Human slavery, Disgrace to the country - EDITORIAL

Yesterday was the United Nations Human Rights Day and the theme this year was ‘Human rights 365’ stressing the message that every day is human rights day. The UN General Assembly proclaimed December 10 as Human Rights Day in 1950, to bring to the attention of the people of the world the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations. It celebrates the fundamental proposition in the Universal Declaration that each one of us, everywhere, at all times is entitled to the full range of human rights, that human rights belong equally to each of us and bind us together as a global community with the same ideals and values.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in a message says “human rights are for all of us, all the time: whoever we are and wherever we are from; no matter our class, our opinions, our sexual orientation. This is a matter of individual justice, social stability and global progress. When people enjoy their rights, economies flourish and countries are at peace. Violations of human rights are more than personal tragedies. They are alarm bells that may warn of a much bigger crisis”.
One of the key rights issues  in the coming years will be the scandal of modern human slavery and trafficking, specially of women and children. In Rome last week Pope Francis and the leaders of other major religions including Buddhism, declared that human trafficking was a crime against humanity and pledged to eradicate human slavery by 2020.

 “In the eyes of God, each human being is a free person, whether girl, boy, woman, or man, and is destined to exist for the good of all in equality and fraternity,” says the declaration signed by Anglican, Orthodox, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, and Muslim leaders during a ceremony at the Vatican.

The meeting was sponsored by the Global Freedom Network, a faith-based network that Pope Francis launched earlier this year with Archbishop Justin Welby of Canterbury, the leader of the 80 million-strong Anglican Communion, and Ahmed Muhammad Ahmed el-Tayeb, Grand Imam of Al Azhar Mosque in Egypt.
Among the signatories to the document were two rabbis, an imam and a sheikh, two ayatollahs, a Hindu guru, a Zen master, and an Orthodox patriarch. In all, eight different religions or Christian churches were represented.

In his brief remarks, Pope Francis said that “any discriminating relationship that doesn’t respect the fundamental condition that the other is my equal constitutes a crime. An abhorrent crime against humanity.”

“We [the signers] make this declaration in the name of the victims,” said Pope Francis, who pointed out that human trafficking occurs virtually everywhere, from slums to the world’s wealthiest cities, hidden behind closed doors or in plain sight on streets where women are forced into prostitution.

According to the World Fact book more than 1.5 million Sri Lankans work abroad, 90% of them in the Middle East. They send home more than $2.5 billion a year.  Sri Lanka is primarily a source and, to a much lesser extent, a destination for men and women trafficking for the purposes of forced labour and commercial sexual exploitation. Sri Lankan men and women migrate willingly to Kuwait, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Bahrain, and Singapore to work as construction workers, domestic servants, or garment factory workers. Some of these workers find themselves in situations of involuntary servitude when faced with restrictions on movement, withholding of passports, threats, physical or sexual abuse, and debt bondages. This is in some instances, facilitated by large pre-departure fees imposed by labour recruitment agencies and their unlicensed sub-agents. Children are trafficked within the country for commercial sexual exploitation and sometimes for forced labour.

As the leaders of all major religions have agreed, Sri Lanka also must commit itself to end all forms of human slavery by 2020 because human slavery is a disgrace to the country.