Monday, March 2, 2009

Trokosi Slave Rescue


Trokosi Slave Rescue

TROKOSI--the practice of some but not all traditional shrines in West Africa in which a human being, usually a young virgin, is forced into ritual servitude to pay for alleged crimes of family members or ancestors (almost always male), or for the priest to lift certain curses placed upon her or her family at the shrine. She is acclaimed to be a "wife of the gods," but those forced into such servitude usually feel they are slaves of the priests, who often use them sexually, treat them harshly and inhumanely, force them to worship and serve the shrine idols, and force them to work hard without compensation and sometimes with barely enough food to keep them alive.Human trafficking is the fastest growing criminal industry in the world today,surpassing drug dealing and illegal arms trade.Experts on slavery estimate that 17 million children worldwide are held in conditions amounting to slavery. Most are in India, Pakistan,where parents drowning in poverty and debt sell their children into labor. In other regions like West Africa, (Ghana) child-traffickers arrive in villages and buy the children -- as young as 4 or 5 years old -- from parents. Some of the families know what awaits their children. Others fall for promises that the children will be educated or get jobs that will allow them to send money home.Children are held in forms of slavery all over the world, and there are examples of children smuggled into the United States to work as prostitutes. Unicef estimates that 200,000 children are enslaved by cross-border smuggling rings in West and Central Africa larger number are held in bondage in their own countries. These children work agriculture, sweatshops, fishing and domestic service, or as prostitutes.

No comments: