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‘He bought me like a chicken’: the struggle to end slavery in Niger
The Guardian ^ | 28th June 2022 | Fred Harter

Posted on 06/28/2022 3:28:57 AM PDT by Cronos

Al-Husseina Amadou never forgets the day she was sold. Like her parents, she was born into slavery in southern Niger. Forty-five years ago, when she was 15, a wealthy businessman from across the border in Nigeria arrived and bought her from her family’s master as a “fifth wife” or wahaya.

“My parents had no say,” she recalls. “I was just a girl and he bought me like a chicken in the market

...For 15 years Amadou lived with her “husband” in northern Nigeria, cooking and cleaning for his four “official” wives, whom he had married in accordance with Islamic law, and their children, while also working in their fields and tending their livestock.

Barely fed, she would eat the family’s leftovers or steal handfuls of grain. She ran away dozens of times, returning to her family in Niger, but was always caught and brought back.

For these transgressions she was beaten with a stick and still carries the scars on her back.

...Slavery has a complex legacy in Niger. It was pervasive in west African kingdoms centuries ago but despite several attempts at abolition, it remains deeply entrenched.

The French colonial administration outlawed slavery in 1905 and it was also banned under the 1960 constitution, when Niger gained independence. Other attempts followed in 1999 and 2003, with a penal code that formally defined and criminalised the practice.

Yet there are still tens of thousands of enslaved people across Niger, according to Anti-Slavery International and Timidria; some estimates put the number as high as 130,000. Most are descendants of people who were enslaved generations ago, living and working on the land of their ancestral “masters”, similar to serfs in Tsarist Russia.

...

(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs
KEYWORDS: chat; chatforum
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This reads like something out of "12 years a slave" about life in the 1840s.

We need to talk about slavery today, not about the long dead past.

1 posted on 06/28/2022 3:28:57 AM PDT by Cronos
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To: Cronos

From the looks of things in modern America, some people (regardless of race) would be better off as slaves.


2 posted on 06/28/2022 3:32:41 AM PDT by RoosterRedux
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To: RoosterRedux

Not if we keep letting the Dims instill sharia law.


3 posted on 06/28/2022 3:35:37 AM PDT by Tell It Right (1st Thessalonians 5:21 -- Put everything to the test, hold fast to that which is true.)
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To: Cronos

There’s white people in Niger?...


4 posted on 06/28/2022 3:35:46 AM PDT by EEGator
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To: Cronos

The only thing they say about the ideology that drives the slave trade in Africa is “islamic law allows multiple wives”. No equation, no condemnation, nothing. The slave trade in Africa, and across a large swath of the planet will never end until the root cause (islam) is addressed.


5 posted on 06/28/2022 3:38:09 AM PDT by Turbo Pig ('To close with and destroy the enemy")
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To: Cronos

My daughter’s closest friend in college went to Niger for her junior year abroad obligation. One girl the friend went to school with was very wealthy and had several animals, including a camel, who met her at the end of her classes every day to walk her home.


6 posted on 06/28/2022 3:42:13 AM PDT by firebrand
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To: Turbo Pig

One article says it has a rigid caste system.lighter born moors are nobles and darker skined blacks are the slaves. One guy was jailed for having 5 wives instead of 4


7 posted on 06/28/2022 3:43:11 AM PDT by RummyChick
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To: Tell It Right
If the fundamental Muslim population in the U.S. expands sufficiently, they could run the domestic slave market as successfully as Hasidic Jews run the Diamond District in NYC.

/alternative reality

8 posted on 06/28/2022 3:46:17 AM PDT by RoosterRedux
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To: Cronos

True, especially how the practice was not started by wealthy plantation owners in the South prior to the Civil War. If a valid conversation about slavery is to take place, it needs to begin with where the practice started, who stated it, modern forms of it, and how to bring an end to it. IMHO what needs to stop is the finger pointing towards Caucasians of European decent.


9 posted on 06/28/2022 4:10:50 AM PDT by MissEdie (Be the Light in Someone's Darkness.)
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To: Cronos
he bought me like a chicken

and loved me like a goat

Joking aside, Niger is a member of the UN. Why doesn't the UN with all it's talk of human rights do something? Kick them out if nothing else. Too busy with their 2030 plans to make Western people live like peasants.

10 posted on 06/28/2022 4:12:48 AM PDT by Pollard (If there's a question mark in the headline, the answer should always be No.)
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To: MissEdie

You may have already read this or know much, if not all, of from other sources:

http://wallbuilders.com/founding-fathers-slavery/

I hadn’t realized that the American colonists, most of whom were anti-slavery Christians, tried to ban slavery, but any law they put into place was struck down by King George.

Anyway, it has some good source material from the Declaration and Constitution signers about how they felt that slavery was wrong, even though some had slaves they’d inherited and there was no plan in place for a large group of uneducated field workers if freed.


11 posted on 06/28/2022 4:18:25 AM PDT by skr (May God confound the enemy)
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To: Cronos

I was in Riyadh and an African slave delivered my food.

Worst moment of my life.


12 posted on 06/28/2022 4:20:09 AM PDT by Cowgirl of Justice
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To: Turbo Pig

an yet we are incensed here about abortion and the transgender cause du jour...this girl could give a rats ass about any of that....


13 posted on 06/28/2022 4:36:05 AM PDT by databoss
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To: EEGator

“There’s white people in Niger?...”

That is why you do not hear stories about slavery still existing in the USA media. It does not fit the left political narrative; remember only white people can be evil.


14 posted on 06/28/2022 4:40:16 AM PDT by DEPcom (Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules)
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To: DEPcom

I’m glad you got it. I was expecting a complete misunderstanding and a “talking to”…


15 posted on 06/28/2022 4:47:40 AM PDT by EEGator
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To: Cronos
“We need to talk about slavery today, not about the long dead past.”

THAT my friend is not allowed. Somehow stories like this slip by the woke censors and we get to read about modern slavery.
As a whole, in order to keep the narrative of the “poor down-trodden” African and even more “down-trodden” people of African descent going, we must only talk about the evils of white men from the 18th & 19th & 20th centuries.

16 posted on 06/28/2022 4:49:33 AM PDT by Tupelo (Don't underestimate The Republican Party's ability to f*ck things up)
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To: Cronos

So many Marxist college students believe slavery was solely an American institution.


17 posted on 06/28/2022 4:59:15 AM PDT by dixie1202
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To: Cronos

This is not nearly as bad as having slavery 150 years ago according to the Communists.


18 posted on 06/28/2022 5:22:01 AM PDT by bray (The Vax is fake and deadly)
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To: Turbo Pig

Islam is/was highly responsible for the slave trade. Blacks who become Muslims is akin to Jews becoming Nazi’s. It shouldn’t happen and just doesn’t make sense to me - maybe I’m missing something...smh


19 posted on 06/28/2022 5:24:18 AM PDT by Paco
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To: Cronos

No money in that.


20 posted on 06/28/2022 5:36:55 AM PDT by Altura Ct.
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