No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
Strong sentence!
What do we today call slavery? Do we call it slavery if a woman has to take care of her children and clean the house? If yes, well done feminists or is this a wrong interpretation of the word? Slavery- how do we define this word? Sometimes I have the impression that many words are misunderstood out of a lack of knowledge. Many words are used without the knowledge of their meaning or the circumstances to make them meaningful.
We are raised with this word as a warning. We are raised with this word and the sentence it is used in is more or less always in past tense or mostly the word does not really fit. We have no idea what is going on next door and many of us think it is good that we don’t. We twist the meaning to suit our time; we bend the word and redefine it. I come from a so called “first-world-country”, where slavery is part of history. Is it really??? Are we immune when it comes to “third-world-issues”? Is slavery a “third-world-issue” or am I mistaken when I say that the “first-world started this as an issue, weren’t the so called well developed countries the once that had slaves? Slavery and servitude should be an issue out of many reasons. As an example I am on purpose not picking prostitution as most likely everybody expects because it is not the only way slavery is still taking place. This is one of the thousand other sad paradigms out there:
A couple of weeks ago, there was a documentary about Chinese restaurants in Germany. I am quite sure that the definition of slavery is obsolete in such cases. I think these cases even define the word. There were people seen, Chinese people that were “imported” from China. As soon as they arrived in Germany at their so called working place, the owners of the restaurant took their passports, they were shown their chambers, they were supposed to live in, and most of them were in some cellar, which belonged to the restaurant. Some of the rooms had the size of a refrigerator.
These people (the cooks) were supposed to work between 12 to 18 hours and on weekends longer, the salary is something like 180€ if I didn’t misunderstand. Of course what did they think – did they really think that they were imported to go on holidays? Did they think the grilled chicken would fly into their mouths? They come to Germany and take good Germans work! Each and every good German always wants to be locked up in a cellar and work for 12-18 hours! Each citizen of a so called first world country is desperate for such a job, but there are not enough of them! These people had to mix old smelly meat into still good one in order to stretch it and because fresh meat is too expensive. Most likely it is because these small, dark and unheated cellar apartments are the most wanted and hence the most expensive.
One of these imported cooks said he wouldn’t cook with smelly old meat. He was not fired like one could think- no he was locked up in his chamber until he starved there and the next one that knew how to obey, after he was shown the dead body of the previous cook, got his chamber.
We don’t have any idea what slavery means but we accept it. Not knowing and not thinking about it.
Slavery and servitude are a question of pride and I am not talking about the slave’s pride, I am talking about the pride of the slavedriver. We should be proud enough and strong enough to make sure that slavery does no longer have any room in our society and we can guarantee that if only we have the will, the interest and our eyes open. There are so many issues out there that need to be solved. Let’s bring this one not only partially to the past.
We are strong enough and we should have the pride to kick it to the past entirely, let’s stick together and just DO IT!!!
Hırpıt
