Florida Atlantic University’s Human Rights Organization held their first event, an outreach pizza party, on Monday, Oct. 27. This was the newly formed organization’s first attempt to raise awareness on slavery and generate student support.
The faculty advisor for the HRO is Dr. Walid Phares, a Professor of Middle East Studies and Ethnic and Religious Conflict. Phares opened the presentation with remarks on his interest on slavery and his enthusiasm to encourage student involvement.
“Florida Atlantic University’s Human Rights Organization was the first student group nationwide to raise awareness on slavery in Sudan and Mauritania,” he said.
The students viewed two short documentaries regarding slavery in Sudan. The first was a Dateline special which included an interview with Baroness Caroline Cox, the deputy speaker for the British House of Lords and the president of the Christian Solidarity International (CSI). She exposed the truth about how people are treated in Sudan.
“[They] are bought, sold, and bred like cattle,” Cox said in the film. “[They] work at their master’s whim, raped, branded, beaten, maimed to avoid their escape.” The video showed a realistic view of how people live in Sudan.
The American Anti-Slavery Group’s documentary “Redemption” was presented next, which is a recruitment video that shows another voice for the voiceless. Dr. Charles Jacobs, founder and current Chairman of the Board said, “There are 27 million people around the world that labor in human bondage, [with] violence issued against them, economic exploitation, and . . . [who are] paid nothing.”
In Sudan there is currently a 13 year-old civil war, a ‘Jihad,’ or holy war. The government does not pay for the military, so the army abducts women and children in the South and then sells them in the North, for a profit. They steal cattle and burn houses, leaving people with no hope for a future.
People search for years for their family members, spend their entire life’s savings to get them back, all the time knowing that they may be taken again. This is a terrible reality that people need to realize. What good is our freedom if we don’t use it to free slaves?