Peace, safety and a clean environment are the hallmarks of our suburban lives. Murder and mayhem may occur, but it’s always elsewhere. We expect our neighbors to be law-abiding citizens – and certainly not engaged in slavery.
But that’s what a Saudi couple’s neighbors faced last week. Homaidan Al-Turki and Sarah Khonaizan were arrested by the FBI for enslaving an Indonesian woman. The government charges that for four years, she labored long hours at the couple’s home or was loaned out to work at other family friends’ homes. She was paid $1.91 a day. Allegedly, Al-Turki raped her repeatedly.
Millions of black Africans experience terror at the hands of their Arab masters in the Sudan, Niger, Mauritania and other African countries. Born in East Africa, I live with the memory of the Arab slave trade: I walked the Mombasa streets where millions of shackled Africans were loaded into dhows since the dawn of the Arab seafaring days. Generations of my people have lived unacknowledged, disenfranchised, tortured chattels of Arabs in the Middle East. More than 40 million blacks were trapped in this nightmare.
Slavery today is a byproduct of tribal misconceptions and primitive ideation. Arab-on-black slavery represents a 500-year continuum; the slave trade persists everywhere Arabs and black Africans live side by side. The United Nations (including African and Arab nations) looks on, paralyzed by diplomatic protocol, unable to stop this heinous crime against humanity. For Western governments, African pain and suffering don’t merit much response.
Modern-day slavery has two streams. One is rooted in primitive tribal concatenations; the other rises from economic imperatives. The form we are best acquainted with is the non-Arab economic, exploitative one. Poor Asian and East European women and young children are brought across borders, forcibly or on false pretense, to become indentured laborers. Elsewhere, poverty forces families to sell their young daughters in Thailand, India, and elsewhere into brothels. Uncounted numbers of human beings live tortured, miserable lives in our own backyards.
Because of the Saudi element in our local story, I must mention that America’s Middle East friends – Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates – are infamous for their treatment of foreign house workers. Many Filipino and Sri Lankan women are raped, tortured and enslaved by their Arab masters. Their countries of origin never complain, because their women are a source of foreign currency.
If Al-Turki is guilty, that guilt is shared by his Saudi friends, who enjoyed the free labor of the poor nameless woman. We who know the horrors of slavery and opt to do nothing are the slavers’ accomplices.
The shame is that today’s Arab brand of Islam condones slavery. There isn’t a more profound breach of a person’s human rights than enslaving them. Can we in the 21st century continue to countenance the existence of this barbaric and terrorist institution? Where’s America’s outrage?
There’s much we can do to affect the fate of those condemned to a life of irrevocable misery and pain: by being more intrusively observant, join anti-slavery groups, support those brave enough to fight to free black slaves by making contributions to help in the movements’ efforts. We must insist that the United Nations act to free the enslaved, and to live up to its charter and mandate.
Pius Kamau of Aurora is a thoracic and general surgeon. He was born and raised in Kenya and immigrated to the U.S. in 1971. His column appears on alternate Wednesdays.
