and another activist, Alassane Biga, remain in prison following their arrest over a week ago. On 5 May, they were charged with illegally soliciting funds from an international organisation based in London, meaning Anti-Slavery International. This charge is unfounded and baseless.

On 28 April, Ilguilas Weila, president of Niger's pioneering anti-slavery organisation Timidria and 2004 Anti-Slavery Award winner, Alassane Biga, Assistant General Secretary of Timidria's Tillabery office, and four other people, were arrested and accused of “propagating false information on slavery and attempting to raise funds illegally”. The charge of propagating false information on slavery has now been dropped and the four men who were arrested with Weila and Biga were released.

The Government's actions against Weila and Biga appear to be a concerted campaign to discredit them and the work of Timidria as a whole.

At least 43,000 people are in slavery across Niger. They are born into an established slave class and are made to carry out all labour required by their masters without pay, including herding, cleaning, and moving their master’s tent to ensure he and his family are always in the shade. Slaves are inherited, given as gifts and babies may be taken away from their mothers once weaned. They are denied all rights and choice.

In May 2004 a new law came into effect making practising slavery punishable by up to 30 years in prison. This was in response to the publication of the first national survey of slavery, which was jointly carried out by Timidria and Anti-Slavery International. The report established the extent and countrywide existence of slavery, having interviewed over 11,000 people, most of whom were found to be in slavery.

I have been an active member of Anti-Slavery International since the spring of 1965 when my Arabic language tutor returned from a visit home to tell me that his family had aquired a new slave during his stay in America – a young eunuch. Slavery was “officially” abolished in Saudi Arabia in 1956, but persists today.

Anti-Slavery International estimates that there are over 27,000,000 slaves in the world today! They range from 4 and 5 year-old Bengali boys, kidnapped and traded to the Gulf States for use in camel racing (The death rate among jockeys is as high as 50%.) to small boys and girls sold into brothels in India and Thailand, to slave labor in the Amazon rain forest of Brazil. The international slave trade is active and brutal today.

In a report released yesterday (Wednesday, May 11, 2005) the International Labor Organization gave a much more conservative figure of a minimum of 12,300,000 slaves in the world – though they admit that it is a very conservative number of which they can be absolutely confident. They also estimated that the MINIMUM profitability of the slave trade amounted to at least U.S.$59,000,000,000 per year. This certainly makes it a major world industry!

If you would like to get involved in fighting the problem, you can start with the following web pages for major anti-slavery organizations:

Anti-Slavery International ( http://www.antislavery.org/), the major international organization

The Australian Anti-Slavery Society ( http://www.anti-slaverysociety.org/)

American Anti-Slavery Group ( http://www.iabolish.com/), a recent, but very active and effective group

Free the Slaves ( http://www.freetheslaves.net/home.php)

If Jesus' figures and the world population clock are accurate, then one person in every 250 in the world, is a slave. More people than the total population of Australia. Something of a jolt to realize that there is a country where slavery was just abolished since the beginning of the millennium. But you also have to figure, that folks like the miners at Taodeni are essentially the same as slaves, except that they are considered to some degree, to be political prisoners.

For as many years as I have worked as an anti-slavery activist, I never realized that the state of California has no law against slave trafficking. Slave ownership is illegal, but it’s difficult to prosecute the traffickers without a law specifically preventing it. It falls through the cracks of the laws against kidnapping and slavery itself.

Slavery, itself, is not yet dead in the state, and a recent study found 57 cases reported since 2000. A vote will be held tomorrow in the State Assembly Appropriations Committee on AB22 (The California Trafficking Victims’ Protection Act) to outlaw slave trading in the state. If it passes the Appropriations Committee vote, it may come before the entire Assembly for a vote sometime this fall. It may even pass into law within a year or so….

It would still require approval by the state Senate and to be signed by the governor.

Maybe Niger isn’t so backward after all!

You're the one with "The Governator"...go figure.

He probably owns a few.

Note - all AHHHnuhld comments furthermore should go in the Political Forum.

Spank me very much.

I had to say that.

JesusA (imported) wrote: Wed May 25, 2005 8:01 pm For as many years as I have worked as an anti-slavery activist, I never realized that the state of California has no law against slave trafficking.

Beg pardon, but why does California need one?

Given that the anti-slavery amendment binds the Federal Goverment against slavery and the recent 20th-century precedents bind the states to most of the things in the federal bill of rights, isn't this a moot point?

Yes, the Thirteeenth Amendment did abolish slavery in the United States (but not in the rest of the world, as too many of my students have thought). It’s the second clause of the amendment that is under consideration in California:

THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT

1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

There must be legislation to enforce the abolition that is specified in the first clause. In the absence of state legislation, the state must rely on whatever the federal legislation is and, at least in California’s case, will rely on federal enforcement through federal courts.

This is clearly not the most efficient or effective way to prosecute the cases that have come to light in this state – 57 cases since 2000.

The Thirteenth Amendment also does not specifically outlaw trafficking, though that is certainly illegal by extension. It’s the reverrse of the Gulf States that have outlawed trafficking in slaves, but not their ownership.

Well-wrought story. I am not particularly interested in the insinuation that it reflects what is going on today. It is a fact of life, just like there are Muslims who want to kill us here in the USA. That is a fact of life, too. The story read very well even though the ending seemed a bit contrived...all's well that ends well, and that sort of thing. Congratulations, pueros.

I'd like to thank everyone who's commented publicly here or privately about 'Slaveboy From New York'. I've received approaching fifty e-mails about the tale.

I'd also like to point out to any reader who's not yet guessed that my new story, 'The Codicil', is a prequel to 'Slaveboy From New York', which will also be followed sometime soon by a sequel, which I've now decided to entitle 'Slaveboys From America'.

PUEROS

Don't know if there is anything derived from it, on the ABC News website, but Nightline had a piece on slavery in Niger last night (2 June 2005), including a reference to castration by a runaway slave. The show gave the figure of 900,000 slaves in Niger. Probably more than there ever were in any one state in the United States.