Word: slaving
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Under the sponsorship of the United Nations, representatives of 51 countries gathered in Geneva's ornate Palais des Nations to deal with a problem which presumably was settled in the 19th century. The idea was to adopt a new international convention against "slavery, the slave trade and institutions and practices similar to slavery," but this week as the conference drew to a close, it proved impossible for nations of the world to cooperate effectively to abolish the most primitive form of human bondage...
Britain and France wanted the carrying of slaves by sea to be labeled "an act of piracy"1-a move that would permit search and seizure of suspected slave ships. Most directly affected by this proposal was Saudi Arabia, which, with the small-fry nations around it on the Arabian Peninsula, constitutes the only area of the world where slavery survives in its classic form. To meet the demand of oil-rich Saudis, who are prepared to pay up to $1,000 for a likely young Arab girl, traders annually import some 30,000 slaves from...
Africa, Iran and Iraq. Some of these recruits to slavery are captured or kidnaped in their native villages; others are lured to Mecca on alleged pilgrimages, then sold in the slave market of the Holy City. Most have to be ferried into Arabia across the Red Sea or Persian Gulf. If the British Navy, under the proposed "piracy" clause, resumed its vigorous, pre-World War I slave patrol in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, this lucrative traffic would be severely hampered...
Jamil M. Baroody, the brooding, hot-tempered Lebanese who was Saudi Arabia's unofficial observer at the conference, did not deny that slavery existed in Arabia. "Slaves," he snorted. "What are slaves? It is better to call them servants or stewards. They have a good life. They call their master 'Uncle.'" But he insisted that the proposal that slave ships be subject to seizure was an "imperialist device"-a typical trick of Western colonialism. Responding to the words "imperialism" and "colonialism" like fire horses to the bell, Asian and African nations lined up alongside Saudi Arabia...
...last week, "what I don't understand is he said he was a Christian, but when we got to Baghdad, I found he was no Christian. He was all Arab. When an Arab marries, he doesn't want a wife or a companion; he just wants a slave. They treat their women like dirt-worse than dirt. They slug them and spit in their faces and then go off and leave them at home while they go sit in these coffee houses. Even before we left Tacoma, he used to go out to a tavern some nights...